If You Were Here: A Novel of Suspense Page 24

  A beep-beep from her phone notified McKenna that another call was coming in. She assured Gretchen that there was no record of her drug case and ended the call.

  “This is McKenna Jordan,” she said.

  “Ms. Jordan. My name is Mae Mauri. I’m a physician at New York Family Medical.”

  “Is this about Patrick?” She started rushing toward the courthouse exit, hoping he was conscious. Hoping she could finally talk to him.

  “No, I’m—” She sounded confused by the question. “I hope you’ll forgive the intrusion. I contacted your former employer for your number.”

  “I’m sorry, Doctor. I’m waiting for some very important news about the health of a family member.”

  “Of course. But I believe you’re looking for Susan Hauptmann. I may have information you’ll be interested in.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

  The receptionist at the front desk of the New York Family Medical practice greeted McKenna with a warm smile and a soft, soothing voice. “Good morning. You’re here for a wellness visit?”

  McKenna felt like she was checking in for a spa appointment. “I’m here to see Dr. Mauri. She’s expecting me.”

  “Of course. Are you a new patient? I usually recognize everyone. I’ll just need your insurance information.”

  “No, I’m not a patient. It’s a different kind of appointment. Please, if you could just tell Dr. Mauri I’m here. McKenna Jordan.”

  “No worries. I’ll let the doctor know.”

  No worries. When did that ridiculous sentence become an acceptable thing to say to another person? As far as McKenna could tell, the phrase was used most frequently when there was, in fact, a reason to worry, and almost always by the very person who was the source of the current worry. This annoying woman had no idea what worries McKenna was harboring.

  The woman returned. “The doctor’s ready for you,” the worry-free, calming voice instructed. She led the way to the doctor’s office.

  Dr. Mauri rose from behind her desk to shake hands. “I’m sorry that I wasn’t able to tell you more over the phone, Ms. Jordan.”

  “I’m sorry I was so insistent. Someone close to me is in the hospital right now. I’m— Well, let’s just say I’m juggling a lot.”

  “I gather. At least, based on the little I know. I met my niece last night after the theater. She’s an intern at Cosmo. She was telling me how difficult it is to make a career in print media, and as an example, she told me about your recent departure and the ensuing controversy on—is it called Twitter?”

  McKenna nodded. Apparently the receptionist’s insistence on a calm demeanor came from the top. The way Dr. Mauri had worded it, McKenna’s professional implosion sounded like any regular day.

  “In any event,” the doctor continued, “my niece became quite enraptured with your story and its apparent connection to a missing woman. Then she asked me whether I remembered anything about the disappearance of Susan Hauptmann. She’s nineteen years old, so for her, ten years ago is like the Ice Age. She caught me off guard with the question. I had no idea that the missing woman she kept talking about all night was Susan.”

  McKenna had been hoping to get more information out of the doctor in person, but so far the woman still hadn’t confirmed the basics of what McKenna suspected. She tried another tack. “I was Susan’s roommate and one of her closest friends. I already know she was your patient.”

  Dr. Mauri looked relieved. “If only all of my patients gave so much care to their own health. Annual physicals, no smoking, regular exercise. Most people insist that they eat healthy and work out, but I can tell—well, my point is: Susan was a real delight. Very gregarious, with that salty sense of humor; our conversations often went beyond the narrow confines of doctor-patient treatment. I think it’s fair to say I knew her.”

  “You said you might know something relevant to her disappearance?”

  “Given my situation, I was hoping that perhaps you had seen the police file and could confirm that anything I might know was already considered a part of the investigation.”

  McKenna had not seen the doctor’s name in Scanlin’s file, or anything related to Susan’s physical health. She took a guess. “She had an appointment with you, not long before she disappeared.”

  The doctor smiled politely.

  “Look, I know you’re restricted by privacy laws, and I respect that. How about this? I’m not asking about any individual patient. I’m interested, hypothetically, in what may have happened if you had a patient disappear.”

  “Without using names, let me say that if I ever had a patient go missing, it was twelve weeks after she was scheduled for an office visit. I assumed when I saw her name on my calendar that she was coming in for her annual physical because she was about due for one. But my assistant alerted me that the appointment was actually forty-nine weeks after her last annual, meaning it was too early for her insurance company to cover it. They’re sticklers about that. I called the patient to suggest rescheduling, but she told me it was important. I thought, well, even my healthiest patient has finally gotten sick. But when she came in, she wasn’t sick.”

  But she’d been something. “She’d been assaulted? Victimized somehow?”

  No response.

  “She was pregnant?”

  Dr. Mauri smiled again. “Let me just say that by the time most unmarried women come to me for a pregnancy test, they have already taken multiple home versions and are looking for a different result.”

  “This particular patient wouldn’t have been happy about the news.”

  “I’m always careful not to say anything loaded when I deliver the results, because many women have no idea how they’re going to feel about an unplanned pregnancy until they’ve had a chance to digest the reality of the situation. So I simply tell them that the test is positive and ask whether they have questions. That’s usually my first indication of what direction the woman is leaning.”

  “And did this hypothetical patient have questions?”

  Dr. Mauri pressed her lips together. McKenna had crossed whatever line the doctor had drawn for navigating this conversation.

  “What types of questions do you think a single, pregnant woman might have?”

  As much as she was beginning to doubt how well she’d known Susan, Susan had always made her views on the most obvious subject very clear. Susan would not terminate a pregnancy.

  “Paternity,” McKenna said. “She wanted to know whether you could determine paternity.”

  Dr. Mauri gave a small nod.

  McKenna did the math in her head. She had introduced Susan to Will Getty four months before the Marcus Jones shooting, which was six weeks before Susan disappeared. Getty could have been the father.

  “She would have been close to four months pregnant when she disappeared.” It was only as she said the words that McKenna remembered Susan drinking club soba at a happy hour. My thirties are gaining on me. Got to take off some L.B.s before I turn into a Fatty McFat.

  If Susan knew that Getty was involved in a cover-up, and she was pregnant with his child, that might explain why she would leave New York. Whether she liked it or not, Getty would have parental rights. She’d spend her entire life permanently connected to him.

  “Did the patient happen to say anything about who she thought the father might be?”

  “I’ve already stretched quite a bit on what I should probably say, Ms. Jordan. But when a patient asks about a paternity test—”

  “It means she had multiple sexual partners. I need to know who they were.”

  “I don’t know,” the doctor said sadly.

  “When Susan first went missing, you never thought to tell anyone about Susan’s pregnancy?”

  “Of course I did,” she said. “I must have called the police three different times. But no one ever called me back. I eventually gave up, assu
ming that they must have already heard the news from someone else. When my niece told me you were looking for Susan, I needed to make sure it hadn’t slipped through the cracks.”

  Scanlin had said that the police tip line had been overwhelmed with harebrained, bogus, and wackadoo calls. He’d also pretty much admitted that he had done a crappy job on the case. Dr. Mauri was making that clear.

  As McKenna walked through the doctor’s calming lobby back to the real world of honking cars and bus fumes, she tried to black out the images that had been flashing in her visual cortex for the last two days. Susan catching Patrick’s eye with that sexy sideways smile—her go-to man-eater move. Patrick responding. Susan whispering in his ear, McKenna doesn’t feel like this, does she?

  Stop it! She replaced the imaginary images with a real one: Patrick in a hospital bed.

  Just because Susan was unsure about the father of her unborn child didn’t mean that Patrick was one of the contenders. It was as Dr. Mauri had quietly confirmed: Susan got around.

  Sometimes beliefs came not from facts or proof but from faith. McKenna had always had faith in Patrick. She would choose to have faith in him now. He was going to survive. He was going to wake up, he was going to be okay, and he was going to have an explanation for everything.

  In the meantime, she needed to make another trip to the courthouse.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

  McKenna sat on a bench at the far end of the fourth floor. She was out of the flow of traffic but had a clear view of the entrance to Judge John DeWitt Gregory’s courtroom, where Will Getty was arguing against a defendant’s motion to vacate a jury’s guilty verdict.

  McKenna had gotten lucky when she arrived to find Berta Ramos outside for one of her hourly smoke breaks. Ten years later, the woman still hadn’t kicked the habit.

  “Ay, Mamí,” she had called out when McKenna waved at her from the sidewalk. Though their kinship had started with an unlikely shared love of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Berta had become one of McKenna’s better allies among the DA support staff. She barely had an accent but liked to pepper her conversation with Spanish slang. “Your ears must be burning. Lots of talk about you around here this week.”

  “I can only imagine.”

  “Don’t you worry. Berta knows you wouldn’t make up a story. Besides, all these people”—she used her manicured blood-red fingernail to draw a circle in the air—“they know that Judge Knight is just how you say he is. Cerdo sucio.”

  “I need to talk to Will Getty, but I’d rather not plant myself in the DA waiting room like a goat at the petting zoo.”

  “Don’t you even worry about it. Give me your number and I’ll report from inside.”

  Now Getty walked out of the courtroom, carrying only a single file folder. His back was straight, shoulders squared, steps even and proud. Defeating the motion clearly was a cakewalk.

  McKenna pretended to be composing a text and then faked a double take in his direction. She smiled, gave a wave as an afterthought, and caught up with him.

  “Bold move, being here,” he said. “The courthouse staff is secretly cheering you on, but Knight’s still got friends.”

  “I know. I thought if I came and talked to my sources, I’d figure out who burned me.” Was it you? She searched his eyes for some sign of nervousness. “No luck yet.”

  “I have no doubt you’ll get to the bottom of it.”

  “Hey, it dawned on me when I saw you that you’d be a good person to bounce some ideas off of. You have a second?”

  He looked at his watch. “Sure. Gregory calendared an hour for a motion that took ten minutes.”

  “Coffee? My treat.”

  Getty opted for a Chinese bakery on Canal. Once they were settled in with a tray of roasted pork buns, Diet Cokes, and egg tarts, she continued the I’m-just-bouncing-some-ideas-off-you talk.

  “Sorry if I sound a little scattered, but my thoughts are all over the place. Did you hear about Scott Macklin?”

  “Fucking awful.”

  “I know. The first thing I thought was, Oh my God, what if this is because I was digging up the whole Marcus Jones issue again. I mean—”

  Getty was shaking his head already. “You can’t try to figure out why someone does that. Otherwise, everyone who ever met the guy could say, What if I had done something different? I’m sorry. I liked Macklin, rest his soul. But what he did is on him and him alone.”

  “I hear you, and I appreciate that. But like I said, my mind went there. And maybe it’s because I didn’t want the weight to be on me, but I started thinking, No, someone doesn’t shoot himself because of a magazine article or even a book. I mean, he didn’t do it back when protestors were waving pictures of his face behind bars and the city was close to rioting. So, I hate to admit it, I started wondering—you know—what if it was because he thought if I looked again, I’d find something new. Something I missed. Like maybe the hammer was finally going to come down.”

  Getty washed down some pork bun with a big gulp of Diet Coke. “That’s a lot of wondering, Wright.”

  “Here’s the thing. I went back and took another close look at the case. It’s a long story, but it turns out that a prostitute who used to meet tricks down at the piers went missing the night Mac shot Marcus Jones.” McKenna glossed over the uncertainties in that part of her theory. “According to her mother, the prostitute was meeting a regular that night—someone slow and strange-looking. I think she was meeting Marcus Jones.”

  “Possible, I guess. Makes sense that the kid would tell his mom he was meeting a girl, not a working girl. Plus, he had cash in his pocket.” Getty’s lightning-quick reasoning had always been amazing. “What about it?”

  “The girl never came back. I’m thinking, What if she saw something that night?”

  “The shooting?”

  “Or maybe she saw something before the shooting. And so did Marcus Jones. And they both wound up dead. You can get rid of the hooker without raising too many questions, then drop a gun next to the body of the kid with a criminal record.”

  Getty balled up his napkin and tossed it on the plastic tray. “I’d keep this to yourself. This on top of the Knight article? Jesus, we went through this ten years ago. You made a mistake. I thought you’d moved on.”

  “I know, I know. Hear me out. It was that kid James Low who saved Macklin’s ass. Low’s testimony put the gun right in Marcus Jones’s hands. Mac’s access to the gun through Safe Streets was just a coincidence.”

  “And yet?”

  “If it weren’t for the kid’s testimony, it would be one major hell of a coincidence. What I want to know is, how did Low come to you? Did someone bring him in? Did he call out of the blue?”

  Getty blinked; she could see him searching his memory for the details. “When you came to me about the gun coming from Safe Streets, I told you I’d look into it. And I did. I looked up the other cops in the program. Saw that one of them was on the Crips’ payroll. What was his name?”

  “Don Whitman.”

  “Right, Don Whitman. I figured a guy who took money from bangers wasn’t above slipping a few guns. So I sent three DA investigators to talk to the usual suspects in East Harlem. Try to find someone from the neighborhood who knew anything about Jones and a gun. I was giving it a few days to sink in. But then you went public.”

  She resisted the urge to remind him that he’d locked her out of the case for two weeks before she took the evidence to Bob Vance. That was an argument they’d had ten years earlier. Getty’s regret about his lack of communication was supposedly the reason he’d always defended her.

  He continued, “It was a few days after the story exploded when Low showed up at the courthouse, asking who was in charge of the case. Once he got to my office, he told me he didn’t want to say anything bad about Marcus, that he”—Getty let out a laugh, remembering the moment—“he certainly didn’t want
to help the cracker cop who killed him, but he didn’t want to see Harlem burn.” The remainder of his recitation came in clipped, just-the-facts fashion. “He asked whether I was going to arrest him if he confessed to a gun charge. I made a quick decision to give him a pass if it meant I’d get the truth. He said the gun had been his dad’s, but he’d sold it to Marcus a month before the shooting. I ran his dad. Big-time Crip, which connected the gun back to Safe Streets through Don Whitman.”

  “Did you ever think it was weird that a hard case like Low would walk into the courthouse out of the goodness of his heart?”

  “I’ve been doing this job a long time, Wright. Those kids don’t give a shit about themselves, but they care about their neighborhoods and their mothers and their friends. Things were getting bad. You don’t think I know how the NYPD was cracking down in the face of those kinds of protests? Yeah, I believed Low when he said he wanted it all to stop.”

  “Fair enough. But here’s a thought experiment, nothing more. What if he played you? What if someone realized that Don Whitman’s bust provided an alternative explanation for the gun making it out of Safe Streets? It wouldn’t be hard to find a kid who knew Marcus Jones and had some connection to the Crips.”

  “And that someone would be Scott Macklin?”

  McKenna shrugged. Other people might berate her for raising such thoughts about a man who had recently died, but she knew that after nearly a quarter of a century at the DA’s office, Getty didn’t dwell on death like normal people did.

  Getty said, “You know, when you first came to me, you said you thought Mac panicked when he saw Jones reach into his pocket, so Mac dropped a gun to cover up his mistake. Your little thought experiment sounds a lot worse. Plus, this stuff about the prostitute. Why would Macklin kill her?”

  “Maybe the prostitute and Jones saw something they weren’t supposed to see.”

  “It wasn’t mistaken self-defense but cold-blooded murder?”