Alafair Burke - Long Gone

Morhart looked at Alice Humphrey’s photograph. He recognized it from one of the articles he’d read about George Hardy’s protests at the gallery. Rare was the woman who victimized a child for her own pleasure, but even out in the sticks, he’d learned that people would do anything for money.

“Who’s the big-fucking-deal father?”

“Frank Humphrey.”

“The director?”

“Yep. And quite the lothario, if you read the tabloids. You’d have to ask Freud whether that has anything to do with his daughter’s venture into child porn. All we know is that she apparently had a falling-out with him some time last year. Maybe this was her way of starting over, separate from her family.”

“And you think Alice Humphrey killed Travis Larson?”

“Wouldn’t be the first time a woman killed a lover. Or who knows? Maybe he double-crossed her. Love and money are powerful motivators. Hopefully we’ll nail down the precise motive when we eventually get a confession. We can tie the gallery laptop to some of the messages that were posted in the chat rooms. We seized that laptop from her possession, but she can always say Larson posted the messages, not her. And even if we can nail her on the kiddie pictures, that’s not enough to carry through to murder. The truth is, we don’t have quite enough to hook her up on anything yet.”

Morhart heard the creak of the door once again. This time, the Asian guy popped only his head inside. “Good news, man. Those gloves from the garbage on Bank and Washington? CSU called. Positive for GSR.”

Morhart didn’t know the city well, but he recognized Bank and Washington as located somewhere downtown, in the unnumbered part of Manhattan, presumably near the gallery. Apparently the crime scene unit had discovered gunshot residue on a pair of gloves found near the crime scene.

Danes pumped his fist at what remained of his waistline. “All we got to do is connect our girl to these gloves, and we just might be in business.”

E ven in better days, Alice felt an intense irritation navigating the crowded sidewalks of midtown Manhattan. Cookie-cutter clones in dark suits. Street vendors pushing roasted peanuts and $3 belts. Meandering tourists staring up at the skyline, blissfully unaware of their shopping bags smacking other pedestrians in the thighs. Teenagers in flip-flops snapping cell-phone photos while they juggled two-quart buckets of soft drinks from fast food restaurants. It was just… too much.

“Smile, girl. Don’t matter if it’s ten degrees out. Every day can be beautiful.” The man with the broad grin wheeled a hand truck filled with bottled water down the loading ramp of a delivery truck double-parked on Fifty-fourth Street. When he hit street level, he reached for the volume knob of an old boom-box CD player resting on the truck floor. “Summertime” by DJ Jazzy Jeff and Will Smith when he used to be called the Fresh Prince thumped over the sounds of midday traffic.

She flashed him a thumbs-up as she hurried to the entrance of the office building towering over them. She signed in with the front guard and posed for a digital camera before receiving a guest pass to proceed to the forty-third floor.

Her father was already waiting in Arthur Cronin’s office, sipping from a glass of water with lemon as he sat cross-legged on the cherry-colored leather sofa. Art sat perpendicular to him in a coordinating wing chair in stocking feet. It would have come as no surprise to anyone seeing these two men for the first time that they had known each other nearly fifty years.

“There she is, right on time, the beautiful female half of the next generation of Humphreys.” Art rose to greet her with a solid bear hug, then clasped her shoulders. “How is my fabulous goddaughter holding up? Huh?”

“I’ve got to admit, I found myself eyeing my passport this morning, wondering about the most livable country in the world without an extradition agreement with America.”

“This is why artists aren’t lawyers. Your imagination is getting away from you. Something is amuck here, no question, but these things have a way of getting worked out. You’ll see.”

She looked at her father and could tell he was working hard to appear untroubled. He was a brilliant filmmaker, but he was no actor. He rested his glass on the coffee table in front of him and used his hands on his thighs as assistance to stand. “All right. I’ve got a meeting with a certain hard-to-land octo-mom of an actress. I don’t want to keep her waiting. She might get bored and adopt another baby.”

“Dad, I thought we were meeting with Art together.” When she had called him about the images she found on the Hans Schuler thumb drive, he had persuaded her it was time to get a lawyer involved, starting first with Arthur.

“Sorry, baby girl. This casting is a major get, and it was the only time she could meet me. I told Art what I know. You’re in good hands now.” He blew her a kiss with all ten fingers, then closed the door behind him.

“Don’t be upset with him, Alice. I was actually the one who thought it might be best to meet with each of you separately.”

He’d obviously notified only her father of the change in plans.

“I brought the thumb drive.”

She hadn’t looked at the pictures since that first manic perusal the previous night. Once she walked him through the process of pulling up the screen with the portal, clicking on the girl’s pupil, and then entering the password, she made a point to check out the corner-office views. A couple clicks of Art’s mouse were followed by wincing sounds. She tried not to remember.

As he browsed through the images hidden on the thumb drive, she moved her attention to a different collection of photographs, the framed ones clustered on top of his mahogany file cabinet. Art shaking hands with Hillary Clinton. Art accepting an award from the ACLU. A younger Art on a boat with her father. An even younger Art and a little gap-toothed Opie Taylor lookalike, huddled in the stands with hot dogs and matching Yankees caps.

“Who’s the cutie at the Yankees game?”

“I’m sorry?” He rose from his desk and waved her back to the sitting area. “That’s my nephew, Brandon. Little runt’s already out of business school, if you can believe it.”

She knew Art had a sister who was married, but she’d never met any of his family. She had always gotten the impression that Art considered himself more of an honorary Humphrey.

“Let’s get down to brass tacks. The detectives who questioned you did not ask you anything about these pictures?”

“No, but they asked me about the missing girl from Jersey. Do you think the older girl in those photographs might be her?”

“I have no idea, but if they know about these pictures, that could certainly be a reason they’re inquiring. Of course, why in the world they’ve imagined any connection between you and that girl is one of a number of unknowns we’re dealing with right now.”

“They also asked me about Dad. And about ITH. They obviously tracked down the same records my friend Jeff got from the state. Someone used the ITH name to open the gallery, and they know that’s one of my father’s corporate entities. They must think I was the one pulling the strings. The pictures on that thumb drive prove I’ve been telling the truth. Whoever opened the gallery did it to sell those pictures, and used me as the cover.”

Art steepled his fingers toward her. “So what is it that your instincts are telling you to do right now, Alice?”

It was funny to see Art here, in this cigar-and-brandy-styled office, wearing a thousand-dollar suit, talking to her the way a grown-up lawyer would speak to a grown-up client. She had known him her entire life. She could still distinctively remember concluding that he was the wisest person on earth after he taught her not to pull her arms through her coat sleeves until she’d first put on her mittens, protecting even her wrists from the cold.