If You Were Here: A Novel of Suspense

by Alafair Burke

  He was tainted goods by then.

  “You’re right,” Scanlin said, “it is ancient history. Or at least it was. I called you yesterday because that same prosecutor—the one who started the whole scandal—was reviving the story for the ten-year anniversary. She’s a reporter now. She wrote a big article in a magazine, trying to get attention.”

  “Ay, ay, ay. The reporter lady. She was out here yesterday. I come home from getting the oil changed, and there she is in my living room.” Josefina was speaking more quickly now, her Mexican accent more noticeable. “I told Scott, ‘What are you doing talking to some reporter?’ He thinks he can be nice and charming and show her how we live a normal life, how he raised a good boy, maybe she’ll leave him alone. Oh my God, do you think that’s why he was so upset? Is the reporter the reason he would do this?”

  He hadn’t answered the question when he saw Josefina’s attention shift to the sound of bells ringing at the Denny’s entrance. A plump middle-aged woman walked in and spotted Josefina immediately. He saw tears begin to form in both women’s eyes.

  “That’s my friend. She’ll drive me to her place. I need to lie down for a while.”

  “Of course.” He walked Josefina to her friend and waited while the two exchanged a hug. “Call me if there’s anything I can do to help. Anything at all.”

  She nodded, but he could tell she would be more comfortable relying on people who had been a part of their lives more recently. As the friend backed her MINI out of its parking space, he watched Josefina place her face in her hands and begin to sob.

  He dropped a twenty on the table and headed to his own car. He was surprised at how hard he slammed the car door. How tight his grip was on the steering wheel. How he could almost hear the blood pounding through his veins.

  A good man was dead. This wasn’t right.

  He found her business card crumpled in his jacket pocket. McKenna Jordan. Cell number scribbled on the back. As he listened to the rings—one, two, three—a lump formed behind his Adam’s apple. He tried to swallow but felt a gasp escape from his throat. Dammit. He was not going to cry. He would not allow this woman to hear him cry.

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  It was amazing how much a hot shower had done to calm McKenna down. Being here, in her own apartment, surrounded by the little reminders of her everyday life—her life with Patrick—was helping, too. Patrick was gone, presumably off to work, which meant her phone calls had reassured him that everything was okay.

  The contents of the box that Adam Bayne had sent over seemed to be just as she’d left them. Granted, she hadn’t memorized the exact placement of every item, and she had taken the picture of Patrick and Susan that had gotten her so worked up. But if Patrick had really been as anxious as she thought he’d sounded the previous night—Is there something in here that could be an issue?—surely he would have torn through the belongings, searching for whatever it was he thought could be so damning.

  In retrospect, it was the phone call that had set her imagination running wild. What had she really heard? She mentally replayed his side of the conversation. She’s got a bunch of your old stuff scattered all over our living room floor.

  He had said your stuff. She had assumed the “you” was Susan, but maybe he’d called Adam when he saw the messenger labels on the box. Is there something in here that could be an issue? Okay, so he didn’t want her to know that he’d had a fling or whatever with Susan. McKenna was mad—pissed—that he hadn’t told her, but she could see how it would happen. They met. They liked each other. It wasn’t like “Hey, I used to sleep with your friend” was a great pickup line. A lie about a past lover was nothing compared to the scenarios she’d been playing in her head.

  And then there was the last part of the call: I have it under control. Problem solved. Just take care of yourself.

  He could’ve meant “Fine, if she found out about me and Susan, we’ll work through it.” And Just take care of yourself could have been a jibe, as if to say “Take care of your own house and mind your own business.”

  Her thoughts were interrupted by the trill of her cell phone.

  She didn’t recognize the number. She hesitated. Every moment of the last two days had brought nothing but more horrible news. She didn’t think she could take any more. She was also screening incoming tips about Susan. Maybe someone had gotten her number from the magazine.

  Three rings. She had to decide. “Hello?”

  “You’ve got blood on your hands, Jordan.”

  There was something familiar about the voice, but she couldn’t place it. “Excuse me?”

  “You’re like a one-woman wrecking ball. You should come with a warning label: human destruction will follow. Do you even stop to think about the way your choices affect other people? Killing his job wasn’t enough, was it? It’s all just publicity to you, but you cost a good man his life. His life.”

  She should have known that a public call for information about a decade-old death would bring out the nut jobs. “Who is this?”

  “It’s Joe Scanlin. That stunt you pulled going to Macklin’s house? I hope it helped you with whatever story you’re trying to publish, because you pushed him over the edge. I just found him. He ate his gun.”

  She felt a lurch in her stomach at the imagery. “Oh my God. Scott Macklin?”

  “He’s dead. You pushed him over the edge. Are you happy?”

  “Of course I’m not happy. He was—I knew him, whatever you might think of me. And I don’t know what you mean by any stunt. I didn’t go to his house. I haven’t seen him since I left the district attorney’s office.” She pictured Macklin, beaming as he described the strategy he used to teach his stepson the perfect spiral football pass. That sweet man killed himself?

  “His wife told me everything. She saw you there yesterday in the living room. He just wanted to be left alone. Why’d you have to—”

  “She said I was there? I wasn’t. I swear to God, Scanlin.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m getting used to that these days. Did she say me specifically? Maybe it was another reporter. It’s the ten-year anniversary, after all.”

  “She said she came home and saw a woman in the living room, and that it was a female reporter. Of course it was you. What other female reporters are going to bother a cop who left the job a decade ago?”

  A woman. An unidentified woman asking questions about something that happened ten years ago. It didn’t make any sense, but she could think of only one person it could have been.

  “Are you there? Fucking bitch hung up—”

  “No, I’m here,” she said. “And it wasn’t me at Scott Macklin’s house yesterday. But if Scott Macklin is dead, I’m not sure it was suicide. I need you to meet me. Right now. I promise I’ll tell you everything.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  It’s said there are certain moments in history that everyone remembers. The moon landing. The day Kennedy was shot. The night the United States elected its first African-American president. The day the towers came down.

  The first reports came in right around nine A.M. on September 11. McKenna was on her way to the morning plea docket. Heading from her office to the elevator, she passed a lounge area for civilian witnesses—the most luxurious area on the floor, complete with a television set—and saw early reports of an airplane colliding with the World Trade Center. The anchors were trying to calm the worldwide audience: “The most likely scenario is that this is a private commuter plane that left its intended route. City officials are encouraging everyone to remain calm.”

  From there, McKenna went to the courtroom of Judge John DeWitt Gregory to accept routine guilty pleas from routine defendants on routine charges. Forty-five minutes passed without interruption. It was a different world then. It was a world without an omnipresent information stream playing constantly in the backgroun
d via phones and other devices. It was also a world where the date she wrote on each of those plea agreements, September 11, 2001, was just a date. By the time she was done taking that morning’s pleas, the world and America’s place in it had changed.

  She sensed something was wrong the minute she hit the hallway. Usually lawyers piled up outside the sluggish elevators, no matter how long the wait, because people, let’s face it, are lazy. That morning, people were sprinting up and down stairs. She remembered the panic on the face of a former coworker turned defense attorney who passed her in the hallway: “We’ve got to get out of here. Leave downtown. Leave the city. This is really, really bad. They’re saying there are eight other planes unaccounted for.”

  It wasn’t until McKenna got to her office that she connected the frenzy in the courthouse to the television report. Her mother had left a panicked voice mail. “Kenny, we just heard the news. Aren’t you right down there by the towers? I think you are, but your daddy says you’re a ways away. Let us know you’re safe, okay?”

  By then, McKenna couldn’t get a dial tone. She did manage to find a cabdriver filling up on the Lower East Side. “Stupid day to let the tank go low,” he was muttering. He didn’t want to take a passenger, but she begged, then offered to pay for the entire tank plus fare to go anywhere outside of Manhattan. She and the cabdriver actually argued about which route to take. Some attributes of city life were truly ingrained.

  And now here she was again. It wasn’t 9/11, not by a long shot, but she did feel like her life had changed forever. She’d lost her job. Susan was back, possibly tied up in a Long Island bombing. The FBI had searched McKenna’s office, when she still had one. And once again, she was bickering with a freakin’ cabdriver who could not accept that the best way to Forest Hills was the LIE and not the Fifty-ninth Street Bridge.

  It had taken her enough work just to get Scanlin to agree to meet. Even after he relented, their conversation had turned to a geographic bartering of the metropolitan region. Surely it was easier for Scanlin in his own car to meet her in Manhattan than for her to leave the island. But he was in Forest Hills, having spent the day consoling Scott Macklin’s widow. Yep, that was the moral high ground. Scanlin got to name the spot. She was schlepping to Queens.

  In retrospect, she was grateful he had a head start. By the time she met him at the Irish pub he had chosen, he was at least two Scotches in and no longer sounded like he wanted to pound her skull against concrete. She took the seat across from him in the booth. She didn’t bother with introductions or even words of solace about the death of Scott Macklin.

  She started with the absurd chase to determine the identity of the subway Superwoman and summarized every last detail until he called her with the news of Mac’s death. The face that looked like Susan’s. The missing video. The button that linked the woman to the People for the Preservation of the Planet. The bombing in Brentwood. The extremely coincidental timing of the fake tip about Frederick Knight. Even her stupid suspicions about Patrick. Everything.

  “What does any of this have to do with Mac?” Scanlin asked.

  “I have no idea.”

  “Nice.”

  “Hear me out. If I’m right, if Susan is alive, it means that for ten years, she was perfectly happy doing whatever it is she’s been doing. But now, after a decade, she’s back in New York. And look at all of the things that have happened since then.” She ticked off the points on her fingers. One. “The man I call the Cleaner did not want her to be seen.” Two. “Deleting the video of her is one thing, but someone also set me up with those forged e-mails from Judge Knight.” Three. “Which means I no longer have a book deal about the Marcus Jones shooting, and everything I say from now on will be considered false.” Four. “Now Scott Macklin is dead, and someone claiming to be a female reporter was at his house yesterday.”

  There was only one conclusion. “Susan being back has something to do with the fact that it’s been ten years since the Jones shooting. Maybe my article triggered something.”

  She could tell from his expression that Scanlin didn’t want to buy it.

  “The timing works,” she argued. “Susan disappeared not long after the Jones shooting. Look, I’m the last person who thought I’d say this. I was sure someone killed her. We all said she’d never just walk away—”

  “Not everyone.”

  “Not you, of course.”

  “Not her sister,” Scanlin said. “And not your husband.”

  “Patrick never thought Susan would leave. He still insists that she must be dead.”

  “I know you think I’m incompetent—”

  “I never said you were incompetent.”

  “Close enough. But I’m quite sure Patrick was the one who told me that Susan had major issues with her family, hated her job, hated the pressure to work with her dad. He told me that in his gut, he thought she just started over again.”

  She had set aside her doubts about Patrick, and now they were back.

  What had he said to her the other day? She’d never just leave. That’s what we all said. That’s what we all told the police. Yet another lie she’d caught him in.

  When she looked at Scanlin, he was taking her picture with his cell phone.

  “What the—”

  His phone was against his ear now. “You have a picture of Susan Hauptmann on that gadget of yours?” he asked, gesturing to the iPad sticking out of her purse.

  “Yes, but—”

  He held up a finger to cut her off. “Josefina, this is Joe Scanlin. I’m so sorry to bother you, but it’s really important. That reporter at your house yesterday? You remember what she looked like? Okay, I need you to look at a couple of pictures for me. I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t think it was urgent. Do you have an e-mail address?”

  They sat in silence after the pictures had been sent. There was nothing more to say until they had their answer.

  He picked up his phone the second it chimed. “You got the pictures? You’re sure? Okay, let me see what else I can find out. Try to get some sleep.” He set his phone down on the table. “Tell me everything again. From the beginning.”

  “What did she say?”

  “That she was a hundred percent certain the woman she saw with Scott yesterday was Susan Hauptmann.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  Carter should have left town. He should have gone to his safe-deposit box, pulled out his passport, and taken the first flight from JFK to Switzerland.

  But some part of him—the part that had puked his guts out at the Marriott, the part that had started to reach for the pay phone yesterday, before it was too late—had kept him in New York. And the same part of him brought him to the Apple store in SoHo to search the latest local news updates.

  “Good afternoon, sir.” The kid who greeted him wore a black T-shirt and a giant ID badge around his neck. He looked entirely too helpful. “What can I help you find today?”

  “To be honest? I’m not buying. My phone’s almost dead, and I’m hoping to check some game scores.”

  “No problem. I hear ya. All our demos are hooked up to the Web, so have a go wherever you’d like. No pressure.”

  Carter picked a laptop at the far corner of the display table. Scott Macklin. Enter.

  It had already happened. The suicide of a retired cop wouldn’t necessarily be newsworthy, but reports had identified him as the police officer whose controversial shooting of Marcus Jones incited citywide protests, widespread racial tensions, and his early retirement. Macklin’s former partner was quoted as suspecting a connection between the suicide and the ten-year anniversary of the shooting.

  Carter knew better. He knew because he was the one who was supposed to have killed Scott Macklin.

  The story was accompanied by two pictures of Macklin with his family—one at his wedding, and one at the son’s high school graduation last May. In both, the boy loo
ked at his father like a hero.

  Was it too late for Carter to be a better man?

  When Carter started thinking about going private, all the work was international. That was fine. After three deployments, Carter was used to it. He would do the same job in the same hellhole and earn a hell of a lot more dough.

  Then more and more people took gigs working the homeland. Now they didn’t even call it the homeland. It was just home.

  Police were estimating that Officer Macklin had taken his life at about nine o’clock this morning. Carter had killed his cell phone at eight o’clock the night before. Even if the client had figured out immediately that Carter was off the rails, that left about thirteen hours to line up another doer. No way.

  That confirmed what Carter had suspected the minute the client had changed the mission the first time. What had been a surveillance job had become an order to blow up a house in the suburbs. He was willing to do it. The woman was fair game. The rest of them were domestic terrorists, as far as he was concerned.

  But the order didn’t sit right with him. Carter worked best when the people giving the orders were as calm and rational and dispassionate as he was. The house explosion was about emotion. So was the order to kill Scott Macklin.

  For Macklin to have died this morning without Carter pulling the trigger meant that the client had done it personally. And the client would know that Carter knew.

  Carter had seen firsthand what the client’s strategy was for people who knew too much. The woman. The retired cop. It was time to clean house.

  It was unavoidable: Carter would be next. And he had no interest in spending the rest of his life in hiding.

  Carter was a firm believer that any mission required complete knowledge of all available facts. Usually his mission was narrow—watch someone, break through a security alarm, find out a true identity. Here, it had escalated from following the woman, to planting the bomb, then taking out Scott Macklin. It was not his job to know the larger “why” behind these assignments.