If You Were Here (28 page)

CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN

I
t had been a long time since McKenna had watched a confession through one-way glass. She’d never thought that the person on the other side would be someone she once considered to be a close friend.

Susan looked less real than she had fifteen minutes earlier, when they’d been seated across a table from each other. She would seem less human still once she was reduced to a two-dimensional image on a screen with a digital counter ticking off time beneath her chin.

“I was pregnant. I planned to have the baby. Even though I would be doing it on my own, I was required to serve. Obviously they wouldn’t force me to deliver the child during active duty, but all I could do was postpone the inevitable. I knew from a classmate that the army had activated his wife even though they had two children under the age of three, and he’d even offered to go in her place. I was desperate.”

McKenna knew how this worked. The jurors who would eventually watch this tape would see an uninterrupted narrative, as if Susan were speaking spontaneously to a faceless, nameless, genderless, identity-less biographer on the other side of the camera. It was the talk-to-the-camera format everyone had grown used to in the age of reality TV.

But this monologue—seemingly without a script, without notes—was the fruit of hours of preparation.

“I called my father.” Susan provided what appeared to be an impromptu aside about her father’s prominence in the military. “Three days later, his business partner—and my former West Point classmate—Adam Bayne called to tell me that I could satisfy my active-duty obligation to the army in an alternative way.”

Susan took her time explaining the context surrounding the deal Adam had conveyed. By then, reports were coming out that the U.S. had lost control of both wars. Former Taliban soldiers had infiltrated the new regime in Afghanistan and were attacking from within. Women and children were being used as shields. Troops handing out water and rice had been killed by land mines. The president had declared Iraq the new central front in the war on terror, as anti-American chants and calls for resistance of the “occupation” broke out at the burial of Saddam Hussein’s sons. By the time Susan disappeared, Baghdad’s Green Zone would have experienced the first of many attacks when twenty-eight rockets struck the Al-Rashid Hotel.

Those were the kind of surroundings that forced governments to weigh ideology against reality. Since Adam’s arrest, McKenna had done some research about that reality. After invading Afghanistan, the military largely opted to look the other way when it came to the country’s thriving opium business. Opium farmers weren’t friends, but they weren’t enemies. They tempered local fears. They negotiated settlements. They garnered cooperation.

But they were demanding more than a blind eye, at least according to Adam. With the war impairing the usual means of export, they wanted the military to provide cover for shipments directly into the United States.

“I didn’t understand,” Susan explained. “I didn’t want to believe that anyone in the military would strike that kind of deal, but Adam told me that soldiers’ lives were at stake in the arena. It was only supposed to be a couple of shipments. They were buying a huge asset in the field, and in exchange, the influx of heroin into the United States would tick up by one undetectable notch. It came down to a cold, hard cost-benefit calculation.”

McKenna could tell that Susan was forcing herself to slow down. She could almost hear Mercado’s coaching during the warm-up session.
You’re talking to someone who doesn’t know the background. Explain every last detail.

“I asked him why the military, of all organizations, couldn’t bring the shipment into the country on its own terms, with no inspection whatsoever. But this was quasi–off the books. Authorized and yet not. They trusted my father, and therefore they trusted me. They were funneling the job through my father’s firm in order to disclaim responsibility if something went wrong. Because I was his daughter, and because I had networks in the city, they thought I was the perfect contact person within the border. This was a concrete way to save the lives of American soldiers. I know it sounds impossible now, but this was 2003—support the troops, us against them, remember the towers. I’ll admit it, I didn’t want to go to Iraq. This was my out. And I found a way to justify it—I felt for the soldiers who were over there, especially the ones in Afghanistan who had been left while we pursued a different agenda in another country. This was a way to increase their safety.”

Adam had played her.

Susan set out the contours of the plan. The truncated cargo inspection program. A cop who needed immigration help for his new family.

“That was the hardest part to justify to myself—involving Officer Macklin. But I really did believe we were saving American lives. And just like I was getting something personally from the deal—freedom to walk away from the army—I believed, because Adam told me, that Macklin was securing citizenship for his wife and son. I realize in hindsight that Adam had no way to help Macklin. He was simply playing the odds that immigration would never come after the wife of a cop or a boy who was brought to the United States at five years old.”

Susan’s gaze appeared to shift in the direction of the one-way glass. “Ultimately, though, Macklin was my best asset for accomplishing the mission.”

She was looking at the glass because she knew McKenna would get the message. Macklin had been the “best” asset but not the only one. Patrick, after all, was the one to mention cargo inspection to Susan. If the appeal to save soldiers’ lives in exchange for a shipment or two of heroin had worked with Susan, it might have worked with Patrick, too. Yet Susan had left him out of it. Or at least she had until last week.

“Then the night of the container inspection,” Susan continued, “something happened. I was at the end of the docks, watching through binoculars. There was a container filled with heroin. Some men—I don’t know who they were—were unloading it into a truck. Officer Macklin spotted two individuals nearby and approached: Marcus Jones and Pamela Morris. He told me later he thought Jones was reaching for a gun, but he was probably reaching for ID, and Macklin was nervous. Jumpy. It was my fault, because I was the one who pulled him into something that had nothing to do with him. He panicked and shot them both. I rushed to the scene, but it was too late. They were both dead.”

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

T
he 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.

I
n 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.

G
eneral 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.