“Your phone rings so darn loud, I can’t help it sometimes. Here you go.”
He looked down at her bubbly, cursive letters. “Det. John Shannon, Homicide, NYPD,” followed by a phone number.
“He said it was about Becca Stevenson.”
“So, we compared those pictures you sent over to the images we have of the so-called artwork that was up at our gallery.”
Morhart felt like the tide was finally breaking. The images would match. Shannon was about to confirm that Becca was the girl depicted in those photographs. He didn’t know whether to be pleased or disappointed. A connection between her and the gallery would be a step toward a resolution, but he suspected it would not be a happy one in light of the murder that had occurred there.
“No match.”
Morhart found himself relieved. He wanted Becca to be safe even more than he wanted answers. “Are you sure? You said your pictures didn’t have any faces in them.”
“The ones on display in the museum-or the gallery, I guess-just showed little snippets of bare skin, but we’ve actually found some other photographs that are of more interest to us.”
“What other pictures?”
“Stuff that wouldn’t be on display anywhere.”
“Are these minors? Is it child pornography?”
“Christ, Morhart. You’re worse than my partner. Can you let me get a word in, here? We’ve got a bunch of pictures, and trust me, none of them matches. Your girl was a little, um, softer than the girls in these pictures. But it doesn’t matter, okay? You were right. There’s a connection.”
“I don’t understand.”
“The fingerprints. We had them run the latents picked up from the gallery against the prints you pulled from your vic’s bedroom. We found a right index and ring finger match on the bathroom doorknob.”
“She was there.”
“Correct. Becca Stevenson was inside the Highline Gallery.”
Chapter Thirty-Four
“N ow we’re at the height of our practice. Trikonasana, triangle pose.”
Alice tried to keep her mouth shut, concentrating on the deep nasal breaths that were supposed to help her control her heart rate, release toxins, and center her thoughts on the present. She bent her right knee at a ninety- degree angle and spread her arms like an eagle, aiming her right fingers between her big and second toes and her left toward the sky. Her legs and arms quivered. She felt her heart racing. She did not, however, feel her past and future float away. She did not feel her worries leave her body.
Instead, she felt the oppressive heat of the 105 degrees and 40 percent humidity and the sour taste of regret for believing that a Bikram yoga class could help her escape from her reality, even momentarily.
She knew from experience that Otto, the teacher who’d affectionately been dubbed “the yoga nazi,” would not allow her to leave the room. This, after all, was the man who once asked a frazzled student to name a pose, only to say in response: “That’s right. Standing head-to-knee pose, not stand-in-my-front-row-and-check-out-your-hair-in- the-mirror pose.”
Despite the quick, cold shower after class, she could still feel heat escaping her body when she returned home to find Willie Danes waiting for her. This time, he had not remained at the curb. He was fiddling with a BlackBerry just outside her apartment door.
“Another workout, huh?”
She immediately wondered whether all this exercise made her look guilty. She had found a body, after all. Her life had been turned upside down by information that didn’t add up. Exercise was a form of escape for her, but would a cop like Danes see the trivialities of her daily routine as a sign of callousness?
“If you need something from me, Detective, you’re always welcome to call.”
She had meant to sound helpful, but the words came across as prickly.
“Didn’t want to inconvenience you, Miss Humphrey, but I do have a few more follow-up questions. Do you mind?”
She heard her father’s voice:
But when she turned and looked him in the eye, she couldn’t do it. She knew any mention of a lawyer would immediately terminate the cordiality between them, however artificial it might be. They would officially be antagonists. It would be her versus the police. And they had power and information, and she did not. She knew she was innocent. She had nothing to hide. “Sure, Detective, come on in.”
This time, she took a bar stool at her kitchen counter. No more sitting low in the corner with a cop staring down at her.
“Have you ever heard of a girl called Becca Stevenson?”
She shook her head. “Is she connected to the man I found in the gallery?”
“She’s a fifteen-year-old girl from Dover, New Jersey. She’s been missing since Sunday night.”
“Oh, sure. I saw something about that in the newspaper a couple of days ago.”
“You don’t know her?” He handed her a photograph. She had dark eyes and a freckled nose. Her dark curls were blowing in the wind, but her pink cheeks looked like they’d be warm. She smiled as if she were trying to hide the tiny snaggletooth on the left side of her mouth.
“Pretty girl. No, I don’t know anything about her. Why?”
“We’ve had some leads come up, but I’m afraid I can’t discuss them.”
Alice could see only one possible connection. “Wait. Do you think she’s the girl from Hans Schuler’s photographs?”
“No, we don’t.”
“So-”
“I’m sorry I can’t share information with you, Miss Humphrey. But you said if we had any questions-”
“Yes, of course. I understand.” She understood this was a one-way street.
“So, just to be clear, you’ve never met or been in the same room or spoken to Becca Stevenson, the girl in this photograph?”
She didn’t like the way he asked the question, as if he were nailing her down for the record. As if he were ready to prove she was a liar. But she knew the truth, and she knew how it would look if she tried to avoid answering. “That’s right.”
“All right. Now I also wanted to talk to you about ITH, the company that was backing the gallery.”
“Uh-huh?”
“You say you’ve never heard of the company before?”
“That’s right.”
They were back on familiar territory, but how many times were they going to ask her to repeat the same information?
“Do you have any thoughts about what ITH might stand for?”
“I don’t know. I’ve tried digging around online, but I never found anything.”
“All right. And, just to be clear, you say you never met the man you knew as Drew Campbell before?”
She tried to hide her frustration as she described, once again, the series of events that had led to her first meeting with Campbell, her meeting with him at the gallery space, her acceptance of the job, and eventually her discovery of the body. She realized she must have sounded remote as she walked him through these facts, but she had recited them so many times that they hardly seemed real anymore.
“And you’re sure your father didn’t have anything to do with the gallery?”
“My father? Um, no, of course not. Why would you ask?”
