Alafair Burke - Long Gone

Art had apparently pulled himself together as well. “I got stuck in traffic trying to get out of Manhattan. I’m crossing the Williamsburg Bridge now. I don’t want to risk screwing anything up, so I’ll call Danes and let him know you’re in place standing by. I’ll be right there. If we’re lucky, Mia will either come clean or at least act hinky enough for Danes and Shannon to clue in that she’s behind this.”

As uncomfortable as she had been with the status quo, she felt sick knowing that something was going to change tonight. Either the police would see her in a new light, or she would officially become a criminal defendant. “How are my parents?”

“It was, well, I’ll go ahead and say it-it was a fucking hard day. But we’re going to try to have something resembling good news for the Humphrey family soon, okay? I’ll be there in a couple of minutes.”

She squared her shoulders and let the cold in, just like Ben had taught her when she was little.

Jason was growing frustrated with the snarl of one-way streets that threatened to take him farther and farther from the address where he was supposed to have met Willie Danes two minutes earlier at 5:55.

He finally gave up and pulled in front of a fire hydrant on the corner outside Mia Andrews’s building. If he got a ticket, he’d send it to the town to pay. Only one shoe had hit the asphalt before he heard a voice beckon from across the street.

“Dover can’t buy you an official ride, Morhart?” Willie Danes stepped from a white Crown Vic.

“I like my own car.”

“Whatever, man. Let’s do what we got to do.”

“So who’s this lady again?”

“You know those old sex pictures taken in Frank Humphrey’s house? The ones that got you all pissed off?”

Technically, the pictures were not the source of Jason’s aggrievement. It was the NYPD’s failure to tell him their significance. Whatever. He nodded.

“According to Alice Humphrey, the chick he was with was some girl at his son’s birthday party. This woman who lives here is that girl’s younger sister.” Jason tried to process the connections between the players. “But Alice wants us to believe that she’s not in fact the little sister. That she’s actually the girl’s daughter, which would make her Frank Humphrey’s daughter also, which would make her Alice Humphrey’s half sister. And supposedly that cluster fuck of a situation’s enough to give this girl a motive to set up Alice and her father.”

“So what’s the plan?”

“We go through the motions. I made a deal with Alice’s lawyer: we check out this Mia person, and Alice turns herself in. Pretty simple. I give it point-one percent odds that this girl is even relevant, and, if she is, I’d put it at ninety percent that she winds up helping us build our case against Alice.”

“That’s a lot of math, Danes.”

“Yeah, that was a little fucked up. My point is, don’t sweat it.” A jingle escaped from the phone clipped to Danes’s waistband. “Danes… She’s nearby? You’re not going to fuck me on this, are you, Cronin?… All right. I’ll call you when we’re done.” He returned the cell to its holder. “We’re all set. According to her lawyer, Alice Humphrey’s waiting in the neighborhood to turn herself in. Let’s see what this chick’s got to say.”

It happened fast. Faster than anything Morhart had been trained for at the Town of Dover Police Department, or in college, or on the basketball team at Linwood High. It felt like he was watching a video game rather than living the intentionally simple life he had created.

They had walked through the main entrance of the generic light brown brick apartment building. They took the two flights of stairs to unit #3B, Jason having to slow down for Danes to keep up. Danes was the one who knocked on Mia Andrews’s door. Four beats with no response.

In retrospect, they had each waited to the left and right sides of the apartment door, respectively-not because they sensed any danger, but instinctively, the way you eventually learn not to stand too close to a top step. They were two cops paying an unannounced visit to a stranger. Without their brains even processing that simple fact, their bodies had known not to stand at the dead center of that door.

If they had, two police departments might have had funerals on their hands.

Four beats with no response. Then another knock, again from Danes. “Miss Andrews. The apartment downstairs is reporting a leak. We need to check the sink in your kitchen. Are you there?”

Jason would remember later the way Danes looked at him from the opposite side of the doorway and winked-as if the building leak was such a clever cover story. When he replayed those seconds in his mind, Jason could almost imagine Danes’s winking eyelid returning to its place of rest, only to blink again when the first shot was fired.

They both fell to the ground so quickly that Jason hit his head against Danes’s shoulder.

Two more shots, right through the door frame. Pop, pop. Jason had never heard a gun fired other than during target practice or hunting. The sound reverberated against the walls and ceiling. He found himself covering his ears, as if the noise were their biggest threat.

Danes was the one who returned fire first. Jason flinched as he heard more pops-these louder and closer-before realizing they were coming from Danes’s Glock. He removed his own.40 cal Beretta from its holster and started firing through the door. He had no idea where they were aiming, but they both unloaded their weapons as they scuttled crablike across the floor toward the staircase.

He could hear his own heavy breaths blurring with Danes’s panting in the stairwell once their weapons were empty. Danes was yelling radio codes that Jason used in Dover only in theory. He could smell fear in their perspiration. And then the hallway fell silent except for the sound of a child crying somewhere on a floor above them.

The first two pops could have been a car backfiring. Alice flinched at the noise, then forced herself to take a deep breath, realizing that her imagination was getting the best of her.

But the first two pops were followed by an array of firecrackers in quick, chaotic succession. She heard a woman on the street scream. A teenager crossing the intersection in front of her ducked into the fruit market, pulling the screaming woman with him.

But as other people ran for cover, Alice felt herself running into the street. They had driven past Mia’s building when Hank dropped her off. She knew where the woman lived. She was absolutely certain the shots were fired there. Her feet were moving faster than she could think.

She heard brakes screeching next to her. Hank Beckman was jumping from his green Camry. “Alice! No!” But her feet were still moving. She was the one who had sent those police officers to the apartment. She had known going into it that Arthur had sold them on the idea by offering her up as the bait. Of course they had treated the entire enterprise as a joke. Of course they hadn’t exercised precautions. And she should have seen it coming.

Hank reached for her arm and pulled her back toward his car. “Stop it, Alice. Just stop!”

She heard a yell escape from her throat-a primal sound that she never would have recognized as her own voice. In that one, prolonged cry, she felt the pain of what was happening now-harm to the police officers whom she’d sent into that apartment, perhaps the loss of any chance to ever speak to the sole person who might exonerate her-and the pain of what had already come to pass-her brother’s death, the sight of Travis Larson’s bloodied corpse. All of it rose at once and rippled through her body, releasing itself through that horrible sound. She felt herself shivering against Hank Beckman.