“ITH. Right?” The H sounded like an A coming around Danes’s toothpick.
She sighed. “Whatever that is.”
They exchanged another one of those insider looks before Shannon picked up the computer.
“So just to be clear”—he liked that phrase—“you’re consenting to our seizure of this computer for purposes of our investigation and consenting to a search of all of its contents: files, search histories, cookies, what not. Those techno-geeks will give it the full once-over. You’re all right with that?”
Friendly, polite, deferential. Nothing to hide. “Of course,” she said with a nod. “I’m feeling a little gross from the gym, if you know what I mean. Maybe I can take a quick shower?” She fanned her shirt from her body and was momentarily relieved when the detectives returned her smile.
“No problem.” Once again, Shannon did the speaking, but both men stepped from their chairs. “You do what you need to do. We’ll have a look-see on this,” he said, holding up the laptop. “Maybe Drew had some earlier activity on it that might come in handy. And, Alice, I’m going to leave that copy of the picture right there for you to ponder. Give us a call if you have any additional thoughts about it.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
“Lady, first you want me to go to Jersey. Now you tell me you don’t even have an address? Let me guess: you’re also paying with a credit card, right?” The cabdriver could read Alice’s response on her face in the rearview mirror. “Ah, Jesus. I read you all wrong. Would’ve been better off picking up that crazy-looking woman wrapped in all the scarves.”
“Just drive. I’ll tell you how to get there once we’re on the other side of the tunnel. And I’ll make it up to you on the tip.”
“If you say so.”
The round-trip fare to Hoboken would run into triple digits, plunked onto a credit card that had been hovering at maximum for the better part of a year, but she had no choice. She’d gone to sleep last night planning to follow Lily’s advice. You’re no longer involved. Consider yourself lucky you don’t know more. But the unannounced house call from the detectives had changed all that.
As the cab emerged from the tunnel, she tried to recall the views she’d taken in from the passenger seat of Drew’s BMW three weeks earlier. A right turn next to the construction site. Then another right where the road came to a tee. A left to cross the overpass. Straight until downtown, then another left.
“I’m pretty sure this is the street. It should be up here on the right. There’s a fire hydrant out front.”
“That’s very specific, ma’am.”
“No, wait, this is it. I remember passing that bar on the corner.”
“Crabby Dick’s? You needed to see that sign to remember a bar called Crabby Dick’s? Are you kidding me?”
“Just pull over, okay?”
“Wait—the fare. You owe me fifty-seven bucks. Plus that tip you mentioned.”
“Look, I have a credit card, okay?” She even pulled it from her wallet as proof. “Just wait for me a few minutes.”
“Jesus, lady.”
“I can’t exactly hail a cab from here. Just run the meter, all right?”
She left him grousing in the front seat with no option but to wait, pulled next to the same parking hydrant where she’d bided her time while Drew Campbell had obtained the paperwork to rent the Highline Gallery space. A bell chimed politely as she walked into the converted town house. Alice recognized the spiky-haired Amazon working two carrels behind the waif of a receptionist at the front desk.
“Good afternoon. I was wondering if I could speak to the woman over there, with the short black hair?”
“And your name?”
“Alice Humphrey. She doesn’t know me, but it’s about a retail space on Washington Street, in Manhattan in the Meatpacking District?”
She watched as the receptionist conferred with the agent, and then returned to the front counter. “I’m sorry, but she tells me that space is unavailable.”
“I know that. I need to talk to her about the lease.” She called out directly to the other woman. “I manage the business that moved into that space. I need to know what name the lease is under.”
The agent barely glanced in Alice’s direction, but did make her way to a wall of file cabinets to retrieve a manila folder. She flipped through its contents as she walked to the front of the office. Alice stepped to the side to make room for the departing receptionist.
“Coffee run, Michelle. Can you watch the front for a sec?”
Michelle with the punky hairdo nodded absentmindedly.
“Now, if you’re the manager, shouldn’t you already know whose name’s on the lease?”
“It’s probably either ITH Corporation or Drew Campbell.”
“Well, okay then. There you go. Drew Campbell.” She looked directly at Alice for the first time. “Is this a joke or something?”
“No, I just—”
“I mean, you’re the woman who was starting a gallery, right?”
“Well, managing it, yes.”
“So, okay, why would you have any doubts about your name being on the lease?”
“Me? My name’s not on the lease.”
“Drew Campbell.”
“Right. I was hoping he gave you an address I could get?”
“Is this Who’s on First or something? I’m pretty sure you know the contact information on the lease. Just like you knew the name.”
“I don’t know. That’s why I’m here.”
“Well, I wouldn’t normally recite the contents of a lease to someone who walked in off the street, but, sure, I’ll play along. The address is one-seven-two Second Avenue, New York.” She rattled off a Manhattan phone number.
Alice felt a fog building around her. “No. That’s my address. My phone number.”
“Not to be rude, but, no duh. Seriously, I’ve got other work to do—”
“No, wait. Please. I don’t understand. Drew Campbell gave you my address to put on the lease?”
“Of course. You are Drew Campbell, aren’t you?”
“No. My name is Alice Humphrey. Drew Campbell is the man I was with. He signed the lease with you.”
“My notes here say his name is Steve Henning. He said he was helping his girlfriend look for a gallery space, and I suggested the Washington property. When he was finally ready to sign the lease, I told him you needed to be the one to come in. But when he got here, he said you were absolutely at death’s door with the flu and didn’t want to infect anyone. Didn’t you see me looking at you through the window?”
“Well, yeah—”
Alice heard the polite chime of the front door behind her. Stepped aside again to make room for the hundred-pound receptionist and her newly acquired cup of coffee.
“So your boyfriend assured me he was taking the lease out to the car for you to sign. He even gave me a copy of your license.”
She flipped the manila envelope around to show a photocopy of what appeared to be a New York State driver’s license. She recognized the photo. It was cropped from a larger shot taken at a friend’s wedding the previous year. Ben had been cut out, and it had been Photoshopped against a standard background in DMV gray. Her face, her address. Drew Campbell’s name.
She replayed her previous visit to this location in her mind. Drew had taken the paperwork, removed a pen from his pocket, and then gestured toward the car. The agent had looked right at her. The reason he’d offered for signing outside had played right into Alice’s stereotypes of a woman who looked like this one: Creepy in there. I felt like a field mouse dropped into the middle of an anaconda tank.
“This license is a fake. I am not Drew Campbell. Drew Campbell is the man who came here to the rent the gallery.”
The coffee-sipping receptionist’s eyes grew wide at the sharpness of Alice’s response before holding up a hesitant hand like an intruding schoolgirl.
“I’m not sure if this matters, but I copied that entire file yesterday for the New York
City police department.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
“What do you mean, she had a cell phone?”
Morhart had known the conversation would be a difficult one, but Joann Stevenson was having a harder time with the news than even he had anticipated. She was only a year older than he was, but, man, what a different kind of life she’d led. He’d never been married. Never even lived with a woman, not formally. And here was this person—pretty much the same age as him, who’d made her daughter the center of her world for as long as she could remember—learning that her baby girl had already reached the age of keeping secrets from her.
“Sophie says Becca got the phone two months ago.”
“Why didn’t she tell me?”
“Sophie assumed you knew.”
“No, I mean, Becca. Why wouldn’t she tell me?”
“Well, that’s one of the questions I’m trying to answer.”
“She’s been begging for a phone since eighth grade. Come to think of it, she hasn’t mentioned it of late. How’d she even pay for it? And don’t kids need a parent or something to sign a contract? I just don’t understand this.”
Morhart prided himself on the quality of his witness interviews, but this woman had a way of wresting a conversation from him.
“Joann, that’s what I’m trying to explain right now. The number Becca was using comes back to a prepaid cell phone. Do you know what that is?”
Joann shook her head.
“There’s no billing plan or credit cards or contracts necessary. Just any form of payment for prepaid minutes. The phone Becca had was purchased two months ago, with cash, at a Sears in Lynchburg, Virginia.”
“Lynchburg? I’ve never heard of that. Becca certainly wasn’t there.”
“That’s what I figured. Now maybe she bought it from someone else, but that’s going to be real hard to track. Our best shot is to look at the call histories.”
Joann’s face brightened. “Of course. This is great. Can you do that thing I’ve read about where you track the phone’s signal, like a GPS?”
“Unfortunately, Becca hasn’t used her phone since Sunday. Now, wait, let’s not get ahead of ourselves here,” he said when her expression fell. “She might have turned it off to save the battery. Or she could have lost it. What I want to focus on are the calls she made prior to Sunday night. Not too many, really. Mostly she was using it to text with friends. I guess kids prefer that nowadays. But she did have several calls to a number I’ve tracked to a church based out of Oklahoma. The Redemption of Christ Church? That ring a bell?”
“No. Becca isn’t religious. Like, not at all. Sort of antireligion, if anything.”
“No recent curiosity about it? Or some change in her demeanor to suggest a conversion of some sort?”
“Well, you know she’d been having a rough patch over the last year or so, and she did seem to have turned that around. But I chalked it up to the usual ups and downs of teenage life. She had some new friends at school, that sort of thing, but a sudden embrace of Jesus? I don’t think so. Becca thought Lady Gaga was too mainstream. Does that sound like your redemption church?”
He gave her a smile. It was the first time he’d heard her allow herself some humor. “Definitely not. Don’t worry. I’ll be contacting them about the phone calls, but wanted to get the lay of the land from you first.”
“I appreciate that.”
“There’s something else about the phone, Joann. And this is undoubtedly going to be hard for you to hear. But Becca was involved in some flirtatious texting activity with one of the boys at school.” He broke the news to her. The texts. The nude photo. The retaliation from Ashleigh. All of it.
Joann wiped a tear from her cheek. “I’m sorry. Just the thought of her going through all that alone. I forgot how horrible teenagers can be, you know? It’s like you don’t want to believe your own child could be subjected to that abuse, so you repress the pain they can cause. These bullies, could they have done something to Becca?”
“I’ve accounted for both Dan and Ashleigh’s whereabouts that entire day, so, no, I don’t believe they’re directly responsible for her being missing right now. But to be honest, Miss Stevenson, it does raise the question of whether Becca may have left for a while to remove herself from the situation at school.” He held up a palm. “I’m just raising the possibility, because I know you want me to be honest with you. But I made you a promise that I would not stop looking for Becca, no matter what. And I plan to keep that promise, so please don’t make me feel like I can’t discuss what I need to discuss in order to do that.”
She took a deep breath and pursed her lips. “All right. So you’re saying maybe the problems at school just got to be too much?”
“You’ve always said that Becca leaving on her own was the best-case scenario, right? So, in a way, these problems at school might be seen as good news from that perspective. It at least gives her a reason for going.”
“Other than me. Sorry,” she said, obviously regretting the impulsive comment. “It’s stupid, but I keep wondering, What if she ran away because I had someone in our house that night? Maybe she came home from Sophie’s and realized Mark was here. That never should’ve happened, and I didn’t even have the guts to talk to her about it first. Maybe she wanted to teach me a lesson—”
“Stop. That’s not right.”
“I just can’t get the thought out of my head. Mark ... well, he wouldn’t even hear me out on it. I think this has all been too much for him. If I could just let Becca know that he’s gone. He won’t be back here again. Maybe then she’d come home.”
“Just stop, Joann. You’re wrong on that, okay? You’ve got to trust me, but you’re wrong.”
“How do you know?”
He sighed as his own words about honesty rang in his ears. “I asked Sophie how your daughter felt about Mark. You’ve got to understand, in a situation like that, any man who’s close to the family—”
“I’ve got it.”
“In any event, Sophie told me Becca was happy for you.”
“But, still, the shock of finding him here. At night.”
“I don’t think it would have been a shock, okay? I think Sophie’s exact words were, ‘Becca was psyched that her mom was finally getting laid.’ Sorry. Oh, God, awkward.” She was smiling again, and her cheeks had flushed from something other than sobbing. “So, all righty then, I’m going to find out who at Redemption of Christ Church has been calling Becca.”
“You’ll be able to do that? Churches aren’t private from the law or something?”
“This isn’t the Vatican we’re talking about here. Seems like a pretty small organization. Figured I’d start with the pastor himself. Hopefully George Hardy’s a good enough Christian to help us out.”
“George Hardy?”
“Yeah, looks like he started the church himself. A real Bible Belter, from what I read online.”
“Detective, I’m not sure what this means, but I know a man named George Hardy. Or at least I used to.” The color that had been in her cheeks had been replaced by sheets of white. “George Hardy is Becca’s father.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Hank Beckman was only forty-eight years old, but there were days when he felt old as dirt. The creeping reminders of the ever-present passage of time certainly didn’t help: that little potbelly that materialized a few years back without any explanation, each move of the pin to a lighter notch on the weight machines at the gym, the pain he’d developed in his side last week when he’d bent over for the newspaper a bit too early in the morning.
But not all indications of age were physiological. He’d joined the bureau when he was twenty-nine years old, meaning he’d be eligible for retirement at fifty. In many professions, a man of his age might be hitting his stride. But law enforcement was a young man’s—no, it was a young person’s game. It shouldn’t be. Hank knew more about people—their desires, their instincts, their weaknesses, their motivation—than he could have e
ver begun to understand as a rookie. But these days, it seemed half their cases came down to bank records, cell phone towers, and computer cookies instead of a deftly handled interrogation. He’d done his best to keep up with advances in investigative techniques, but sometimes it was easier to hand off the actual mechanics of the keyboard work to an intern.
Today’s work, however, could not be delegated. He had lost Travis Larson. He needed to find him.
Hank had last seen the man yesterday morning, parking the stolen BMW on Washington Street. After work, he’d picked up a Subway sandwich to go and headed directly to the Newark apartment complex. No lights on at home. No BMW in the lot. He’d stayed on the place until finally risking a walk up to the man’s landing. The Subway buy-one-get-one coupon he slipped halfway under the front door had still been there this morning and remained there again when he’d found time between field interviews for a drop-by.
No Larson. No BMW.
If Larson wasn’t home, Hank would start from his last known location. He had pulled up Google Maps on his computer, then zoomed in to the few blocks that divided the West Village from the Meatpacking District. From there, he dragged the orange figure of a man onto the map to see the location from street-level photographic view. He remembered the twenty-year-old intern who had shown him how to do it: “See? He looks like the little guy on a bathroom door.” Like she was teaching a computer class at the senior citizens’ center.
He dragged the cartoon man up Washington Street. It seemed that every other click, he did something wrong, shifting out of street-level view, or zooming in to a close-up of broken concrete. He started to get a hang of the movement, taking a virtual stroll past Perry, past West Eleventh, past Bank, until he found the BMW’s parking spot. He rotated the view to home in on the side of the street where Larson had disappeared. He saw two empty storefronts and a laundromat called Happy Suds.
Problem was, the images on Google Maps could be several years old. He was pretty sure the shoe store he’d seen on that street yesterday morning occupied the same space as Happy Suds in this picture. He called information for the number at Happy Suds, but there was no such listing. No surprise. Retail turnover in that neighborhood was faster than the $20 tricks that used to be turned under the Highline before the gentrification. Yet another business owned by one hardworking person to service the needs of other hardworking people, probably closed to make room for a shop hawking thousand-dollar handbags.
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