“Her name was Christie, Papa. Christie Kinley, but her real name was Julie.”
“Alice, I know you’ve been angry at me for some time now, and I can only wonder whether you will ever forgive me after what happened to you because of my mistakes. But I am trying to make it right. That is why I’m doing this blood test. I don’t want to cover anything up anymore. You may not know this, but I never took another sip of alcohol once those officers knocked on our door. Not one sip. Because the fact that I could have done something like that—that I’ll never even know the depths to which I sunk that night—made me hate myself. And I never wanted to be whatever man I became that night, not ever again. But I realize now that I felt entitled all those years. Because I’d quit drinking—because I had put that night behind me—I felt entitled to indulge other vices. And I felt entitled because your mother and I—well, we have our issues. But I never realized that the way I’ve carried on all these years was not just a betrayal of your mother and our wedding vows—words we long ago wrote off as more aspirational than anything—but a betrayal of you and Ben, and of me as a man. And that’s what I came here to say. That I’m sorry. That to put my own baby girl in jeopardy is the worst crime a man could ever commit. And that, even though I’m getting to be an old man now, I plan on changing. For the better. So that you will let me be your father again. You’re all I have left now, Alice. I need to be your father again.”
She had cried. So had he. Ben was gone. She wasn’t. She had promised him that she would find a way to forgive him.
So she might be able to keep her promise, she had been avoiding all media coverage about the story. She did not need to see photographs of her father emblazoned with the words child rapist. Or of her mother: “What did she know?” Or even the one she had seen of her brother: “Did Daddy’s secrets cause him to OD?”
But now, sitting in her living room, flipping through her beloved Entertainment Weekly, she was unexpectedly confronted with a sidebar about the case. She checked the date on the cover. It was last week’s edition, before the DNA results came in.
RAPE, LOVE CHILD, OR BOTH?
Academy Award—winning director Frank Humphrey reportedly settled a lawsuit in 1985 arising from allegations that he raped a fourteen-year-old acquaintance of his children. Now sources report that Mia Andrews (below), who killed herself last week in a police standoff, may have been the daughter from that ill-fated night. Humphrey’s son, Ben, 41, died of a heroin overdose the day before the standoff.
She found herself staring at the photograph of Mia. She wasn’t her perfect doppelgänger, but there was undoubtedly a resemblance, enough so that even Alice had been certain that the grainy picture of Mia kissing Travis Larson was a doctored photo of Alice.
She opened her laptop and searched until she found a site that had published a photograph of Christie Kinley. She hadn’t realized it until now, but Christie looked like a younger version of her mother, like all those other women who had come forward last year to claim celebrity mistress status. Was the resemblance between Christie and Alice’s mother sufficient to explain the similarity between Mia and Alice?
Alice stared again at Mia’s photograph. No, Mia looked like her mother’s daughter, but she looked even more like Alice. And there was only one way that could be true.
She rifled through her purse until she found the business card that was first handed to her the day she discovered Travis Larson’s body. She had hoped she would never need to dial this number again. Detective Shannon answered. “Hi, Alice. I can’t imagine you missed us already.”
“No, but I’m afraid there still might be one loose end.”
Chapter Fifty-Eight
Jason Morhart managed to cram his truck into the hybrid-sized spot at the curb outside Bloomingdale’s.
It had been three days since the NYPD had broken the news. They had wrapped up their investigation and were about to tie the pretty little bow into a nice, neat package without any explanation for Becca Stevenson’s disappearance.
Sometimes investigations required you to look at a case through a different lens—to start over again with no assumptions and to rethink facts and events in a new light. Maybe if Willie Danes and John Shannon had done that when they first learned about Mia Andrews, the woman might still be alive, and Jason wouldn’t be waking up in cold sweats every night wondering whether he could have prevented the shooting in Williamsburg.
But now it was time for him to take a fresh look at Becca Stevenson’s disappearance. He realized now that he had stopped challenging himself for explanations the minute he’d learned about the fingerprint match in Highline Gallery. From that moment on, he’d been convinced that his case was inextricably entwined with the NYPD’s. He’d allowed himself to become complacent, waiting for them to arrest their suspect, who would in turn point him toward Becca.
But now the NYPD had all of its answers, and he was the one left with questions.
Where was Becca? How had her fingerprints wound up in Highline Gallery? And the question he kept coming back to, the one he knew had to be answered: How could it possibly be a coincidence that the Reverend George Hardy just happened to be protesting that very gallery?
He found Hardy and his protesters outside the Little Angels store where they’d last spoken.
“Back down here again, are you?”
“We get a big reaction down in SoHo. People don’t understand that yelling at us—calling us hate mongers and Jesus freaks—only makes us stronger. And only brings us more attention, which ultimately builds our flock. This spot here’s been good for us, yes it has.”
“I don’t know if you’ve been following that story about Highline Gallery.”
“A bunch of wicked sinners there. I knew it from the start.”
“Here’s the thing, Reverend. I suspect you love Becca.”
“I surely do. She’s my daughter. My blood.”
“And I think you’re worried about her. I also believe that you follow a higher law, something grander than man’s law. Finally, I believe—no, I am convinced—that your decision to picket the Highline Gallery is somehow related to the fact that your daughter’s fingerprints were found on the bathroom door of that building.”
“That’s a lot of beliefs you have there, sir.”
“When I put all of those beliefs together, Reverend, this is the conclusion I have to draw: you are privy to information that you still have not disclosed to the police. At the time you held it back, you did so with the firm conviction that somehow you were protecting Becca. But now all this time has passed, and no one has heard from your daughter. My guess is, you’re starting to wonder whether you did the right thing by her.”
The reverend was silent.
“The NYPD is shutting down its investigation. That leaves me and my Podunk department the last ones looking for Becca. And my best lead is still that dag-nab fingerprint, which brings me right back to the fact you were protesting that very same gallery. If there’s any more information to offer, sir, I’m telling you that now’s the time to divulge it.”
Hardy’s eyes moved between Jason and his fellow protesters. “It’s a bit nippy today. Maybe you know a place where we can get a cup of tea.”
The two of them had been Mutt and Jeff on the streets of SoHo, with Hardy dragging around his sign and megaphone, and Jason’s fanny pack broadcasting to all the world that he was either a cop or tourist. They did, however, manage to find a café with cups of tea. They were $6 cups of tea, but Jason could justify the expense if his instincts were right.
“You’re a smart man, Mr. Morhart, and I can tell that you care about the well-being of my daughter.”
“I do, sir. I want to find her and bring her home.”
“I will tell you everything I know, but I will not allow you to judge me. I know in my heart I was trying to do right by Becca.” He waited for Jason to protest, but hearing nothing, proceeded. “I was with Becca that night after she left her friend’s house. We had arranged to meet dow
n the street. That’s what we had been doing. Mostly we would talk on the phone. And once she rode the train into the city—I believe she told her mother she was doing some kind of school activity—but I tried to drive out to Dover and catch a few minutes with her as I could. We’d leave Dover proper. See the parks in that area and whatnot.”
Jason wanted to grab the delicate tea cup from Hardy’s fingertips and smash it against his head, but he tried to remain expressionless.
“To understand what happened that night, you first have to know that the last time I had seen her was three weeks prior. That was the day she rode the train into the city. The plan had been for me to drive her back home after some sightseeing, but then she told me she was meeting some friends from school and asked me to drop her off downtown. I was uncomfortable dumping her in the middle of this hedonistic jungle, but she pointed out that if I waited for her friends to arrive, one of them might mention my existence to her mother. Frankly, I recognized that to be a bit of emotional blackmail, but I realized this was probably normal for a teenager, so I agreed.
“I am not, however, stupid. I cruised my car around the corner so I could make certain she was in the safety of a circle of suitable friends. Instead, I saw her talking to a man who was either locking or unlocking that gallery on Washington Street. A grown man. And rough looking.”
“Travis Larson.”
The reverend nodded. “Of course, I did not know his name at the time. Nor did I know the place was a gallery. It was empty. But I did see him open that door. And I did see my daughter walk into that building with him. She lied to me. My own daughter. She had me deliver her into the waiting hands of a grown man.”
“When was this?”
He doodled on the table, counting days backward. “Six Sundays ago.” Precisely three weeks before Becca disappeared. It was also the same date as the photographs Becca had posted on Facebook. Hardy concluded his daughter had lied, but she really had met her friends. Or at least, she had believed at the time they were her friends.
“Go on.”
“So when I saw her that last night, I asked her about it. Oh, boy, was she ever angry that I watched her.” Jason could tell from the man’s tone that he admired his daughter’s temper. “She swore up and down that she didn’t even know that man. That she had to go pee and saw the man there at the store and asked if she could use the bathroom. According to her, she was in and out of there in a few minutes.”
“That’s it? We’ve spent all these days trying to find a connection between Becca and that gallery, and all she did was use the bathroom?”
“Well, that’s what she would’ve had me believe.”
He wanted the man to get to his point, but the reverend was obviously used to a captive audience.
“We went to the Dairy Queen off Route 15, and when she went to the little girls’ room, I looked at her cell phone. Now, don’t go judging me. She was only a child, and I bought her that phone for the purpose of communicating with me. I felt I was in the right. But when I looked in that phone, I saw the filth she’d engaged in. The dirty talk. And not just talk, I saw that picture. I saw that picture ... of my own daughter.”
Jason could tell where this story was headed. He wanted to jump into the narrative and stop it. He wanted to run inside that Dairy Queen and tell this man he was making a horrible mistake.
“What did you do?”
“I went to the car, and I waited for her. When she got in, I did what I thought a father should do. I told her she had sinned. That the Lord saw all. That peddlers of flesh would be judged both here and in the hereafter.”
Based on what Joann had told him about George Hardy’s reaction to her pregnancy, Jason could only imagine the insults this man must have hurled at Becca. A teenage girl who had always been described as fragile. Who had opened herself up sexually for the first time to a boy, only to have him turn her into a laughingstock. Who had recently learned that the mother she trusted had lied to her about the circumstances of her own birth. Who was only beginning to know the father she never realized she had, only to have him call her the ugly words Jason knew the man had used.
“Why didn’t you tell anyone this, George?”
The reverend’s eyes were puffy and rimmed with red, the result of sleepless nights, tears, and (Jason guessed) regular tips of alcohol. “Just wait for me to explain it my way, all right, son? A couple days went by, and I didn’t feel right about how we left it. I tried calling her, but she wasn’t getting back to me. I assumed she was mad.”
“You didn’t know she was missing?”
“Who was going to tell me? Certainly not that mother of hers. So I drove by that storefront again, thinking I might find that man. Confront him. Tell him to stay away from Becca. And by that time, it was no longer vacant. It had opened as what they were calling a gallery. I saw those pictures on display in there. A man biting himself. And you can’t tell me that one with the girl’s belly in it was of a full-grown woman.”
“You assumed the man you’d seen at the gallery had taken improper photographs of Becca.”
“Of course I did. I saw some with my own eyes. I thought about calling the police directly, but then I’d have to tell them Becca was in those nasty pictures.”
“You were worried about her reputation.”
“Among other things, yes, I was. So I did what my church does best. I brought attention to the issue.”
“By protesting.”
“Yes, sir.”
“You thought if the press made the artist prove the age of the models in those photographs, you’d get the artwork removed without having to drag your daughter’s name into the matter.”
“I’m not a total fool, you see? But now here’s the thing that’s important for you to understand. I still didn’t know Becca was missing on that day we were protesting. It wasn’t until the next day that I heard about Becca’s disappearance on the radio news.”
“That was the day Travis Larson was found dead at the gallery.”
“And I heard about that story, too. Do you see what I’m getting at?”
“You didn’t say anything because you thought Becca might have been involved in Travis’s murder.”
“I saw her with the man. And the man was trouble. It stood to reason.”
“But now the NYPD knows who killed Larson, and Becca didn’t have anything to do with it.”
“I’m aware of that, son. And that’s why I’ve told you everything I know.”
“On that last night with Becca, how did you leave things?”
Hardy was fiddling with the handle of his empty teacup. “Not well. She jumped out of the car. I didn’t stop her.”
“Where?”
Jason called his captain as soon as he was inside his truck. “I got a lead on Becca Stevenson. She was last seen distraught near the vicinity of the River Styx Road marina, over by Lake Hopatcong.”
“This is a solid tip?”
“Like a rock.”
“What was she doing way over by the lake?”
She’d been having ice cream with a man whose love she had wanted more than life itself. She’d been having ice cream with a man who dealt her fragile sense of self the final blow. “We need to get divers down into the water, sir.”
His next call was to Joann Stevenson. It would be the second hardest telephone call he would ever have to make. The hardest would come the following morning, when he had to tell her over the phone that her daughter’s body had been found, just to be sure she didn’t hear it first from someone else.
Chapter Fifty-Nine
“This is certainly a lovely treat.” Arthur Cronin was inspecting the pear-glazed pork loin the waitress had placed on the table. He waited while a second staff member poured a thin drizzle of sauce across the dish. “It’s not every day that one of my favorite people invites me to lunch. And with such panache.”
“Well, it’s not every day someone saves me from life in prison.”
“I never would have let that hap
pen, sweetie, but in this instance, I’d have to say your friendly neighborhood FBI agent probably did more of the work than your Uncle Artie. Any chance of a love connection there?”
“He was just doing the right thing, Art.”
“But, let me guess, he’s called you a time or two to see how you’re holding up?”
She smiled.
“Aha! I knew it! What about that schlub of yours? Jeff from Indiana, isn’t it?”
“You know quite well that his name is Jeff Wilkerson.”
“How is Mr. Wilkerson dealing with your new FBI friend?”
“We’re not actually talking right now.”
“The on and off is off again, huh?” He was talking between bites now. She forced herself to take a bite of her pasta. If she didn’t eat, he might know something was wrong.
“Actually, Art, Jeff asked me to marry him.”
He dropped his fork to his plate. “Get out of town! Wilkie finally manned up, did he? Where’s the ring? Tell me the man bought you a ring!”
She whispered a shh. She had chosen this restaurant because she knew it would be empty, but even five tables away, a fellow diner could overhear raised voices.
“I politely declined.”
“You finally figured out you’re too good for him.”
“No, but it wasn’t right. It never will be.” She felt funny talking to Art about her love life, but she needed the conversation to seem natural.
“Still that thing about the kids?”
“I guess my father told you about it.”
He waved his hand with a pssh. “A long time ago, when you broke up for a while.”
When Jeff had proposed, she had almost accepted immediately. But she wanted to make sure he had really thought about the decision. She did not want their marriage to be an impulsive reaction to the events of the previous week. So she had stated her concerns. “But you so desperately want children.”
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