If You Were Here: A Novel of Suspense Page 27

  McKenna remembered the night she’d told Susan about Macklin breaking down in her office. He’d just been moved into the state-federal team working with Homeland Security.

  Between the two of them, McKenna and Patrick had told Susan everything she needed to exploit a potential hole in the country’s cargo inspection. By turning Macklin, she could have sneaked anything into the country.

  “Is it possible Susan was involved in some kind of smuggling operation? Maybe with Gretchen’s dealers?”

  Patrick looked at her as if she had proposed a move to the ocean to live with the mermaids. “First of all, I think Gretchen’s dealers were more corner hustlers than Pablo Escobars. Besides, Susan had her problems, but something like that? No way. She was more her dad’s daughter than she wanted to admit.”

  He was starting to speak more slowly. She could tell he was getting tired. “I hate to ask you this,” she said, brushing his hair with her fingers, “but the police want to talk to you about the shooting. Are you sure there’s nothing else to tell? Because now’s the time to say so. We’ll hire a lawyer.”

  He gave her a tired smile. “I swear. There’s nothing else. I’ll talk to the police.”

  “What about today? Susan was here at the hospital?”

  “I thought I dreamed that. When I first woke up, it was— God, McKenna, I thought I was dead. It was like I could see things, but then I’d fall back asleep. And I couldn’t talk. I thought I saw you, too, and we were in Cinque Terre, popping open that bottle of prosecco and letting the cork fly below us to the Riviera.”

  She remembered the exact spot and wished they were there again. “You thought you saw Susan?”

  “At one point, she was in that chair when my eyes opened. She looked relieved, and I was sure we were both dead, like she was welcoming me. But then she started crying uncontrollably and saying she was going to end this. No matter what. I thought maybe she was going to hurt herself, but I couldn’t move. The next time I woke up, she was gone.”

  He was fading back into sleep even as he finished the sentence.

  CHAPTER SIXTY

  McKenna tracked down a nurse in the hallway. “He’s groggy again. Does the doctor need to check on him?”

  “No, that’s natural. He’s on a morphine drip. Your husband’s very stoic, not a complainer, but he’s in a lot of pain. It’s better for him to rest.”

  Stoic. Marla Tompkins had used the same word to describe General Hauptmann’s acceptance of impending death.

  McKenna told the nurse she’d be in the lobby if Patrick became alert again. When she got there, she found Joe Scanlin waiting. He greeted her with a “hey,” and she took the seat next to him.

  “You okay?” she asked. “I should have backed off this morning. Macklin was your friend. And I didn’t say enough about how sorry I am about his death. Or that you were the one to find him.”

  He held up a hand. “Your husband was in critical condition, and you wanted to know why. I was an ass. And I put my blinders on about Mac. I promised to see this through, and I dropped the ball.”

  She nodded. “You can tell Compton he can question Patrick as soon as his doctors think he’s up for it.”

  “Compton won’t need to talk to your husband.”

  “He needs to know about the phone call Patrick got. The Cleaner said I was in danger—”

  “First of all, you don’t need to call him the Cleaner anymore,” Scanlin said. “We’ve got a name. I figured if he was connected to Susan, I’d check military fingerprints. Prints taken for military personnel before 2000 aren’t in AFIS. But with the military, I got a hit. Our guy’s name is Carl Buckner. Direct into army in 1995 after ROTC at Texas A&M. He put in sixteen years—military intelligence—and then quit. Honorable discharge.”

  She knew from Patrick’s friends that twenty years of service meant retirement pay for life. “Did any of his service overlap with Susan’s?”

  He shook his head. “No, but I talked to his most recent supervising officer. Apparently Buckner was brilliant. And a true believer. A lot of guys entered the army in the late nineties thinking they’d never see real danger. A little UN peacekeeping here and there, with all the benefits of service. Not Buckner. When other soldiers started silently cheering on the ‘bring home the troops’ crowd, Buckner wanted to stay in the Middle East and finish what we started.”

  “And what exactly was that?”

  “More than six thousand service members lost their lives for freedom, Jordan. For men like Buckner, that means something. When we decided to pull out with the job unfinished, he quit. Told his friends he’d spent sixteen years watching government contractors get rich without the sacrifices made by true soldiers. They got the impression he was moving on to the private sector, but we can’t find any evidence that Buckner used his social security number to earn a single dime, or rent a house, or buy a plane ticket since the day he came home from Afghanistan.”

  For anyone who’d earned a reputation for brilliance among military intelligence, living off the grid for a couple of years must have been like tying shoes.

  “I talked to Patrick.” She gave Scanlin an abbreviated version of her husband’s interactions with Susan. “He thinks he saw the Cleaner—Buckner—on the train but doesn’t know anything else about him.”

  “I’ll get the full story from him,” Scanlin said. He saw the confusion register on her face. “I got the department to reassign the case to me. I told them it was connected to Susan Hauptmann’s disappearance. Do I have his lawyer’s permission to see him now?”

  She placed a hand on his shoulder. She thought it was the most affection Scanlin could handle.

  While Scanlin went in search of Patrick’s doctor, McKenna placed a call to Marla Tompkins, the nurse who had taken care of George Hauptmann during his illness. Something had been bothering her about their earlier conversation, though she hadn’t put her finger on it until now.

  “Mrs. Tompkins, it’s McKenna Jordan. I came to your apartment earlier this week.”

  “Of course. I remember.”

  “You mentioned that General Hauptmann’s daughter Gretchen visited him shortly before he passed away and that you gave her his diary as a memento.”

  “Yes, that’s correct. He was so very happy to see her. I don’t think I’d ever seen him filled with that kind of joy.”

  “Had you met Gretchen before?”

  “No, it was the first time. She was very emotional also. It was— Well, General Hauptmann came to depend upon me, and he treated me so very, very well. But his daughter—she was family. I was surprised they remained estranged after she visited. I hoped at the time that I was witnessing a thawing of the ice.”

  “Had you seen pictures of the Hauptmann daughters before?”

  “No, ma’am. As I mentioned, he had already packed away most of his belongings, and I was told when I showed up for the home care that he found photographs of his family upsetting. Though he did have a wedding portrait of his wife right next to him on the nightstand. I saw him looking at it often.”

  McKenna had seen that photograph before, on Susan’s bookshelf. She’d commented once on how much Susan looked like her mother.

  “When Gretchen came to see her father, did you happen to notice if she looked like the late Mrs. Hauptmann?”

  “Oh my goodness, yes. Isn’t she just the spitting image of her mother? I couldn’t stop commenting on it, but then I realized she seemed a bit uncomfortable with my remarks. My, yes, that’s the woman’s daughter, no question.”

  It was one of Mrs. Hauptmann’s daughters, all right, but it hadn’t been Gretchen. Just like Gretchen had said, she had left the cord to her father severed, even as he’d been dying. Susan had been the one to see her father one last time, to let him know she was alive. Susan, the same woman who told Scott Macklin’s wife that she was a reporter and the Lenox Hill ICU that she was Mr
s. Patrick Jordan, had told her father’s nurse she was her older sister, Gretchen.

  “Mrs. Tompkins, I hope you won’t take my question the wrong way, but it’s important that I ask. I can tell that you were a complete professional in your care of General Hauptmann, but I imagine that when you gave his daughter that diary, you had your reasons.”

  “I thought she would want it. That’s all.”

  This proud woman did not want to admit there was more to the story. McKenna pressed again. “Wouldn’t it be part of his treatment for you to have a sense of his mental state as he was reaching the end? Or maybe you had seen him write something about his daughters, and you wanted Gretchen to know.”

  “I don’t snoop, if that’s what you’re saying.”

  “Of course not.” What sane person sharing a house with a lonely, decaying old man—a man who’d lived a life filled with power, politics, and international travel—wouldn’t sneak a peek at his journals? “But this is important, Mrs. Tompkins. Was there anything in the general’s journal about his other daughter, Susan, and the end of her military service?”

  “Not really. No.”

  “Not really” did not mean the same thing as “no.” “Did Susan ask him for help getting out of active duty?”

  The silence confirmed it. It was only because McKenna knew the truth that the nurse was considering putting aside her loyalty to her former patient and friend. “I cared very much for General Hauptmann, and he was a brave and good man, but I never understood the hardness he showed toward his girls. You see, that’s why I read his journals. To see if there was something I could use to bring Gretchen back into his life—something he had written that he could not say to her directly. But all he wrote about was their shortcomings and his disappointment in them.”

  “Like Susan leaving the military?”

  “Yes. According to his journal, Susan came to him and begged for help. He pulled strings for her that regular people do not have access to. He said it reminded him of the senators’ sons and corporate nephews who got deferments in Vietnam. He said he had no regrets cutting off Gretchen, and now it was time to do the same with Susan. They never spoke again. He was so ashamed for helping her that he didn’t tell her himself. He said that he could find no way to deliver the news without sounding like he approved of her decision. He had his business partner tell her instead. She disappeared three months later.”

  “Business partner? Do you mean Adam Bayne?”

  “Yes, that’s right. I guess that was a long time ago, but Adam was like a son to General Hauptmann. Mrs. Jordan, if you talk to Gretchen, please tell her how sorry I am for giving her that journal. I wasn’t thinking about her feelings. I was thinking about the general.”

  McKenna’s mind was racing. She didn’t understand the nurse’s last comment. “How were you helping General Hauptmann?”

  “He was an important man, the kind of man people write about when they die. I didn’t want anyone to see what a terrible father he was.”

  McKenna mumbled something to the nurse about being a good person and disconnected the call. Before she knew it, she was pulling up Adam Bayne on her phone and hitting dial.

  “McKenna. I saw the news. They said Patrick was in critical condition. I didn’t know if it was okay to call. Any updates?”

  Die. Die, die, die. You shot my husband, you evil motherfucker.

  “He’s going to make it.” The catch in her voice wasn’t feigned. “He’s out of the woods.”

  “Oh, thank God. If there’s anything at all I can do—”

  You can go to hell, right after you die.

  “Right now it’s only immediate family, but visiting hours start at six.” That gave her two hours. “Patrick’s asking for visitors. I think he’d really like you to come.”

  “Oh. Well, absolutely, then.”

  He was good, but she could hear the skepticism in his voice. At one point, Patrick and Adam had been close, but these days they were barely beyond holiday-cards friendship.

  “In fact,” she added, “you’re the only person he asked me specifically to call. Maybe after that kind of danger, he just wants an old military friend to talk to.”

  “Of course. Anything he needs. I’ll see him right at six.”

  Scanlin was just finishing up with Patrick when she entered the hospital room. “How soon can we get a wire set up in here?”

  CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE

  McKenna held Patrick’s hand tightly in hers. “Are you sure you’re willing to do this?”

  He flashed her a look that revealed the ridiculousness of her question. Her plan for Patrick to coax Adam into incriminating himself was the equivalent of a luxury cruise compared to what Patrick really wanted to do to his former college buddy.

  “You can’t show that anger,” she warned. “He’ll know.” She hadn’t prepped a witness to wear a wire in ten years, but she remembered the basic talking points from her prosecutor days. Get the subject to talk on his own rather than merely acquiescing to your suggestions. Don’t be too eager to lead. Be passive. You’re the one who’s scared. You’re the one who’s vulnerable. You’re the loose cannon. Once the target feels the need to take control, he’ll start talking.

  She did one more test of their phones to ensure that the connection would work. Two hours’ notice hadn’t been enough to get NYPD approval for a recording device. McKenna had taken the situation into her own hands.

  It was 5:53 P.M. She hit the call button on Patrick’s phone, dialing herself, and then answered the call, activating the record function she’d installed for source interviews. “Detective Scanlin,” she said, “my husband is clearly fatigued.”

  Patrick voiced weak protests that he was fine.

  “In light of the fact that you haven’t yet identified the gunman who nearly killed my husband, I assume you’ll be here to frisk anyone who attempts to visit him in the hospital.”

  “Of course, Mrs. Jordan.” Scanlin rolled his eyes, but he sounded perfectly obsequious. “I plan to stay during visitors’ hours. Given the gunman’s attempt to conceal his identity at Grand Central, I’d be surprised if he showed up here, but I’ve got two officers standing by just in case.”

  The real reason for the officers’ presence was to back up Scanlin in the event that Adam Bayne was arrested. If Adam tried to argue later that the NYPD had orchestrated the recorded conversation with Patrick, this prologue would prove that she and Patrick had acted independent of the police.

  Once she and Patrick were alone, she held his hand again and whispered in his ear. “Be careful, babe. Nothing you get Adam to say is worth the risk.”

  “He already shot me, M, and I’m still good. He won’t be armed. I’ll be fine. Now get out of here.”

  She paused at the door, knowing they had so much more to say to each other. But every word was being recorded, and Adam would be here any second. Patrick could see all of it on her face. I know, he mouthed.

  Later. They would work through it later. All of the pain—Macklin’s death, Patrick’s shooting, even Susan’s so-called disappearance—could have been avoided if people didn’t always put off the problems that needed to be worked through right away.

  Now it was 6:02 P.M. Adam was coming. It was time for her to go.

  She played her assigned role when Adam appeared, gargantuan iris in tow. “Thank you for coming. You’re such a good friend.” She felt like the widow at a funeral.

  Detective Scanlin played his part, too. “Sorry, sir. Routine for crime victims. Just a quick weapons check.”

  She stared at Scanlin as he stepped away from Adam empty-handed. As a detective, the man had missed a lot at one point in his career. But he had made a promise to her, and she’d made a decision to trust him. She had to believe he was capable of finding a weapon in a frisk. If he put Patrick in danger, she’d never forgive either one of them.

  She listene
d to her cell phone four chairs away from Scanlin in the ICU waiting room. If Scanlin were ever asked, he could testify under oath—with no chance of contradictory evidence—that he had no idea she was eavesdropping on her husband’s conversation with his friend. If something went wrong on the other end of the line, all she had to do was give Scanlin the signal, and he’d intervene.

  She had one final idea. She pulled up her Twitter account on her iPad and posted a message:

  Susan, you promised P you would end this. Time is NOW. We know about AB; he’s here. Come to hospital. P needs you NOW.

  According to Will Getty, at one point Susan had been in love with Patrick. As careful as she’d been about hiding, Susan had come to the hospital today to check on him. She had told him she was going to end this, no matter what.

  McKenna had to hope that Susan was still the same person, hardwired to do the right thing.

  There was nothing more to do but wait.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO

  Buddy. You look fucked up.” McKenna nodded to Scanlin; she could hear Adam’s voice clearly. The record function was working. “Not to rush anything, but if you die, is McKenna fair game?”

  They called it the sickness, and supposedly Patrick’s circle of army friends had it to a person. For someone with the sickness, nothing was off limits—profanity, incest jokes, even necrophilia jabs. It was all comedic fodder.

  “You know nothing about true love,” Patrick said. “It’s in our vows. Promise to love, honor, obey, through sickness and health, richer or poor, and to do me, alive or in rigor mortis. Once the hard, high one wears off, that’s another matter.”

  “What the hell happened?” Adam said. “They’re saying it was some mind blow at an Occupy flash mob.” The local news had made it sound like a random shooting during the Occupy protest. If McKenna’s suspicions were right, Adam knew otherwise.

  “Don’t bother with the act, Adam. Susan told me everything. I just wanted to see you before it all went down. To try to understand how you could do this to me.”