Alafair Burke - Long Gone

“Her name was Christie, Papa. Christie Kinley, but her real name was Julie.”

“Alice, I know you’ve been angry at me for some time now, and I can only wonder whether you will ever forgive me after what happened to you because of my mistakes. But I am trying to make it right. That is why I’m doing this blood test. I don’t want to cover anything up anymore. You may not know this, but I never took another sip of alcohol once those officers knocked on our door. Not one sip. Because the fact that I could have done something like that-that I’ll never even know the depths to which I sunk that night-made me hate myself. And I never wanted to be whatever man I became that night, not ever again. But I realize now that I felt entitled all those years. Because I’d quit drinking-because I had put that night behind me-I felt entitled to indulge other vices. And I felt entitled because your mother and I-well, we have our issues. But I never realized that the way I’ve carried on all these years was not just a betrayal of your mother and our wedding vows-words we long ago wrote off as more aspirational than anything-but a betrayal of you and Ben, and of me as a man. And that’s what I came here to say. That I’m sorry. That to put my own baby girl in jeopardy is the worst crime a man could ever commit. And that, even though I’m getting to be an old man now, I plan on changing. For the better. So that you will let me be your father again. You’re all I have left now, Alice. I need to be your father again.”

She had cried. So had he. Ben was gone. She wasn’t. She had promised him that she would find a way to forgive him.

So she might be able to keep her promise, she had been avoiding all media coverage about the story. She did not need to see photographs of her father emblazoned with the words child rapist. Or of her mother: “What did she know?” Or even the one she had seen of her brother: “Did Daddy’s secrets cause him to OD?”

But now, sitting in her living room, flipping through her beloved Entertainment Weekly, she was unexpectedly confronted with a sidebar about the case. She checked the date on the cover. It was last week’s edition, before the DNA results came in.

RAPE, LOVE CHILD, OR BOTH?

Academy Award-winning director Frank Humphrey reportedly settled a lawsuit in 1985 arising from allegations that he raped a fourteen-year-old acquaintance of his children. Now sources report that Mia Andrews (below), who killed herself last week in a police standoff, may have been the daughter from that ill-fated night. Humphrey’s son, Ben, 41, died of a heroin overdose the day before the standoff.

She found herself staring at the photograph of Mia. She wasn’t her perfect doppelgänger, but there was undoubtedly a resemblance, enough so that even Alice had been certain that the grainy picture of Mia kissing Travis Larson was a doctored photo of Alice.

She opened her laptop and searched until she found a site that had published a photograph of Christie Kinley. She hadn’t realized it until now, but Christie looked like a younger version of her mother, like all those other women who had come forward last year to claim celebrity mistress status. Was the resemblance between Christie and Alice’s mother sufficient to explain the similarity between Mia and Alice?

Alice stared again at Mia’s photograph. No, Mia looked like her mother’s daughter, but she looked even more like Alice. And there was only one way that could be true.

She rifled through her purse until she found the business card that was first handed to her the day she discovered Travis Larson’s body. She had hoped she would never need to dial this number again. Detective Shannon answered. “Hi, Alice. I can’t imagine you missed us already.”

“No, but I’m afraid there still might be one loose end.”

J ason Morhart managed to cram his truck into the hybrid-sized spot at the curb outside Bloomingdale’s.

It had been three days since the NYPD had broken the news. They had wrapped up their investigation and were about to tie the pretty little bow into a nice, neat package without any explanation for Becca Stevenson’s disappearance.

Sometimes investigations required you to look at a case through a different lens-to start over again with no assumptions and to rethink facts and events in a new light. Maybe if Willie Danes and John Shannon had done that when they first learned about Mia Andrews, the woman might still be alive, and Jason wouldn’t be waking up in cold sweats every night wondering whether he could have prevented the shooting in Williamsburg.

But now it was time for him to take a fresh look at Becca Stevenson’s disappearance. He realized now that he had stopped challenging himself for explanations the minute he’d learned about the fingerprint match in Highline Gallery. From that moment on, he’d been convinced that his case was inextricably entwined with the NYPD’s. He’d allowed himself to become complacent, waiting for them to arrest their suspect, who would in turn point him toward Becca.

But now the NYPD had all of its answers, and he was the one left with questions.

Where was Becca? How had her fingerprints wound up in Highline Gallery? And the question he kept coming back to, the one he knew had to be answered: How could it possibly be a coincidence that the Reverend George Hardy just happened to be protesting that very gallery?

He found Hardy and his protesters outside the Little Angels store where they’d last spoken.

“Back down here again, are you?”

“We get a big reaction down in SoHo. People don’t understand that yelling at us-calling us hate mongers and Jesus freaks-only makes us stronger. And only brings us more attention, which ultimately builds our flock. This spot here’s been good for us, yes it has.”

“I don’t know if you’ve been following that story about Highline Gallery.”

“A bunch of wicked sinners there. I knew it from the start.”

“Here’s the thing, Reverend. I suspect you love Becca.”

“I surely do. She’s my daughter. My blood.”

“And I think you’re worried about her. I also believe that you follow a higher law, something grander than man’s law. Finally, I believe-no, I am convinced -that your decision to picket the Highline Gallery is somehow related to the fact that your daughter’s fingerprints were found on the bathroom door of that building.”

“That’s a lot of beliefs you have there, sir.”

“When I put all of those beliefs together, Reverend, this is the conclusion I have to draw: you are privy to information that you still have not disclosed to the police. At the time you held it back, you did so with the firm conviction that somehow you were protecting Becca. But now all this time has passed, and no one has heard from your daughter. My guess is, you’re starting to wonder whether you did the right thing by her.”

The reverend was silent.

“The NYPD is shutting down its investigation. That leaves me and my Podunk department the last ones looking for Becca. And my best lead is still that dag-nab fingerprint, which brings me right back to the fact you were protesting that very same gallery. If there’s any more information to offer, sir, I’m telling you that now’s the time to divulge it.”

Hardy’s eyes moved between Jason and his fellow protesters. “It’s a bit nippy today. Maybe you know a place where we can get a cup of tea.”

The two of them had been Mutt and Jeff on the streets of SoHo, with Hardy dragging around his sign and megaphone, and Jason’s fanny pack broadcasting to all the world that he was either a cop or tourist. They did, however, manage to find a café with cups of tea. They were $6 cups of tea, but Jason could justify the expense if his instincts were right.