Alafair Burke - Long Gone

She’d woken up that morning determined that her involvement in the drama around the gallery be resolved. Now it was, albeit in an awful, horrific, unimaginable way. Now she was resolved to listen to Lily. You’re no longer involved, she’d said. Consider yourself lucky you don’t know more about Drew Campbell and the Highline Gallery.

But despite that moment of resolve, Alice would not remain uninvolved. The following day, the detectives from the gallery would arrive unannounced at her apartment asking all of their same questions once again.

Y ou’ve heard what they say about pictures and a thousand words.

Alice took another sip of her water, but immediately wondered if the movement seemed suspicious, an obvious attempt to appear calm. I’m hot because I took a seventy-five-minute spinning class , she wanted to yell. I’m sweaty because we ended with a long climb, then I sprinted home from the gym. And I just walked into this overheated apartment from the bitter cold. I’m hot and sweaty and more than a little stinky, but not because of your being here or your questions or this ridiculous photograph of me supposedly kissing Drew Campbell .

But she could not say anything. Instead she stared at the picture. It was not the best quality. It looked like a blowup from a digital version. But the man certainly appeared to be Drew Campbell. And the woman? It was hard to make out her face in profile, but the black sunglasses pushing back her red hair looked like hers. That blue coat with the upturned collar was exactly like hers. The profile followed the same contours. Jesus, it looked like her, certainly enough that she had no doubt about why they had come to her apartment to ask her to reexplain everything she had already said to them yesterday.

And now that she’d conveyed it all once again, they apparently weren’t asking any more questions. Not explicitly. Shannon had simply glided the photograph onto the tabletop, accompanied by a single sentence.

You’ve heard what they say about pictures and a thousand words.

The detectives’ silence following that single sentence had somehow made her apartment louder. The clicking furnace. The upstairs neighbor’s plumbing. The usual horns on Second Avenue below. The rattle of an accelerating bus. A distant siren growing louder, then fading once again.

She found herself wishing Lily were still here, but Alice had been the one to insist that she return to her own routine lest she face her boss’s wrath. Lily would have some pithy comment to break through the awkward silence. With humor and fortitude, she would somehow persuade these police officers that, despite every appearance in this photograph, Alice Humphrey was someone they should believe.

But Lily wasn’t there to speak for her. And someone in this room had to start speaking before the sounds in Alice’s own head caused her to scream something she’d regret.

“I don’t understand.” That’s it, Alice? Minutes of stunned silence, and that’s what you come up with? She tried again. “If you think I’ve been lying to you, or hiding something from you, I swear to you, I have not. That’s not me in that picture. It can’t be. Who gave you that? It has to be doctored. I never, ever, ever kissed Drew Campbell.”

The two detectives exchanged the kind of look that suggested an inside joke.

“Well,” Shannon said with a patient smile, “did you ever kiss the man in this picture? The man whose body we carried out of your gallery yesterday?”

Your gallery.

“I don’t understand,” she said before realizing she’d repeated herself. “I just told you, I never kissed him. I only met him a few weeks ago. He hired me. That’s all.”

“That’s not what you told us. You said you never kissed Drew Campbell. We’re just trying to verify that you’re saying you never kissed the man in this picture, despite what this picture suggests.”

“I assume the man in that picture is Drew Campbell, and, no, there was nothing romantic between us.”

“Did you ever know him by another name? Something other than Drew Campbell?”

“No, of course not. I would have told you.”

“And how about yourself? Have you ever used any name other than Alice Humphrey?”

“Me? No. Never.”

“Well, do you have any thoughts on why there would be a photograph of Mr. Campbell kissing a woman who seems to share a very close resemblance to you? If I’m not mistaken, Miss Humphrey, that’s the very coat you had on yesterday at the gallery.”

“I know. I find it very confusing. Maybe I reminded him of his girlfriend? That might be why he offered me the job in the first place. That’s all I can think of. But I know that’s not me in this picture. It can’t be.”

“And, just to be clear, you didn’t have anything to do with clearing out the contents of your gallery.”

Just to be clear? She knew the worst thing she could do right now was show anger. Friendly, polite, deferential. That’s what she needed to be. “No. The place was closed up when I got there.”

“But not really closed. The gate was open, I believe you said? Door unlocked?”

She nodded. That was obviously what she’d said, both yesterday and today. “By closed up, I meant that the gallery had been cleaned out.”

“Miss Humphrey, is that your computer?” Shannon asked the question, but both of the detectives were eyeing the slim gray laptop that was open on her kitchen table. Her old dinosaur was closed on top of a bookcase in the living room, growing dusty since she’d starting carting around the newer one.

“Um, I guess not anymore. Drew gave it to me for the gallery. And for me to work from home. It served double duty, I guess you’d say.”

“So that laptop there’s the only computer you had in use at the gallery?”

“Uh-huh.”

“And when we asked you yesterday, and today, whether you knew the whereabouts of any of the property from the gallery, you didn’t think to mention the fact that you had the gallery’s computer in your personal possession?”

“No, I didn’t even think about the computer until you asked about it just now. I’m sorry. I didn’t realize-I mean, you’re welcome to have it. It’s not even mine, and I have no idea how to even give it back, or whom I’d give it to.”

“ITH. Right?” The H sounded like an A coming around Danes’s toothpick.

She sighed. “Whatever that is.”

They exchanged another one of those insider looks before Shannon picked up the computer.

“So just to be clear”-he liked that phrase-“you’re consenting to our seizure of this computer for purposes of our investigation and consenting to a search of all of its contents: files, search histories, cookies, what not. Those techno-geeks will give it the full once-over. You’re all right with that?”

Friendly, polite, deferential. Nothing to hide. “Of course,” she said with a nod. “I’m feeling a little gross from the gym, if you know what I mean. Maybe I can take a quick shower?” She fanned her shirt from her body and was momentarily relieved when the detectives returned her smile.

“No problem.” Once again, Shannon did the speaking, but both men stepped from their chairs. “You do what you need to do. We’ll have a look-see on this,” he said, holding up the laptop. “Maybe Drew had some earlier activity on it that might come in handy. And, Alice, I’m going to leave that copy of the picture right there for you to ponder. Give us a call if you have any additional thoughts about it.”