If You Were Here: A Novel of Suspense

by Alafair Burke

  McKenna nodded in agreement. No falsity there.

  The college Mercado was referring to would have been the University of Idaho. In a quick briefing from Jason Eberly, McKenna had learned that Mercado was a good and thorough agent who treated her hunt for ecoterrorists as a personal calling. With the resources of a large law firm and their corporate clients behind him, Jason had done some digging into Mercado’s background to get a better sense of the woman who had been his bunny-blinding client’s best ally against the protestors. After two years of full-time college, she took another four to graduate because she had to help raise her younger sister. Her father, a logger, went on disability after his chain saw hit a railroad spike that activists embedded in the trunk of a western red cedar in the Nez Perce National Forest.

  “But from what I remember,” Mercado continued, “you still have to get the idea from somewhere. A newspaper article. A comment made by a friend. A report on the radio. How did you come to hear about the P3s? They’re one of the lesser known militant environmental activist groups.”

  “I don’t always remember where ideas come from.” Technically true.

  “When you say you’ve just begun your research, what do you mean? What precisely have you done?”

  McKenna could refuse to answer, but there was no privilege to avoid testifying if Mercado got a grand jury subpoena. And this was her opportunity to learn more about the P3s and why an FBI agent was so determined to talk about them.

  “I’d be more comfortable sharing my work product if I knew you had a real need for it, Agent. My understanding is that the FBI is prohibited from engaging in general information gathering about political groups.”

  McKenna’s lawyering skills weren’t entirely rusty. The statement was perfect. An offer to cooperate. The reference to work product, suggesting she had something of value to offer. The not so veiled threat to expose the FBI’s activities if they ran afoul of federal restrictions against domestic spying.

  “You can rest assured that we don’t gather intelligence against American citizens based on their exercise of First Amendment rights. Maybe if we did, I wouldn’t need to question a private reporter for essential background information after a bomb comes close to wiping out an entire residential block.”

  McKenna felt the air leave her throat. She couldn’t breathe. A bomb? When her mouth finally opened, she felt herself wanting to tell Mercado everything. The subway video. The P3 button on the backpack. McKenna’s suspicion that the woman carrying the backpack was Susan Hauptmann. What had Susan gotten herself into? What had she gotten herself into?

  Then she remembered all those interrogations she had watched from behind the one-way glass. Just as McKenna had chosen her words to convince Mercado to reveal her motivations, a good agent might say anything to test McKenna’s resolve. How many times had she seen detectives lie to get a confession?

  “What bomb?” she asked.

  “An explosion in Brentwood—out near Islip—last night. We’ve managed to keep it quiet so far. The Long Island papers are calling it a suspected gas leak.” Mercado pulled a photograph from a file folder and slid it across the table toward McKenna. The second level of the house was gone, replaced by shards of wood and drywall. “The next-door neighbor’s air-conditioning unit blew out of its casing. The expert tells me anyone within six feet of the epicenter would’ve evaporated into a ‘pretty pink mist.’ Those were his exact words—the kind of juicy tidbit you’d like for an article. It’ll be a while before we can identify them or know the number of bodies.”

  McKenna had no way of verifying Mercado’s story. Was the agent holding up her half of an information-exchange bargain, or laying on the details to give a lie more credibility?

  “What about the neighbors?”

  “Got lucky. We found some other bombing materials at the site, but those didn’t ignite. Looks like the bad guys were building something and set it off accidentally. One of the surviving residents is a dumb little thing—barely drinking age, searching for an identity. Maybe thirty years ago she would’ve ended up with the Krishnas. Now she’s a so-called ‘environmental activist.’ She shacked up with a group of older P3s. Denying any knowledge of the bombing materials, but . . .” She trailed off, as if everyone knew that denials were predictable, false, and temporary. “They had enough fertilizer to take out an entire warehouse when mixed with the right ingredients. We don’t know the intended target, the date of the planned attack, or who else might be out there to complete the job. So I’m thinking that for a reporter who wants to do the right thing—a former prosecutor, to boot—that might be a good enough reason to answer a few questions.”

  McKenna slid her iPad from her bag. “You remember last weekend a woman pulled a teenager from the subway tracks at Times Square?”

  Mercado nodded.

  “A girl on the platform tried to get a cell video of it. The video’s been deleted, but I managed to get this still shot of the woman’s backpack.”

  “That’s the P3 insignia,” Mercado said.

  “I didn’t know that at first, but yes. I read a few articles online about the group and then went to Jason this morning to see if he could point me in the right direction.”

  “So you were just looking for the subway woman?” Mercado was clearly disappointed that McKenna didn’t have a more ambitious research project in the works.

  “That’s all. I went to the kid who got rescued. I tried the MTA’s security cameras. This was just one piece of a wild goose chase. If it makes you feel any better, I won’t be writing about the bombing. Unless something goes down in the city, our magazine treats it like it didn’t happen.” McKenna didn’t know the area well, but Brentwood was out in Suffolk County, forty-plus miles from Manhattan.

  “And you still don’t know who the woman with the backpack is?”

  “No.” The denial was legally permissible, since McKenna didn’t know anything, but after the word came out, she wondered if she had done the right thing.

  She could tell that Mercado believed her now. “When you were looking for your mystery girl, did any of these names come up?” The agent pushed another sheet of paper across the table.

  McKenna didn’t recognize any of the four names—three female, one male. “Who are they?”

  Mercado heard the question but didn’t answer.

  “I told you, Agent, this isn’t on my magazine’s map. To be honest, most of what we print these days is what we call ‘lifestyle.’ What you’d probably call gossip. You won’t see a story from me on the bombing.”

  “Doesn’t mean I need to share my sandbox, though, does it? You mind showing yourself out?”

  McKenna could tell there was no point in arguing. She wished the agent the best of luck with the investigation and made her way back to the reception area.

  She knew from her time as a prosecutor that the federal building was closely monitored. Her descent in the elevator, her march through the lobby, her traipse to the next block would all be on screens for Mercado and her pals to view, if they were interested.

  So McKenna gave them no reason to be interested. She did her best to appear calm. Indifferent, even. But mentally, she was repeating the four names Mercado had asked her about, over and over again, committing them to memory.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  McKenna ducked into a deli two blocks from the Federal Building and quickly jotted down the names from Mercado’s piece of paper. She had just finished scribbling when her cell phone rang. She recognized her editor’s number.

  “Hey, Bob. I’m just on my way in. I should be there in fifteen—”

  “Where are you now?”

  “Not far. Downtown. I’ll be right—”

  “Don’t come in.”

  “You’ve got something for me?”

  “No, I mean, we’ve got something of a shit sandwich here.” He sounded strange. Panicked. Vance didn
’t panic. “Look, I can only say so much.”

  “Why, Bob? Are the aliens listening?”

  “This isn’t funny, McKenna.” Usually Bob Vance could find anything funny, and he wasn’t the one who’d spent the morning being grilled by an FBI agent. “I can’t say much because the magazine’s counsel doesn’t want me to.”

  “Counsel like an attorney?”

  “Attorneys. Multiple. There are—some issues.”

  “Issues?”

  “Jesus, please stop repeating everything I say. These obviously aren’t my usual word choices, all right? Our lawyers got an affidavit this morning from the state court’s tech people. They inspected the primary e-mail database for the judicial system, and those Big Pig— The e-mails we ran in your piece about Judge Knight didn’t come from his account.”

  “I don’t understand. I thought he was a no-comment.”

  “Well, after he gave you a no-comment, he called a lawyer who was able to do what we couldn’t. The judiciary keeps complete records of all e-mails sent through its systems. They checked the dates and times when Knight supposedly sent those messages, and there was nothing. And they did a text search for the content of the messages. Nothing.”

  “But why would someone—”

  “It gets worse, McKenna.”

  “I published forged documents. I have New York State’s court system saying I got a story wrong. I’m not sure how it can be worse, Bob.”

  “Knight’s attorney used the affidavit from the court system to go to the free e-mail service that was used to forward you the supposed messages. They have IP addresses. That kind of junk.”

  “Okay. And?”

  “Jesus, McKenna. If there’s something you need to say, tell me now. I can still fight for you. If I’m in front of it, I can control the damage. I mean, did I push you too hard? Were you spread thin with the pressure to write a book?”

  “Bob, I swear to God, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “I can’t believe I’m saying this. The IP address. The 3G connection or whatever used to access the anonymous e-mail account that sent you those messages about Knight? Your so-called anonymous source e-mailed you from your own iPad, McKenna.”

  “No. There’s no way that’s right. I’ll take a lie detector right now, Bob. Tell them.”

  “It’s ironclad. Your IP address. Your iPad.”

  “I’ll find some tech geek to fix this. There’s no way—”

  “It’s not going to be that simple. I was on the phone, weighing the options with counsel. I thought I could hold them at bay, but there’s some serious shit going down here. I’ve got an FBI agent searching your office right now, McKenna. They’re saying that opening an account like that to forge e-mails could amount to a felony—”

  “Wait, Bob. Who’s saying that? Is it an Agent Mercado? Female? Dark hair?” Mercado would have to be Wonder Woman to have gotten to the magazine with a warrant already. She must have applied for it the second she got the call from Jason Eberly.

  “No, the agent’s a man, and he’s not saying a word. It’s the lawyers who are calling the shots.”

  “Listen to me, Bob. The FBI thing has nothing to do with Knight. It’s a story I was working on about environmental terrorism. There was a bombing or something late last night.” As she tried to tell him about her call to an old friend who was an environmental lawyer, and the road to her interrogation with Mercado, she realized how crazy it all sounded. So much for Mercado pretending to believe McKenna when she said she didn’t have any information.

  “There’s nothing I can do, McKenna. The lawyers are going into bunker mode in case Knight sues. They were saying it was worse than Jayson Blair and Stephen Glass.” Given the kind of fluff work the magazine had steered her toward, she never would have expected to be compared to two of journalism’s most infamous liars.

  “So what are you saying?”

  “You’re terminated immediately until further notification. Your entry card into the offices has been deactivated. Your press credentials are revoked. Your log-in to our databases will no longer work.”

  “Bob, my work. My e-mails. All of my data—”

  “I’m sorry, McKenna.”

  She could tell that he was, in fact, sorry, but it was the kind of regret that came from trusting a person only to be disappointed. Bob Vance didn’t believe her.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Everyone was a liar.

  Carter had no shortage of examples. The Bible-belting, Jesus-loving politicians who got caught with hookers and rent-a-boys. The fat housewives who swore they kept a reasonable diet and a regular exercise regimen but breezed through the McDonald’s drive-through three times a week when no one was looking. The spoiled trust-fund kids who held themselves out as writers and artists and “entrepreneurs.”

  Most people didn’t really mean to lie. But the story they told themselves and the world was a better version of the truth. It was as if they implicitly measured themselves against a bell curve of human behavior created in their own minds. By imagining others as worse, everyone could say they were above average.

  As a result, Carter knew that what people believed to be true about themselves was rarely the absolute truth. It was the relative truth. Carter’s own identity—these days, at least—was very much about the tricks he had learned in the positions to which he’d been trusted. Tricks like explosives.

  Carter thought of himself as one of the best in his line of business. He certainly knew more than the average bear. He was smart. He was ambitious. He was willing to sell his skills to the highest bidder.

  The actual skills? His talent was understanding people. Including the people who had started hiring him once he realized there was money to be made on the skills he had acquired. But when it came to his knowledge of explosives, he may have exaggerated. Sure, he knew more than the average person, but the average person could barely light a match. And he hadn’t set up explosives since 2007.

  He had moved to the Marriott after one night at the Four Seasons. The Marriott sucked, but it could be counted on to forget its guests. Given the change in mission, he needed to be forgettable.

  Now he was sitting at the built-in desk in the corner of his room, with those stupid outlets at the base of the lamp that never worked. He was checking the tracker on his laptop again, hoping to get an update on the woman’s location. Nothing.

  He checked the news reports again, too. The explosion had definitely taken place. Two women were in custody. No reports about the other two occupants, in particular the one he was interested in.

  He shouldn’t have driven away. He should have waited nearby. Watched the explosion. Made sure no one walked out alive.

  But any decent emergency response to a bombing would have been quick and overwhelming. And if he’d gotten stopped? Toast.

  The time estimates varied by news report. Ten-thirty P.M.? Ten-forty? Eleven?

  He hadn’t made the explosion big enough. He’d wanted to make sure the investigators found evidence that the people who lived there had been stockpiling bomb materials—that they were the ones who had done this.

  She must have seen the detonator. She could have leaped from a window at the last minute and escaped the blast.

  All he knew for sure was that her phone somehow made it out of that house. The woman—Carter didn’t know her real name, so he just called her “the woman”—didn’t know it, but his client had installed a GPS tracker in her phone.

  Carter knew he had a problem when the woman’s phone moved from the house, down the block, to the left, and then to the right. It was a route toward the Long Island Expressway, 1.6 miles. It took about ten minutes. She was probably running. Fast. And then she stopped. And then she turned off the phone. Twenty-two seconds later, she realized that killing the power wasn’t good enough.

  The tracker went dead. Maybe s
he threw the phone under the tire of an eighteen-wheeler. Or pulled out the SIM card and lit it on fire. Whatever, the tracker was now dead.

  The woman wasn’t. She was alive. And she knew she was being hunted.

  This had gone very, very wrong.

  Carter set aside any inch of doubt he had allowed to creep in and replaced it with the confidence that had come with fifteen years of work, training, and specialization. There was a reason he had his job.

  Because he was an expert, he knew that the tracker in the woman’s phone had been put there by his client, which meant his client would be monitoring it, which meant his client would know what Carter knew.

  He called the special number.

  “We have a problem,” he said. “She’s alive.”

  PART III

  You stepped out of a stranger.

  —Kate Bush

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  Though she’d admit it only to her closest friends, McKenna had a Google Alert. A million years ago, when “Google” still sounded like a masturbation euphemism, McKenna was publishing a debut novel. In awe of the fact that newspapers, magazines, and trade reviews would weigh in on the value of her wee little book, she had set up the ongoing search service. Every time her name appeared on the Interwebs, she got an alert.

  Today the Google Alert was going wild. If only her novel had brought so much buzz. Since New York City magazine had posted its retraction of the Knight story, her name had gone viral. Print media. TV. Blogs. Twitter. It was a weird feeling to be sitting at her familiar spot on the living room sofa, knowing at only the most abstract level that her name was rapidly becoming a part of the zeitgeist outside the bubble of her home. The first telephone call was from the literary agent who had been so damn hot to see a book proposal about the Marcus Jones shooting. Needless to say, the timing’s probably not great right now. If anything changes, I’ll be sure to give you a call. But until then— Well, I wish you all the best.

  No bueno.