If You Were Here: A Novel of Suspense

by Alafair Burke

  It had been Scanlin’s idea to let McKenna have the first go at Susan.

  “I read what you wrote,” Susan said. “That was the truth. My mistake was believing Adam. I had no idea how much destruction we were unleashing. When Scanlin showed me those pages, I thought you believed me.”

  “I do believe you. At least I believe you’re telling the truth about Adam and what happened on the docks ten years ago. But I saw how you responded when Scanlin told you that it was a woman who hired Carl Buckner. I saw your expression when he showed you a copy of your father’s will. You hadn’t seen it, had you? Gretchen received a copy but never told you.”

  “This is all about my reaction to Scanlin? How would you respond if the police accused you of murdering two men?”

  “Almost three,” McKenna said. “She shot Patrick, too. You went to Scott Macklin—you wanted him to come forward—because you believed that he was fundamentally a good man who would choose to do the right thing. How can you protect the person who killed him and tried to kill Patrick?”

  Susan opened her mouth, but no words came out.

  “I know what you were about to say,” McKenna said. “Because she’s your sister. She’s blood. For you, that’s always come first. You spent your whole life trying to believe that your father loved you, that some part of him was proud of you, even if he couldn’t say it. You risked everything to come back to New York City and see him one last time before he died. Because Gretchen’s your sister, you kept a connection to her, too. She was the one person who knew you were alive.”

  Though Susan was shaking her head, McKenna knew her suspicions were right.

  “When you saw your father and learned that Adam had lied to you about the military’s involvement in the drug running, you decided you were going to get your old life back. You had a plan to have Macklin back you up. The country’s immigration policies had changed. His stepson was no longer at risk of being deported. Mac could finally tell the truth without worrying about his family being sent to Mexico. And then you made the mistake of telling Gretchen. She hired Buckner to follow you. When she found out you were going through with it—contacting Mac, contacting Patrick—she tried to kill you. When that failed, she went after everyone else who knew you were alive. You figured it out when Scanlin showed you the will and told you that Buckner was working for a woman.”

  Susan was working her jaw as if chewing an imaginary piece of gum.

  “She pulled a gun on us yesterday,” McKenna said. Susan stopped chewing. “The police say it’s the same weapon used to shoot Buckner and Patrick. They also found a cape and mask matching those worn by the shooter.”

  “So why do you need me?”

  “Because she can still say you did it. She can say it’s your mask, your cape, your gun. You dumped it all at her place with no explanation. She’ll claim that when she heard about the shooting, she realized it was you but was too confused to know what to do. Then when we came to her house and saw the costume, she panicked and pulled your gun. She’d probably get attempted assault at best.”

  In McKenna’s short prosecutorial career, how many jailhouse deals had she cut in these attorney conference rooms? In theory, she was rewarding those who were least responsible and most contrite in exchange for their cooperation against the most culpable offenders. Most days, it was a question of which bad guy talked first.

  “Susan, you mentioned the destruction you and Adam unleashed. Look at what Gretchen did in the last week. Mistaken or not, you did it because you thought there was a higher good. You thought you were saving lives halfway across the world. And here you are, ready to pay the price for what you did, even though you already paid dearly. You lost your life for ten years. And you lost your child.”

  Susan looked away. “It didn’t mean anything. It was just a clump of cells.”

  “No, it wasn’t. He wasn’t. You didn’t lose your baby. Porter is your son. You couldn’t be the person—the people—you’ve had to be for the past decade and also raise a child. But Gretchen could. She was clean. She got married. You’re not doing this to protect Gretchen, are you? You’re trying to protect Porter. How can it be good for him to be raised by a murderer? By a woman who tried to kill you so she could be the one who inherited your dad’s money instead of you? Think about it, Susan: how did she hire a guy like Carl Buckner in the first place? She only knew about that kind of private work because you’ve been doing it for ten years. Let me guess: she probably hit you up for a lot of extra cash in the last few months. You thought you were helping her through the divorce, but you were paying your own hit man.”

  Susan was clenching her fists so tightly that her knuckles were white.

  “Even if you try to take the fall, the police won’t buy it. Gretchen will get indicted. She will go to trial. And Porter will have to testify that he found Mommy’s neato mask and cape right before she pulled a gun on that nice couple who came to visit. He’ll testify about mommy’s friend who always brought him toys and called herself Carol—your middle name, your mother’s name. He’ll be cross-examined by Gretchen’s lawyer. Oh, and don’t forget the DNA evidence. Scanlin will get a search warrant authorizing the state to draw Porter’s blood. He won’t understand why a man in a white coat is poking him in the arm with a needle, but his very biology—the fact that he’s your son, Susan, not your nephew—is proof of Gretchen’s motive. She wanted the money, but she also wanted him. Some lawyer will have to explain to him that his mother is his aunt. That the father who just left his mother isn’t really his father. In fact, no one knows who his father is.”

  Susan jolted upright. “Stop! Just stop, okay?” The room was silent except for the sound of her heavy breaths. “Who will take care of Porter?”

  Though McKenna had been prepared to use Porter as a chip in this negotiation, she had never stopped to think about what would happen to the boy while Gretchen was serving life in prison and Susan served whatever time she got for her part in Adam’s drug scheme. “Does Gretchen’s husband know Porter isn’t his?” she asked. “He obviously thinks of him as his son—”

  “Paul?” Susan shook her head. “Gretchen met him at an N.A. meeting when she was supposedly six months pregnant, thanks to a rubber maternity bump. When she told me she’d met a guy, I wanted to shake her senseless. Faking the pregnancy got a little trickier. Fabricated doctors’ appointments. Sham sonogram images. I coached her through all of it. She just had to keep him from seeing her naked for a few months. From what I understand, it’s not all that hard once your gut’s the size of a beach ball and the only moans you’re making are from morning sickness.” The momentary smile brought back memories of a younger Susan. “As far as Paul is concerned, Porter was born three weeks premature, at home in their bathtub, assisted by the doula I bribed while he was away on business. He’s a decent guy—good enough to fall in love with a woman who was already knocked up. But when they got engaged, I panicked. I figured he’d want to adopt Porter, and then what would we do? In over nine years, he’s never raised the subject. Being called Daddy is one thing, but being legally obligated? I need to know Porter will be taken care of. And that he might have some connection with me when I get out.”

  “I’ll make sure of it.” McKenna was hearing her own words before she’d thought them through. But they felt right. At one point in their lives, Susan had been Patrick’s closest friend. Susan had been the person to introduce them. Susan had cared about them both enough to sit back and watch as they fell in love.

  And now that same friend was trying to take care of a nine-year-old boy who had no one else to care for him.

  McKenna saw the uncertainty in Susan’s face. “I promise you that I’ll work with Paul. Any man who married a woman he believed was pregnant and then spent nine years raising the boy as his own has to be a decent guy. He’ll want to be part of Porter’s life. And Patrick and I will help out so he won’t be overwhelmed. Porter will be taken car
e of. And loved. When you get out—and you will, Susan—you’ll get your life back. You’ll get your son. All of this will be over.”

  In the silence, Susan imagined Scanlin listening to the transmission of the conversation. With nothing but audio, he would think they’d lost her, that Susan was shutting down. He could not see what was happening in the silence: Susan grasping McKenna’s hands across the table. Something had changed. Porter was the key.

  “It’s my fault,” Susan said. “I’m the one who set this in motion. Gretchen had finally gotten her life together, and I dragged her into my mess. She raised my son as her own. And when I decided I wanted to come back, I never stopped to think how much that must have terrified her. Or how much she resented me. I was the one who let my father believe I was dead, and yet he continued to hold out hope for me. He searched for me. In his mind, I became the good daughter again, even as he continued to shun the only daughter he had left. In all those years, he could never bring himself to call Gretchen and take back the horrible things he said to her when she got arrested.”

  “She could have picked up the phone, too.”

  “But she didn’t. Because she never felt like she was loved. And I was just as guilty as our father. When I persuaded Getty to give her a plea bargain, I felt like she owed me, so she was the one who would keep my secret and not tell anyone I had left. When months went by and I still had no way of coming home, she was the one who would raise the baby until I figured something out. I never thought it would be ten years. Even after she got married, I still treated her like a babysitter, a placeholder. Time was frozen for me. I was in limbo. But she became Porter’s mother. She loves him, McKenna. And she’s good with him. She needs him. And now I was coming back, and I never took the time to make her feel loved enough to know that she wouldn’t be left alone—no Paul, no Porter, no me. I know you think this was only about the money, but it wasn’t. I did this. If I could serve her sentence for her, I would.”

  “You can’t. You know the letter that Carl Buckner mailed before he was killed? He said he was trying to do the right thing even though he was late. He actually wrote, Is it possible to be a good person, then a bad person, and then a good person again? It’s not too late to start making the right choices. Someone has to be there for the child you and Gretchen both love. Under the circumstances, however we got here, that has to be you, Susan. It’s time to start taking care of yourself so you can take care of him.”

  “Give me five minutes. Then send Scanlin in.”

  Scanlin was waiting in the adjacent room. He was packing up the audio equipment that had monitored her conversation with Susan. “Good job.”

  She nodded. Susan’s testimony would help seal the case against Gretchen, but McKenna didn’t feel like celebrating.

  “Please tell me you were shining her on about helping out with her kid.”

  “Nope. Dead serious.”

  She allowed him a few sentences to lecture her about the seriousness of child care. The responsibility. The sacrifice. The way children can break your heart. She cut him off. “You don’t know everything here.”

  McKenna imagined a different reality, one in which Susan was never reactivated by the military. One in which she didn’t need to call her father for special treatment, and Adam Bayne never ensnared her into his scheme to squeeze every last bit of cash out of Afghanistan while he could. Susan still would have been pregnant and single, but she would have stayed in New York City, parenting a son alone. She would have had help from Uncle Patrick and Aunt McKenna.

  If Susan had been here, this boy would have been part of their lives already. It wasn’t too late to catch up.

  MARCH

  At the beginning of this trial, you made an oath to the judge in this case—an oath that you would listen to the evidence and follow the law. And once you were sworn in as jurors, I made a vow to you, as a lawyer for the People of New York, that the evidence in this case would support every representation that I made to you in the People’s opening statement.”

  As McKenna spoke, she made a point to look directly at each juror individually. To a person, they returned her gaze. No nervous glances at their laps. No fidgeting in their chairs.

  She had this.

  “You have now heard the evidence. And I know you will follow the law. I am confident that you will find I have kept my promise as well. We have played our role in the system, and now it is time for the defendant to learn that this system works. That truth prevails. And the truth is that the defendant is guilty of assault in the first degree. I am confident that your verdict will reflect that truth.”

  She walked solemnly to the prosecution’s counsel table and took her seat. There was a time when she had tried an entire case with nothing except a Post-it note. But this was her first jury trial in ten and a half years. She had memorized that closing argument word for word.

  For all she knew, those jurors would look her in the eye, lock themselves away in their little room, and then decide that Martians, not the defendant, had beaten her victim—a homeless twenty-seven-year-old whose only offense was falling asleep on the subway.

  But she believed in juries. She always had.

  Will Getty was waiting for her, coat draped over his arm, when she emerged from the courtroom. “I stuck my head in. Good closing. Sorry it’s not the kind of case you were probably looking forward to handling.”

  When the district attorney himself called last month to offer her a position, he had explained that her assignment in the office would reflect her prior experience but also the fact that she had been out of practice for so long. She could tell by the cautiousness of his words that he expected her to be insulted. A year ago, maybe she would have been. Now? The events of last fall had taught her that happiness wasn’t about titles or acclaim or recognition.

  She had spent all those years feeling like a victim, punished for the simple act of pursuing justice. Even though her suspicions about the Marcus Jones shooting proved to be correct, her motivations weren’t entirely pure. She could have pressed Getty back then to tell her more, but she used his silence as a justification to play whistleblower. After so much grunt work, it was her chance to shine. And when her novel came out, she may have told herself that she was trying to start over, but she made a point to take her author photo on the courthouse steps. Her publicity materials talked up her prosecutorial experience, describing her as more experienced than she ever was. She had earned her former colleagues’ skepticism.

  Now she was just happy to be back in the only job she’d ever wanted.

  “Want to walk over to the courthouse together?” She meant the federal courthouse, where Susan was scheduled to be sentenced today.

  She noticed then that Will was holding not only his coat but hers as well. “I took the liberty. We need to hurry if we’re going to get there on time.”

  Patrick was already in the courtroom when they arrived. McKenna took a seat next to him. Will Getty chose a spot behind them, next to Gretchen’s ex-husband, Paul Henesy. So far, Susan’s predictions about Paul had proved an underestimation of his resolve to remain a father to the boy he had always treated as his son. He had moved back into the family’s home and was serving as Porter’s primary guardian. Porter’s biological father, Will Getty, was slowly easing into the boy’s life. As of three weeks ago, Porter had taken to calling him Daddy Will.

  Susan was wearing the borrowed suit that McKenna had given to Susan’s defense lawyer, Hester Crimstein, the previous day. It was a little baggy but better than the jail’s coveralls.

  Crimstein set forth the conditions of the plea agreement. McKenna already knew the terms. In the five months Susan had been in custody, her attorney had managed to work out a joint deal with federal and state prosecutors. Adam and Gretchen were looking at homicide charges: Adam for setting in motion the events that led to the deaths of Pamela Morris and Marcus Jones; and Gretchen for shooting Scott Macklin
and Carl Buckner. Susan would testify against them both. In exchange, she would receive immunity from the state government, serve a year in federal prison, and complete five years of closely monitored probation.

  It was a good deal—so good that Susan’s lawyer was worried the judge might not accept it. Every observer in the courtroom was willing to speak in support of the sentence if necessary.

  The courtroom door opened, and Joe Scanlin entered with Josefina Macklin and a teenage boy McKenna recognized as her son, Tommy. To McKenna’s amazement, they had come to terms with Mac’s wrongdoing. Now they wanted justice—for him and for them. Learning how to forgive Susan was part of that process.

  “Does the defendant have any remarks?”

  Susan rose to speak. As she laid out all of the mistakes she had made, and all of the opportunities she had missed to mitigate the harm, McKenna thought about her own regrets. She had spent ten years waiting for her life to change. Waiting for something big to happen, as if she were owed something better. Waiting to be happy—someday, when things were different, when the pieces fell into place.

  Susan had described her time away as limbo. McKenna had created her own limbo.

  The judge announced that she was accepting the plea agreement and then banged the gavel, bringing a quick end to the proceedings. Susan threw her head back and let out a soft sigh. She was going to jail, but she was finally free.

  So was McKenna. She reached next to her and took Patrick’s hand in hers. Her wait for the future that would change everything was over. She had been there all along.

  Acknowledgments

  Ten years ago, I published my first novel with the enthusiastic support of a smart and perceptive editor named Jennifer Barth. Hitching my wagon to hers was the best non-marital decision I have ever made. She makes every book better. Thanks to her, I now also have the tremendous support of an extremely talented crew at HarperCollins: Amy Baker, Erica Barmash, Jonathan Burnham, Heather Drucker, Mark Ferguson, Michael Morrison, Katie O’Callaghan, Kathy Schneider, Leah Wasielewski, David Watson, and Lydia Weaver.