Long Gone (15 page)

Chapter Twenty-Nine

O
nly forty miles of road separated Dover, New Jersey, from New York City, but Morhart’s lifetime trips into the city probably still numbered in the single digits. He liked Central Park. The pizza. The lights at Christmas at Rockefeller Center. But, boy, you sure did pay a big price for those experiences. Simply put, this place had too much stuff in too small a space for his tastes. In Dover, you get outside of town and can look at miles of green hills and blue sky. He appreciated the open space. In New York, a person wasn’t in control of his own movement. Cars crept inch by inch around double-parked trucks. Pedestrians gazing up at skyscrapers and down at cell phones collided into each other like bumper cars. The ability to move was what made Morhart feel free.

Now he was one of thousands of other drivers fighting to squeeze through the light at Broadway and Houston. How-stin, they called it, just inviting out-of-towners to make the obvious mispronunciation so they could whisper about stupid tourists. He was tempted to trigger his dash lights to cut through traffic but didn’t want to find himself at odds with the infamously territorial NYPD.

When he heard a voice blasting from a bullhorn, he felt some of the stress leave his hands, still tight on the steering wheel. He couldn’t spot the protesters yet, but they were here.

He had found a 900 number for the Redemption of Christ Church online. The call cost his department a buck, but the prerecorded message had given him a line on George Hardy’s current location: “
We came to New York City to tackle the belly of temptation and sin. We started with peddlers of smut and the pornographers of children. Yesterday, we learned that the establishment in question had closed, proving we are on the side of righteousness. Today we will continue our work here in the name of our savior. The slope of sexuality created for our children is a slippery one, and the slide can sometimes begin with the so-called clothing that treats our young girls like objects of sexuality instead of vessels of Christ. We will converge upon Little Angels, a store that markets to our children clothing more suited for street corners than schools, at three p.m. If you are with us—even if you have not met us—if you love your daughters, and follow the word of our one savior, Jesus Christ, please join with us. We will expose Little Angels for the damage its business causes to the lives of young women. And we will continue to spread our message that each Christian is called and chosen in God to be a priest unto God, and to give of his time, strength, and material possessions to the service of the Lord. To donate to this cause, please ...”

Morhart did not make a donation, but did jot down the address of the church’s protest du jour.

He recognized the man with the bullhorn as Hardy himself from photographs on the Internet. Based on the patches of clothing barely covering the mannequins in the front window of Little Angels, Morhart had to admit the man had a point. A flash of his badge was enough for Hardy to hand his amplifier to one of his followers.

“Someone from your precinct’s already been around here with some ground rules. We’re following them to the letter, Officer.”

“This isn’t about your protests, Reverend.”

“Is this about the pornographer found dead in that smut palace over yonder? The Meatpacking District, they call it? Might as well call it the fudge-packing district, you ask me. I done already talked to some of yours about that one, too.”

“This is about something else entirely.”

“Well, my word, son. How many of this city’s problems can y’all lay at our feet? Don’t you have about eight million other folks to talk to?”

“I need to talk to you about Becca Stevenson.”

A darkness fell across Hardy’s face. The exaggerated folksiness was gone from his voice when he finally spoke. “Now is that right?”

“Are you really going to force me to play this game, Reverend? I know Becca was your daughter. I know you gave her a cell phone. And I know you established contact with her behind her mother’s back and against her mother’s wishes.”

“Her
mother
had no business denying a man the right to father his own blood. Her
mother
had no right to give that girl her own last name, like some bastard child. Her
mother
—her mother’s a harlot and a liar.”

Joann had already filled Morhart in on the background. When she was twenty-one years old, a few years out of high school in Oklahoma, she had gotten pregnant by an out-of-work married man who started out as a daytime drinking buddy at the local watering hole and had become her lover. Would he offer to leave the wife he’d never managed to impregnate? Offer to pay child support in exchange for her silence? When she told Hardy about the pregnancy, she hadn’t known what to expect.

What she never anticipated, though, was the man’s anger. No, not mere anger. As Joann had conveyed it to him—all these years later—Morhart could tell that she had been exposed to the humiliating scorn and hatred of the first man whom she had trusted and loved. Meeting that man now, Morhart could imagine the words Hardy would have used.
Seductress. Beguiler. Trouble. Couldn’t keep your legs shut even with a married man. How do I even know it’s mine with a loose woman like you?

The anger in Hardy’s whisper was fierce. “She told me she killed it. Is there anything worse than that?”

Rather than forever entangle her and her daughter’s lives with Hardy, Joann had tried to create a new life on her own. She saw Hardy one last time before leaving Oklahoma. She told him she had terminated the pregnancy. She said she would no longer continue her relationship with the still-married Hardy. She moved north to Jersey and enrolled in classes at the technical college while working full-time. She assumed that Hardy would go on with his life, with the same enabling wife, the same bar stool, and a new woman to keep him company.

But apparently that hadn’t happened.

“Linda and I were almost fifty when I knew Joann.”

“Joann was young enough to be your daughter.”

“I wasn’t the same man then. I changed. Linda never could give me a child. She blamed it on me. Said I wasn’t good at much of anything, not even spreading my seed. I finally told her I knew she was the one who was barren. I knew I was capable of fathering a child. But that, that
woman
—I know, I wasn’t kind to her when she came to me with news of the baby. But she killed our child. Murdered it. Or so I thought. I couldn’t get past that. And Linda couldn’t get past the infidelities I eventually confessed once I turned to Jesus Christ for forgiveness.”

Morhart didn’t want to hear Hardy’s self-serving account of the distant past. He didn’t want to understand his side of an ancient story.

“How did you find out about Becca?”

“I went looking for Joann. I wanted her to know that her decision ultimately led me to a path of salvation and redemption. I wanted her to know the love and strength and spiritual maturity that can be found only through the one true God who has revealed Himself as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.”

“So you tracked her down.”

“Nineteen ninety-nine for a person search on the Internet with a full name and date of birth. Joann’s birthday was Saint Patrick’s Day. Easy to remember. Turns out she had a baby girl about six and a half months after she left Oklahoma. I didn’t go to college, but I’m smart enough to add two and two.”

“Why didn’t you go to Joann and ask to have a relationship with your daughter?”

“After what she done, would you
ask
? Would you
beg
to enjoy what was yours by both man’s and God’s law? If so, I feel sorry for you as a man.”

“So, what? You just showed up one day and surprised a fifteen-year-old girl? ‘Hi, dear. Daddy’s here’?”

“I e-mailed her, actually. She could have gone to her mother if she’d wanted, of course. Instead, she asked to meet me.”

“I’m sure you tried your best not to disparage the choices her mother made as a younger woman.”

“I laid out the truth. That I was told she was dead. That I was denied any choice for myself about a relationship with her. That her mother lied to both of us. Her mother told her I was a loser and a flake who didn’t want anything to do with either of them.”

Was it a lie if it had been the truth fifteen years earlier? Joann was so proud of what she thought was her close relationship with her daughter.
Not just mother and daughter
, she had told him:
Best friends.
Morhart could only imagine the pain Becca would have experienced learning, from the undoubtedly harsh words of this man, that her mother and friend had denied her the full story about her very existence.

“You’re telling me all of this about yourself, sir, but I can’t help but notice you haven’t asked yet why I’m asking so many questions about your daughter.”

“I don’t figure it’s my place to question the authority of a police officer.”

“I didn’t invite you to challenge my authority. I’d think that a father who cared enough about his daughter to track her down halfway across the country might be alarmed when a police officer came around asking questions about her.”

“‘Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in and adhere to and trust in and rely on God; believe in and adhere to and trust in and rely also on Me.’ John 14:1.”

“What exactly do you mean to say to me, sir?”

Hardy smiled at him as if he were a patient man waiting for a child to tie a shoe. “I no longer try to anticipate obstacles.”

“When was the last time you spoke to Becca?”

“I’m not entirely certain.”

“Take a guess.”

“Maybe a week ago?”

“You met with her?”

“I spoke with her.”

“You suddenly seem very careful about your words, sir. Did you speak with her face-to-face? On the phone? E-mail?”

“By phone.”

“The phone you gave her so Joann wouldn’t know you had forged a relationship with her daughter?”

“
Our
daughter. That’s right.”

“I assume you’re aware that your daughter has been reported missing.”

Morhart saw the man’s eyes shift up, then left to right, as if he were reading to himself mentally. “I saw the story in the newspaper yesterday.”

“And you didn’t think your recent reemergence was sufficiently relevant to warrant a phone call to the police?”

“I have been in contact with Becca for two months, so your attribution of cause and effect does not strike me as particularly rational. I have been worried about Becca, certainly. I have called her number to no avail. And I have not stopped praying for her. But, no, I did not see how a phone call to the police could help the situation. It would only ensure that her mother would prevent Becca from contacting me once she returns.”

“You sound confident that she’ll return.”

“‘Cast your burden on the Lord and He will sustain you; He will never allow the consistently righteous to be moved.’ Psalm 55: 22.”

“And what would the Lord say about the fact that a man was murdered yesterday at a place of business you just happened to be protesting?”

“The police have already questioned me about that. I assured them that my people and I were uninvolved. On the other hand, ‘A man who stiffens his neck after many rebukes will suddenly be destroyed—without remedy.’ Proverbs 29:1.”

“So the man deserved it, is what you’re saying?”

There was that patient smile again.

“One more question before you go back to saving the world, Reverend. Those city police who talked to you about the murder—did you happen to tell them your daughter was missing?”

“I surely don’t see the connection, Detective.”

Back in his truck, Morhart cranked the heater before dialing the NYPD, asking to speak to the detective assigned to the homicide at the Highline Gallery the previous morning. Life definitely was different in the big city. Turns out the case was assigned to two detectives: John Shannon and Willie Danes, out of the Thirteenth Precinct.

“You spent the afternoon with the reverend, huh? He quote you any scripture?”

Willie Danes was a big man with big hands, a big head, and a roll of neck fat above his collar. He was eyeing the half-eaten pastrami sandwich on his desktop, so Morhart knew he should make his visit short.

“I got more preaching on a SoHo sidewalk today than I’ve had the last three Christmases put together.” He reminded Danes again why he had called. “I don’t want to step on any toes, but it seems like when one man’s name comes up in two different criminal investigations, we ought to at least exchange information.”

“Makes sense to me. We looked at Hardy right away. Trouble is, we got a street-level security camera showing Hardy walking into the rathole he’s staying at in Chinatown around ten o’clock Wednesday night and not coming out again until nine the next morning. The ME says our vic died around six or seven a.m. Hardy’s in the clear.”

“I keep coming back to the fact that we’ve got one guy linking my missing girl to your dead body, both events going down within a few days of each other.”

“Some people have shitty luck.”

“I read that Hardy’s church was protesting the gallery over some naked pictures?”

“The stuff seemed pretty tame by today’s standards, but yeah, there was some S&M imagery, things a guy like Hardy would find offensive. It wouldn’t have been much of a story, except Hardy’s people claimed underage models were used in the photographs. A claim like that should have been easy for the gallery to clear up, but all they offered was radio silence. All of a sudden, Hardy’s got a media hit on his hands, then we’ve got a dead body.”

“What age kids?”

“Can’t say for sure it was a kid at all, but postpuberty for sure. The artist’s Web site has been pulled down. Tell you the truth, we can’t even confirm the artist ever existed. Why?”

“Becca, my missing girl? She was getting hassled by some of the popular kids at school recently about some naked pictures of herself.”

“Sexting, huh? I tell you, as the father of two girls, that shit makes me wish I’d had sons. So you’re telling me that your case and my case not only have George Hardy connecting them, but now we’ve got this photograph angle, as well?”