Authors: Alafair Burke
I
t was four o’clock, and Scanlin still had that funny feeling in his head. He had to admit that his annoyance with McKenna Jordan was just part of the reason. Her reappearance had not only reawakened his antagonism toward her and his memories of Scott Macklin; it had also triggered a look back at his life.
When he caught the Hauptmann disappearance, he was no longer that hundred-percent detective at the top of his game. Oh, he looked the part. He was physically fit, with the clothes and the watch and the swagger. But on the inside, he realized now, the change had started, because Melissa’s changes had started.
At first her problems were hardly noticeable—little verbal tics. In their circle of fast-talking New York friends, Melissa had been the most manic chatterer of all, but he started noticing occasional uncharacteristic pauses. Proper nouns that once were as familiar as her own name were replaced with descriptions like “that restaurant you like with the squid-ink risotto” or “your partner from back when you worked in the Bronx.”
Initially Melissa attributed her “offness” to sleep deprivation. Or sometimes to one too many glasses of Chianti. They used to joke, after all, that a bad hangover temporarily suppressed twenty points worth of IQ.
The doctors would tell him later that it wouldn’t have mattered if he’d gotten her to experts earlier, but sometimes he wondered whether they said that in a failed attempt to make him feel better.
The pauses in her speech got longer. Her extensive descriptions to compensate for the loss of proper nouns became more vague: “That place—the one where you—have food.” A restaurant? “Yes, the one with the—small white food, but dark.” Squid-ink risotto? “Right! That’s the one.” By then she would have forgotten why she was trying to remember the restaurant at all. Was she remembering their second date there? Craving a dish they served? Interested in the dress shop next door? Whatever it was, the moment was gone.
And before he knew it, so was Melissa. The fast-talking friends were polite at first, pretending not to notice that she could no longer follow the conversation. And then pretending not to mind. And then pretending to support his efforts to maintain some semblance of normalcy in their marriage. But his patience for Melissa had outlasted theirs with him, so then they were gone, too.
He could look back and see it all so clearly. A beginning, a middle, and an end to the arc in their lives together. Ten years ago, when Susan Hauptmann disappeared, he had no idea what would happen later and how it would affect him—was already affecting him.
As he recalled it, Susan disappeared just after Thanksgiving. Scanlin got Melissa’s initial diagnosis on October 24. Every week she had appointments with specialists. The doctors were constantly changing her medications, trying to wean her from the antidepressant/antipsychotic cocktail they put her on before realizing that frontal-lobe changes were to blame.
And Jenna. Oh God. Jenna. Scanlin loved Melissa more than he could ever love another woman, but no one loves a woman the way a child loves a mother. Maybe in some families, one parent’s illness brings the healthy parent closer to the children. That wasn’t how it worked for the Scanlins.
Scanlin remembered the initial interview of Susan Hauptmann’s sister. What was her name? Gertrude? Gwendolyn? Guinevere? G-something, if he had to guess. See? He couldn’t remember. At the top of his game, he could remember the name of a victim’s sister. Somewhere right between her last high and the next one, the sister had been a font of information, motivated by concern for her sister but probably also the hope of getting on the good side of a police officer.
As she’d droned on and on about the pressures their father had placed upon Susan—no sons, only one “good girl” to count on—Scanlin had felt himself coming to conclusions. If Scanlin’s own daughter, Jenna, could push him away, why wouldn’t a woman like Susan, with an SOB father like that, make a clean break of it and start over again?
And then he was getting pushed in a different direction by the likes of some cop-hating prosecutor. Not to mention constant phone calls from the pushy father who had pushed his daughter to the brink and was now pushing him.
All that pushing at a time when Scanlin was in no mood to be pushed.
The truth was that, back then, the only way he found the time to deal with Melissa, her doctors, and his pissed-off daughter was by phoning it in on the job. Susan’s father obviously had enough money and connections to pull out all the stops for reward offers and private detectives, so what more could Scanlin do? Writing off Susan Hauptmann as a grown-up runaway made his life easier.
Now his mind was in a fog because seeing McKenna Jordan was forcing him to ask whether he’d rushed to judgment. He could think of only one way to be sure he could stand by the choices he’d made so long ago. He made a call to the Records Department. “It’s Joe Scanlin, Homicide, Twelfth Precinct. I need an old case. The name on it is Susan Carol Hauptmann.”
He’d take a quick look. Just for peace of mind. Just to be sure he hadn’t missed anything.
D
ana was still freaking out in the pool reporter room. At one point, she began to screech like a stepped-on cat until Bob Vance stuck his head out of his office and threatened to remove her vocal cords with a letter opener if she didn’t shut up.
Her meltdown had sent McKenna into a panic, futilely opening windows on her own computer, hoping that the video had cached itself somewhere in the computer’s memory. As if McKenna even knew what “cached” meant.
That video was the only proof—if she could even use that word—that Susan was alive. Even after seeing the video, Patrick had been dubious. Now she had nothing.
She was starting to wonder if she truly remembered what Susan looked like. She had pictures, of course, but pictures were never the same as the real thing. They were a more perfect version—images that were saved for a reason. Photographs were never enough to catch the facial expressions, subtle reactions, and other idiosyncrasies that defined a person’s appearance.
McKenna had first met Susan through an e-mail forward. Susan had found a two-bedroom in Hell’s Kitchen but needed a roommate to split the rent. Her e-mail blast about the rental landed in the in-box of an ADA who knew that McKenna’s tenancy on the sofa of a college friend was wearing thin.
When McKenna went to see the apartment, she couldn’t believe her luck. The condo was clean and bright with floor-to-ceiling closet storage and a tiny slice of a Hudson River view. And her new roommate was smart, nice, and hilarious. What could be better?
But just as cameras failed to capture a person’s real appearance, first impressions usually didn’t reflect real character. Over the next twelve months, McKenna’s opinion of Susan evolved. At first she was drawn to Susan’s boldness. She was beautiful and magnetic and always spoke her mind. When the man who lived upstairs listened to a Dave Matthews CD on repeat one too many times, Susan managed to sneak into his apartment and swipe the offending disc. She wasn’t just funny; she was a good person. Not in a flashy show-off way; she was someone who constantly thought of others. Reaching down to help a fellow subway rider carry a stroller up the stairs. Bringing a flashlight to the widow on the third floor during a power outage. Carrying an extra umbrella on a rainy day in case a coworker forgot one. Answering the door for unannounced visits from her screwed-up sister, despite the hour. She had a big heart and a big sense of humor. It wouldn’t be an overstatement to say that McKenna idolized her.
Then one night McKenna found Susan—always so busy, always buzzing with energy—sitting alone on the kitchen floor, a bottle of wine in one hand, the cordless phone in another. Her father had called. There had been a fight. He was the one person who could shut Susan down with nothing but a stern glance. This time he’d gone much, much further. Joining her on the cold tile, McKenna knew she was seeing a side of Susan rarely shown to anyone.
Which side of Susan was McKenna remembering? Did she really remember her, or only snippets of time, artificially frozen in the recesses of her brain?
If she couldn’t trust her memories of Susan, how could she possibly begin to recognize the ghost on the 1-train platform, whom she’d seen only in grainy, shaky footage? She had to find that video.
She called Patrick to see if he knew anything about Skybox storage. No answer on his cell, and his secretary said he’d left work early. Just her luck to need him the one day he skipped out before five.
She heard Vance yell another warning at Dana, this time to shut up before he choked her with her own tattoos. With Dana momentarily silenced, McKenna realized that, unlike her photographer colleague, she had a backup plan. She flipped through her phone, found the incoming call from the previous day, and redialed the number. “Is this Mallory? It’s McKenna Jordan from
NYC
magazine. You were nice enough to send me a video clip yesterday.”
“Sure. I remember.”
“I hate to bother you, but we’re having some computer glitches on my end. Is there any way I can get it from you again?”
“Same thing with the Skybox account?”
Apparently everyone understood cyber storage except McKenna. “No, that’s where the glitch happened. I know it’s an imposition, but can I meet you somewhere in person? I’ll upload it to my laptop directly, just to make sure I don’t mess something up.”
There was a pause before Mallory responded in her low drawl. “I guess that would be okay. I’m at work. There’s a Starbucks at Forty-fifth and Sixth Avenue. Call me when you’re there, and I’ll come down.”
“I’ll be there right away.”
McKenna was pulling her jacket on when her cell phone rattled against the desk. This time she recognized Mallory’s number.
“I’m just heading out, Mallory. See you in a bit.”
“Don’t bother.”
“What do you mean?” McKenna heard her own voice jump an octave and hoped Bob wouldn’t appear, letter opener in hand.
“The girl in the next cubicle overheard the call and wanted all the details. I went to show her the video, but it’s gone.”
“What do you mean, it’s gone?”
“I don’t know. It’s just not there anymore.”
“Is your phone working?”
“I called you, didn’t I?”
McKenna could tell that her persistence was irritating the girl, but she didn’t understand how Mallory could erase the video and not know about it. “I’m sorry, but I really, really need it. Is it possible you overlooked it?”
“No. I’m positive. I only took one picture since then, and it’s gone, too.”
“Did you erase them?”
“Not intentionally. I think some dipwad I lent my phone to must’ve deleted them.”
“What dipwad?”
“My friend Jen and I were in line at Margon. Line’s always halfway down the block at lunch. Some dude said he needed to call his wife and left the office without his phone. Maybe he accidentally erased it or something.”
McKenna was certain that nothing involving this video file was accidental. “What did he look like?”
Another long pause. “I have
no
idea.”
“Anything at all that you remember would help, Mallory. Anything.”
“Jen was telling me about her douchebag boyfriend, who tried to justify cheating because she gained seven pounds when she quit smoking. I wasn’t paying attention. Honestly? I couldn’t pick the guy out of a lineup if my life depended on it.”
Whoever “borrowed” that phone probably planned that, waiting until Mallory was completely distracted.
“Wait a second. Is this really such a hot story?” Mallory asked. “Is this like some rival reporter stealing the video so you can’t have it? That totally blows for you.”
McKenna thanked Mallory for the sympathy, figuring there was no harm in leaving the girl under a mistaken impression. Mallory had already served her purpose to whoever had erased the video from her phone. There was no need for her to know the bigger picture.
Not that McKenna had any idea what the bigger picture was. As she hung up, she realized she was in way over her head. Someone had wiped out Dana’s media storage account. Someone had tracked down Mallory’s phone. Someone definitely did not want that video to be seen. She found herself wondering whether the malfunction in the MTA cameras might be related, before she realized how insane that idea was.
She rushed to her desk and e-mailed a file on her computer to her three different e-mail accounts, saved it to a thumb drive, and then hit the print key. She watched the photograph churn from the printer.
A picture of a button pinned to a backpack. The logo for a group called People Protecting the Planet. This was her only image of the woman on the subway. It was all she had left.
W
hen Scanlin took the Hauptmann file home, he wasn’t entirely sure he would even open it. As he drove to Yonkers, the box from the Records Department filling his passenger seat, he scolded himself for letting McKenna Jordan into his head. Thanks to budget cuts, he had enough work to fill his hours. He didn’t need the added burden of dusty files detailing a perfectly capable adult’s voluntary disappearance.
I’m a good cop.
He had repeated that phrase mentally like a mantra, all the way up the West Side Highway onto the Henry Hudson Bridge. I went through hell back then, but
I was a good cop.
I’ve always been a good cop. Even then.
Now that good cop’s dining room table was covered in paper. The DD5s documenting each witness interview. The crime lab reports. Inventories of items seized during searches of Susan’s apartment and office. The file from the investigation had been organized by type of document. Scanlin had rearranged the documents in strict chronological order, refreshing his memory of the case from beginning to end.
When he’d told the former prosecutor—emphasis on “former”
—
that he remembered the case well, he’d believed his own words. But he’d learned through years on the job that memory was a fragile thing, more like a crime scene that had to be protected and preserved from alteration than a fixed, permanent object that was impermeable over time. Usually the evolution of an eyewitness’s memory helped the prosecution. He’d seen it so many times. The witness, reluctant and uncertain as she perused the six-pack of suspect photographs. A tentative finger moving toward a candidate, the witness searching for some kind of affirmation from police that she had the right guy. “I think he’s the one.”
“Good job” was Scanlin’s standard response. A small reward, but he could see immediate effects in the relieved witness: a nod, a small, satisfied smile. By the time the prosecutor asked the witness how sure she was of the identification, she would be “extremely confident.” And when she pointed that accusatory finger at the defendant—in person, at trial—it was as if the suspect’s face were emblazoned on her visual cortex. “I’m absolutely certain.”
Say something enough and it not only sounds true, it becomes memory.
Everything he had said to McKenna Jordan about the disappearance of Susan Hauptmann had come from memory. It all sounded true. It all
was
true. And he had been able to recall those facts effortlessly—to pull them from memory—because he had repeated them so many times to General Hauptmann in those first years after Susan disappeared.
Susan Hauptmann was last seen on a Saturday, following her usual routine of a long workout, even on Thanksgiving weekend. No one had any inkling of a problem until she failed to report to work the following Monday morning. When Scanlin was called to her Hell’s Kitchen walk-up on Tuesday night, he found the one-bedroom apartment in what her friends described as its usually tidy condition. Neighbors reported no known visitors, noises, or other noteworthy observations. It was as if, as her friend McKenna said so sarcastically, Susan simply evaporated.
But in less obvious ways, Susan had left behind evidence that pointed Scanlin to his eventual conclusion that she had disappeared of her own volition. Her consulting firm’s managing partner reported that the firm recently notified Susan that she was underperforming, not living up to potential, and unlikely to be a serious candidate for partnership. After her “noble” service in the Middle East, she had failed, in her boss’s estimation, to transition from her military background into the culture of a private firm, where billable hours were more important than efficiency, and the most successful associates understood they could forge their own version of a chain of command.
At the same time, according to Susan’s sister, their father was pushing her back into that familiar culture. “The General,” as the girls had learned to address their two-star father, had been temporarily appeased by Susan’s following his footsteps to West Point, but he had never accepted her decision to go to business school. He’d hoped that her stint in Afghanistan would persuade her that life was better spent in service to her country than as yet another corporate lackey. His words, recited by Gretchen, were right on Scanlin’s dining room table, staring at him from her DD5: “Our father would always say, ‘The only thing lawyers and consultants have ever created is more work for lawyers and consultants.’ ”
After a full career in the military, George Hauptmann was launching his own firm to do contract work for the government. One of Susan’s friends from West Point had already signed on, and the General was pushing Susan to make the move or, at the very least, go back on active duty. Scanlin had his fair share of problems with Jenna, but he could not imagine wanting to send his daughter to war—especially the two wars that were raging when Susan Hauptmann disappeared.
She had a million friends, but none of them close. She dated, but no boyfriends. Two careers, but no successes. She was a woman who had nowhere to belong. How many times had Scanlin restated these facts, cementing them into his memory with each new recitation? No sign of a struggle. No sign of foul play. A woman in a time of “emotional and professional crisis”—those were the euphemistic words Scanlin had used gently with the father when what he’d really wanted to say was “You drove your daughters away, the ways fathers can. Now one’s a junkie, and one has run away from you.”
All those facts were true. But memory was malleable. It was selective. Some facts hardened, and others fell away. As he relived the course of the investigation from beginning to end, he found his present self arguing with his former self. How did she leave New York? There were no plane tickets, bus fares, or car rentals on her credit cards. No large cash withdrawals. She’d left behind her driver’s license, passport, and every other possession. When did she leave? Perhaps most important, if she really did leave of her own accord, why had she never resurfaced? Runaways, whatever their age, eventually returned, but even after the death of her father, Susan remained missing.
MISSING.
That was the header on the flyers plastered on telephone poles and parking meters across Manhattan as November turned into December. Basic data: thirty-two years old, white female, five feet seven, 140 pounds. In the photograph, shoulder-length blond waves encircled her wide face, marked by a broad smile and gleaming green eyes. She was beautiful. And she was a missing young white woman with an impressive background and influential father. The case had gotten attention.
He remembered all the wack-job calls to the tip line: spottings at bodegas, bookstores, Knicks games. None of them panned out. Well-intentioned but mistaken tipsters believed she was a current coworker, classmate, fellow yoga aficionado. As he leafed through the old notes, he saw that one guy (anonymous) had claimed to have had sex (anonymously) with the missing woman six months earlier in a restaurant bathroom. No information about her current whereabouts.
The tip—viewed in the context of a fresh look at the entire file—reminded Scanlin of another piece of paper he had just seen. He pulled the DD5 of one of Susan’s colleagues, Jared Klein. Like most everyone else who knew her, he was utterly perplexed by her disappearance. Scanlin remembered prompting Klein, as he always did, to think of anything—
anything at all—
that might have been unusual. Klein had shaken his head, but Scanlin could tell he was holding back.
“Now’s not the time for secrets,” Scanlin had warned.
“It’s not a secret. It’s just— You know, maybe I misunderstood.”
“Misunderstood what?”
“Last year, we were working late, as usual. We had a couple glasses of wine at dinner. Everyone else left, and it was just the two of us. She leaned in and—I don’t know, it was like she was going to kiss me or something. I stopped it. Last thing I needed was a sexual harassment suit or worse. I expected her to brush it off like a stupid late-night moment, but she got—well, I guess I’d say aggressive. Like, who was I to reject
her
? The next morning she seemed totally normal, and I’ve always thought maybe it was me who had cloudy judgment that night. But now I’m wondering if maybe I saw a hidden side of her. Jeez, I feel bad saying this about her now.”
It had seemed like a stretch at the time. And the anonymous tip about the anonymous sex had seemed like nonsense. The neighbors’ observations about all of the people—mostly men—coming and going from her apartment had seemed totally consistent with the depiction of a woman who socialized regularly and operated in male-dominated work settings. The half-empty box of condoms in the nightstand had seemed like a standard precaution for a heterosexual adult woman.
But all of it together? Maybe there had been a side to Susan Hauptmann that her friends and family didn’t know.
His thoughts were interrupted by a knock on the door.