Long Gone (31 page)
Authors: Alafair Burke
A
lice was panting by the time she reached her turnoff from Council Crest Drive. The view from the backside of her rental house had made the west hills irresistible, but she had not taken into account the labor that would be required for even a twenty-minute jog in this neighborhood. She slowed to a leisurely walk, allowing her heart rate to return to normal and the breeze to dry the thin layer of perspiration around her neck.
Alice had always heard that the Pacific Northwest was the perfect place to spend a summer, but now she knew firsthand. She would never have dreamed of running outdoors in steamy New York City in August, but even uphill in Portland, Oregon, she had barely broken a sweat.
She pulled her mail from the curbside box. A.J. Benjamin. She’d changed her name six weeks ago but was still getting used to it. A.J. for her initials, Alice Janine. And of course Benjamin. A.J. Benjamin seemed like she’d be a brunette, so it was back to the Temptation Brown in a bottle. At least for now. Memories were short, though. In another year or two, when people had forgotten about that time a girl who looked just like her was in the news, she could go back to her natural hue. Maybe she’d even go back to the name Alice Humphrey. Until then, a name was just a name, as interchangeable as her hair color.
It was Tuesday, and she had just enjoyed an afternoon jog. In New York City, Alice had only been able to exercise in the middle of the day when she was unemployed. In Portland, she was now a once-a-week telecommuter. No pencil skirts and tailored blouses for this woman, at least not on Tuesdays. She ran her fingers across her laptop’s touchpad, bringing the screen back to life, and carried the computer out to the canvas chair she’d bought for her deck. Voilà, she was at work!
For the seventh time, she checked the flyer she had designed for errors. The Portland Art Museum’s distribution list was only a tiny percentage of the Met’s, and this show—an overview of Edward Hopper’s images of Portland—would not even warrant its own publicity campaign back in the city. But it would be one of Portland’s most attended exhibits of the year. She wanted the flyer to be perfect.
When she was absolutely certain she was satisfied, she e-mailed the file to her boss, reminding herself to sign the message A.J.
She found a message from her father waiting in her in-box.
She was still trying to convince him that the name change had not been a rejection of him. A.J. Benjamin on the West Coast was the fresh start she needed. Ironically, she actually spoke to her parents more now than she had when they’d lived in the same city. Maybe it was because they all knew they had to make an effort.
“Alice”—A.J. was only for people in her new life—“I thought this might interest you.”
It was a link to a wedding announcement from last weekend’s
New York Times
. Joann Stevenson to Jason Morhart. She was a medical billing technician. He was a police detective in Dover, New Jersey. These weren’t the kinds of top-tier pedigrees usually found in the Sunday Styles section, but no couple could top the poignancy of their backstory—falling in love as he risked his life investigating the tragic death of the bride’s daughter.
“Get this,” her father added. “Ron Howard’s trying to buy movie rights. Love, Dad.”
Her instant message account was blinking on-screen, one of the costs of telecommuting. But this message wasn’t from one of her coworkers at the museum. It was from Hank Beckman. His termination from the bureau was official. Brooklyn was a little pricey for the proportion of his pension he’d been able to salvage, but a friend had suggested Portland as a nice compromise between the big city and the Montana town where he’d been raised. He was thinking of flying out next week to check it out.
“A ‘friend’ suggested this, huh?” She hit the send key.
“Maybe you should’ve been the FBI agent.”
They had seen each other a few times before she’d been offered the job in Portland. But a few get-togethers that weren’t even officially dates could not be the reason she turned her back on the opportunity for a new life she so desperately needed.
“I’ll pick you up at the airport.” Send.
She typed the next sentence and reread it twice: “I have a guest room. It’s yours if you want it.” Send.
She tapped an impatient fingernail against the teak arm of her chair, waiting for his reply. “Sounds great. Thanks.”
Maybe the fresh start didn’t need to be entirely new. She knew she still needed to work through the lessons gleaned in the past year. Her understanding of family had been shaken. When her brother had learned what he thought was the truth about their father and that night in Bedford, he’d fallen back into addiction rather than turn to her. Now Ben was gone. So was the half sister she’d never even known she had. Art was still fighting the charges against him, but would likely die in prison. She tried not to feel sorry for the man who had raped Christie Kinley, and taken the life of his own daughter. But then she’d remember that Mia was not Art’s only daughter. No, she did not feel sorry for Art, but she might never be able to accept that her biological father was capable of the sins Arthur Cronin had committed.
And the only father she had ever known—having found forgiveness from his wife for so many transgressions—was still finding it in himself to forgive hers. But, no matter what DNA tests had to say about it, Frank Humphrey was still her father. She just had to find a way to convince him of that.
Those months when she had been unemployed, when she had wanted so desperately to be free of her family, she had made herself miserable. She wanted a job. She wanted her own money. She wanted a man. She spent every second of every hour of every day craving what she did not have. Wanting states of being she could not even identify. Wanting
something.
Something
else.
Then two police officers showed up at her apartment with a photograph. That single image had been a wake-up call. In that singular moment, she had realized how much there was to appreciate in simplicity. Clean air. This view of Mount Hood. A pretty decent job in a nice place with good people, with one day a week when she could work on this deck in her jogging togs. Parents who loved her. A couple of new friends in Portland. Maybe another to add to the list if Beckman chose to move.
Nothing could be more than this.
A Special Note of Thanks to My Readers
O
nce again, I want to thank my readers, without whom I would not have the privilege of being a published writer. Were it not for you, I might wake up one morning to find myself out of work like Alice Humphrey (albeit hopefully without the dead bodies and whatnot). Thank you for continuing to read and to support my work.
I’ve gotten to know many of my readers through my Web site, Facebook, and Twitter. I’m so appreciative of the community we have built online and thank Holden Richards at Kitchen Media and Catherine Cairns of Cairns Designs for their technical assistance. If you read my books and haven’t yet connected to this community, I hope you’ll do so.
Some readers have even accepted my ongoing invitation to serve as online kitchen cabinet, helping me think through decisions like
Long Gone
’s title and the always-stressful selection of a new author headshot. For their helpful (and fun) kitchen-cabinet comments during the writing of
Long Gone,
I thank the following readers: Alice Jackson, Alison Janssen, Alromaithi Mohammed, Amber McDonald, Amber York, Anastacia Kipp, Andrea Wilson, Andy Gilham, Angie Thomas-Davis, Ann Turner, Anne Madison, Anthony N. Smith, April Smith, Ashton Laurent, Aude Dupré de Boulois, Audrey Pink, Barb Juarez, Barb Mullen Gasparac, Barbara Bryan, Barbara Detwiler, Barbara Pease Claypool, Barbara Theroux, Barbara Vink, B. C. Creighton, Becky Cemper, Becky Doshier Gallimore, Becky Morganstern, Bert Shapiro, Beth Stack, Bev Murphree, Beverly Bryan, Beverly Vick, Bill Horn, Bill Strider, Bill Tipping, Billie Ruth Walker, Billy Bob Billy, Bob Campbell, Bonnie D. 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McIntyre, Craig Pittman, Curtis Ensler, Cyndi Sieber, Cynthia Poley Parran, Dani Leonor, Danny Nichols, Daphne Anne Humphrey, Darcy Lafferty Justice, Daryl McGrath, Dave Davis, David Bell, David Booker, David Hale Smith, David Hansard, David MacClure Conrad, David Maidstone, David Pinter, Dawn Lattimore, Deb Gravette Threadgill, Debbie Ballou Sladek, Deborah Burge, Debra Belmudes, Debra Manzella, Den Terwilliger, Dennis Leleux, Dennis Siler, Diana Bosley, Diana Taylor, Diane Griffiths, Diane Quilghini, Diane Simmons, Dianne Wisner, Dick Droese, Dodie Osbourne, Don Boynton, Don Nations, Donna Bagdasarian, Donna E. Stephenson, Donna Reed Enders, Douan Thomas, Dru Ann L Love, Dudley Forster, Dwayne K Workman, Dwight Lee Spencer, E.j. Copperman, Elaine Roberts Razo Videau, Elena Shapiro Wayne, Elizabeth A. Olesen, Elizabeth A. 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I apologize for omitting names of other kitchen-cabinet participants, as I surely have, but please do know how much I appreciate your ongoing online support between books. See you on the interwebs!