Long Gone

by Alafair Burke

  Alice knew they had reached the end of what could be accomplished today. They would have to start up again tomorrow in Falls Village. She could not recall another time in her life when she had absolutely nowhere to go.

  “All right. You can use the bat phone to call me when it’s time to leave the city.”

  “You can’t go back to your apartment tonight.”

  “I know.”

  “So where are you planning to stay?”

  “I stopped trying to plan anything about fifteen hours ago. That sofa you’re on seems as good a place as any.”

  She could tell he didn’t like the suggestion. She didn’t want him to suggest his own apartment. She wanted him to be precisely what he seemed, a man who believed that law enforcement should stand for truth, a man who was willing to help her because it was the right thing to do.

  “How about we make the drive tonight to avoid the traffic. We’ll find a hotel up there to crash. Two rooms, of course.”

  It was the perfect suggestion.

  They were halfway to Connecticut on the Hutchinson River Parkway when they heard the announcement on 1010 News radio. An arrest warrant had been issued for Alice Humphrey, the daughter of Academy Award–winning director Frank Humphrey, for the murder of a former boyfriend and business associate. The facts of the case were still sealed, but according to an anonymous source, evidence submitted in support of the warrant included sexual photographs of Frank Humphrey with an allegedly underage girl. It was unclear how the photographs were related to the murder allegations against his daughter. The reporter promised more details as they rolled in.

  They drove in silence to Falls Village. As she fell asleep in a lumpy bed in a roadside motel, she had never felt so alone.

  Chapter Fifty

  Joann Stevenson felt like the wind had been knocked out of her. In the days that had passed since she’d last seen her daughter, she had learned to protect herself as she listened to the television. Hearing Becca described as a missing teenager—with all of the accompanying speculation about the dark possibilities—was not easy. But even harder were the nights when the newscasters said nothing about Becca during those thirty-second commercial teasers, a reminder to Joann that her daughter’s disappearance was already turning into yesterday’s story, surpassed by the latest home invasion or commercial fire.

  What she did not expect during a commercial break from Glee—the show Becca had turned her on to—was the announcement that an arrest warrant had been issued for the murder at the Highline Gallery, or that the suspect in question was a woman—a former child actress at that. Nor did she expect the scintillating teaser that the woman’s father and pornographic photographs of him with an underage girl might be involved.

  She knew it was late, but called Jason Morhart anyway.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Joann?”

  “That’s right. Joann Stevenson, the white-trash woman whose daughter went missing, and no one had the proper decency to call to say an arrest warrant was going out. I had to hear about it on the news.”

  “It’s on the news?”

  She heard a television come on in the background. “You didn’t know?”

  “I knew an arrest might be coming soon. They’re still not sure of Becca’s connection to the gallery, Joann. Hopefully if they get this woman in custody, they can turn the pressure on for answers about Becca. Remember? We talked about this?”

  “Did you know this movie director was involved?”

  “He’s the suspect’s father. They’re looking for the woman who was running the gallery where Becca’s fingerprints were found.”

  “But they’re saying the father took sexual photographs of an underage girl.”

  “That part was on the news?” The detail must have proved too titillating not to leak.

  “So you knew about the pictures? I thought the picture of Becca was one she’d taken to send to that boy, Dan Hunter.”

  “The gallery was selling pornographic photographs—the picture that Becca sent to Dan was definitely not one of them. I’m sorry, but it was a detail I couldn’t share with you.”

  “I mean, a man like Frank Humphrey must have access to all kinds of film distribution networks. He could peddle that smut all over the world.”

  “I can assure you, Joann, that the detectives in the city are absolutely positive that Becca was not one of the kids depicted in those photographs. And I promise you—I swear on my life—that I had no idea that they suspected this woman’s father of being involved.”

  “I can’t believe no one even called to tell me the arrest warrant was really happening. Jason, I heard about it on the news.” She didn’t like the shrill tone of her voice.

  “They didn’t call me either. I would’ve told you. I would have driven over there myself to let you know in person to expect the announcement. I’m so sorry, Joann.”

  “Is it too late?”

  “You know you can call me anytime you need me. That’s why I wanted you to have this number.”

  “No, I mean is it too late for you to come over here? To talk to me.”

  Jason knew it was probably a mistake, but he pulled on his coat and climbed into his truck.

  Chapter Fifty-One

  The home in which Christie Kinley had supposedly passed away was a large yellow colonial with a wraparound porch and French doors. Alice guessed the lot was about three acres. She wondered if her father’s money had paid for it.

  The woman who answered the door was about her age. Her hair was pulled into a high ponytail. She was wearing running clothes and had her car keys in hand. “Let’s go, Jenny. We’re going to the gym. Little Kyle’s going to be in the playroom, too. It’ll be fun. Sorry about that,” she said, lowering her voice to a conversational tone. “Getting a four-year-old in the car is a twenty-minute production.”

  Alice let Hank do the talking, since he was the one with a badge. He explained that they were looking for background information about the previous homeowner, Julie Kinley. They believed she still went by her middle name, Christie.

  “She passed away last year. We bought the house in the summer and only dealt with the real estate agent. I’ve got a forwarding address for her mail, though. It goes to her sister, I believe?” She reached for the black metal mailbox affixed to the front porch and slipped out one of the envelopes awaiting pickup. “This looked like junk mail from her gym, but I forward everything just in case. You can take it if you want.”

  Alice saw a handwritten Brooklyn address on the envelope before Hank slipped it into his coat pocket.

  “Do you happen to know the details of Ms. Kinley’s passing?” he asked.

  “No, I think I’ve intentionally kept my ears closed to that kind of talk in the neighborhood. I don’t really want to know there was a dead person in my house. Silly, I suppose, but the house was all cleared out by the time we looked at it, and I like to pretend to think we were the first to ever live here. You might try Mrs. Withers next door. She’s lived here forever and is one of those neighbors who seems to know everything about everybody.”

  Alice could tell that the woman didn’t consider that trait a good thing.

  They could still hear the mom yelling at Jenny to “hurry it up” as they made their way to the next-door neighbor’s house.

  Mrs. Withers was exactly what a nosy neighbor should be—a little plump with curly white hair, a kitchen that smelled like bread, and an ability to whip up mugs of hot cocoa, with marshmallows no less, for strangers who showed up without notice. She also liked to talk. A lot. And quickly.

  “I always felt sorry for Christie. The cancer was like the icing on the cake, confirmation of that queasy feeling I had since I first met her as a teenager. It’s like some people are just born with bad karma. I always hoped that something would turn for that girl. When Gloria died —”

  “That was Christie’s mother?” Alice was delighted at the woman’s loquaciousness, but found it difficult to get a word in ed
gewise.

  “If you could call her a mother. She was always flitting around, chasing after this man or the next. That’s how she managed to have two daughters without ever having a man involved in any way except the bedroom, if she even bothered going to a bed. She was a groupie back in the sixties, you know.”

  Alice and Hank both muttered the requisite “No, we didn’t,” but Mrs. Withers had plowed on without them.

  “Oh, she would talk about those days like she was Neil Armstrong, walking on the moon. She bedded Mick Jagger once, according to her. By the time she moved here, Christie was fourteen years old and already headed to rehab, but Gloria was still at it. She’d go down to the city and try to pick up these has-been actors at their old hangouts. She was one of those gals who thought a woman’s only value was to land a man. She wanted those girls of hers to be famous, but never taught them a single talent or skill. In Gloria’s delusional mind, they’d get by on their looks. But then Gloria had her stroke about eight or nine years ago, and Christie moved back into the house to take care of Mia.”

  “Mia is Christie’s sister?” Alice remembered mention of a surviving sister in Christie’s obituary.

  “Yep, and Gloria screwed her up at least as much as she did Christie. When Christie moved back here, I thought maybe this would be her chance to have a better life, without Gloria hounding her about getting a husband locked down. It seemed like she might have gotten her head on a little straighter, but then she got the news about the cancer. Poor thing was too far gone by the time they caught it. ”

  She finally paused, taking a sip of her cocoa as if they had been having an idle conversation about the relative merits of powder or liquid dish detergent.

  Alice didn’t know how to ask the woman whether she was absolutely certain Christie had really died.

  “I imagine that’s a difficult end to one’s life,” she finally said.

  “Oh, it was horrible. You know, when Gloria went, it was from a stroke out in the yard shoveling snow. She just fell down and died. But we all had to watch Christie go. She got so thin because she couldn’t keep any food down.”

  Alice looked at Hank, who also seemed disappointed. The deterioration this woman was describing did not seem like something that could be feigned.

  “I think Christie knew when it was finally time for her to go. She rounded up a group of people at the house so she could be surrounded by friendly faces. She told us to make it a potluck so she could watch us eat.” She smiled at the memory. “Then when she was feeling tired, she called her best friend and her sister into her room to hold her hands while she fell asleep. She never woke up.”

  “So you were actually there at the house when she passed?”

  “Yes. I like to think it’s because Christie knew I always hoped for something better for her.”

  “You mentioned that Christie moved back into the house to take care of her sister. May I ask if there’s something wrong with Mia?” Maybe she would know who might still hold a grudge about what happened to her sister as a teenager.

  “Well, it depends by what you mean by something wrong, I suppose. Supposedly she’s a very talented photographer, but as my granddaughter sometimes says, there’s a screw loose in there. There’s a darkness to her. Very negative energy. Why do you ask?”

  “It just seems a little old to be living with her mother.” Even eight or nine years ago, when Gloria died, the daughters would have been around thirty years old.

  “Oh, Mia’s a youngster. She only needed Christie to stay with her at the house for a few years, and then she moved down to the city, so Christie had the house on her own. You know, when Gloria moved in next door, she was just pregnant with little Mia. Christie was already messed up, so I thought maybe Gloria wanted a second chance. But then she goes and makes all the same mistakes with Mia, starting with that name. Mia Farrow and Louise Fletcher. I mean, naming your daughter after the crazy nurse in One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest? Talk about cuckoo. Mia Louise Andrews. The dad was never in the picture, but I assumed that Andrews was the father’s name. Then Gloria told me years later after a few margaritas on July 4 that she just made up the baby’s last name. Maybe it was for Julie Andrews? Who could really know with that woman.”

  “So, I’m sorry—Mia was born when?” The story was building in Alice’s head faster than she could process it.

  “Well, let’s see ... Gloria wasn’t even showing yet when she moved here in, it must have been 1985. The beginning of the summer. Early June, I think. She’d been having all kinds of problems with Christie. I said before she sent her off to rehab, but it was technically boarding school. Again, who knows how Gloria paid for that either. I never saw a woman other than a prostitute who found a way to pay so many bills without doing any other work than on her back. Oh lord, did I just say that?”

  Alice knew precisely how Gloria had paid her bills. She needed Mrs. Withers to get back on track.

  “Christie was sent away to boarding school?” Alice remembered Ben telling her that a girl at his party had gotten so wasted that her parents had sent her away to an all-girls boarding school.

  “Yep, for girls only. I thought it might do her some good to be away from her mother, but she only stayed a year. You know, I even joked with Gloria that first summer that with Christie going away to boarding school, and Gloria having a little baby at her age, people might get the wrong impression.”

  Alice looked at Hank, who spoke for the first time since the cocoa had been poured. “You mean the neighbors might gossip that Gloria’s pregnancy was fake, and that the baby was actually Christie’s.”

  “I know, I’m just awful. But I was only joking.”

  Alice knew in her gut what the relationship was between Christie Kinley’s sister and all of the questions she had been carrying around the last week. But that didn’t stop her from asking the validating question.

  “If you don’t mind, Mrs. Withers, what does Mia look like?”

  “Well, she’s a lovely girl. It makes her penchant for these lowlife men all the more perplexing! She’d never bring home a nice guy like this one. But what does she look like? She’s slender, you know. Very fit. One of those girls who carries herself well. And she has the most amazing red hair. Delicate features. Sort of a honey-and-strawberries kind of complexion. You know what, dear? I know this will sound like babble from an old woman, but if I had to say, Mia looks a bit like you if it weren’t for that dark hair of yours.”

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  They were back at their motel outside White Plains, strategizing their next move.

  “I know you’re the one who’s an FBI agent, but don’t we have enough evidence to go to Shannon and Danes? I ran from my apartment because I knew I was in over my head. But with what we know now? I’m willing to go back to the city. I’ll turn myself in if that’s what it takes to make them investigate Mia.”

  “You can do that, but once you turn yourself in on the warrant, no one will be in a rush to exonerate you. You’ll probably get slapped with a no-bail hold on the murder charge. The police will have passed the case on to the DA’s office, so it will be clear as far as they’re concerned. And the prosecutors will keep setting over your trial date until a judge forces them to fish or cut bait. It would be better to get them to drop the charges up front.”

  “You’re a federal agent. Can’t you just tell them what to do?”

  He shook his head. “If only I could. Federal and state governments are separate sovereigns. Put it this way: the last time I talked to John Shannon, he basically called me a burnout and a loser. I can call them with this tip about Mia, but trust me: they’re not going to listen.”

  “How can they ignore it? If we’re right, Mia Andrews is my half sister.” She cringed at the thought. “My guess is she had no idea that Christie was actually her mother, until Christie died. Maybe she found the settlement documents or something else that made her realize her sister was actually her biological mother. She has every reason to hate me and m
y father.”

  “Mrs. Withers did say she had a weak spot for dirtbags, which pretty much sums up Travis Larson.”

  “She has to be the woman kissing Larson in that picture. Plus she’s a photographer. That can’t be a coincidence. If she got part of the settlement money when her mother died, she might have been in a position to front the Highline Gallery operation. Like I said before: three birds, one stone. She makes money off the sale of the so-called artwork. She frames me. And she gets the pictures from my father’s office in front of the police without ever having to name her mother as the girl depicted in them.”

  Hank had run Mia Andrews and learned that Mrs. Withers had not been exaggerating when she’d described the young woman as troubled. Two drug busts. A stop by police officers who suspected her of prostitution. The use of a false name and identification on the second drug arrest. According to Hank, she was precisely the kind of woman who might have crossed paths with Travis Larson.

  “That’s one version of the facts. But John Shannon and Willie Danes have spent the last week convincing themselves that you killed Larson and were the mastermind behind those thumb drive sales from the gallery. To them? Mia’s existence will just be another motive for you to act out against your father and try to prove you could be independent. I’m sure the way they look at it, your slipping those pictures of your dad into those thumb drives was some Freudian act of revenge.”

  “Even the suggestion that I would peddle obscenity involving my own father—”

  “I hate to say it, Alice, but I’ve seen people do much sicker things. And so have Shannon and Danes. All I’m saying is that the NYPD isn’t necessarily going to shift their entire theory based on what we have so far. But that’s not an absolute deal breaker. We just need them to be sufficiently intrigued to follow up on it. To be open-minded. But if I’m the one to call them, it’s not going to happen.”