Authors: Alafair Burke
M
cKenna was sitting on a stool at the kitchen island, hunched over her laptop, when she heard keys in the front door. Patrick maneuvered his bicycle into the apartment, careful not to let the tires bump the walls, a practice that had taken months of training after the building had sacrificed the bike storage room for an expansion of the laundry room.
“Hey, you’re home!” Patrick said, surprised at the sight of her there.
Theirs was one of a growing number of households in which the female half tended to work later than the male half. Patrick was almost always home in time for the six
P.M.
episode of
SportsCenter
. He was not only fine with a routine, he liked it. If every single day could be the same for the rest of his life, Patrick would be happy as could be.
But today she was the one who had wrapped up work early, wanting to be alone with that video from the subway platform.
For as long as she had known him, Patrick had insisted on riding his bicycle to work. Another part of the routine. The very idea of riding a bike in Manhattan—the fumes; the horn blasts; the texting, Bluetoothing drivers—scared the bejesus out of McKenna. But Patrick insisted he was safe. Helmet. Side-view mirrors. And though his office closet at the Metropolitan Museum of Art was stocked with conservative suits, for the commute, he donned the look of a badass bike messenger, complete with fake tattoo sleeves on his arms. According to him, drivers were less likely to mess with a cyclist who looked like he might slit a throat over a near miss.
As Patrick carried the bicycle to the far corner of their open loft, he paused behind her for a quick kiss on the cheek. “You started cocktail hour without me?”
She let out a distracted “Huh?,” then realized he was referring to the beer stein resting beside her computer on the granite countertop. “No, it’s empty. I was just looking at it.”
The mug had felt like such a special possession when she’d given it to Patrick, but five years later, McKenna had located it at the back of a kitchen cabinet, blocked by a panoply of coffee mugs and the cheap glasses that emerged only when they had more guests than good stemware. The beer stein deserved better placement, but a lot had changed since they got married.
“Why would you—” His bike propped safely against a wall of bookshelves, Patrick turned his full attention to her. “Oh, it’s
the
mug. That was sweet.” He wrapped his arms around her waist and gave her a kiss on the neck, letting his breath graze her ear.
She spun around on the stool to face him. “Actually, I was thinking about this mug because I was thinking about Susan.”
His expression went blank. Apparently McKenna wasn’t the only one who hadn’t thought about Susan in a long time.
“
Susan
. Susan Hauptmann. She’s the one who stole it from Telephone Bar that night.”
“Oh my God, that’s right. I always thought of it as the mug
you
stole.” He took a seat on the sectional sofa, extending his legs in front of him. “Why were you thinking about Susan?”
She carried her open laptop to the couch, scooting next to him. The video was cued up. “You know that story about the woman who pulled the high school kid off the subway tracks?”
“I believe you tried to bet me twenty dollars yesterday morning that the kid wasn’t really an honor student. I didn’t take the bet. Plus, we’re married, so it doesn’t matter. Besides, twenty dollars in this city would barely fill that beer mug.”
“Well, a girl on the platform managed to get it on videotape.” She hit play.
Patrick chuckled as the scene played out on the screen, a subtle twitch in his face each time the cell phone jerked in a new direction. “You can’t use this, McKenna. Did you try the MTA? They have cameras in the stations.”
She held up a finger to cut him off. Listening to the now-familiar audio, she prepared to hit pause. The high-pitched scream. The “Oh my God.” The something-something “train!” A thump as another passenger bumped into the amateur cinematographer. The “Don’t go down there.” “Grab him.” “Get his wrists.” “I’ve got him, I’ve got him.” “Is he conscious?”
And . . . pause.
“Look. Do you see it?”
“I can see why everyone’s calling her Superwoman. Takes a lot of strength to lift a person like that. Hard to tell, but the kid didn’t appear to be helping any. Probably suffering from shock.”
“Look at the woman, Patrick. Look at her face.”
He leaned closer to the screen and shook his head. “I know the MTA’s video coverage is spotty, but really, did you at least check? Maybe you’ll get lucky.”
“Yes, I checked. Just look at her face, okay?”
He raised his brows at her snappish tone. At least he hadn’t called her shrieky, as he was prone to do when her tone became too strident for his tastes. “I’m not sure what I’m supposed to be seeing here, McKenna, and I’m obviously frustrating you. Just tell me. You said something about Susan.” He looked at the image on the laptop screen again. “Oh, McKenna, no. There’s no way.”
“The face. The face is the same.”
“You can’t even
see
her face.”
“The shape, like a heart. The lips. And the arch in her brow. Plus, look.” She pointed to a spot just beneath the woman’s hairline. “You can see that scar, from when she fell running across campus—during the Maharathon or whatever.”
“The Mahanathon,” he said, correcting her. The cadets called the sprint from the West Point gym to Mahan Hall the Mahanathon. Despite Susan’s usual speed and dexterity, she had managed to trip on a curb and wipe out face-first. “You can’t tell that’s a scar. It could be a loose hair or a splotch or something. This woman could be anyone. Seriously, the MTA must have better footage.”
“They don’t, okay? The guy said an entire hotspot or something crashed. This is all I’ve got, but look at it. You said yourself the woman would have to be incredibly strong to lift a kid like that. Fast, too, to be chasing a high school athlete. You should see her haul ass up the subway steps. Susan is strong and fast. The only female cadet in your class to get that prize—”
“The Commandant Prize. Because Susan
was
fast. She
was
strong.” He placed a hand on her knee and gave it a squeeze. “And she’s been gone for a really, really long time.”
“People aren’t just gone. They never found a body. I don’t even think she’s been declared dead legally.”
He pulled his hand away and shook his head. “You’re contradicting everything you’ve ever said since Susan disappeared. ‘She’d never just leave.’ That’s what we
all
said. It’s what we
all
told the police. That somebody must have done something terrible to her. Now you’re saying she’s alive and well and living in New York after all these years?”
“I didn’t say she was
well
. Maybe, I don’t know, you hear these stories about people with head injuries who don’t even know who they are. They eventually start life all over again.”
“McKenna, amnesia? Come on.” He walked to the refrigerator and grabbed a bottle of water. When he returned to the sofa, he didn’t sit quite as close to her.
“She’s just
missing
, which means she’s somewhere. She could be back in New York. You can’t ignore the fact that the woman in that video looks exactly like Susan.”
“We haven’t seen her in ten years, McKenna. And that picture—it’s like a blur. You went through all of this before, all those years ago. You cried every day for a month. You stopped eating. You were walking around Hell’s Kitchen at all hours of the night, trying to find her.”
She remembered those nights. She had wanted so desperately for Patrick to comfort her. He was the only person McKenna knew who was also close to Susan—they never would have met if not for Susan. They had taken very different paths to New York City. Patrick had attended West Point and served in the army before going to work at the museum; McKenna had gone to school on the West Coast and was working downtown as a prosecutor. They had tried the game of tracing six degrees of separation between them, but the one and only direct route was Susan Hauptmann.
So if anyone could help her through the grief of Susan’s disappearance, she had assumed, it would be Patrick. And McKenna knew that Patrick felt a sense of loyalty to Susan.
She had heard both versions of the story about the beginning of their friendship. According to Susan, she had pulled the old West Point trick of stuffing her bed, tucking laundry beneath her blanket for bed check so she could celebrate her twenty-first birthday in Chelsea. Nights in the city with the friends she’d made outside the army were an escape for her. They helped remind her that she had a life beyond the one she’d chosen in order to please her father. She used those nights to doll herself up and blow off a little steam, to nurse a side of her personality she could never show the other cadets. That night, she wasn’t the only cadet who’d left the grounds. When Patrick Jordan walked into the same city bar at one in the morning, she was sure her reputation was done.
In Patrick’s version, the only reason he ever walked into a club like the Limelight was because he had a two-day leave from campus for a cousin’s wedding, and the bride and groom decided to go bar hopping after the rehearsal dinner. His ears were beginning to adjust to the thumping music when two of the bridesmaids began gossiping about the girl “slutting it up” on the dance floor with two different men. When he looked at the woman grinding against her dance partners, something about her seemed familiar. He recognized Susan just as she made eye contact with him.
He was aware of the whispers about her on campus—the General’s Daughter, they called her, or sometimes Hot Lips Hauptmann—but he knew that cadets routinely exaggerated their sexual accomplishments where the female cadets were concerned. Now it appeared that in Susan’s case, the whispers might be kinder than the real thing. And as the son of a mere colonel—though a full one, a “bird”—he could only imagine the panic going on behind his classmate’s mascara-laden eyes.
The two versions of the story converged from there: Patrick turned around, left the club, and never said a word to anyone on campus about the encounter. Not even Susan. Back at West Point, popular, trusted Patrick found subtle ways to bring outsider Susan—female, attractive, last name Hauptmann—into the fold. Susan knew she had a real friend.
So when Susan disappeared, McKenna knew Patrick cared. They had been friends long before McKenna was in the picture. But he had been almost angry about it. Not angry at Susan or even about her disappearance. Angry at McKenna. At her reaction. At the crying and the sobbing and the picking at food and the inability to sleep. At what he saw as overly dramatic displays of emotion. At her expectation that it was up to him to make her feel better.
“What you’re doing right now isn’t about Susan,” he said to her at last. “I’m worried about her, too. So is her father. So is everyone who knows her. But you’re making this about you. Things suck for you at work, and you’re using this as an outlet.”
That statement—and the hour-long yelling match that followed—marked the first of many offs in their relationship. Ten years later, he was clearly worried that she would unravel once again.
“I’m not doing any of that now. I just— You know, even if the woman on the subway wasn’t Susan, it doesn’t matter. She’s been gone all this time, and I haven’t even
thought
of her in years. I want to know what happened to her. She deserves for someone to still be looking.”
He started to push back but thought better of it. “So what should we do about it?”
We.
Patrick was like that. He could play devil’s advocate. He could try to convince her to pursue another path. And then just like that, he could climb aboard and support the mission. That was probably how he’d been able to make it through the army. It was why he was still at the Met—his first civilian job out of the military—after all these years. What were
we
going to do about it
.
She didn’t give him enough credit for that loyalty.
“Her dad started getting sick years ago, and he was the one putting pressure on the police. For all I know, no one’s been looking for her. Maybe her loser sister knows something. What was her name again?”
“Gretchen.”
“Right. Maybe you can contact the army crowd. See if they know anything?”
“I think I would have heard—”
The expression on her face stopped him. “I’ll call around.”
“I’ll start with the basics. Public records. Credit reports. We can play it by ear.”
Playing it by ear sounded so simple. No promises. No rules. Just following intuitions on a lark. As though, if the melody didn’t work, you could simply walk away from the piano
.
But searching for answers wasn’t like fiddling with notes on a keyboard. Once you started asking questions, it could be impossible to stop, even when you knew you should.
T
he man behind the reception desk at the Four Seasons was oily. Not literally. He wasn’t shiny or glistening or greasy. But the way he peered out and up beneath thick black eyelashes, not even bothering to lift his chin despite speaking to a man six inches taller than he; the way he smiled without parting his lips; the way his clenched jaw failed to hide the grinding of teeth behind the forced smile—all of it reeked of unctuousness.
“No reservation, sir?”
“I’m afraid not. Thought I’d be back on the train to New Canaan tonight—deal sealed—but I guess the lawyers had other plans. Guess that’s what happens when you let these firms bill you by the hour. How can you tell when an attorney’s lying? His lips are moving.” He dropped an American Express card on the counter. The name read Michael Carter. That would be his name for the foreseeable future. Until he needed to be someone else. “I’ll take whatever room you have available. Beggars can’t be choosers, right?”
There was that sealed-lip smile again, as if the request didn’t bother him a bit. The clench in the jaw told a different story while he tap-tap-tapped away at his merry keyboard.
“Our standard rooms are all sold out tonight, sir. We do have a city-view executive suite. This would be your rate, exclusive of taxes, of course.”
The clerk pushed a piece of paper discreetly across the counter: $995 per night. Exclusive of taxes. Of course.
Carter nodded his approval and watched the black card swish through the reader. Beneath the name Michael Carter was the name of a company: Acumen Inc. The company was real, incorporated as a shell, permitting him to funnel untraceable money through a series of offshore accounts. Panama was popular these days.
“How many keys, sir?”
“Just the one, please.” One was the right answer for a businessman unexpectedly stuck in the city for an evening. It struck Carter that two was probably the more typical request, given the liaisons he’d observed so many times in high-end hotel lounges. But a request for two keys by a solo traveler was interesting. It provoked curiosity. Carter made a very nice living—with unplanned and unexplained expenses part of the package—by being completely, entirely, and utterly uninteresting and unprovocative.
He returned the clerk’s smile while accepting the room key. Throughout the entire transaction, Carter remained angled away from the security camera that hung on the wall behind and to the right of reception. Now he pivoted to his left, depriving the lens of any look at his face.
Not that it mattered. Just habit.
His fib to the reception clerk hadn’t been too far from the truth. He was, in a sense, a businessman with an unexpectedly long detour in New York City.
Compared to the work that had gotten him here, Carter’s current position was practically a desk job. His job was to watch. To monitor. To stand to the side and make sure there were no problems. He thought of himself as an auditor hired by people who didn’t want the audits discovered.
He had mastered the language used to describe his line of work. People paid him a lot of money as a
precaution
. For
peace of mind
. For
comfort
. They paid Carter to watch for
red flags
.
Alarms
. People used these terms to describe what they believed to be a feeling of gut instinct. Carter knew there was no such thing. Facts raised flags. Events sounded alarms. Carter knew how to articulate the subtle culmination of facts and events that caused lesser people to experience an inexplicable “feeling.”
Usually he could tell when a target was going to be a problem. Living a life filled with secrets required highly choreographed management of both time and physical location. It meant sneaking away for a supposed bathroom break but placing a brief phone call from the men’s room. It meant telling your coworkers you had a headache and needed to turn in early, then driving to a rest stop thirty miles out of town for a clandestine handoff of a package.
He had no problems locating the subject of the audit, thanks to the GPS tracker that she didn’t know she was carrying. Carter had been hired because the GPS tracker had traced the woman to other parts of the New York metropolitan area. Carter’s boss wanted a better idea of what those side trips entailed.
The first two days had been like punching a clock. No gut feelings. More important, no facts to raise red flags or alarms. Just a lot of time out in Suffolk County, where she was supposed to be.
On the third day of observation, she hopped on an Amtrak to Penn Station. He followed. She didn’t seem to notice.
But he noticed her. He noticed that she was using a second phone. Not the one with the GPS tracker in it. A different one.
She’d been typing away on it when that boy had grabbed it from her hands. And then she was gone, barely making it past the subway doors before they slammed shut, sealing him inside that crowded tube. Unknowing. Without eyes or ears. Utterly useless for a moment.
H
e had hopped off at the next stop, Herald Square, then headed north to Times Square. Clipping through the station, he could overhear the leftover rumblings of commotion.
Did you hear? Some guy fell on the tracks! Someone saved him.
It hadn’t taken him long to find the two EMTs at the foot of the platform stairs, one flashing a penlight in the kid’s stunned eyes.
The kid was fine. The woman he had robbed was gone.
Carter called his boss from aboveground.
Yesterday morning the papers had called the woman the 1-train heroine—an unidentified mystery woman. She had Carter to thank for her continued anonymity. It had taken some persuasion, backed by cash, for Carter to render the MTA’s security footage unavailable. What seemed like a lot of dough to an MTA technician was chump change to the kind of people who hired Carter.
He knew what the mystery woman called herself. And where she was supposed to be. He did not know why she had come to New York City or why she had been so desperate to recover her second telephone. But he had a very strong, and very bad, feeling.
And if Carter had learned anything in his forty-two years, it was never to accept the unknown.