Long Gone (9 page)
Authors: Alafair Burke
H
er apartment had to be cold—it always was in the winter, thanks to the lousy furnace and cheap windows—but Alice woke up with the covers kicked from her body and a thin sheen of perspiration coating her skin. She was thankful to be one of those people who could never truly remember her dreams. Although the details of last night’s sleep were fuzzy, they’d left behind a shadow of anxiety still lingering in her core.
Even as she shuffled into the shower, images from her sleep flashed through her mind. Hans Schuler’s photographs. The protesters. Those ugly words plastered onto their signs. News cameras. Standing at a podium before an auditorium full of reporters. The white lights of flashbulbs blinding her. A hush covering the room as she began to speak. Looking down at her notes to find nothing but blank paper. A thin, balding man chasing her. In her dream, she imagined he was Hans Schuler. Or maybe he was the Reverend George Harvey. Or perhaps he was no one—just a physical representation of the horrible feeling she carried in her subconscious about yesterday’s protest at the gallery.
She held her head beneath the spray of hot water, as if she could literally wash away the thoughts from her mind and send them spiraling down the drain.
Even after the long shower, she had too much time on her hands before her meet-up with Drew. She used the extra minutes to check the online situation.
She entered “Highline Gallery Hans Schuler” into her search engine and hit enter. As the computer did its thinking, she hoped against hope that she would find no new results since the previous night.
No such luck. As she’d suspected, the story had gone viral. What started as a local New York story had been picked up on the wires, was spreading blog to blog, and was now being “retweeted” across the Web with irreverent headlines like “Hans Smut-ler” and “New York Art Show: Mainstream Radicalism or Old School Porn?”
On the
Daily News
Web site, she was happy to see that the story of a missing girl in Dover, New Jersey, had replaced the gallery for top billing. No surprise. Alabaster skin, full lips, a few freckles for good measure. Becca Stevenson’s photo beneath a banner declaration—
missing
—made good newspaper copy. Alice felt a pang of guilt as she registered her hope that the media vultures would latch on to the missing girl story instead of her own saga.
She moved her cursor back to the search window. This time, she searched for her own name, plus the words “Highline Gallery.” Maybe Channel 7 would be the only outlet to play up her family background.
Despite her hopes, she found story after story identifying the gallery’s manager as the daughter of Frank Humphrey and Rose Sampson. Almost all of them alluded to the controversies her father had created with his own work. Most also mentioned his recently exposed infidelities—the “casting couch” allegations, the scandalous ages of the women involved. Then she reached a news update that she found herself rereading.
Alice Humphrey is only the latest member of her family to find herself at the center of controversy. In addition to her father’s reported extramarital and perhaps even coerced sexual activity going back decades, her brother, Ben, was arrested last weekend for drug possession. According to two separate NYPD sources, Ben Humphrey, 41, was arrested after police found marijuana in his possession while investigating a noise complaint outside of a West Village bar.
She remembered Ben’s unexplained absence from the gallery opening. Recalled her parents’ anxious expressions, wondering whether he was back to his old ways.
She quickly pulled up his number on her cell, but heard only his familiar outgoing message: “This is Ben. You know the drill.” Even when he was clean, Ben was not the type to answer a phone this early in the morning.
As she disconnected the call, she caught the time displayed on the screen: 6:34. Shit. Time to meet Drew. Her brother’s problems would have to wait.
She found herself working the metal of the gallery key between her bare fingers inside her coat pocket like a worry stone. If it weren’t for those ridiculous protesters, she would have had time yesterday to pick up a new pair of gloves to replace the ones that were still missing. One more reason to hate the fuckers.
Alice wasn’t proud of this aspect of her personality, the complete inability to harness free-floating anxieties. She was the kind of person who could not sit still once she realized an unsent piece of mail still lingered on her desk, who would wake in the middle of the night with a recollection of an unreturned phone call.
Her relationship with stress was one of the reasons she had never felt at ease with the acting career her mother had so desperately sought for her. The standing around, biding time before the next scene. Wondering if the director was going to alter the dialogue or the order of filming. Waiting to know whether the powers that be would pick up the pilot or approve the dailies. The constant uncertainty had left her feeling unfocused and insecure, never able to find peace within herself.
The irony that she had chosen a safer path only to find herself out of work for nearly a year was not lost on her. Now she had finally landed not only a job, but a fabulous one at that, and once again she found herself trying to anticipate what would happen next.
As she continued to rub that key between her fingers, she resolved that her involvement in this nightmare would end today. She would not spend another night as she had the last, tossing and turning in bed while those awful images rushed through her mind. She would take control of this situation, or at least her role in it. She was through with Drew’s middleman smokescreen. She would simply refuse to end this morning’s meeting until he put her in direct contact with Schuler. And if he couldn’t connect her to Schuler, she’d insist on speaking with the gallery’s owner. And if all else failed, she would quit. She’d go back to being jobless. She’d break down and ask her parents to help, if it became necessary.
But no matter what happened, her anxiety about those photographs would be assuaged. Hopefully, it would be a simple matter of verifying the model’s age and identity. A quickie press release, and all would be forgotten. And if the verification didn’t come, she’d take the omission as a sign that the Reverend Harvey might actually be onto something, and she would walk away. Regardless, she would no longer be part of this story by the time the day ended.
She found comfort in that knowledge. She’d found a small element of control.
As she approached the gallery, she spotted brown butcher paper lining the previously unobstructed glass. Drew had been quite the busy bee this morning. She let out a frustrated sigh. She was as upset about the protesters’ allegations as anyone, but covering the windows like some seedy peep-show emporium was a little over the top. Knowing—okay, not knowing at all—but based on her assumptions about Hans Schuler, she wondered if this was the artist’s way of generating even more controversy, along with the attendant publicity.
The security gate was unrolled over the glass entrance, but when she bent down to unlock it, she found it unsecured. Drew must have pulled it down behind him. She rolled the gate open and found the front door also unlocked. She pushed it open, ready to find Drew waiting for her at the desk. Instead, the lights were off. The space black.
“Drew?”
He must have stepped out for coffee. If she was going to continue to work here, she’d have to talk to him about leaving the place unattended, even at this early hour.
She made her way through the gallery space, struggling to adjust her vision to the dark, wondering who the genius was who installed the light switches in back. She was relieved when she finally felt the rear wall. She ran her hand along the now-familiar row of switches, but nothing happened.
Damn it. She had no idea where the fuse box was in this place.
She worked her way toward the fire exit, one hand against the wall. Fumbled with the bolt until she felt it release. She was disappointed when only a gray ray of morning light crept through the propped open door.
She knew immediately when she turned to face the interior of the gallery again that something was wrong. It was one of those unexpected realizations. A dawning of awareness at a cellular level. The rhythms of this space had already become ingrained. Even in the dark, her brain was wired to expect certain shaded forms—the low leather banquettes dividing the gallery in half, the glass-topped desk toward the front door, the very objects that she’d been careful to avoid bumping into as she’d worked her way to this place. But she saw nothing but evenness in her field of vision.
“Drew?”
Her voice sounded different in the room. Louder. With a touch of an echo.
Every sense was telling her that something had changed. She fumbled inside her purse for her cell phone and activated the screen for a tiny pocket of light. Did a 180-degree scan of the room. Saw an empty floor where the benches had been. Saw uninterrupted blank space on the wall where Hans Schuler’s
First
had hung.
Fuck. She had assumed the brown paper on the windows was a cheap publicity stunt—a very public effort to obscure their so-called pornography from public view—but now she realized Drew had been even busier this morning, and even more overreactive, than she’d first assumed. It looked like she wouldn’t be calling the shots about how the end would go down. Obviously the owner was pulling the plug.
She was tempted to walk out the door and leave the entire experiment behind her, but thought Drew owed her an explanation. She assumed, based on the open gate, that he’d be returning.
As she walked toward the front of the gallery, she noticed a shadow on the floor—some sort of pile. She took each step carefully, as if the sounds of her footsteps might disrupt it. Fifteen steps from the pile. Now ten. Five.
Despite her caution, she felt the sole of her boot slide beneath her on the floor. Felt her weight pulling her down backward. She reflexively stuck her hands beneath her, forgetting all those old ski lessons about protecting your wrists in a fall. She heard her cell phone tumble to the floor.
Her body hit the ground, palms first, and then slid against the tile. Wet. Warm. Sticky. Paint?
She pulled herself to her knees and crawled toward the form on the ground. Used a tentative hand to tap what she recognized upon touch as some kind of fabric. A rug? A large canvas?
She patted the form’s edges and jerked upright when she finally identified a texture with certainty. Hair. Coarse human hair.
She scrambled on the slick tile, fumbling for her phone. Found the button at the bottom. Aimed the tiny beam of light toward what she now suspected was a body.
Drew Campbell lay on his side, a magenta pool forming beneath him despite the bundling of his winter coat. Her hands and knees and shins and forearms were soaked in his fresh blood.
She felt her fingertips stick to the glass screen of her phone as she dialed 911.
This page has been blocked. Please try again later or contact your network administrator for assistance.
“God damn it.”
Detective Jason Morhart hit the enter key on his computer once again, this time so hard he thought it might not pop back into place.
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“Fuck.”
“Cursing’s for the uncreative. They say ‘Frack!’ on
Battlestar Galactica
, and everyone still knows what it means.”
Nancy had appeared at his desk about six presses of the return key ago. Her job was to process file requests. In her mind, that plus a few software classes at the community college made her the resident computer expert at the police department. No one had the heart to disabuse her of the notion. He knew for a fact that Nancy could out-cuss a cussing contest at a sailor’s convention, but that wasn’t going to stop her from ribbing him about his temper.
“Cursing’s also for the seriously pissed off, Nancy. And I’ll let you in on another secret while I’m at it:
Battlestar Galactica
’s for nerds. You’re never gonna land a man quoting a nerd show.”
“Now, for
that
? You really do deserve to have your mouth washed out with soap. Let me see that keyboard again.”
She reached across him and typed in the Web address he’d been trying to pull up: Facebook.com. Hit the enter key.
This page has been blocked. Please try again later or contact your network administrator for assistance.
Tony Rollins passed behind her and rolled his eyes, but Morhart just shrugged. Nancy could drive folks crazy, but her heart was in the right place.
“You want me to call Gary?” she asked. “You know all roads eventually lead to Gary.”
Gary Moore was the town’s technology guru.
“No, I’ll call. The fucking town’s blocking all the good Web sites again.”
Two years ago, after it was discovered that eight of the ten most-frequented Web sites on the town network were sex-related, the town had finally started tracking Internet traffic, issuing warnings and threatening to go further for inappropriate usage. Apparently the Big Brother tactics didn’t go far enough, however—at least not for the accountant who racked up nearly thirty hours a week watching online porn from his desk. When the local news broke the story, the higher-ups demanded stronger action.
Now poor Gary Moore had to foresee all of the idiotic ways town employees might squander their time online and block all the fun stuff in advance. Jason knew from experience why he was getting that frustrating message about the Web site being blocked. He’d received the same error alert a few months ago when he was investigating a sex offender who groomed his victims by enticing them to look at pornography with him. Every time Jason tried to pull up one of the sites listed in the suspect’s browser window, there went the alert.
He picked up his phone and dialed Gary Moore’s number. “How can I help you, Detective?”
The town’s network was for shit, but the caller identification seemed to work just fine.
“First you block my porn. Now it’s Facebook? Pretty soon we’ll be down to nothing but National Geographic and the weather channel. Oh wait, they might show bikini shots for the weather in Miami.”
“Don’t get me started about the smut on National Geographic. Some of those baboons are pretty kinky.”
“Seriously, Gary? Facebook?”
“I know, it’s ridiculous. But the order came down from on high.”
“Too many hours spent on
social networking
?” The name struck Jason as the ultimate misnomer. Socializing for the asocial. Like Happy Hour at a skid-row bar.
“Definitely. Major online time suck. But with this particular Web site, the blocking was personal. You didn’t hear it from me, but apparently thanks to Facebook, the mayor’s wife got a little too cozy with one of her ex-boyfriends from high school. Now he’s got his panties in a bunch over it. No town employee can access Facebook from a public computer.”
Morhart had met Dover mayor Kyle Jenson. And he’d seen his smoking-hot wife in those reelection ads. If she was stepping out on her husband, Facebook had nothing to do with it.
“Jesus. Seems like half our cases pull us online, and half of those run me right into one of these blocking problems. Can’t you exempt the detectives from this stuff?”
“Yeah, right. You mean to tell me Rollins had a work-related reason for every single one of those replays he hit on the Miss Howard Stern page before I got appointed the town’s cyber czar?”
Leave it to Rollins to mess it up for everyone.
“Well, can you at least unblock me? I got a missing girl and need to check out her Facebook page.”
Morhart heard a clucking noise in his earpiece.
“I saw that on the news this morning. My wife and I were sort of hoping it was a runaway kind of deal.”
“Might be, but I don’t think Jenson wants me telling the girl’s mother I’m not really sure because her mayor got cuckolded by his wife and won’t give me access to the resources I need to find her daughter.”
“No, I don’t imagine he’d be happy with that explanation.” Morhart took the sound of keyboard tapping on the other end of the line as a good sign. “All right. I unhooked you from the nanny system. Run. Be free. But don’t let Rollins near your computer, okay?”
Becca Stevenson had eighty-two friends.
Eighty-two friends sounds like a healthy number. To maintain eighty-two relationships required a certain degree of social activity and mutual care. But on the Internet, where “friendship” meant nothing other than the click of a mouse, eighty-two “friends” was nothing. Eighty-two friends for a high school sophomore made Becca something of a loner.
Funny how it was the loners who went missing.
Eighty-two friends might not be much in the world of Facebook, but it was too many people for Morhart to track down on his own. He was about to narrow down the field.
He clicked first on the tab for photographs, hoping to find an array of photos matching full names to smiling faces, the high-tech equivalent of a “question these witnesses first” list. Instead, he found only two photo albums. One, labeled “Profile Pictures,” included one shot, a photo of Becca’s little dog. The other, labeled “Big Apple,” featured grainy phone-quality pictures of what looked like Manhattan, posted three and a half weeks earlier. Water. Buildings. Graffiti on brick. No people. No smiling faces. Based on what he’d gathered about the girl’s disposition, he assumed she was trying to be artsy.
He read the postings on Becca’s Wall, the page where her friends could leave messages for her.
The entire first page consisted of messages submitted since Becca’s disappearance had been made public.
Linwood High misses you. Come back soon and safe!
OMG, Becca. Hope you’re just off being wild.
We love you, Becca, and pray that you’re well.
Morhart suspected the trite sayings had been scribbled by classmates who hardly knew the missing girl. He scrolled down further, searching for posts written prior to Becca’s current claim to fame. The level of posting activity suddenly dropped. He read from the bottom up, taking in the earliest posts first.
Four weeks ago, she posted a status update: “I know I shouldn’t, but I do love me some Glee.”
A girl named Sophie Ferrin posted a response: “And you say I’m the dork.”
Sophie Ferrin. Morhart knew the name. Best gal pal. Last to see her around.
Sophie’s post was followed by a second response. “That show is totally gay.” Authored by Rodney Carter. Morhart recognized that name, too. Boyfriend to Sophie. Accompanied the girls to the mall that same night.
He scrolled further up the page, skipping over the postings related to the nonsense games people played on Facebook. Squirreling up loot in one virtual world. A promotion to captain in another. The fertilization of nonexistent farms.
He was only thirty-four years old but felt like a cantankerous old geezer, shaking his head with scorn at the rotting brains of today’s teenagers.
A few days after the
Glee
posting, Becca had posted another update: “Heading to the city tonight. Woot!” The date matched the upload date for the city images he’d seen in her photo album.
“Have fun, girl, but not too much fun!” The response was from Sophie, meaning Sophie hadn’t accompanied her friend on the photography trip into New York. Morhart made a mental note to follow up on that.
He clicked again on the album of images from the city and noticed that Becca had “tagged” someone named Dan Hunter. Not a name Morhart had come across until now.
Morhart knew that tagging was used to identify people depicted in pictures posted to Facebook. It was also a way to make sure that the photographs would also be displayed on the tagged person’s own page.
He clicked on Dan Hunter’s name. His profile photo showed a sandy blond teenager in a basketball jersey shooting a free throw. Morhart scrolled down until he found the postings of Becca’s photographs. “Dan Hunter was tagged in a photograph.” Tiny thumbnail images of Becca’s pictures appeared on Hunter’s virtual wall.
The posting of the images had triggered a comment from an Ashleigh Reynolds, another unfamiliar name. Ashleigh had typed only one word, but it was enough to place her at the top of Morhart’s priority list.
Slut.