Authors: Alafair Burke
Long Gone (22 page)
A
lice rose from damp moss beneath a towering mulberry tree, trying to shake the dirt from her ruffled skirt. She heard footsteps approaching.
“She went that way!”
It was a man’s voice. Somehow she knew he was looking for her, and that she did not want to be found. She ran through the woods in red patent saddle shoes, watching the ground beneath her, aiming for flat patches of soil between rocks and entangled roots. She saw a spot of light up ahead in the clearing.
When she emerged from the trees, she recognized the backyard of her family’s home in Bedford. The landscaped grass. Two hammocks beneath the willow tree. The swimming pool they rarely used.
She slid open the glass door on the deck and stepped inside the house. She felt taller now. Her saddle shoes and ruffled skirt had been replaced by her current-day blue jeans and all-weather boots.
“Mom? Papa? Ben?”
The kitchen was as she remembered it from her childhood: walnut cabinets, burgundy wallpaper, brass fixtures. She turned the corner expecting to find the living room, but instead she was on the set of
Life with Dad
. It was the pilot episode. She saw a younger version of herself on the sofa in a three-sided living room. The saddle shoes and ruffles were back.
The man who played her father delivered the setup line: “Don’t look at me. My idea of the four food groups are spaghetti, ice cream, beef jerky, and beer.” The set fell silent. “Your line, Alice.”
She wanted to whisper to her younger self:
That’s what you get when your mom is a dad
.
Then the line was delivered. A studio audience she couldn’t see laughed, as required. Even at ten years old, she had known the line wasn’t funny. She had known the laughter was feigned.
She heard the back door slide open behind her and moved farther into the house for a place to hide. She ran up the stairs, into her father’s study, and slipped behind the steel gray brocade curtains. She peeked out at the decor that had caused such a ruckus between her parents.
It’s my office, Rose. It is my one private space. Why can’t I keep it the way I like it?
For Christ’s sake, it looks like a French whorehouse vomited on a Duran Duran video.
Her mother had insisted that her father get rid of the outdated wood paneling and shag carpet, replacing it with a black, white, and red color palette, glass and steel furniture, and Patrick Nagel paintings that would appear dated within a couple of years.
For some reason, Alice could not stop staring at the room. The black-and-white-striped wallpaper that her father had called schizophrenia-inducing. The sofa in the center of the room, whose red velvet grain she had run her fingers across so deliberately that day the police had come asking questions about Ben’s keg party.
Something about that room felt so familiar. She’d known it in her childhood, of course. Standing there behind the curtains, she could even smell the remnants of her father’s herbal cigarettes—the ones he’d turned to for years until he’d weaned himself for good when Alice was in college. But something about the room felt more current. She didn’t want to stop looking at it. She wanted to stay there and remember.
But she heard the footsteps and accompanying voices headed her way. Their steps were deliberate now. In sync with one another. Step. Step. Step. Step. She heard a bell that rang with each approaching stride. Step/ring. Step/ring. The door opened, and she tried to make herself smaller behind her father’s curtains. She took a deep breath and found comfort in the smell of her father’s exhaled smoke.
The footsteps stopped, but the chime of the bells continued and became more aggressive and shrill. No longer a ring, but a buzz. Buzz. Buzz. Buzz.
Her eyes darted open to blackness, near total but for the digital display of her bedside clock and a sliver of light penetrating the crack in her curtains. She heard an urgent buzzing from her security system. Some gin-brined idiot on St. Mark’s was leaning on the outside doorbell again, one of the many downsides to living in the middle of Manhattan’s go-to neighborhood for early-twenty-something binge drinking.
She closed her eyes again and willed the noise to stop. It did not.
The parquet floor felt cold beneath her bare feet as she padded to the front door and held down the intercom button. “You’re leaning on a stranger’s doorbell, asshole. Go. Home.”
She prepared herself for one of the usual retorts. “Bitch” was most common. Occasionally she got an actual apology. More than a few times she’d been invited to join the drunk for one last round. But tonight’s visitor was not the usual fare.
“It’s Jeff. Let me up.”
She had just managed to tie her robe by the time he burst through the door she had left cracked open. She smelled alcohol as he slipped past her.
“It’s almost one in the morning.”
“I’ve been trying to call you.”
“It’s sleeping time.” After one too many failed calls to Ben, she had decided that an Ambien sounded pretty good. Off went the ringer on her home phone, and off went the cell. She noticed the message light blinking on her answering machine on the kitchen counter. “What’s going on?”
“Have you heard anything further from the police?”
“No. I was following your advice not to talk to them anymore, and they haven’t tried to contact me anyway.” She had half expected another visit from the detectives after she filed the report about the green Toyota, but the rest of the day had been uneventful.
“I hate to tell you this, but I think things are about to get worse.”
“I don’t think that’s possible.”
“Your gloves. Please tell me you have those gloves you love so much. The ones with the fur inside of them that you pretend is fake.”
“Faux faux fur?”
“Yes. Please tell me you have those. Physically. In your possession.”
“No. They went missing last week. I bought another pair but the fur’s not the same—”
“The police have them, Alice. Or I assume they do. They showed me a picture of those gloves inside a plastic bag and asked me if you owned a pair like that.”
“You’re sure they’re mine?”
“I wasn’t until you just told me yours are missing. But, yeah, they’ve got that same pattern on them and everything.”
“Crocodile-embossed,” she muttered. “The police went to your apartment at one in the morning to ask you about my gloves?” She knew that what he was telling her was important, but she still felt groggy from sleep. She still pictured herself standing in her father’s office, staring at the gaudy wallpaper.
“He showed up at a bar, actually. He said his name was Danes?” She nodded. “I assume he followed me to try to catch me off guard. Nothing like having a cop show up at your table at Temple Bar.”
She knew the place. It had been one of their favorites when they first got together. It was the kind of place that people chose for dates.
“So did it work?”
“What do you mean?”
“Did Danes catch you off guard?”
“No. That’s why I’m here. I told them I’d had conversations with you in a legal capacity and therefore would not be discussing anything with them. But it’s not going to be that hard for them to prove those gloves are yours. And if they’re asking around about those gloves, it’s for a reason. They must have Drew’s blood on them or something.”
“You know what they say: ‘If the glove doesn’t fit, you must acquit
.
’”
“What is wrong with you, Alice? This isn’t funny.”
“At this point, it’s actually pretty fucking hilarious. Of course they have my gloves. They were already missing by the time I found Drew’s body, but you know what? I’m sure you’re right. They’ve probably got Drew’s blood on them—plenty of his DNA, and my DNA, and every other piece of evidence you could possibly imagine. Because that’s how this is going to play out. Whoever did this to me, did it with absolute perfection. And I have no idea who did it. Or why. Or what any of it has to do with me.”
“You don’t have to go through this alone.” He placed his hand on her wrist, but she pulled away.
“Of course I’m alone. You’ve been a good friend, but you know, this isn’t happening to you. You’re at fucking Temple Bar drinking champagne with a date.”
He looked at the floor and swallowed.
“I’m sorry. I’m tired, and I’m scared, and I’m being a total bitch. Thanks for not digging my hole any deeper with the police.” She walked to the front door and opened it. He pushed it shut.
“I didn’t like being there with someone else.”
“Where?”
“At Temple Bar. She was the one who suggested it. I thought I could be there and not think about you. I was wrong.”
She felt a tear tickling her cheek, and didn’t know whether it was there because of the stress of her current predicament or the memory of what her life had once been—her life with Jeff and the one she’d thought they’d always have together. He stepped toward her and ran his fingers through her hair. Placed a palm against the nape of her neck. It felt so familiar. They’d done this hundreds of times before. This part had never been their problem. He would pull her face toward his. He would kiss her lips, gently at first and then not so gently. He would know exactly where to place his hands on her body. The exact moment to lead her to the bedroom.
And she let it all happen.
For the first time in a miserable week, Alice felt a smile on her face when she woke up. Jeff rustled the curtains trying to pull his clothes on in the dark.
“Love ’em and leave ’em, huh?”
“I’ve got a deposition in an hour. I was trying not to wake you.”
She felt warm beneath the comforter and pushed the covers down to her waistline. She looked up at him, squinting to protect herself from the sunlight penetrating the parted curtains.
“That is so unfair.”
“What? I’m just lying here.”
That was apparently all it took to persuade him to fall back into bed with her. A few seconds later, however, Jeff suddenly sat up in bed to face her.
“I feel like I need to apologize to you for this.”
“What are you talking about?” She tugged at his elbow, trying to nudge him back to horizontal.
“I feel like I took advantage of you when you’re probably in a fragile place.”
“Fragile? Did you really just call me fragile?”
“No, because I have absolutely no desire to have my ass kicked. But I did wake up wondering if last night—after everything that has been happening to you this week—was the best time for, you know,
us
.”
“I’m a grown-up, Jeff. I make my own decisions. And, in case you couldn’t tell, I was definitely a willing participant in last night’s activities.”
“I guess I’m just surprised that you’re willing to fall back into the same pattern that, at least at one point, made you so unhappy. I remember you telling me how unhappy you were, and that’s not what I want, Alice. It’s why I’ve tried—to the point of misery, even—to find another woman I can care about half as much as you.”
She pulled the covers back up to her shoulders. “Not the best time to talk to me about other women.”
“My point was that nothing ever works with anyone else, and it’s because you and I always fall back into the same patterns.”
“You really think it’s the same this time?”
“Isn’t it always with us? We’ve been doing this for years. And it never seems to be enough for one of us, so we call it quits. But then we see each other as friends, and it can never stay just-friends. And then we’re back to being us again.”
“It’s always been enough for me, Jeff. In light of what I’ve learned about my parents’ marriage in the past year, maybe I just wasn’t trained to dream of the traditional wedding package and the kids in the yard with a picket fence. We’ve always been good friends. And there’s always been love between us, no matter what phase of our continuing cycles we’re in. That’s enough for me. You’re the one who needs something I can’t give you, and I don’t want to keep you from having everything you want: a woman who can be mother to your children and a family you can take care of for life. I have never wanted to stand in the way of that.”
“Or maybe you were so convinced that I wanted all of that stuff that you pushed me away.” She saw his eyes move to the clock on the nightstand. “I hate that I have to leave right now.”
“We’ll talk after your deposition. And only if you think we need to talk. Really, Jeff, I woke up just now feeling happy, despite all that’s been heaped on me the past few days. You didn’t take advantage of me. And I don’t think there’s a problem here.”
“I’ll call you when I free up. I want to see you tonight, okay?”
“Of course.”
“And, just so you know? Right now? Looking at you and having been with you this week while all this hell has been breaking loose? I don’t know why I ever thought there was something else out there for me to find.”
T
he next time she opened her eyes, she felt groggy. She reached for the clock. It was almost noon. She didn’t know if it was the sleeping pill, the sex, or an intense disaffection for her current reality that kept her in bed, but she decided in that moment that if she could stay wrapped in those blankets, with her head on that pillow, for the remainder of her life, that would be her preference.
The sound of her apartment buzzer pulled her from the fantasy of an eternal bed rest.
“Hello?”
“Let me in. Hurry.”
She buzzed the security entrance and cracked open the apartment door, feeling a pang of guilt for being disappointed that it was Lily and not Jeff. She was scooping coffee grounds into a filter when she heard Lily’s footsteps coming hard and fast up the hallway stairs. She sprang into the apartment and bolted the door behind her.
“I’m getting a late start, but I’ll have coffee to offer in a sec. Don’t freak out, but last night—”
“Shit, Alice, I am so sorry. We’ve got to do something.”
She knew immediately, from one look at Lily’s panicked expression. With that one look, she realized how stupid she had been to allow a moment with Jeff to escalate into an escape from reality. Jeff had come to her apartment in the middle of the night for a reason, and it had nothing to do with lost memories at Temple Bar or the ease with which the two of them could lose themselves in each other.
It’s not going to be that hard for them to prove those gloves are yours.
“The police questioned you, didn’t they?”
Lily nodded. She looked like she might cry. “Fuck, I’m so sorry. They came to my office. And I freaked. I just answered. I didn’t see how it could possibly matter. But then I realized: why the fuck would they be asking me about your gloves unless it mattered? And I tried calling you, but your phone’s off.” The words were spilling out of her. “And now they’re here.”
“What do you mean, they’re here?”
“You weren’t answering your phone, so I got down here as fast as I could to try to tell you. But there’s a bunch of police cars downstairs, Alice. I saw them watching me when I was at the door. They were getting out of their cars when I walked in. I think—Fuck, Alice, I think they’re here to arrest you.”
Alice would subsequently try to remember her immediate reaction, but memory is a funny thing. It’s as if those first forty-five seconds were forever lost. She knew she was muttering, “Oh my God,” more than could ever be helpful. She vaguely recalled looking down to see what she was wearing and wondering how quickly she could change into real clothes.
But whatever mess was unfolding in her mind was instantly clarified when Lily grabbed her by the shoulders. “Alice, you need to get out of here.”
She processed what Lily was telling her. Those gloves must have been the piece of rock-solid evidence they’d been waiting for, the thing that sealed those suspicions they’d formed about her on the first day. They were here to take her away. She heard Lily’s words again, this time louder. “Get out of here. They don’t know for sure you’re home. Go out the freight entrance.”
“I can’t. I mean, I should call my lawyer. It’s going to make me look guilty.”
“They’re not here yet. Just leave before they get here. There’s no law that says you have to be home. I’ll tell them a neighbor buzzed me in, and you weren’t actually here. Just go. Come on, get moving.”
Alice remembered what Cronin had said to her about clients who could make another life for themselves elsewhere. A passport, some money, and a private jet, he’d said. She had access to all of that. Her father could help her. If it really came to that. If it was necessary. But she wouldn’t have the option once they took her into custody.
She was moving faster than she could think. She pulled on a pair of jeans and a warm sweater. She grabbed her passport from her jewelry box. Pulled her gym bag, already stocked with basic necessities, from the front closet. Stuffed her laptop in her purse. She started to reach for her bright blue coat when she stopped herself, opting instead for the nondescript black trench she’d stopped wearing a couple of years ago.
“Are they in the building?” she asked, tugging on the coat.
“I don’t think so.” Lily cracked open the apartment door. “Okay, it’s safe. You need to hurry.”
She grabbed Lily and kissed her hard on the cheek before making her way to the freight elevator. As she slipped out of the delivery entrance at the back of the building on Ninth Street, she was aware of the sound of sirens in the distance. At least, she hoped they were in the distance.
And she wondered whether she would ever get her life back.