No Such Person Page 6

  The vehicle is a police car.

  Is Jason a cop? No. He would have said so when the trooper was questioning him last Saturday. So is a cop bringing Lander home? Is she drunk? This would be utterly unlike Lander. And realistically, if Lander needs a ride under such circumstances, she would call home.

  What are the circumstances?

  Lander does not get out of the police car. Neither does Jason.

  Two policemen get out.

  They are husky, solid men. They are in uniform. They adjust their heavy belts and tug their ties.

  Why would the police be here at this hour?

  Or any hour?

  Icy knowledge comes to Miranda.

  There has been a car accident.

  If Lander were just hurt, they would call. Actually, the hospital emergency personnel would probably call. There’s only one reason for the police to come to the house.

  Lander is dead.

  Miranda’s knees buckle. Her mouth is dry. Her mind swirls.

  Out the window she sees a second police car come very slowly down the lane. There is no outdoor lighting, and they cannot see where the driveway leads or where it ends, and they do not want to drive off the cliff.

  Has Lander driven off a cliff?

  Miranda sits hard on the end of Lander’s bed, which will irritate Lander, who makes her bed carefully and tightly every morning.

  Oh, Lander! How are we going to be best friends after all? What about your life?

  What about medical school and all your work to get there and all your plans?

  How will our parents survive this?

  She must dress, go into the living room and be a help.

  But she is thinking: Did Jason Firenza do this? Is he careless behind a car wheel too? Did he walk away from a car wreck wringing his hands about his passenger’s fate, just as he drove a boat away from Derry Romaine?

  To capture the breeze, the front door is open. Her parents also see the two police cars come down the drive.

  The only one not home is Lander, so the police have to be here about Lander. Her mother flings open the screened door. “Lander!” she cries. “My daughter! Is this about Lander? Is she all right? Was there a car accident? Why are you here?”

  The police suggest that they should all sit down.

  “Tell me, just tell me!” Her mother’s voice is as warbly as an old soprano’s and Miranda realizes that this will destroy her mother.

  She, Miranda, will not be much consolation. They have staked everything on their older daughter. Miranda does not grieve for herself. It is what it is, and she recognizes it. She grieves for them.

  “Nobody is hurt,” says one of the policemen.

  Miranda is weak with relief. Lander is not dead. She is not even hurt.

  But if nobody is hurt, why are there two police cars? Four police officers?

  “I think you should sit,” says the policeman again.

  There are shuffling sounds. Miranda assumes that her parents are on the sofa next to each other, upset and yet relieved.

  The officer’s voice is a very deep, very loud baritone. It’s almost comical. “Is Lander Allerdon your daughter?”

  “Yes, yes, of course. Please just tell us what’s happening.”

  “Your daughter is in jail. We received a tip about a delivery of cocaine. We found Lander Allerdon alone on a boat that did in fact have a package of cocaine hidden aboard. In the woods not far from where this boat was tied up, we found the body of a man shot to death. A gun that is probably the murder weapon was found in Lander Allerdon’s tote bag. She admits shooting this gun.”

  Lander is lying on a hard metal bed with a thin mattress and white sheets. There is no pillow. The room is empty except for the bed. There is one window with wire embedded in the glass. The room reminds her of the nurse’s station in elementary school. The window in the jail faces a hall. It does not exist to give her sunlight. It exists so that she can be watched.

  A policewoman is standing next to the bed. “You fainted,” she says.

  Lander tries to think which, of all the ghastly things that are happening, might have caused her to pass out.

  “Derry Romaine,” says the policewoman. “The man shot in the back in the woods where you were using a gun.”

  The dead person cannot be Derry Romaine. Derry is in the hospital. Jason visits him daily. Derry isn’t even talking yet. How can Derry be the body in the woods? They’re making this up to torture her.

  She tries to sit up and nothing happens.

  “You’re restrained,” says the policewoman.

  Lander looks sideways. Wide leather bracelets are attached to her wrists, fastening her to the sides of the bed. “This has to be illegal! You can’t do this to people!”

  “You have a history, Lander. You kicked and hit the officers who brought you in. You tried to bite them.”

  “I promise not to do that,” she whispers.

  “Good. But for now, we’ll just talk this way.”

  She closes her eyes instead. “Why am I in a different room?”

  “It’s not a room. It’s a cell.”

  She cannot bear this vocabulary. “I don’t see how it could be Derry Romaine who was killed. He’s in the hospital.”

  “Not now he isn’t. He’s in the morgue.”

  How can these people be so cold? How can they talk like this?

  “Tell me about the gun, Lander,” says the policewoman.

  In the little woods, Lander is shocked to see that Jason has a gun; more shocked when he says he loves hunting and shooting. Lander does not know anybody who would make that statement. People in other states say that. States in the South or the West. But here, where it’s civilized, where everyone she knows is civilized, no one would think of guns as a hobby. No one would shoot innocent deer or wild turkeys or beautiful pheasants.

  Jason laughs. “Connecticut has as many gun enthusiasts as any other state,” he says, “not to mention gun manufacturers. And plenty of hunters. You just haven’t met any until now. You are one lucky girl. You’ve met me.”

  His dancing eyes tease and her heart literally weakens. What matters is whatever Jason wants.

  “Come on,” he says. “I’ll teach you. We’ll shoot targets, not squirrels. Don’t worry. You won’t shed any blood.”

  But did I shed blood?

  “Tell me about the gun,” says the policewoman again.

  I was laughing, thinks Lander. I was laughing out loud when I aimed.

  I killed Derry Romaine.

  While I laughed.

  FRIDAY NIGHT

  The stunned silence in the Allerdon living room is broken by her parents’ cries: It isn’t true. It’s ridiculous. Our daughter has nothing to do with violence or crime. The police have made serious errors. How dare the police do this to our innocent child?

  The police repeat their statement.

  “Tell us where she is,” says Miranda’s father. “We have to be with her.”

  “You can’t see her tonight,” says the female officer. “She’s being processed.”

  Processed, thinks Miranda. Like sandwich filler. Fingerprints. Searches of body cavities. Mug shots. Interrogations. Handcuffs.

  Lander?

  Her father’s voice is hot with anger. “Our daughter was simply on a date. Jason Firenza took her out. I’m sure he can explain everything.”

  “She gave us that name. But Jason Firenza was not there when we arrived on the scene. She claims not to know his phone number or address. Can you supply those?”

  So it isn’t Jason who has been killed, and this is good, because Miranda can imagine a circumstance in which Lander would have to protect herself from Jason Firenza. Once Lander finds out he’s a drug dealer, say. But in fact, wouldn’t Lander just stomp on him? Yell at him? Call the cops on him?

  Miranda cannot visualize her sister in the same room with a gun, let alone using it.

  Is Lander protecting Jason? Has Jason killed a man and fled the scene, and Lander
is now sacrificing herself for him?

  Do people do such things in real life? Would Lander do it?

  And if Jason isn’t dead, who has been killed? Whose body have they found?

  Why does it take four cops to tell the family that Lander is in this trouble?

  Do police routinely run around Connecticut thoughtfully contacting family members when an adult is arrested? Does it take four officers?

  Miranda is filled with understanding. It is a hot soupy sensation, as if she has poured hot liquid straight from the stove down her throat.

  The police are not here to chat with her parents.

  They are here to search the premises of a woman accused of homicide.

  —

  In the split second it takes to fathom what the police are saying—that Lander is in jail, accused of drug dealing and murder—Miranda realizes that if there is incriminating material, it is not on a piece of paper. It is on Lander’s iPad.

  They won’t find drugs in Lander’s room. Lander has utter scorn for people who use mind-altering substances. People should be proud of their minds and use them for finer purposes than getting stoned. Lander believes that drug cartels in South America and dealers skulking around middle schools are evil. If there are drugs on Jason’s boat, Jason put them there without Lander’s knowledge.

  There’s little in Lander’s room to search, because the cottage is small, and the family leaves most stuff in West Hartford, hauling in huge L.L.Bean canvas totes or plastic laundry bins what is needed for each stay at the cottage.

  The gun theory is ridiculous. Lander has no gun. Would never have a gun. Would never touch a gun if it were around.

  But it is possible that Lander knows something. Did she find out about the drug dealing? Discover the fake boat nameplate? Did Jason have some sort of meeting while Lander was there? A delivery? A sale?

  Since Lander is never without her cell phone, the police have it now. Any message Lander sent or received is saved on that phone.

  But Lander’s iPad is here.

  Her research, college papers and downloads are on the iPad. Lander is a fine pianist, and tends not to have sheet music but digital copies on her iPad. Her senior-year chemistry project and all its background material are on that iPad. A research project begun in eighth grade involving Lyme disease, because they live at the epicenter of this cruel illness—five years of data and statistics are on that iPad.

  And what else?

  Something the police should not see?

  Miranda also has her iPad at the cottage and she too never travels without it. She uses hers to binge on TV series she has missed. There is nothing of interest to strangers—or for that matter, friends—on Miranda’s iPad.

  Lander’s has a frosted mint-green case that matches her cell phone case. Miranda’s case is orange and all fingerprint-y because she’s not as careful as her sister and has gotten ink and chocolate on it.

  Miranda steps barefoot and silent into Lander’s room. She takes the mint-green case off her sister’s iPad, carries Lander’s tablet into her own room and switches them. Back in Lander’s room, she eases the wrong iPad against the tiny magnetic clips of the mint-green case. She leaves it where Lander always does, on the bedside table.

  In her own room, she sets Lander’s iPad, now in a stained orange cover, on her bed, along with her ereader, a paperback, a cotton sweater, a ponytail holder, a teddy she could not resist from Build-A-Bear, a plate that had cookies and now has crumbs and a cord bracelet she is weaving. Miranda sleeps on the very edge of her bed, one arm hanging down, so that she does not have to move all these precious possessions just because she needs a little sleep.

  The police will have a search warrant. It’s probably for the entire cottage, not just Lander’s room. They will come into Miranda’s bedroom too. Better not to be in here watching or her face may give something away. She slips on a summer robe. It is crispy cotton, white with tiny polka dots in primary colors, like the tips of crayons. She loves this robe.

  I have to behave normally, she thinks. What is normal when the police in your living room have arrested your sister for murder? When you have just switched case colors so that your parents won’t accidentally give away that the police have the wrong iPad?

  Barefoot, in her robe, she pads into the living room.

  The four police officers fill the room, as if they are the only reason it exists. Around their waists is so much equipment it must bruise their hips. They too are crispy, as if they iron and starch their summer shirts. Two of the men are very bulky. They must spend a lot of time at all-you-can-eat chains. The one woman and the other man are slim. All four stand with their feet slightly apart and their arms slightly away from their bodies, as if to draw weapons. All four, extra pounds or not, look fit.

  Her parents are also standing, and they are next to each other behind the sofa, perhaps believing that upholstery will protect them from the news the police have brought.

  All eyes look upon Miranda.

  “I don’t think I heard right,” says Miranda, focusing on the nearest officer.

  “Focus” is the wrong word. The room blurs with her fear for Lander; fear that she will be caught trying to hide Lander’s digital world. The officer is a foot taller than she is, but this is not unusual. Miranda is used to looking up. “You said that my sister—um—my sister…?”

  The police gently repeat their statement.

  Miranda says sharply, “Lander would never hurt anybody. Ever. And besides, she’s very anti-gun. She would never even hold one.”

  “She admits holding it and shooting it,” says the officer. “But she claims she and Jason Firenza were doing target practice and nobody else was there.”

  Target practice? thinks Miranda. Lander?

  “It’s a strange location for target practice,” says the officer. “It’s a strange location, period. And there is a dead body right where Lander admits shooting.”

  Miranda does not believe this. But the police do. And they have been there. It’s a hunting accident, she tells herself. “Who was killed?” Her voice splits down the middle, cracking like an old clarinet reed. “Who is the dead person?”

  “We haven’t identified him yet.”

  There’s no such thing as a person without identification. Everybody has a cell phone and every adult has a wallet.

  Did somebody remove the dead man’s cell phone and wallet? If so, this cannot be written off as a hunting accident, even if it were deer or turkey season, which it isn’t. If the identification is gone, then that murderer walked up to the person he killed, bent down and emptied the pockets. A vision of Lander being there, seeing this, knowing this, is so appalling that Miranda wants to scream and flee all the way to West Hartford. “Lander didn’t do that. She just didn’t. Jason Firenza must have. Here.” She takes her cell phone out of her robe pocket and clicks to the close-up of Jason on their dock, their striped beach towel around his shoulders, their coffee mug in his hand.

  A minute ago, Miranda would have said this was just a nicely focused shot of a handsome young man. But even as the officer takes the phone out of her hand to see better, she is frightened. How intimate the photograph looks. How relaxed Jason seems. He could be part of the family.

  The officer knows that a fifteen-year-old girl does not take one photo. She takes a series. He asks for permission to scroll through the other photos.

  Behave normally, she reminds herself. “Okay.”

  He studies the photographs. He pauses on the shot where Jason and Lander gaze into each other’s eyes. He tilts it for Miranda to see. “They’ve known each other for a long time, then.”

  “No, no. That was the first moment they met. That we all met.”

  “They look very close,” says the officer.

  This is the same idea Miranda had when she took the shot. “Well, they didn’t know each other yet,” she says. “Not in that picture. Lander thought he was—um—in shock—and needed—um—a warm wrap. A towel.”

&nb
sp; But last Saturday was a very hot summer day. Nobody needed a wrap. What the photograph implies is that Lander thought Jason needed affection.

  Miranda tells the officer everything. The tug, the barge, the lime-green tow rope, the moment in which Jason cut back on the throttle. She shows him the little video, in which Jason is too far upriver to be recognized, but the tow rope is visible. A green thread against dark water.

  The officer scrolls back to the photo of Lander and Jason on the dock looking softly into each other’s eyes. “This picture was taken while the water search for Derry Romaine was still happening?” says the officer slowly.

  It is horrifying that those two beautiful people are exchanging an intimate look while the friend of one of them is drowning. It is horrifying that Jason is not out there participating in the search. Miranda is beginning to see why lawyers want the accused to say nothing. The accused’s sister is making it worse.

  “Miranda, did you tell your sister your belief that Jason Firenza attempted to kill his friend?” asks the officer.

  “Yes, of course.”

  “And what did she say?”

  Miranda’s answer will matter. All answers matter now. One of the officers is writing everything down. Perhaps what Miranda says will be used against Lander.

  Miranda imagines Lander having her rights read to her. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you.

  She cannot imagine the terror Lander must be feeling. Nothing is used against people like us, thinks Miranda. For people like us, everything is on our side.

  Miranda wants her father or her mother to interrupt, but they are as silent as stuffed toys. It feels as if only Miranda and the four police officers are in the room. She needs time to think about Lander’s actual answer and whether those words will play well or whether she should make something up or maybe just pretend she has forgotten.

  “And what did Lander say when you told her your suspicions?” the cop asks again.

  Miranda decides on a careful version of the truth. “Well, Lander isn’t usually that impressed with my take on things. And she wasn’t impressed by that, either. She told me it was an ugly thought and not to repeat it.” This sounds virtuous. Even noble. Miranda is rather pleased.