Alafair Burke - Long Gone

“That explains why he was calling me and my brother-to see what we remembered about that weekend.”

Her father and Art’s cover story that Kinley was a former employee was a classic move on their part: treat her like a child, while they pulled secret strings in an attempt to help her. They probably figured Arthur would come up with a solution without having to tell anyone about that night in Bedford. But she was the one who had been sucked into the Highline Gallery mess. She was the one who had found that man’s body. And she was the one being investigated by the police. She had a right to know everything.

“Was Christie Kinley at your brother’s party that night?”

She shook her head. “I was inside the whole time. But obviously Ben would know.”

“We really need to find your brother.”

Hank had been able to nudge her toward a vocalization of her worst fears, but this time she rambled out loud about Ben’s various acquaintances without reaching the logical inference he’d been suggesting. He decided to give her one more push.

“How harmful would it be to your father if Atkinson had dredged up those old allegations?”

“To be accused of- that ?” He’d been careful so far not to use the word rape , and she stopped before saying it herself. “Obviously that would destroy him.”

Now he allowed the silence to fill Robert Atkinson’s apartment again, waiting for her to draw her own conclusions.

“If you think my father had something to do with Atkinson’s car accident, you’re out of your mind. When all those women were coming out of the woodwork last year, he was totally unfazed. At worst, he might do damage control and pay Atkinson off, like he did with Christie Kinley, but he’d never resort to violence. Absolutely not. It’s unimaginable. I would bet my life on that.”

“So then who goes to the trouble of setting you up using pictures of your father and Christie Kinley, only to decide they don’t want Atkinson’s story out there in the public domain?”

“It has to be someone who’s still angry about what happened that night in Bedford. It’s like they’re killing three birds with one stone. They get the money from selling the thumb drives. They fuck with me for creating an alibi for my father. And presumably they bring my father down in the process once the police figure out those pictures are of him-if they haven’t already.”

If he was willing to shift his focus from her father, what she was saying made sense. “Maybe whoever did this wanted to get back at you and your father, but without dragging Christie Kinley’s name into it. If Atkinson had broken the story, Kinley’s name would have been thrown into the mix. People then start saying she’s a liar. Or that she was the seductress. And she’s dead, so she can’t even defend herself.”

“Except what if she’s not dead?”

“You told me she died last year.”

“I told you that because Arthur Cronin tried tracking her down and only found a death certificate. But if Travis Larson can run around New York telling realtors and gallery owners his name is Steven Henning, and telling me his name is Drew Campbell, maybe he was working with a woman who decided she no longer wanted to be Julie Christie Kinley. Do you know how to find out if someone faked her death?”

“We’d need to track down someone who actually saw Christie Kinley’s body.” He pulled out his BlackBerry and started entering information with both thumbs. “Okay, I’ve got an obituary here from the Lakeville Journal last March. ‘Julie Christie Kinley died peacefully in her family home in Falls Village . ’”

Alice recognized the town name. “She must have left Westchester and moved to Connecticut at some point.”

She had been fighting breast cancer since her diagnosis last summer. She was preceded in death by her mother, Gloria Barnes Kinley, and survived by her sister, Mia Louise Andrews. In lieu of flowers, the family requests that contributions be sent to the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation.

“If she died in her family home, I guess we should start there.” He looked at his watch. “By the time we get to Connecticut, it will be a little late to be knocking on strangers’ doors to ask about a dead woman. It’ll have to wait until tomorrow.”

Alice knew they had reached the end of what could be accomplished today. They would have to start up again tomorrow in Falls Village. She could not recall another time in her life when she had absolutely nowhere to go.

“All right. You can use the bat phone to call me when it’s time to leave the city.”

“You can’t go back to your apartment tonight.”

“I know.”

“So where are you planning to stay?”

“I stopped trying to plan anything about fifteen hours ago. That sofa you’re on seems as good a place as any.”

She could tell he didn’t like the suggestion. She didn’t want him to suggest his own apartment. She wanted him to be precisely what he seemed, a man who believed that law enforcement should stand for truth, a man who was willing to help her because it was the right thing to do.

“How about we make the drive tonight to avoid the traffic. We’ll find a hotel up there to crash. Two rooms, of course.”

It was the perfect suggestion.

They were halfway to Connecticut on the Hutchinson River Parkway when they heard the announcement on 1010 News radio. An arrest warrant had been issued for Alice Humphrey, the daughter of Academy Award-winning director Frank Humphrey, for the murder of a former boyfriend and business associate. The facts of the case were still sealed, but according to an anonymous source, evidence submitted in support of the warrant included sexual photographs of Frank Humphrey with an allegedly underage girl. It was unclear how the photographs were related to the murder allegations against his daughter. The reporter promised more details as they rolled in.

They drove in silence to Falls Village. As she fell asleep in a lumpy bed in a roadside motel, she had never felt so alone.

J oann Stevenson felt like the wind had been knocked out of her. In the days that had passed since she’d last seen her daughter, she had learned to protect herself as she listened to the television. Hearing Becca described as a missing teenager-with all of the accompanying speculation about the dark possibilities-was not easy. But even harder were the nights when the newscasters said nothing about Becca during those thirty-second commercial teasers, a reminder to Joann that her daughter’s disappearance was already turning into yesterday’s story, surpassed by the latest home invasion or commercial fire.

What she did not expect during a commercial break from Glee -the show Becca had turned her on to-was the announcement that an arrest warrant had been issued for the murder at the Highline Gallery, or that the suspect in question was a woman-a former child actress at that. Nor did she expect the scintillating teaser that the woman’s father and pornographic photographs of him with an underage girl might be involved.

She knew it was late, but called Jason Morhart anyway.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Joann?”

“That’s right. Joann Stevenson, the white-trash woman whose daughter went missing, and no one had the proper decency to call to say an arrest warrant was going out. I had to hear about it on the news.”

“It’s on the news?”

She heard a television come on in the background. “You didn’t know?”

“I knew an arrest might be coming soon. They’re still not sure of Becca’s connection to the gallery, Joann. Hopefully if they get this woman in custody, they can turn the pressure on for answers about Becca. Remember? We talked about this?”