Alafair Burke - Long Gone

Alice had never broken down like this in front of Lily, and she could tell her friend did not know how to respond. Lily patted her on the leg before saying they couldn’t give up. “We’re just getting started. We’re two smart, capable, and stubborn women. We’re going to get to the bottom of this.”

Alice wiped away her tears with the back of her hand and tried to regain control over her breathing as Lily turned her attention back to the laptop. She typed in “Drew Campbell” and hit enter. More than five hundred results. Alice felt herself succumbing to sobs again until Lily narrowed the results to New York City, and a manageable list of profiles appeared.

Her eyes surveyed the pictures, searching for the man who had charmed her. The man whose body she had found just yesterday morning.

But she didn’t see the face of that man on the screen. It was another picture that caught her attention. A photograph of a woman. A face that could not have been more familiar.

She felt Lily’s hand pushing back her own, as if to protect a curious child from a hot stove, but Alice reached the computer and clicked on the name next to the photograph: Drew Campbell .

A page of basic biographical information appeared. Sex: Female. City: New York, New York. Education: Haverford College for undergrad, MFA from NYU. Employer: Highline Gallery.

The profile picture was the same photograph she’d been handed earlier that morning by the property management agent in Hoboken. The photo of Alice at Christina Marcum’s wedding. The picture that had been used to create a fake ID under the name Drew Campbell.

She felt her hand quiver involuntarily as she clicked on the tab marked “Photos.”

The page was filled with photographs from her own life. Times with Jeff. With Ben. With her best girlfriends, Danielle, Anne-Lise, and Maggie. In Paris and Rome when she could afford those kinds of trips. But in every picture, the other people depicted had been cropped out-except in one photograph, which, although familiar, was not from her own life.

It was the photograph the police had sprung on her just that morning-a picture of some other red-haired, Alice-looking woman kissing the man she had known as Drew Campbell. She had known that kiss would destroy everything. It was a kiss she’d never even had.

She’d asked the detectives where they’d found that photograph, and now she knew. The police had discovered this Web site. They also had copies of the lease for the gallery. They believed she had been living as Drew Campbell.

Which would mean she had been lying to them about everything.

H ank Beckman felt like a dying man who had planned his own funeral. Much as a man sent to hospice for his last few months could anticipate the fallout of his eventual demise, he had known that the death of Travis Larson-and his firsthand surveillance of Larson’s final days-would bring certain unavoidable consequences.

To manage those consequences, Hank needed to maneuver around three unalterable truths. The first of those truths? He would share his knowledge with the New York Police Department. That decision was beyond choice. He was not the kind of man who would place his own stature before the investigation of a murder-even if the vic was a scumbag like Larson, and even if the disclosure cost him his pension.

The second truth was that the world of law enforcement was a sprawling and inefficient bureaucracy when one needed it to be streamlined, and yet remarkably insular and incestuous when one might prefer the impersonal. Once he came forward to the NYPD, word of his extracurricular surveillance activities would migrate back to the bureau like a freshly hatched salmon to sea.

The third truth was that Hank was a man who took lumps when they were due. No weaseling, no matter the costs.

Add up one, two, and three, and Hank’s decision was preordained. He waited patiently for his SAC to finish up his face time with the field office’s Citizens’ Academy. Like most special agents in charge, Tom Overton enjoyed the mythology of the bureau. John Dillinger. Baby Face Nelson. Ma Barker. Taking on the Gambino crime family and Sonny Barger’s Hell’s Angels under RICO. Newly expanded powers under the Patriot Act. In some circles, a bureau man was thought to be a stuffed suit with a stick up his ass, but the novice writers, true-crime junkies, and curious retirees who filled out the Citizens’ Academy arrived at the field office with eager questions and appreciative eyes and ears. Overton returned to his office with a skip in his step and a smile on his face.

Until he spotted Hank waiting for him.

Hank got directly to the point. He knew he was supposed to leave Larson alone. It had been two months since he’d been reprimanded for his communication with the man who had “taken up” with his sister, as Overton worded it at the time. Two months since he’d been told he was lucky Larson hadn’t sued both him and the bureau for false accusations and harassment. Two months since Overton himself persuaded Larson not to file charges after Hank had thrown the first punch.

“I didn’t keep my word, sir. I’ll hand you my resignation today if that’s what you want, but what matters is that I step up to the NYPD with what I have.”

“Not this again, Beckman. The guy’s a low-level con man, I grant you that. But it’s only because of your sister that you want the bureau-”

“It’s nothing like that this time, Tom.” Beckman’s use of Overton’s first name might have been a first between the two men. “Larson’s dead. And I was watching him not long before he got popped.”

Overton stared at him for a full thirty seconds before speaking. “Should I even ask whether you had something to do with this? Do we need to get you representation?”

If Hank had more sense, he probably would get himself a lawyer. Instead, he assured Overton he had nothing more to hide but would need to take the rest of the day as personal time so he could pay a visit to the detectives handling Larson’s murder investigation.

Police precincts have a rhythm and a grit and a smell that mark them as a unique culture, so different from the sterile bureau field offices that could be mistaken for any office park in the country. Hank had worked enough joint task force operations to read the energy of an NYPD precinct. The second he stepped inside the homicide squad, he knew a case was hot. Detectives out of their desks. Moving a little more quickly than usual. Sheets of paper changing hands. And when the civilian aide at the front desk pointed him to an interrogation room down the hall, he knew the bustling was related to the Travis Larson case.

The detectives handling the case had covered every inch of a rolling whiteboard with scrawled notations in four different colors of ink. The small table in the center of the room was layered with documents and photographs. Piles of paper were beginning to accumulate on the floor.

An attractive blonde passed him in the narrow hallway. He was embarrassed when she caught his gaze moving to the detective shield hanging from a chain inside her tailored shirt. He was relieved when she threw him an amused smile instead of a faceful of the coffee she held in one hand.

“Let me guess: Feds?”

“Bureau.”

“For Shannon and Danes?”

“That’s what I’m told.”

“Oh, yeah. They’re gonna love that.”

Hank suspected the detectives actually would love what he had to say. He understood the whole local-versus-feds tension. Truth be told, he wasn’t certain he was always on the right side of it. Cops worked more cases in less time and with fewer resources. When the feds showed up, it was usually to cherry-pick the high-profile slam-dunks. But this time, a federal enforcement officer was walking into their yard with his tail between his legs. They’d love it, all right.