If You Were Here: A Novel of Suspense Read online

  She exhaled loudly and took two slow breaths. “I’m the one who devised the plan from there. It was clear from Pamela Morris’s attire that she was a prostitute. The men who took the cargo—they also took her body. I don’t know where. I told Officer Macklin that he could claim mistaken self-defense: it was dark, he thought he saw a weapon. That was when Officer Macklin told me that he had an untraceable weapon, what cops call a drop gun. We placed it in Marcus Jones’s hand.”

  She walked through the ensuing controversy over the shooting. The initial quiet murmurs in the African-American community. The church-led vigil at the piers. And then a young ADA who traced the drop gun back to Safe Streets.

  “I was sure that once people began looking at the shooting, someone would start asking questions about the cargo coming in that night. Adam flew back to New York from Afghanistan and met me at my apartment. I tape-recorded that conversation and have given a copy of the recording to the FBI.”

  The recording was the evidence she’d said would sink both of them. The argument in her apartment. Mac. Import.

  “Adam assured me that his contact people in the military were coming up with a plan, but I know how the world works. The whole reason the military would use private contractors, off the books, for this quasi-authorized operation was to have deniability. We were on our own. So I left everything I had and walked away. At some level, I was afraid for my life, and for my baby’s, because of the secret I carried. I also saw it as an obligation to my country never to get caught.”

  She’d spent the last decade working private jobs, mostly overseas. She was an especially good catch for the protection market. The assumption was that a woman couldn’t pull off the difficult work, let alone one attractive enough to pass for a valued asset’s girlfriend or personal assistant. She never had a problem locating people who were willing to use her skills and not ask too many questions about her past.

  “Three months ago, I learned it was all a lie.” Her tone of voice changed. A flicker of anger registered in her eyes. “There was no quasi authorization. And there was no military team.”

  She described the visit to see her dying father and the relevant passages in his diary. “I was free to walk away from the army, and I never knew it. Instead, I walked away from the only life I’d ever known.”

  She took a job following environmental activists to the New York suburbs. They were buying small quantities of bomb-making ingredients, to locate suppliers in the event of an eventual plan to use them. She was nervous but did not believe the operation had reached a level where criminal investigators could intervene.

  One day she came home and saw a fuse, something she was sure that none of the people living in that house knew how to build. She tried to grab Greg Larson, but he resisted, and there was no time. She escaped out the back window on the second floor, convinced that Adam was trying to kill everyone who might be able to expose him.

  Her plan was to persuade Scott Macklin to join her in coming forward with the story. Adam would pay for what he did, and they could be free of the secrets they’d carried for a decade. Her incentive was to return to her old life. But Macklin was perfectly happy with the life he was living. He said he needed to think about it. A day later, he was dead.

  “Even if it had been my own country asking this of me, it would have been wrong. We are a nation of laws. There are no exceptions. But I allowed myself to believe that we knew right from wrong in a way the general population would never understand. I bought in to the idea that there was a higher law above civil law. If I could do anything to take it back, I would. I’ll pay whatever price I need to, if only for the hope that Adam Bayne is punished to the fullest extent possible.”

  It felt like a natural ending point, even though the moment was entirely manufactured.

  Scanlin and Mercado walked out of the room together. “She did a good job,” Mercado announced. “I don’t know about you guys, but I’m actually rooting for a good deal from the federal prosecutor.”

  Scanlin patted McKenna on the back. “Your girl did good.”

  “She’s not exactly my girl anymore, but she did. And so did you with the prep.”

  Despite her words, McKenna still knew Susan Hauptmann. She was the woman who’d pulled Nicky Cervantes from the train tracks when she could have simply grabbed the phone that would have led back to her assumed identity. She was the woman who’d come to the hospital when Patrick was hurt, and had returned again when it was time for her to confront Adam Bayne. McKenna even understood why Susan had never told her about the relationship with Patrick.

  It had been ten years, but McKenna knew Susan at her core.

  And because she knew her at her core, McKenna understood that—despite the prep, despite the video—Susan was holding back. She knew more than she was saying.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-EIGHT

  The way her husband was shoveling ketchup-topped tuna fish straight from the can to his mouth, McKenna would have thought he was feasting on the signature dish at a five-star restaurant.

  “You must be the only patient who has ever rejected hospital food in favor of something even worse than hospital food.”

  When they met, Patrick was still in the habit of opening a can of tuna and a deli packet of ketchup and calling it a meal. In the intervening years, most of his other disgusting culinary habits—instant iced tea, three-dollar wine, and Velveeta sandwiches—had fallen by the wayside, but he still loved tuna and ketchup.

  “I wish you could go home tonight,” she said. “I’d make you a proper meal.”

  “You mean you’d walk to Union Square Cafe and ask them to pack us up a proper meal.”

  Patrick’s surgeon had been close to releasing him tonight, but they were still monitoring him for the risk of internal bleeding. Tomorrow, they said. No promises, but they’d reevaluate tomorrow.

  “I’m getting used to it here,” he said. “Adjustable bed. Free sponge baths. All the antiseptic cleanser you could possibly desire. You should go home and get some proper sleep, though. You’ve been through the wringer this week.”

  “Which of us has a frickin’ bullet hole in his neck?”

  “I’m going to be fine. But Susan manipulating you that way? Trying to guilt trip you into helping her? I would have expected better. She’s obviously not the person she used to be.”

  “You weren’t there, Patrick. She thought she was doing the right thing. Not just for herself. For everyone. It was almost—messianic.” McKenna had conflicting emotions about Susan, but she believed Adam had been able to deceive her only by abusing her patriotism.

  Patrick wasn’t having it. Internal checks. Chain of command. There was no excuse for going outside the system. In her own thoughts, McKenna heard the counterargument.

  The nurse who came to check on Patrick’s respiratory strength made a not so subtle suggestion that he could use a night of uninterrupted sleep. Without a visitor.

  McKenna kissed him on the lips. She could tell from the way he returned the kiss that he was ready to come home.

  In her dream, McKenna was back at the DA’s office. She had gone to Will Getty with the link between Safe Streets and the gun next to Marcus Jones. She was back to her drug cases, arriving to work each day, waiting for some word from Getty.

  She walked into Getty’s office. Susan was leaning over the desk, her back arched, mouth open. Adam Bayne was behind her, grabbing her hair in his fists.

  McKenna’s eyes opened. The room was dark.

  She reached for her cell phone and checked the time.

  4:14 A.M.

  She wasn’t used to sleeping in their bed alone. Outside of an occasional security conference, Patrick was always home at night.

  She tried to fall back asleep but kept hearing Susan’s voice. I was having a baby . . . I was desperate . . . a concrete way to save the lives of American soldiers . . . support the troops, us against them
, remember the towers . . . I saw it as an obligation to my country never to get caught . . . I walked away from the only life I’d ever known.

  McKenna had left the Federal Building believing that Susan was holding something back. Wasn’t that natural, given the unnatural confines of the statement? In custody, on videotape, after hours of coaching? When they’d been alone, without Scanlin or Mercado or the camera, it had been like being with the old Susan. She fucked up, and now she was trying to make it right.

  McKenna pulled her laptop into the bed and started to type: My name is Susan Hauptmann, and on November 29, 2003, I walked away from my own identity.

  By the time she closed her computer, light was peering through the crack in the curtains. She had the first six thousand words of Susan Hauptmann’s life as a fugitive, and they were good words. They were the kind of words that would put Susan on the Today show, not as a drug dealer but as a woman whose loyalty to her country had been manipulated by Adam Bayne.

  What had felt like the middle of the night was now well into the morning. McKenna walked to the kitchen, hoping that caffeine would rouse her from the fog.

  Her briefcase, thrown on the kitchen island, was still stuffed with the two-day overflow of mail that Tom the mailman had handed her the previous day. Con Ed bill. Bank statement. Eight furniture catalogs that Tom had been unable to squeeze into their mailbox.

  Something for Patrick. Handwritten, no return address. A New York City postmark.

  Seven minutes later, she placed the letter in a Ziploc freezer bag and made a phone call to Marla Tompkins.

  General Hauptmann’s former nurse finally answered after six rings. She sounded tired.

  “Miss Tompkins, it’s McKenna Jordan. I hate to bother you again, but you mentioned that General Hauptmann was very generous to you by recognizing you in his will.”

  “That’s correct. I didn’t feel right about accepting it at first, but I prayed on it. He was a strong-willed man, and it was what he wanted.”

  “What about the rest of the will? How did he deal with his missing daughter, Susan?”

  “I remember very well, because the estate lawyer explained it to me. It was complicated because he never was willing to accept that she was gone. He could have had her declared dead after she was gone for three years, but he never, ever did it.”

  “Susan was still in the will?”

  “Well, yes. In a way. If she was no longer alive, her part would pass to his other descendants, but then he expressly disinherited Gretchen, so it would go to his various charities. Wounded Warriors. Special Olympics. American Cancer—”

  “And what if Susan lived?” McKenna felt rude cutting the woman off, but it was the will’s other contingency plan that interested her.

  “That was simple: if she outlived him, she got her inheritance.”

  “How much was that?”

  “Well, he left a quarter to me, which was just over nine hundred thousand dollars. That’s mostly the value of the apartment, but I still can’t believe it. Another quarter will go to the charities. The remaining half was set aside for Susan. And there was a deadline where if they didn’t find out what happened to her within . . . I believe it was seven years of his death, the money would be divided among his charities.”

  The General had written off (and out) Gretchen, but he’d never been able to give up on Susan.

  McKenna called Joe Scanlin, but got his voice-mail. She typed a text message instead:

  Don’t make any deals with Susan.

  Susan had spent ten years on the run. Her father’s death had given her more than 1.8 million reasons to come home.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-NINE

  Scanlin placed two sunny-side eggs carefully on the plate-size pancakes. Those were the eyes. Strawberry nose. Bacon smile.

  “Maple syrup on the side,” he announced, positioning the plate and a small pitcher of warmed syrup in front of Jenna at the dining room table.

  “You know I avoid carbs, Dad.” Jenna picked at the pancake with her fork the way a crime lab analyst would handle a blood-soaked mattress.

  “It’s almond meal instead of flour,” he explained. “Got the recipe off the Internet. Tastes like a hubcap if you ask me, but I know you’re always good for eggs and bacon if all else fails.”

  “You got a carb-free recipe off the Internet?” she asked. “Who kidnapped my father?”

  “I know you’re not ten years old anymore, and this is my way of thanking you for getting up early to come here before work. It’s the last time I’m going to ask you to change your schedule for me.”

  She gave him a confused look as she scooped up half of a runny egg.

  “Your mother doesn’t remember me,” Scanlin said. “She recognizes me sometimes, but only when I’m with you. You have your own life and need to see her on your own schedule. So that’s going to be my schedule, too.”

  She swallowed her food, taking in his words. “Okay.”

  “I’ve been hanging on to the past, Jenna. And simultaneously not taking responsibility for it. I’ve been blaming you and resenting you for giving me a hard time, without ever admitting that you’ve got good reason to. And without telling you how much I regret that.”

  “Dad, I haven’t always been fair—”

  He raised his hand to stop her. “Whether you have or not, that’s not the point. I’m your father. And I owed you more. I owed your mother more. I even owed myself more, but mostly I owed you two. I realized that years ago, when your mother first got sick. But then somehow it became a battle between the two of us, and I was too stubborn to do what I should have done as your father—which was to put you first.”

  He couldn’t remember the last time she’d looked at him that way. No resentment. No fatigue. Just trust. For a second, she looked like her mother.

  “This pancake totally tastes like a hubcap.” But she kept chewing.

  His cell phone interrupted the moment. Jenna smiled sadly. “Go ahead, Dad.”

  “No, I’m not answering it.”

  “It’s probably work.”

  “Absolutely not.” He walked to the freezer and tossed the phone inside. “See? I can’t even hear it now.”

  She laughed the way she usually laughed only with other people. “How am I going to feel if that’s a super-secret, super-smart witness who wants to help you catch bad guys. Justice is at stake, Dad.”

  That was what he had always told her when he was leaving for work, despite her pleas that Daddy stay home. Justice is at stake.

  The muffled ringing sound stopped. “Too bad,” he announced. “I missed it. Justice will have to wait.”

  “At least take it out of the freezer.” She opened the door and grabbed the phone from the top of the ice tray. “You should probably see this.”

  He stole a glance. One missed call, followed by a text from McKenna Jordan.

  Don’t make any deals with Susan. Carl Buckner sent us a letter before he died. It changes everything.

  CHAPTER SEVENTY

  McKenna met Scanlin at his detective squad. She read the letter over his shoulder, even though she’d already memorized every word.

  To Whom It May Concern:

  My name is Carl David Buckner. Two days ago, I rigged a bomb to ignite in Brentwood, Long Island.

  The target was a woman living there under an alias as Pamela Morris. I do not know her true identity, but I was hired to kill her.

  Not at first. Initially, the job was to follow her and to discredit a reporter named McKenna Jordan. I paid a coworker of Jordan’s to help with the latter. I then learned from Jordan’s coworker that Jordan had video footage of Morris. The person who hired me asked me not only to wipe out the video but also to wipe out Morris.

  When the woman escaped the Brentwood bombing, I was then ordered to kill Scott Macklin, a former NYPD officer. I did not comply with the order,
but I also did nothing to save him.

  It has become clear that the person who hired me is a sociopath willing to kill anyone. I am trying to stop that.

  If this letter gets mailed (FBI, NYPD, FOX News), it’s because I did not make it back to a Mail Boxes Etc. by noon the day after I wrote this, which means I am probably dead.

  I don’t know whether this will be one of those stories on the front page for a week, or maybe no one will care (except maybe my brother). If anyone does care, I was a good person once and am trying to be one now.

  I know about soldiers who have come home and killed their wives or themselves or a roomful of strangers in a mass shooting. I’m not going to try to make excuses for myself. I crossed a line when I set that bomb. And then I didn’t do enough to make up for it.

  I’m trying now. Is it possible to be a good person, then a bad person, and then a good person again?

  I have close to $400,000 set aside. I want ¾ to go to the family of Scott Macklin. If possible, I want ¼ to cover college for my nephew, Carl David Buckner III.

  As for the person who hired me: I was contacted entirely by untraceable phone and e-mail. All I know is that the voice on the phone was female.

  Signed,

  Carl Buckner

  P.S. I sent a copy of this letter to a man named Patrick Jordan because I saw him with the woman I know as Pamela Morris. He is married to McKenna Jordan, and I believe he was trying to help Pamela Morris. Hopefully I will see him in person before I die. I am going to meet him now at Grand Central Station.

  Scanlin dropped the letter on his desk.

  “Female,” McKenna said, placing an index finger on the most important word on the page. “The person who hired him was a woman.”