Read Online If You Were Here by Alafair Burke - Free Book Online Page B

mustache that matched his dark hair. She remembered that he wore cuff links and a subtle cologne that smelled a little like pine. He was the kind of man who made the effort.
    Now he took up nearly as much room on the park bench as its previous resident. No mustache, just the graying stubble of a skipped day or two from shaving. No cologne or cuff links. His tie was loose, and the wool of his navy sport coat was beginning to shine from too many cleanings. No, she couldn’t say that he looked pretty much the same.
    “Thanks for meeting me, Detective.”
    “What detective doesn’t want a face-to-face with a member of the illustrious media?”
    She could tell from his smile that he was enjoying his barbs. “I’m not here as a writer. Or as a former prosecutor, for that matter. Is Susan Hauptmann’s case still open?”
    “It was never cleared, so it was never closed. Last time I checked, not closed means open.”
    “But is anyone working it? Is anyone looking for her?”
    “Not my case anymore. I’m in homicide at the Twelfth now.”
    “You never considered the case a homicide even when she was in your jurisdiction.”
    “I know you did. You made that clear the day you came storming to my lieutenant accusing me of stonewalling you.”
    “I’m not trying to relive the past, Detective. I’m asking you why you were so sure that Susan up and left when everyone who knew her said otherwise.”
    “We never found evidence of foul play. I guess you didn’t need much in the way of evidence to go around making claims.”
    McKenna ignored the superfluous dig and tried to focus on Susan. She could feel the stirrings of all those old frustrations. “To the people who knew Susan best, her sudden disappearance was the strongest possible evidence. She would never put her friends and family through that kind of uncertainty.”
    McKenna remembered the few basic facts she’d been able to glean from Susan’s father and her own queries: Susan’s gym card had been scanned at Equinox on the Saturday morning after Thanksgiving. One of the trainers remembered waving hello as she cranked away on the treadmill, seemingly lost in the beat of the music pumping into her headphones. She had RSVP’d to a friend’s Sunday card game as a maybe, so no one gave her absence any thought. It wasn’t until Monday night that a coworker dropped by Susan’s apartment building, assuming she must be incredibly sick to miss work and not call in. At the end of Tuesday, the building superintendent unlocked the apartment door at the request of Susan’s father. The police took two hours to show up, and only after ADA McKenna Wright made a phone call.
    Though there was no point in rehashing all of the details with Scanlin, McKenna highlighted the key points. “She left her purse, her passport, her wallet.”
    “You don’t have to remind me, Ms. Wright. I know that you, of all people, don’t hold the police in the highest regard—”
    “That’s not fair—”
    He waved a hand, not to concede the point so much as to signal his unwillingness to debate it. “I remember my cases. I can tell you the life stories of missing people—men and women—that I still wake up wondering about. And I can tell you that I believe I failed by moving on without them, without answers for their families. But I never felt like that with your friend. You know why? Because you and I view the same facts in a different way. Every single thing was in its place at her apartment. You see that simple fact the way you see it. But I’ve been a cop for over thirty years, and I know that a woman who goes somewhere takes her pocketbook with her. She takes her wallet. Hell, she at least takes her damn keys . And there was no sign of disruption to the apartment, even though, by every account, Susan Hauptmann was an athlete. A trained soldier. A fighter.”
    McKenna thought about the woman in the white sweater, pulling Nicky Cervantes from the tracks and sprinting up the subway