If You Were Here: A Novel of Suspense Read online

  Now that he was on his own, the “why” was precisely what he needed. But the two people who could have helped him were gone.

  He should have called Macklin yesterday, before it was too late. He could have warned the man. Maybe it wouldn’t have saved him, but it would have given him a chance to protect himself. And Carter could have asked Macklin why someone wanted him dead.

  The woman might know, but Carter had no idea how to find her.

  Without the woman, and without Macklin, Carter lacked the information he needed to get himself off whatever hit list the three of them shared.

  He could think of only one other person who might be able to help: the man he’d seen meeting the woman on the train. Carter remembered his address.

  He searched for the apartment’s sales history online. Bingo. Purchased five years ago by Patrick Jordan and McKenna Wright.

  He did a Google search of both names. Ah, a very nice wedding announcement in the Sunday Styles section of The New York Times. He was West Point, army, museum security. She was Stanford, Boalt Hall, prosecutor, writer.

  Prosecutor. Carter clicked back to one of the stories he had read about Scott Macklin’s suicide. Last week New York City magazine published a ten-page article about the Marcus Jones shooting. The article was authored by McKenna Jordan (née Wright), the former prosecutor who initially raised doubts about Mr. Macklin’s claim of self-defense.

  Interesting.

  Was it too late for Carter to be a better man? He was about to start finding out.

  Their phone number was listed under P. Jordan, same address.

  “Hello?”

  Carter was calling from a pay phone. Even if Patrick Jordan had caller ID, the number would mean nothing to him.

  “You’re going to be very interested in what I have to say.”

  “If that’s a sales pitch, you need to work on it.”

  “Your girl is in danger,” Carter said. He wanted to get this guy’s attention. Patrick Jordan had to believe he needed Carter’s help.

  “Who is this? Do you have her?”

  Huh. Carter had been hoping Patrick could lead him to the woman. Was Patrick looking for her, too?

  “I’m not interested in hurting anyone. But you and I need to talk.”

  “We’re talking now.”

  “In person,” Carter said. He didn’t know how Patrick might fit in to the picture. He didn’t know where his loyalties were. He needed to meet him—alone. To read his body language. See his expressions. Figure out if they could trust each other.

  “Leave McKenna out of this. She doesn’t know anything.”

  Carter heard the break in Patrick Jordan’s voice. He wasn’t worried about the woman. For some reason, he was worried about his wife.

  “If you care about her, you’ll come,” Carter said. “Trust me.”

  “Those two sentences don’t belong together, guy.”

  Carter could see Forty-second Street and Lexington from the pay phone. Occupy Wall Street protestors were beginning to stream out of the 6 train exit. Others were pouring into Grand Central up Park Avenue. He’d selected the train station for the meeting because there was an unauthorized OWS flash mob scheduled to start in an hour. Big crowds. Big police presence. Big chaos. If he needed to get lost in the mob to get rid of Patrick, the protestors would provide cover.

  “Grand Central Station. The north side, by the MetLife escalators. I’ll come to you. One hour.” He hung up, hoping that would do the trick.

  He should have realized that he wasn’t the only person who might be interested in the whereabouts of Patrick Jordan. Or that his attempt to get the man’s attention would be so successful that Jordan would be too worried about his wife to notice he was being followed.

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

  Three more drinks in, McKenna and Scanlin were hammering out wild scenarios that could connect Susan’s disappearance with her reappearance and, most challenging of all, Scott Macklin’s shooting of Marcus Jones.

  Her phone buzzed on the table. It was Patrick. She let it go to voice mail.

  “The timing between the Jones shooting and Susan’s disappearance was close,” she pointed out.

  “I remember,” he said. “That’s part of the reason I hated you.”

  “I’d like to think I’d do things differently now.”

  He surprised her. “Me, too.”

  She was allowing herself to think aloud for the first time in two days. “The big debate was whether she left voluntarily or something bad happened to her. But if she’s still alive? And if she has some kind of tie to Scott Macklin? You were the lead investigator. What do you think?”

  He shook his head.

  She was looking down at her gin, feeling the fatigue of the last two days. There was nothing she wasn’t willing to say right now. “Look, we only got this far because I was willing to tell you that I basically saw a ghost. You have no idea how good it felt to talk about all of the insanity that has poured down in the last two days. And I’m not talking about therapy or purging or anything like that.” She leaned forward intently and realized what a clichéd, intoxicated gesture it was. “But you and I are the only ones who know anything about this. You know about Susan. And Scott. We have to tell each other everything. Because you know things that I don’t know. And I know things that you don’t know.” She was aware of the couple next to them, eavesdropping. She recognized that shared look—yep, she was wasted.

  Scanlin was in the same zone. He needed to talk. To unleash. He was spinning the edge of his empty Scotch glass against the table. “After you called me last week, I asked for the cold-case files on the Hauptmann case.”

  She put down her gin and switched to water. “You did?”

  “To tell you the truth, I wasn’t my best back then. Family stuff.” He waved a hand as if she’d know what he meant. “In retrospect, there were things I missed.”

  “See? This is what I meant. We need to work together.”

  “I didn’t get anywhere.”

  “What is it they say about opting for the simplest explanation for multiple problems? Pretty much since I left the DA’s office, I’ve lived in a world where every single day ends the same way it began. My world just happens to be falling apart at the same time Susan Hauptmann is running around on the New York City subway system wearing propaganda from a group involved in bomb-making, and when Scott Macklin just happens to decide to kill himself. There has to be a connection.”

  Her thoughts moved back to her husband. Patrick knew she’d been considering writing a book about the Macklin shooting. Patrick had been closer to Susan than she had ever allowed herself to recognize. But why would Susan care about the Macklin shooting? Her head was cloudy. Too much speculation. Too much gin.

  Scanlin turned his glass upside down and slapped it on the table. “I got bupkes.”

  Her cell phone rang. It was Patrick again. She turned it off. She was on her way home. She was finally ready to talk things out in person.

  “And I’m going home,” Scanlin added. “Let me kick it around in my head some more. I’ll check in with you tomorrow if you want.”

  “I’d like that, Detective. Thanks. And I’m really sorry to hear about Mac.”

  He started to throw cash on the table, but she insisted on paying.

  She should have answered the phone when Patrick called. Or maybe it would have been enough had she checked her messages once she was alone in the bar. If she had, she would have called him back. He would have known she was okay—that she was on her way home, ready to talk to him. Ready to tell him that he needed to trust her with the truth. Ready to hear his side of the story and find a way to understand whatever role he had played in a ten-year lie.

  But she didn’t answer.

  So he left a message, left their apartment, and walked into the night to meet a stranger.
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  It wasn’t until she got back to their empty apartment that she checked her voice mail.

  “Call me as soon as you can, if you can—if you’re okay. Dammit.” His voice cracked. “I got your message earlier and thought you were fine. But—I should have known. I should have told you. I should have—I’m so sorry. Fuck. I’m—Fuck!”

  She listened to it again, and it made no more sense the second time.

  She played a second message, assuming it would be from Patrick. It was Bob Vance. “McKenna, hi, it’s Bob Vance. Um, I know things aren’t good right now, but I thought you should know—Patrick just called me. I guess he’d been trying to get ahold of Dana with no luck, but he wanted to know whether you were out with the magazine crowd again like you were last night. I told him I didn’t know what he was talking about. Dana quit, and—Sorry, the magazine’s lawyers are requiring every employee to notify them about all contact with you. Anyway, I don’t know what you told him about where you’ve been the last couple days, but I thought I should let you know he called me. I hope things work out for you. Sorry, I’m rambling. And now I guess I’ll have to tell our lawyers about this stupid message. Bye.”

  Patrick had caught her in a lie, too. What was happening to them?

  She tried his cell. Straight to voice mail. Either he had turned it off or was somewhere without reception.

  She finished a quick walk through the apartment. The Susan box still open in the living room. The blankets pulled hastily over the bed, the way Patrick did it on weekdays. Not exactly hospital corners. Not exactly unmade.

  Then she saw the note on the kitchen counter. Phone call from unidentified man claiming to have my wife. Meeting him at Grand Central. Patrick’s signature, followed by today’s date and the time, half an hour ago.

  He had left the note behind in case he never came home.

  She called Scanlin. She’d never heard her own voice sound like that before. Loud. Shrieking. Hysterical. “It’s Patrick. He left. Someone said they’d kidnapped me. He’s gone—a meeting at Grand Central Station. We have to find him.”

  “All right, just calm down. I’ll call it in. They’ll have someone there to look for him.”

  She was already out the door.

  CHAPTER FIFTY

  McKenna let out a groan in the backseat of the cab as the light at Thirty-fourth and Park turned red once more. She could have subwayed it faster than this. “Can we go around or something?”

  “Your noises don’t make the cars move any faster,” the driver said.

  “You don’t understand. It’s an emergency.”

  “Everyone believes everything is an emergency these days. Turn on the TV if you’d like. Some people find it makes the time pass more quickly. Or take deep breaths and count. That’s what I do.”

  Great. She had the only yoga-practicing cabbie in New York City.

  “Please. Go in the right lane. It’s faster. And if you take the next turn, we can go over to Third. I’ll pay you double the fare.”

  “You have to let me do my job. I hear it on the radio. Big protest at Grand Central. It’s a traffic jam all the way around.”

  “Fine. I’ll go on foot.” She tossed him a twenty through the window of the plastic partition.

  “Wait. You can’t get out here. I need to pull to the curb.”

  She stepped out into the middle of the street, weaving her way to the sidewalk through the gridlocked, horn-blasting cars. She could jog to Grand Central in five minutes.

  She noticed the first protestors on Thirty-sixth Street. She could tell from their signs. One said: HONK IF YOU’RE IN DEBT. The other was: SAY NO TO TRADE DEALS, YES TO U.S. JOBS.

  By the time she hit Forty-first, protestors outnumbered regular commuters, many dressed to make their point. Union workers had come in factory and trade uniforms. Others wore red, white, and blue to emphasize patriotism. McKenna spotted one couple dressed in full business attire but with makeup to create white faces, black undereye circles, and bloody mouths. Handmade signs around their necks identified them as Corporate Zombies.

  By far the most common accessories were masks. Halloween masks with dollars taped over the mouth holes. Black bags over heads to simulate images from Abu Ghraib. And the most popular staple of the Occupy crowd: the pale-faced, rosy-cheeked, soul- patched masks of Guy Fawkes from V for Vendetta. In typical New York City fashion, an entrepreneurial street vendor was selling the masks on the corner. Apparently the irony of purchasing a mask licensed by a multinational media conglomerate to participate in a 99-percenter protest was lost on some people.

  As McKenna tried pushing her way north through the crowd, she realized that just as many protestors were trying to leave Grand Central as were heading there. As she got closer to Forty-second Street, the individual comments became more specific.

  Forget it, too crowded.

  They’ve got it blockaded. That’s bogus. They can’t keep us from gathering in a public place.

  This is getting crazy.

  It’s got to be the cops, man. They’re probably beating on people again.

  Holy shit. People are, like, running out of there.

  I just heard there were gunshots. We’ve got to get out of here.

  Oh my God, people got shot.

  They’re saying he was in a Vendetta mask. You know they’ll try to pin this on us.

  As the words rippled through the crowd—gunfire, gunshots—a consensus built to move south. She pushed against it, turning sideways as necessary to press between protestors. She could see Forty-second Street now. She was almost there.

  A wall of police officers behind barricades greeted her at the corner.

  “I’ve got to get in there,” she said to the nearest one.

  “Not gonna happen.”

  “My husband’s in there—”

  “Well, he won’t be for long. We’re evacuating the station. You need to leave, ma’am.”

  “There was a shooting?” She said it like a question, then realized there was only one way she was going to get past this barrier. “I got a call that there was a shooting. It’s my husband, Patrick Jordan. My husband’s involved. I need to get in there. Now!”

  The officer disconnected two of the barriers, allowing her to pass. An older officer, also in uniform, wasn’t happy about the development. “Mario, what are you doing?”

  “This lady says her husband’s one of the guys got shot.”

  More than one person shot. More than one male.

  The two officers led her through the press of people being cleared from the train station. She found herself praying. Please don’t let it be Patrick. I’ll do anything. Please not him.

  The older officer seemed to be the one who knew where they should go once they were inside Grand Central, heading directly to the stream of yellow crime tape that formed a large right triangle from the west balcony staircase to the circular information booth and over to the escalators. She spotted a huddle of three people in the center of the marked-off scene. One was crouched on the ground.

  She cried out when she saw the puddle of blood behind them.

  The huddlers turned toward her.

  “I thought we were clearing this place out.” The man wore plainclothes. Badge on belt. Shoulder holster. He had to be a detective.

  “This lady says she got a call. Said her husband was one of the shooting victims.”

  The detective walked toward her and stopped at the crime tape. “What’s your angle, lady? You with the protestors or something? Because we haven’t called anyone.”

  “It’s my husband. He got a phone call telling him to come here.” She handed him the note Patrick had left in their apartment. “I think he’s in danger.”

  The officer who originally let her through the barricades sighed. “Dammit. I’m sorry, Detectives. She told me she got a call. I swear to God. I should
have confirmed it with you before bringing her back.”

  “Get her out of here,” the detective said.

  “My husband’s name is Patrick Jordan.” McKenna fumbled for her phone and showed him the screen saver—it was a picture of them together at the High Line. She was kissing his cheek. There was a rainbow over the Hudson River.

  “Hold on just a second,” the detective said. He walked toward the balcony staircase. She watched as he made a call. She couldn’t hear the conversation, but she could imagine the words. Because she knew. She already knew. The way he looked at that picture. The way he stopped the officer from walking her out of the station. He must have recognized Patrick.

  When he turned back toward her, something in his face had changed. Serious. No longer annoyed at her presence. Even sympathetic.

  Oh my God. Not Patrick. Please, God, no.

  PART IV

  So much past inside my present.

  —Feist

  CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

  McKenna’s shoulders began to shake as the detective delivered the news. “Two men were rushed to the hospital with gunshot wounds. One was dead on arrival.”

  She felt one of the uniformed police officer’s hands grab her under the arm as her knees gave out beneath her.

  “Because they were rushed by ambulance,” the detective continued, “we didn’t have identification on either man. But I just phoned the hospital. One of the men had a wallet in his back pocket. According to his driver’s license, his name is Patrick Jordan.”

  “No. Oh God, no.”

  “He’s in critical condition. They’re operating on him now, but he’s alive. Your husband’s alive.”

  The prayers started all over again. Prayers that surgery could save him. Prayers that she would see him again. Prayers that they would have a chance to fix whatever they’d gotten themselves into.

  “We’ll get you to the hospital right away.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Of course, it would help if you could answer some questions we have. You said he got a phone call instructing him to come here? Was he part of the protest?”