“I’d like to talk to you when you have a moment.”
“Maybe I should call him.”
“Are you out of your mind? Didn’t Jeff tell you to keep your pretty mouth shut?”
“It wouldn’t hurt to get my side of the story out there.”
“Except you might piss those cops off even more, and then you’ll be locked into anything that’s in print. Jesus, woman, maybe you do need to watch more TV. Do not call that guy.” Alice didn’t protest when Lily walked to the kitchen and hit the delete button on her answering machine. “There.”
They finished culling through the profiles, searching for a picture resembling Drew Campbell, but it was a waste of time.
“The guy is dead, and I find myself hating him and wanting to kill him myself, and I don’t even know who the fuck he was.” She was screaming by the time she completed the sentence. “Why would someone do this to me? I’m scared, Lily. I’m scared of the police. I’m scared for my life. I’m scared of things I can’t even imagine.”
Alice had never broken down like this in front of Lily, and she could tell her friend did not know how to respond. Lily patted her on the leg before saying they couldn’t give up. “We’re just getting started. We’re two smart, capable, and stubborn women. We’re going to get to the bottom of this.”
Alice wiped away her tears with the back of her hand and tried to regain control over her breathing as Lily turned her attention back to the laptop. She typed in “Drew Campbell” and hit enter. More than five hundred results. Alice felt herself succumbing to sobs again until Lily narrowed the results to New York City, and a manageable list of profiles appeared.
Her eyes surveyed the pictures, searching for the man who had charmed her. The man whose body she had found just yesterday morning.
But she didn’t see the face of that man on the screen. It was another picture that caught her attention. A photograph of a woman. A face that could not have been more familiar.
She felt Lily’s hand pushing back her own, as if to protect a curious child from a hot stove, but Alice reached the computer and clicked on the name next to the photograph: Drew Campbell.
A page of basic biographical information appeared. Sex: Female. City: New York, New York. Education: Haverford College for undergrad, MFA from NYU. Employer: Highline Gallery.
The profile picture was the same photograph she’d been handed earlier that morning by the property management agent in Hoboken. The photo of Alice at Christina Marcum’s wedding. The picture that had been used to create a fake ID under the name Drew Campbell.
She felt her hand quiver involuntarily as she clicked on the tab marked “Photos.”
The page was filled with photographs from her own life. Times with Jeff. With Ben. With her best girlfriends, Danielle, Anne-Lise, and Maggie. In Paris and Rome when she could afford those kinds of trips. But in every picture, the other people depicted had been cropped out—except in one photograph, which, although familiar, was not from her own life.
It was the photograph the police had sprung on her just that morning—a picture of some other red-haired, Alice-looking woman kissing the man she had known as Drew Campbell. She had known that kiss would destroy everything. It was a kiss she’d never even had.
She’d asked the detectives where they’d found that photograph, and now she knew. The police had discovered this Web site. They also had copies of the lease for the gallery. They believed she had been living as Drew Campbell.
Which would mean she had been lying to them about everything.
Chapter Thirty-One
Hank Beckman felt like a dying man who had planned his own funeral. Much as a man sent to hospice for his last few months could anticipate the fallout of his eventual demise, he had known that the death of Travis Larson—and his firsthand surveillance of Larson’s final days—would bring certain unavoidable consequences.
To manage those consequences, Hank needed to maneuver around three unalterable truths. The first of those truths? He would share his knowledge with the New York Police Department. That decision was beyond choice. He was not the kind of man who would place his own stature before the investigation of a murder—even if the vic was a scumbag like Larson, and even if the disclosure cost him his pension.
The second truth was that the world of law enforcement was a sprawling and inefficient bureaucracy when one needed it to be streamlined, and yet remarkably insular and incestuous when one might prefer the impersonal. Once he came forward to the NYPD, word of his extracurricular surveillance activities would migrate back to the bureau like a freshly hatched salmon to sea.
The third truth was that Hank was a man who took lumps when they were due. No weaseling, no matter the costs.
Add up one, two, and three, and Hank’s decision was preordained. He waited patiently for his SAC to finish up his face time with the field office’s Citizens’ Academy. Like most special agents in charge, Tom Overton enjoyed the mythology of the bureau. John Dillinger. Baby Face Nelson. Ma Barker. Taking on the Gambino crime family and Sonny Barger’s Hell’s Angels under RICO. Newly expanded powers under the Patriot Act. In some circles, a bureau man was thought to be a stuffed suit with a stick up his ass, but the novice writers, true-crime junkies, and curious retirees who filled out the Citizens’ Academy arrived at the field office with eager questions and appreciative eyes and ears. Overton returned to his office with a skip in his step and a smile on his face.
Until he spotted Hank waiting for him.
Hank got directly to the point. He knew he was supposed to leave Larson alone. It had been two months since he’d been reprimanded for his communication with the man who had “taken up” with his sister, as Overton worded it at the time. Two months since he’d been told he was lucky Larson hadn’t sued both him and the bureau for false accusations and harassment. Two months since Overton himself persuaded Larson not to file charges after Hank had thrown the first punch.
“I didn’t keep my word, sir. I’ll hand you my resignation today if that’s what you want, but what matters is that I step up to the NYPD with what I have.”
“Not this again, Beckman. The guy’s a low-level con man, I grant you that. But it’s only because of your sister that you want the bureau—”
“It’s nothing like that this time, Tom.” Beckman’s use of Overton’s first name might have been a first between the two men. “Larson’s dead. And I was watching him not long before he got popped.”
Overton stared at him for a full thirty seconds before speaking. “Should I even ask whether you had something to do with this? Do we need to get you representation?”
If Hank had more sense, he probably would get himself a lawyer. Instead, he assured Overton he had nothing more to hide but would need to take the rest of the day as personal time so he could pay a visit to the detectives handling Larson’s murder investigation.
Police precincts have a rhythm and a grit and a smell that mark them as a unique culture, so different from the sterile bureau field offices that could be mistaken for any office park in the country. Hank had worked enough joint task force operations to read the energy of an NYPD precinct. The second he stepped inside the homicide squad, he knew a case was hot. Detectives out of their desks. Moving a little more quickly than usual. Sheets of paper changing hands. And when the civilian aide at the front desk pointed him to an interrogation room down the hall, he knew the bustling was related to the Travis Larson case.
The detectives handling the case had covered every inch of a rolling whiteboard with scrawled notations in four different colors of ink. The small table in the center of the room was layered with documents and photographs. Piles of paper were beginning to accumulate on the floor.
An attractive blonde passed him in the narrow hallway. He was embarrassed when she caught his gaze moving to the detective shield hanging from a chain inside her tailored shirt. He was relieved when she threw him an amused smile instead of a faceful of the coffee she held in one hand.
“
Let me guess: Feds?”
“Bureau.”
“For Shannon and Danes?”
“That’s what I’m told.”
“Oh, yeah. They’re gonna love that.”
Hank suspected the detectives actually would love what he had to say. He understood the whole local-versus-feds tension. Truth be told, he wasn’t certain he was always on the right side of it. Cops worked more cases in less time and with fewer resources. When the feds showed up, it was usually to cherry-pick the high-profile slam-dunks. But this time, a federal enforcement officer was walking into their yard with his tail between his legs. They’d love it, all right.
All it took was an introduction for the toothpick chewer to shepherd him out of view of the war room. “Let’s have a word next door. You’ll be more comfortable.”
The man introduced himself as Willie Danes. Hank didn’t bother holding anything back.
“I doubt the details matter, but I have what you might call a grudge against Travis Larson. I’ve been keeping an eye on him here and there ever since, and thought I should let you know in case anything I saw might be helpful to your investigation.”
“Travis Larson, huh?”
“My understanding is you’re one of the lead detectives. The body you caught at that gallery on Washington Street?”
“Sure. Travis Larson.”
“I take it you didn’t have an ID yet?”
“I didn’t—”
“Look, man. I’m not sweating you. The guy was good at running a scam. He dated my sister for five months under a fake name, and she wasn’t a stupid woman. Was he using a false identity?”
Danes’s gaze moved to the hallway as if he was considering running the conversation past a partner, but something in Hank’s face must have told him that for once a federal agent had come here with no agenda. “We had zero ID. No wallet. Cell phone came back to a throwaway. Even his prints were a dead end. You’re telling me this guy’s never been popped?”
“I hooked him up for an attempted fraud on my sister. Unfortunately, that decision happened to occur immediately after he said some choice words about her, and then I punched him in the side of the head.”
“Jesus. Remind me not to fuck over your sister.”
“Ellen’s dead. She ran her car into the side of a triple-trailer on what was supposed to be her wedding day.”
“Then I’d say Larson was lucky you only punched him in the head.”
“That’s not how his lawyer saw it. Or the bureau. He threatened to press charges. Started the paperwork for a civil suit. He got an apology, and all record of the arrest was purged, including his booking photo and prints. That’s why you didn’t get a match.”
“You’ve got an address on him?”
Hank handed him his business card from his lapel pocket, Larson’s address already printed on the backside. He also handed him six typewritten pages of notes summarizing his recent surveillance. It wasn’t until he watched Danes flip through the pages that he fully realized the drive-bys were really over now. No more staring at the ceiling at night, wondering whether Larson was courting another well-to-do woman. Whether he was enjoying his life. Whether he ever paused to remember Ellen.
Hank was grateful for his death.
“You saw him in the gray BMW, huh?”
“Stolen from QuickCar last month. It’s all there.”
“That, we knew. Found it three blocks south of the gallery, unlocked, keys in the ignition. Someone wanted it stolen.”
“Last I saw it, Larson had parked directly across the street from the gallery. And he locked it.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I had to use a slim jim to break into it.”
Danes chuckled, then started from the top, asking first about Hank’s general knowledge of Travis Larson, then building a timeline based on his recent surveillance.
“You said you saw the redhead at Larson’s home?”
“That’s right. She either took the train or lives nearby, because she arrived on foot.”
“Hold on a second.” When Danes returned, he handed Hank a cup of coffee. Hank drank it even though it was bitter. Danes slipped two photographs onto the table. “Is that the lady?”
It wasn’t the way they’d handle an ID at the bureau. Always better to use a six-pack. Multiple choices to make sure the witness isn’t just rubber-stamping. One at a time was preferable to all at once. Hank took a moment to consider the images. The first was the kind of blurry that came with resizing low-resolution digital images. It looked like Larson kissing the woman he’d seen at the Newark apartment complex. Same orangey blond hair. Even the same piercing blue coat. The second photograph was a clearer shot of the woman’s face. He recognized the photograph as one he had seen online of the gallery manager. Frank Humphrey’s daughter. What was her name? Alice.
“Yeah, that’s her.”
“Did you ever see Larson with anyone else? Maybe a younger girl? High school age?”
Hank shook his head.
“How about religious involvement? Any church groups or the like?”
“If Travis Larson was going to church, it would be to steal from the collection plate. Why do you ask?”
“Just some angles we’re working. I think we’ve got what we need from you for now. Thanks for coming forward. I hope you’re not in too deep a hole with the bureau.”
“You sure that’s it? Because, trust me, I probably know more about Travis Larson than his own mother, if he even has one. He’s the kind of guy who’s forging checks while peddling fake concert tickets and smurfing Sudafed for meth dealers, all while he’s looking for a woman to pay his bills. I wouldn’t be surprised if a hundred people out there wanted him dead.”
Still, Danes did not voice the obvious follow-up.
Hank felt uneasy as he followed Danes down the hallway, past the interrogation room lined with evidence pertaining to Larson’s murder. Hank had come here expecting a different kind of conversation. By his own statements, he had placed himself on the street outside that gallery immediately before Larson’s death. By his own statements, he had a motive to kill the man. By his own statements, he had stalked him for the last week. He had served himself up as a suspect on a silver platter, and Danes hadn’t taken even a single nibble.
Danes struck him as a good man. He was probably a well-intentioned cop. But Hank had seen this before. Those detectives had not even identified their victim until he did it for them, and yet they had already made up their minds about who killed him. They didn’t want to know anything different at this point. They’d slot the rest of the evidence where they could to fit the story they had already written.
He threw his half-full cup of coffee in the garbage on the way out.
Chapter Thirty-Two
There was a time when the Upper East Side was Alice’s front and back yard. The townhouse on Seventy-second Street. Shopping on Madison Avenue. Burgers at P.J. Clarke’s. Saturday-morning tea with her mother in the trustees’ dining room at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
In retrospect, she realized how odd it was that her lefty lib parents opted for a neighborhood where residents were occasionally wistful for the other side of the park’s devil-may-care stance on blue jeans. But the Upper East Side was home to almost all the exclusive girls’ schools, and her mother had always valued Alice’s convenience over Ben’s. Her father had never seen this part of the city as his home, but he would have deferred to her mother, since he basically lived at their country home in Bedford when he wasn’t in L.A. or away on location.
Today, though, he had come into the city especially to see Alice, and he had insisted that she make herself available. She rang the doorbell and then followed the assistant she remembered as Mabel into the front parlor. Mabel was fiftyish and professional, and she looked like a Mabel. She’d appeared in place of the younger, more attractive assistant last year, just after the big blowup. The woman who’d looked like a younger Rose Sampson was out, and Mabel was in.
> “Sort of silly to ring the doorbell at your own childhood home, isn’t it?” Her father wore a bulky gray cardigan. She smelled fresh cedar and soap when he leaned in to kiss her cheek.
“It’s a bit presumptuous for a grown woman to walk into her parents’ house without knocking.”
“Touché. I don’t have to tell you to take a seat, do I?”
She took her usual place on a mid-century recliner and waved off Mabel’s gesture toward an aperitif from the bar cart. She knew she had been summoned here for a reason, so wasted no time laying out the abbreviated version of the still-unfathomable events that had landed her and her former employer on the crime pages of the Daily News: “Murder on the Highline.”
“You say this like it’s nothing, Alice. As if this were yet another little cycle in your life—getting married, that move to St. Louis, returning home, the MFA, finding a dead body at what turned out to be a nonexistent job. Where is the shock? Where is the fear?”
“You have no right to tell me how to act. I am not one of your starlets for you to direct. Trust me, I feel fear and shock and terror and fury. I feel it so much that I’m numb.”
“Yet you still can’t call us for help. I practically had to beg you to come here and tell me what is happening. You want to punish me so badly that you’ll punish yourself in the process.”
“If I thought you could help, I would have asked you. This isn’t late rent or a job interview. Money or a phone call isn’t going to make this go away.”
“So you think that’s the only way I know how to help? By handing you money or throwing Hollywood names around?”
“No, Papa, that’s not what I meant. I didn’t want you to worry.”
“We always worry about you, baby girl.”
He had called her that as long as she could remember. There had been times as a teenager when the sound of it made her cringe, but she had to admit she liked hearing the term of endearment now. She liked being here in this familiar room. In this particular chair. She wanted to close her eyes and believe her father could make everything all right.
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