If You Were Here: A Novel of Suspense

by Alafair Burke

  To make matters worse, Scanlin had spent four years in a precinct with Scott Macklin. It hadn’t taken Scanlin long to make the connection between the nosy ADA pushing her way into his investigation and the bitch who was accusing his old friend of lying about an officer-involved shooting. She remembered the way Scanlin had raised the issue. She had called him the day after storming into Susan’s apartment. The point of the call was to apologize for her heavy-handed approach, but she never got the words out. Instead, she got an earful from Scanlin about the honor, integrity, and courageousness of Scott Macklin, followed by a warning that she was “nobody” as far as Susan’s case was concerned, followed by a prediction that karma would catch up with her, followed by a click.

  She remembered her response to the click in her ear. She had run to the ladies’ room down the hall at the DA’s office and held her hair back while she vomited. Susan was missing. McKenna had publicly accused a police officer of homicide and perjury. And now the Marcus Jones mess was keeping her from helping Susan.

  She had wanted to call Scanlin back. She wanted to explain to him how hard it was to come forward with her suspicions about that shooting. She wanted him to know that she liked Scott Macklin. He’d been a regular in her office at the drug unit. He had shown her the pictures of his new wife, Josefina, and her eight-year-old son, Thomas. He had talked to her like a friend.

  So, yeah, she wanted Scanlin to know that she didn’t need a lecture about honor and courageousness and karma. All she wanted was to do the right thing, but locked in that bathroom stall, sobbing into a ball of toilet paper, she had known that the Scott Macklins and the Joe Scanlins of the world would forever see her as a backstabbing, ladder-climbing careerist.

  Now Scanlin would think she was yanking his chain once again with the promise of a video that McKenna could no longer find. Another fucking error message on the computer.

  McKenna had called Dana twice, and both times got voice mail. She normally approved of Dana’s ability to disappear from the reservation with no accountability, but now she was beginning to understand Bob Vance’s frustration with her freelancing ways. It was four o’clock. Where was Dana?

  She hit redial on her cell. This time she recognized Dana’s ring tone—a snippet of the Blondie song “Call Me”—chirping from the pool of desks beyond her office.

  “Dana?” she yelled, hitting refresh on her keyboard in a futile attempt to pull up the link. “Is Dana back?”

  She was answered with the blurt of a “fuck”—Dana’s voice—followed by an explanation from Pete the junior assistant: “You might want to lay low. She’s having, like, a meltdown or something.”

  McKenna found Dana bent over the computer in her cubicle. “I can’t believe this. It’s gone. Every freakin’ thing is gone.”

  “Your Skybox? That’s what I’ve been calling about. I can’t pull up that subway video.”

  “Screw the video. My photographs. My entire backup account. The entire thing is wiped out.”

  “It’s not just the link?”

  Dana looked at McKenna as if she were a child asking why dogs couldn’t talk. There was no need to provide a response. Instead, she continued ranting to herself. “I’m going to have to call them. You know there won’t be a live person. Fuuuuck!”

  McKenna could tell it wasn’t a good time to press the subject of the video. She turned to Pete. “Do you know anything about this stuff? Why would her account be down?”

  “It’s not down,” he whispered. “It’s deleted. It’s like someone logged in as her and erased the entire thing. That was her backup. She’s totally screwed.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Carter was situated comfortably in the second-to-last row of the PATH train, by all appearances deeply interested in the Wall Street Journal’s analysis of the latest tech-industry initial public offering. There had been a time when Carter followed the markets, squirreling away his few extra dollars in an IRA, hoping that sensible choices would create slow, steady gains that would lead to a comfortable retirement long down the road. That was when he bought in to the idea that if you were a good person and tried hard enough and kept your head down, everything would work out in the end. That was back when he believed in institutions and loyalty and hierarchies. That was back when he believed in . . . anything.

  Carter was a different person now. Now he was the kind of person who stayed liquid.

  He knew that most of what was covered in this newspaper was irrelevant to the way the world actually worked, but the paper served its current purpose of helping him blend into a sea of commuters departing Penn Station.

  The woman’s People magazine served a similar purpose. It was four o’clock, and commuter traffic was already getting heavy. She could be calling it an early day after a long presentation at her job in marketing. Or heading back after those part-time classes she was taking to get that advanced degree she was always talking about. Or going home to her kids from her monthly mommy day in the city for a facial and a haircut. She looked like any other woman. You’d never know that three days earlier, she had chased a kid onto the tracks of the subway only to rescue him seconds later.

  Carter had to hand it to the woman. She was good. The casual observer would think she was genuinely engrossed by the latest celebrity baby bump or ongoing love triangle involving a teen mom. But he could see her eyes sweeping the car, monitoring the platform at each stop. So far, she hadn’t noticed him. She was good; he was just better.

  What was she looking for?

  He almost missed it. The man stepped into the train right before its departure. He sat in the seat behind hers, so they faced opposite directions. He sported earbuds blasting metal that was loud enough for other passengers to hear from a comfortable distance away. He even threw in an occasional mock air drum. He didn’t seem like Miss People Magazine’s type.

  But then Carter saw the woman’s left hand move ever so quickly to her side, just as his right hand swished down from the drum solo playing in his head. He had given something to her, as if they were two grade-school children passing notes. Very skillful grade-school children.

  When the heavy-metal guy stepped from the train at Thirteenth Street, Carter stepped off, too. When he walked up Sixth Avenue, Carter followed. The earbuds stayed in. The metal kept playing.

  Carter pulled his cell phone from the breast pocket of his cashmere sport coat. Pretended to send a text but zoomed in and took a quick snapshot once the man’s head was turned to the side.

  Carter watched the man enter a residential building. He noted the address. He watched through the glass as the man stopped to retrieve his mail from the wall of boxes.

  Other people would have called it a gut feeling, but Carter knew it was all about facts. He did not like the facts he was gathering.

  He waited for the man to leave the lobby and then entered. He approached the doorman with a friendly smile. “Hi, there. I’m looking for a rental. Wondering if this is a rental building or only ownership?”

  “Ownership. It’s a co-op.”

  “Ah, okay. Thanks.” He turned to look at the building’s mailboxes. Four rows over, three boxes down. That was the one the man had opened. Apartment 602.

  It was time to call the client.

  He knew by now that the preferred reporting style was to use as few words as possible. Train. Man. Address. “I have his picture.”

  “Send it. You know the number.”

  That cell phone number—untraceable—was pretty much the only thing Carter knew about his client. “Sure thing.”

  He texted the man’s photograph.

  Two minutes later, Carter’s phone rang. The client used the same crisp style—no extraneous words. A minute after, Carter hung up, knowing that his mission had just changed. So much for the easy life.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  It was four o’clock, and Scanlin still had that funny feelin
g in his head. He had to admit that his annoyance with McKenna Jordan was just part of the reason. Her reappearance had not only reawakened his antagonism toward her and his memories of Scott Macklin; it had also triggered a look back at his life.

  When he caught the Hauptmann disappearance, he was no longer that hundred-percent detective at the top of his game. Oh, he looked the part. He was physically fit, with the clothes and the watch and the swagger. But on the inside, he realized now, the change had started, because Melissa’s changes had started.

  At first her problems were hardly noticeable—little verbal tics. In their circle of fast-talking New York friends, Melissa had been the most manic chatterer of all, but he started noticing occasional uncharacteristic pauses. Proper nouns that once were as familiar as her own name were replaced with descriptions like “that restaurant you like with the squid-ink risotto” or “your partner from back when you worked in the Bronx.”

  Initially Melissa attributed her “offness” to sleep deprivation. Or sometimes to one too many glasses of Chianti. They used to joke, after all, that a bad hangover temporarily suppressed twenty points worth of IQ.

  The doctors would tell him later that it wouldn’t have mattered if he’d gotten her to experts earlier, but sometimes he wondered whether they said that in a failed attempt to make him feel better.

  The pauses in her speech got longer. Her extensive descriptions to compensate for the loss of proper nouns became more vague: “That place—the one where you—have food.” A restaurant? “Yes, the one with the—small white food, but dark.” Squid-ink risotto? “Right! That’s the one.” By then she would have forgotten why she was trying to remember the restaurant at all. Was she remembering their second date there? Craving a dish they served? Interested in the dress shop next door? Whatever it was, the moment was gone.

  And before he knew it, so was Melissa. The fast-talking friends were polite at first, pretending not to notice that she could no longer follow the conversation. And then pretending not to mind. And then pretending to support his efforts to maintain some semblance of normalcy in their marriage. But his patience for Melissa had outlasted theirs with him, so then they were gone, too.

  He could look back and see it all so clearly. A beginning, a middle, and an end to the arc in their lives together. Ten years ago, when Susan Hauptmann disappeared, he had no idea what would happen later and how it would affect him—was already affecting him.

  As he recalled it, Susan disappeared just after Thanksgiving. Scanlin got Melissa’s initial diagnosis on October 24. Every week she had appointments with specialists. The doctors were constantly changing her medications, trying to wean her from the antidepressant/antipsychotic cocktail they put her on before realizing that frontal-lobe changes were to blame.

  And Jenna. Oh God. Jenna. Scanlin loved Melissa more than he could ever love another woman, but no one loves a woman the way a child loves a mother. Maybe in some families, one parent’s illness brings the healthy parent closer to the children. That wasn’t how it worked for the Scanlins.

  Scanlin remembered the initial interview of Susan Hauptmann’s sister. What was her name? Gertrude? Gwendolyn? Guinevere? G-something, if he had to guess. See? He couldn’t remember. At the top of his game, he could remember the name of a victim’s sister. Somewhere right between her last high and the next one, the sister had been a font of information, motivated by concern for her sister but probably also the hope of getting on the good side of a police officer.

  As she’d droned on and on about the pressures their father had placed upon Susan—no sons, only one “good girl” to count on—Scanlin had felt himself coming to conclusions. If Scanlin’s own daughter, Jenna, could push him away, why wouldn’t a woman like Susan, with an SOB father like that, make a clean break of it and start over again?

  And then he was getting pushed in a different direction by the likes of some cop-hating prosecutor. Not to mention constant phone calls from the pushy father who had pushed his daughter to the brink and was now pushing him.

  All that pushing at a time when Scanlin was in no mood to be pushed.

  The truth was that, back then, the only way he found the time to deal with Melissa, her doctors, and his pissed-off daughter was by phoning it in on the job. Susan’s father obviously had enough money and connections to pull out all the stops for reward offers and private detectives, so what more could Scanlin do? Writing off Susan Hauptmann as a grown-up runaway made his life easier.

  Now his mind was in a fog because seeing McKenna Jordan was forcing him to ask whether he’d rushed to judgment. He could think of only one way to be sure he could stand by the choices he’d made so long ago. He made a call to the Records Department. “It’s Joe Scanlin, Homicide, Twelfth Precinct. I need an old case. The name on it is Susan Carol Hauptmann.”

  He’d take a quick look. Just for peace of mind. Just to be sure he hadn’t missed anything.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Dana was still freaking out in the pool reporter room. At one point, she began to screech like a stepped-on cat until Bob Vance stuck his head out of his office and threatened to remove her vocal cords with a letter opener if she didn’t shut up.

  Her meltdown had sent McKenna into a panic, futilely opening windows on her own computer, hoping that the video had cached itself somewhere in the computer’s memory. As if McKenna even knew what “cached” meant.

  That video was the only proof—if she could even use that word—that Susan was alive. Even after seeing the video, Patrick had been dubious. Now she had nothing.

  She was starting to wonder if she truly remembered what Susan looked like. She had pictures, of course, but pictures were never the same as the real thing. They were a more perfect version—images that were saved for a reason. Photographs were never enough to catch the facial expressions, subtle reactions, and other idiosyncrasies that defined a person’s appearance.

  McKenna had first met Susan through an e-mail forward. Susan had found a two-bedroom in Hell’s Kitchen but needed a roommate to split the rent. Her e-mail blast about the rental landed in the in-box of an ADA who knew that McKenna’s tenancy on the sofa of a college friend was wearing thin.

  When McKenna went to see the apartment, she couldn’t believe her luck. The condo was clean and bright with floor-to-ceiling closet storage and a tiny slice of a Hudson River view. And her new roommate was smart, nice, and hilarious. What could be better?

  But just as cameras failed to capture a person’s real appearance, first impressions usually didn’t reflect real character. Over the next twelve months, McKenna’s opinion of Susan evolved. At first she was drawn to Susan’s boldness. She was beautiful and magnetic and always spoke her mind. When the man who lived upstairs listened to a Dave Matthews CD on repeat one too many times, Susan managed to sneak into his apartment and swipe the offending disc. She wasn’t just funny; she was a good person. Not in a flashy show-off way; she was someone who constantly thought of others. Reaching down to help a fellow subway rider carry a stroller up the stairs. Bringing a flashlight to the widow on the third floor during a power outage. Carrying an extra umbrella on a rainy day in case a coworker forgot one. Answering the door for unannounced visits from her screwed-up sister, despite the hour. She had a big heart and a big sense of humor. It wouldn’t be an overstatement to say that McKenna idolized her.

  Then one night McKenna found Susan—always so busy, always buzzing with energy—sitting alone on the kitchen floor, a bottle of wine in one hand, the cordless phone in another. Her father had called. There had been a fight. He was the one person who could shut Susan down with nothing but a stern glance. This time he’d gone much, much further. Joining her on the cold tile, McKenna knew she was seeing a side of Susan rarely shown to anyone.

  Which side of Susan was McKenna remembering? Did she really remember her, or only snippets of time, artificially frozen in the recesses of her brain?

  I
f she couldn’t trust her memories of Susan, how could she possibly begin to recognize the ghost on the 1-train platform, whom she’d seen only in grainy, shaky footage? She had to find that video.

  She called Patrick to see if he knew anything about Skybox storage. No answer on his cell, and his secretary said he’d left work early. Just her luck to need him the one day he skipped out before five.

  She heard Vance yell another warning at Dana, this time to shut up before he choked her with her own tattoos. With Dana momentarily silenced, McKenna realized that, unlike her photographer colleague, she had a backup plan. She flipped through her phone, found the incoming call from the previous day, and redialed the number. “Is this Mallory? It’s McKenna Jordan from NYC magazine. You were nice enough to send me a video clip yesterday.”

  “Sure. I remember.”

  “I hate to bother you, but we’re having some computer glitches on my end. Is there any way I can get it from you again?”

  “Same thing with the Skybox account?”

  Apparently everyone understood cyber storage except McKenna. “No, that’s where the glitch happened. I know it’s an imposition, but can I meet you somewhere in person? I’ll upload it to my laptop directly, just to make sure I don’t mess something up.”

  There was a pause before Mallory responded in her low drawl. “I guess that would be okay. I’m at work. There’s a Starbucks at Forty-fifth and Sixth Avenue. Call me when you’re there, and I’ll come down.”

  “I’ll be there right away.”

  McKenna was pulling her jacket on when her cell phone rattled against the desk. This time she recognized Mallory’s number.