Alafair Burke - Long Gone

Of course it wasn’t what she wanted . She wanted her life back. She wanted anything else but her current circumstance. “Yes. I’m sure.”

“Okay, now remember that you promised not to change course, no matter what.”

“Why do you keep saying that?”

“Because your father called me. He begged me for your number so he could tell you himself, but I was worried he’d lead the police right to you.”

“You’re really scaring me. Are they okay?” Hank mouthed a silent What? from the threadbare chair in the corner of the hotel room.

“They’re fine, but it’s Ben. His sponsor hadn’t heard from him for a while and got worried enough to go by his apartment. He found Ben in the bathroom. There’s no easy way to say this. Your brother was using again. He overdosed.”

“Where is he? Did he go to the hospital? Is Down with him?” Despite Ben’s at least initially regular attendance at NA meetings, he’d never found anyone with whom he was as comfortable discussing his addiction as Down.

“It wasn’t just an OD. Ben’s dead. They think it happened sometime yesterday. Heroin. I’m so sorry.”

She remembered Ben’s unlocked apartment. The unoccupied loft. The cracked bathroom door that she had never opened. Her ugly rush to grab his money and cell phone. Maybe if she had nudged that door. She imagined rubber tubing around her brother’s bare arm, a syringe still hanging from his vein.

“Alice, I’m so, so sorry. You had a right to know immediately, but remember your promise. You need to focus on yourself right now-for the sake of your parents, if nothing else. They can’t lose both of you.”

From his choked-back sob, she knew he’d been holding himself together for her benefit, playing the role of the unflappable lawyer who was going to take care of everything. Practical intelligence, her father had called it.

She felt the phone slip from her hand before Hank grabbed her shoulders to break her fall.

I t was nearly four o’clock, and Jason was still pissed at those fat-slob NYPD-ers who had fucked him over. He also had a crick in his neck from spending the entire night tossing and turning on Joann Stevenson’s sofa, unsure whether the lack of sleep was from the fact that he hadn’t slept on a couch since college, or because he knew he had no business being on that particular one.

To top it off, Nancy had to go and say something about the fact that he looked exactly how he felt. “Holy moly, Jason. You’re much too young to have bags under your eyes the size of mine. You’ve got to take care of yourself, honey.”

“Just allergies, Nancy. Nothing to worry about.”

He’d been steaming all day, but decided he had to draw a line in the sand with those detectives in the city. Willie Danes picked up after two rings.

“Danes.”

“It’s Jason Morhart from Dover. My victim’s mom heard about your arrest warrant on the news last night.”

“Now if only we could find the defendant.”

He emphasized the last syllable to rhyme with ant , the way Jason noticed lawyers often did. He always thought it was a person’s way of trying to sound like an expert.

“You should have kept me in the loop, Danes. Our departments had an agreement. Full exchange of all information. And you never told me anything about that woman’s father being in some of those photographs. That’s got my victim’s mom all worked up about the pornography angle again. Her daughter being missing is bad enough. She doesn’t need to worry about naked pictures of her getting distributed all over the world.”

“Sounds like you’re the one who’s got yourself all worked up about the feelings of that girl’s mother, Morhart. This is a criminal investigation.”

“And it’s supposed to be a joint one. Forget about the girl’s family. I shouldn’t have heard about a major development from the television. Did you forget who it was who told you George Hardy is Becca’s father? Or who told you to look for Becca’s fingerprints in the first place?”

“A lot of good that’s done us. We’d actually have a pretty nice and neat case if we didn’t have to explain what the hell your girl’s prints are doing in that gallery.”

“Jesus, Danes. Listen to yourself. I’m sorry if the truth is interfering with the tidiness of your murder case.”

“Aw, crap. I’m being a jerk because I know we blew it. We got sucked into the momentum of things and were working overdrive on the arrest warrant. We didn’t think to call you. Sorry, man. Honestly, though, we got nothing but conjecture about Becca. Our best guess is that Larson was grooming her for the camera, but either something went wrong and she wound up getting hurt, or hopefully she got spooked and ran off. Once we get Humphrey in custody, maybe we’ll get a better read on the situation.”

“Any thoughts on when that might be?”

“With any luck, it’ll be tonight. Look, do you really want to be involved in this, even if it’s not taking us directly into Becca territory yet?”

“We did have a cooperation agreement.”

“I’ll tell you what. I worked out this cockamamie agreement with Humphrey’s lawyer for her to turn herself in, but first I promised to chase down some girl she thinks is her secret identical half sister or something.”

“Her what?”

“It’s nonsense, man, but that’s the way this girl’s been yanking our chain from the beginning. It’s a box I got to check off, though, and Shannon’s probably going to be tied up with the DA. We’re trying to figure out whether we have any charges against the father, and then we can use those as leverage with the daughter. Think you can meet me in Williamsburg by six o’clock? Take a run at this mystery witness with me? It’ll be a waste of time, but if you want to be in the loop, you and I will play Murtaugh and Riggs tonight.”

“Only if you’re the Mel Gibson one. Without the phone rage.”

“Deal.”

“Where’s Williamsburg?”

“In Brooklyn, man. That’s one of the five boroughs of New York City?”

Part IV

Mia

A lice’s disposable phone rang at 5:58 p.m. She recognized her surrogate uncle and now-attorney’s voice.

“Where are you?” he asked.

“Outside a fruit market on Rutledge and Lee.”

“Are you holding up all right?”

“No, but I’m here.”

She had spent another two hours in the hotel room, overtaken by uncontrollable sobbing. Just when she thought she had no more left to give-the tears losing steam, her breathing returning to normal-she’d succumb beneath another oncoming wave.

It was Hank who had finally forced her into the car. He spoke more words during the drive to Brooklyn than he had since they’d met. He’d lost a sister. Her name was Ellen. He talked about her death and the way it tethered him to Travis Larson. About the phone call from the state police after Ellen’s accident. About how he had to hang up on the trooper before learning the location of her body so he could run to the bathroom to be sick.

And then he said he’d never gotten past the guilt. That the responsibility for someone else’s pain was a weight that could never be eased. You feel responsible for Ben, but your parents feel responsible for you. Don’t do this to them, Alice. Don’t give up on yourself. Don’t let them go to bed every night, knowing you’re either a fugitive or in prison, and feeling like it’s all their fault.

So just as she had promised Art she would, she had pulled herself together-for tonight. For now. Grieving the loss of her brother would have to come later. Hank had dropped her off at the intersection where she and Arthur had agreed to meet. There was no need to advertise to the NYPD that her plan had been assisted by an FBI agent. He promised he’d be circling in the neighborhood, waiting for her to call.