You Can't Catch Me

by Catherine McKenzie

  “All of it. Todd especially. You don’t know what he was like then.”

  “Tell me.”

  “You want to know?”

  I shrugged, and that was enough for her to begin.

  “We were so young, your father and me, when we got married. We were so naive. We’d been sheltered growing up in Provo. No alcohol. No music other than what we sang on Sundays. You never met your grandparents, but they were so, so strict. Everything I wore, everything I did, everyone I knew, they controlled all of it. If they hadn’t decided your father and I were going to get married long before we even knew one another . . .” She shook her shoulders. “But that was the one thing they got right. Your dad was different. He’s so smart, and even then, he could see around corners.”

  I nodded in agreement, but I didn’t know anything about my father or my parents’ religion, whether they were regular Mormons or in one of those splinter sects. Even when I was little and allowed to live with them, it was my mother who’d been the caretaker. If I had to guess, he agreed to have me to please her. Or I was an accident. More questions I couldn’t ask.

  “Anyway, our parents decided we’d get married right away, at twenty, after your dad got back from his mission, Lord knows why, but it was such a blessing. Once we had our own home, we could make our own rules. We could sleep in, or watch TV, or sing along to songs on the radio. The one thing they believed in, our parents, was an education. They thought we were going to Brigham Young—your dad, anyway—and they gave him the money for it. But we’d applied to colleges in the East without them knowing, and we both got into Connecticut College with some scholarship money, and we decided to go for it.”

  “They must’ve been upset.”

  “They were livid. But we did it anyway. We moved away, went to college, met other kids.”

  “And Todd.”

  She nodded. “He was a philosophy professor. But he wasn’t like the other teachers. He wasn’t teaching from books; he was teaching from life. For life. Everything he said made so much sense to both of us.”

  “If he was teaching anything resembling what I’ve heard, he should’ve been fired.”

  My mother cleared her throat. “Well, he was. Fired. There was an . . . incident. But it was never clear what had happened. That girl was always throwing herself at him, and we were already in his thrall, and when he told us it was all made-up lies by the patriarchy to keep us asleep, well, we believed him. Without question. That’s when he came up with the idea of going to Schroon.”

  “Why there?”

  “He grew up there. That was his family’s land.”

  A flock of birds crossed overhead. I wondered if they were still migrating back from wherever they went to in winter, or if they were local. Were these birds in my mother’s life, or only temporary visitors, like me?

  “And you decided to follow him.”

  “I know it sounds nuts, and it was, in a way, but after the way I was brought up . . . freedom was great for a while, but then I saw all the things that people did when they were free. We were learning about life for the first time. Seeing what all the possibilities were, but all the bad stuff too.”

  I wanted to scream, and maybe the birds heard my thoughts because they suddenly wheeled away in a shriek of their own.

  “You think I don’t know what it’s like to leave a cloistered life and get out into the real world?”

  “I didn’t mean—”

  “Right. Whatever. You never do.”

  I crossed my arms, hugging myself like I used to do when I was a child and I wanted to sleep. When I needed comfort. I was falling to pieces right there in that cornfield. It had to stop.

  “This isn’t helping,” I said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You telling me how you ended up under Todd’s spell, it isn’t helping. Kiki’s still dead and it hurts, Mom. It fucking hurts.”

  She put her hand on my arm. I shrugged it away. “Don’t touch me!”

  “Jessica, please—”

  “No, you can’t make it better, Mother, okay? You didn’t even try. How could you not have even tried?”

  She was crying, and I was fine with that. “I did try, I did.”

  “Oh, please. No, you didn’t.”

  “But I did,” she said, taking in a deep breath and letting it out through her nose the way Todd had taught us to when we were losing control. She did it again and I watched the tears stop. When she spoke, her voice was calmer, almost trancelike. “I let you go up that hill even though Todd offered to let you stay with us because I knew it would be better for you up there than with us. With him. And I did do something for Kiki. It was too late, too late for all of us, as it turns out, but I did try.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  She turned to me with an expression I’d seen once too often growing up. The light of certainty even as the worst offense was being committed.

  “This is bullshit,” I said. “What did you do? Nothing, just like always.”

  She reached out her hand as if she hadn’t heard me, placing it gently on my arm. “Tell me, dear. Are you still under the impression that Todd died of natural causes?”

  JJ and I drive through town to the police station. It’s not far, but sometimes short journeys can feel momentous. We park the car, then stand outside the building. Its base is made of the same stone they seem to use for a lot of buildings in town, a local granite, perhaps, though it hasn’t got a shine to it. It doesn’t look big, but there are jail cells inside and so many lies to tell if we’re going to avoid ending up in one of them.

  “Are we doing the right thing?” I ask JJ as we stand on the walkway.

  “You’re asking me that now?”

  “I know, right? But seriously. We could . . .”

  “Run?”

  “We have her money.”

  “Not yet.”

  “No, but we can get it. And then we could be free.”

  JJ shakes her head. “I don’t think any of this was about freedom, was it?”

  “No.”

  “Besides, living her life, being on the run . . . that’s not something I want to do.”

  “We wouldn’t have to live her life.”

  She looks at me. “It would be, though, in some way, wouldn’t it? You’d never get to be yourself again.”

  “I guess.” That doesn’t sound that bad to me, if I’m being honest. What’s so special about my current life?

  A carload of teenagers drives by with their windows down. They’re blasting a Kanye song, singing along to the lyrics.

  “You’re not going to give me some crap about how we’re never ourselves, are you?” JJ says.

  “Ha! I was thinking of it.”

  “That something Todd used to say?”

  “No, I thought of that one all on my own.”

  “Well, it’s crap. We’re always ourselves. Every God damn day. And you know what? Before Jessie came along, or whoever the fuck she was, I was happy. I had a good thing going. It wasn’t perfect, but that whole relentlessly positive thing wasn’t a total act.”

  “So, you’ll go back to that?”

  “That’s the plan.”

  “I don’t know if I can go back.”

  “Why not? Isn’t Liam waiting for you?”

  “Yeah, but who knows if that’s going to work out. Plus, my career’s in tatters.”

  “So, start over.”

  “Easy to say, hard to do.”

  She rubs at the spot where her prosthetic arm meets what’s left of her real arm. I’ve never heard her refer to it as a stump, and so I don’t feel like I can, even in my thoughts.

  “Yeah, it is hard. But that’s okay. We’re still young. And soon, if you’re right, we’ll have our capital back. The world’s our oyster, I say.”

  “You do have a positive attitude.”

  She flashes me a smile. “I’ve got an idea for a new show.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Turning ar
ound the lives of depressed people through teaching them how to cook for others.”

  “That’s pretty good.”

  “You want to be the first guest?”

  “That’s sweet of you, but I think I’ve had enough exposure for a while.”

  “Understood. But do something, okay? Don’t just sit around and brood.”

  “I won’t.”

  I look at the building again. A patrol officer is leaving. He stops when he sees us.

  “Can I help you, ladies?”

  We glance at one another, and then I say, “We’re here to report a crime.”

  Chapter 37

  Home Again, Home Again

  Three days later, we’re at the airport saying goodbye.

  It turned out that we had nothing to fear in reporting Jessie, not in the short term, anyway. But once we did, it seemed weird for us to leave immediately. Even though we made it clear that she wasn’t our friend, it felt as if we had to show some concern for her well-being, and the well-being of the others she might be trying to scam. So, we stayed, and cooperated, and asked for details on the investigation like we cared whether they found her when we both very much hoped they wouldn’t.

  After a few go-rounds with the initial officer we spoke to, we ended up in the investigative unit of the Teton County Sheriff’s Department. Sergeant Axel Johansson, the head of investigations, was about forty-five and as fit and tall as the citizens he was sworn to protect. He wore a tan uniform, with a crest that had a moose’s head in profile on its breast. He had an open and friendly air about him that we feared hid a keen investigative mind. And perhaps it did. He asked all the questions we thought of and many, many more, listening for the full two hours it took us to go through everything that had happened to JJ and me, and then all of us together.

  We’d done the right thing in telling him, he said. She might still be in the vicinity, and she sounded like a highly dangerous person. That’s what he called her, a “highly dangerous person.”

  I tried not to laugh as I agreed with him. Besides, he wasn’t wrong. She was still highly dangerous to both of us.

  We stuck to our story. They issued an APB. They uncovered her plane ticket and took JJ’s computer to analyze it. They checked in with the officer I’d reported the theft to in New York, and JJ’s one in Chicago. They were thorough.

  In some ways, the investigation that Liam was conducting on the other end of things was the harder one to get through. He kept texting me with questions, like what she was wearing the last time we saw her, what exactly her last words were, and how she’d gotten her hands on JJ’s computer to book her ticket. What had we asked her on the paddle? Why had we even gone on that paddle in the first place, knowing who she probably was?

  I called him when I got the paddle text.

  “I thought maybe she’d loosen up. I didn’t have a lot of time to think about it. You’d just told me that her backstory was probably made up. I was trying to think of what to do.”

  I stopped talking. I was saying too much, sounding defensive.

  I was sitting in the town square eating an ice cream. It was the only thing I could get down these days, its cool creaminess slipping past the permanent lump in my throat. There was a family sitting on the grass having a picnic, their two little kids running around in circles chasing one another and laughing.

  “I kept telling you she was dangerous,” Liam says.

  This was a theme I was getting tired of, but I couldn’t lose my temper with him. “And I kept telling you I was with JJ. Plus, she wasn’t dangerous in the end, was she? She just left.”

  “But did she? She didn’t take the flight.”

  “You been hacking again?”

  He coughs. He doesn’t like it when I say words like hacking on a cell phone. Who knows who was listening in?

  “Didn’t the police tell you that?” he says.

  “They might’ve mentioned something.”

  “It’s odd, isn’t it?”

  I reach the cone part of the ice cream and stop eating. It’s sweet and delicious, but I can’t handle those sharp edges; they make me want to vomit.

  “Maybe she had other ID,” I say.

  “I thought you searched her bag?”

  “I did, but not that thoroughly. I didn’t have much time. Maybe there were secret compartments, or she had . . . what’s that called? A go-bag? She probably had one of those. Maybe she stashed it at the airport.”

  “Have they confirmed that she went into the airport?”

  “Her car was found there.”

  “But did she go inside?”

  “I don’t know, Liam. They don’t tell me everything. I assume she did at some point.”

  A shadow crosses over me. It’s JJ. I mouth to her Liam, and she nods.

  “What are you so worried about?” I ask.

  “I think she’s still in Jackson.”

  “Why would you think that?”

  “Because there’s no sign of her leaving.”

  “There’s a zillion ways she could have left. Maybe she took the town bus to the ski hill and stole a car. Maybe she stole one in Jackson. Maybe she hitched a ride. Or took a Greyhound, or . . .”

  “Okay, okay, I got it. You know it’s only because—”

  “You worry. I know.”

  I look up at JJ and roll my eyes. I make a crazy motion with a finger next to my temple, then turn it into a gun and pull the trigger.

  “JJ’s here. I’ve got to go.”

  “You’re coming home tomorrow?”

  “Yes, tomorrow. Will you pick me up?”

  “Text me your flight info.”

  “I will.”

  “And be—”

  “Careful, I know. I will, I promise.”

  He sighs again and it feels like a transition. I’ve moved away from being his girlfriend and back to being his . . . daughter isn’t the right word, but sometimes it feels like that.

  “See you tomorrow,” I say, and hang up before I say something I’ll regret. “You ready for the shoot-out?” I say to JJ. Every day at six, there’s a fake shoot-out in the town square. JJ’s become a little obsessed with it.

  “You know it.”

  She’s picked up a cowboy hat at one of the stores along Broadway. It’s sitting on her head at a jaunty angle. If I didn’t know better, I’d say she looked happy. And maybe she is.

  “You’re turning into one of them,” I say.

  “Who?”

  “The tourists.”

  “All part of the facade.”

  “If you say so.”

  She tips her hat at me. “You could start running up Snow King every morning. And wearing more fleece.”

  “I’m already at maximum fleece, thank you.”

  She smiles. “Liam going to be a problem?”

  “He’ll let it go eventually.”

  “Hope so.”

  “Me too.”

  We check in with Sergeant Johansson before we leave and make sure he has all our numbers and emails and that he’ll let us know if he finds anything.

  “This is a puzzler you’ve left me,” he says, tapping a pencil on his desk in time to some rhythm I can’t make out.

  “Sorry,” I say.

  “Not at all, not at all. I suspect she’ll turn up in some other jurisdiction soon enough.”

  “What, then?”

  “That depends on what she’s done in the meantime, but I reckon she’s in for a long haul in prison. She’s committed dozens of crimes.”

  “So, there’d be a trial?” JJ asks. “Or more than one?”

  “That’s right. Unless she pleads guilty. But let’s not get ahead of yourself. We have to find her first.”

  “Thank you for looking,” I say.

  “No trouble at all. It’s my job.”

  We shake hands all around, and then JJ and I leave and drive out to the airport. Despite everything that’s happened, I’ve grown pretty fond of the place. As we drive past the marsh and the vast expanse of
the Elk Refuge, I try to take it all in. The big sky, the rolling hills covered in scrub pines, and that incredible view of the Tetons as we turn down the airport road. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to bring myself to come here again, but I wish I could. I wish I could show Liam Jackson Lake without thinking about what lies below its cold blue surface. Or climb up to the saddle of the Grand and take in the view of the valley and the dotted cars along the highway. I never made it to Yellowstone or saw half the wildlife there is to see; I mourn for these last things that Jessie took from me.

  We drop off the Jeep near where I left Jessie’s the other night, check into our separate flights, and go through security. As I place my pack on the conveyor, I start to feel a bit lighter. Maybe we can put all this behind us, let it all be scanned out of us.

  But then I hear the TSA agent say something to JJ behind me, and there’s a tap on my shoulder and a voice saying that I need to come with him, and the feeling slips away.

  The TSA holding room is small and windowless, and we’re in here because we’re idiots who, after all our careful planning, forgot that going through TSA at the same time with the same name and birth date might set off some alarm bells.

  Compared to the interrogations I’ve been through with Liam, this one is gentle. The TSA agent, a balding black man in his midfifties, runs our IDs through the system and confirms that we’re two separate individuals. He tells us that the agent out front didn’t have any choice but to bring us back once the flag had been raised, and that he’s sorry for the inconvenience. He assures us that we’re unlikely to miss our flights. Then he asks us if we know that there’s an APB out for a third woman with the same name? “Yes,” we say together. I can see Jessie’s face on his screen, and I wonder if this is part of my life now. Getting pulled out of line every single time I travel forever because of Jessie. Being reminded of her everywhere I go. I’m sure it’s something I deserve, given everything, but I don’t relish the thought.

  JJ hands the TSA agent Sergeant Johansson’s card. “If you call him, he can vouch for us.”

  He takes it and places the call and returns a few minutes later with the all clear.

  “Might be best if you don’t travel together for a while,” he says. “And keep that card handy.”

  “Understood,” JJ says, though I hope never to speak to the sergeant again. If that means sticking to land transportation in the continental United States, so be it.