If You Were Here by Alafair Burke Page B

need it. Is it possible you overlooked it?”
    “No. I’m positive. I only took one picture since then, and it’s gone, too.”
    “Did you erase them?”
    “Not intentionally. I think some dipwad I lent my phone to must’ve deleted them.”
    “What dipwad?”
    “My friend Jen and I were in line at Margon. Line’s always halfway down the block at lunch. Some dude said he needed to call his wife and left the office without his phone. Maybe he accidentally erased it or something.”
    McKenna was certain that nothing involving this video file was accidental. “What did he look like?”
    Another long pause. “I have no idea.”
    “Anything at all that you remember would help, Mallory. Anything.”
    “Jen was telling me about her douchebag boyfriend, who tried to justify cheating because she gained seven pounds when she quit smoking. I wasn’t paying attention. Honestly? I couldn’t pick the guy out of a lineup if my life depended on it.”
    Whoever “borrowed” that phone probably planned that, waiting until Mallory was completely distracted.
    “Wait a second. Is this really such a hot story?” Mallory asked. “Is this like some rival reporter stealing the video so you can’t have it? That totally blows for you.”
    McKenna thanked Mallory for the sympathy, figuring there was no harm in leaving the girl under a mistaken impression. Mallory had already served her purpose to whoever had erased the video from her phone. There was no need for her to know the bigger picture.
    Not that McKenna had any idea what the bigger picture was. As she hung up, she realized she was in way over her head. Someone had wiped out Dana’s media storage account. Someone had tracked down Mallory’s phone. Someone definitely did not want that video to be seen. She found herself wondering whether the malfunction in the MTA cameras might be related, before she realized how insane that idea was.
    She rushed to her desk and e-mailed a file on her computer to her three different e-mail accounts, saved it to a thumb drive, and then hit the print key. She watched the photograph churn from the printer.
    A picture of a button pinned to a backpack. The logo for a group called People Protecting the Planet. This was her only image of the woman on the subway. It was all she had left.

PART II
    Girls, you’ve got to know when it’s time to turn the page.
    —Tori Amos, “Northern Lad”

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
    W hen Scanlin took the Hauptmann file home, he wasn’t entirely sure he would even open it. As he drove to Yonkers, the box from the Records Department filling his passenger seat, he scolded himself for letting McKenna Jordan into his head. Thanks to budget cuts, he had enough work to fill his hours. He didn’t need the added burden of dusty files detailing a perfectly capable adult’s voluntary disappearance.
    I’m a good cop. He had repeated that phrase mentally like a mantra, all the way up the West Side Highway onto the Henry Hudson Bridge. I went through hell back then, but I was a good cop. I’ve always been a good cop. Even then.
    Now that good cop’s dining room table was covered in paper. The DD5s documenting each witness interview. The crime lab reports. Inventories of items seized during searches of Susan’s apartment and office. The file from the investigation had been organized by type of document. Scanlin had rearranged the documents in strict chronological order, refreshing his memory of the case from beginning to end.
    When he’d told the former prosecutor—emphasis on “former” — that he remembered the case well, he’d believed his own words. But he’d learned through years on the job that memory was a fragile thing, more like a crime scene that had to be protected and preserved from alteration than a fixed, permanent object that was impermeable over time. Usually the evolution of an eyewitness’s memory helped the prosecution. He’d seen it so many times. The witness, reluctant and uncertain as she perused