No Such Person

by Caroline B. Cooney

  But the detective says slowly, “She told you not to repeat the possibility that Jason intentionally dumped his friend in the path of a barge?”

  And now Miranda’s quote is laden with implications. Lander doesn’t want anybody else to think this. Why not? Because it’s true? Because Lander knows it’s true?

  “Why did Jason motor right up to your dock on the day of the barge incident?”

  Because Lander waved a big striped beach towel at him, thinks Miranda. But she does not say this. It sounds like a signal, as if the whole thing really was prearranged.

  She knows what the next question will have to be. Why did Jason arrive at any dock at all when he should have been out there searching for his drowning companion?

  Time to stop talking. Miranda turns to her parents. “Lander needs a lawyer, I think.”

  The police do not remark on this, but produce their search warrant. Her father takes it, unbelieving. It is in an envelope and he cannot get it out. His fingers are stiff with shock. He has trouble reading the words. He is incapacitated by what is happening.

  Miranda shows them Lander’s room. When they turn on the ceiling light, they see a small very tidy space, with a single bed neatly made, a small white chest of drawers, a small white bedside table and a mint-green iPad. There are paperbacks on a wall shelf, a wire tote filled with cosmetics and shampoo hanging on the back of the door, a large canvas bag sagging empty in the corner and decorative cardboard boxes lined up on the single shelf in the tiny closet, in which the police will find a small selection of designer sunglasses, caps, hair accessories, scarves and CDs.

  “This is all she owns?” the detective asks incredulously.

  “This is our summer place. Most of our stuff is in West Hartford.”

  He texts, probably asking for another search warrant for West Hartford.

  They start in one corner of the room. They move, lifting and opening everything. Perhaps they are looking for drugs.

  It’s the one thing she knows they will not find. She goes back into the living room. Her dazed parents hold out their arms and the three Allerdons stand together, loosely linked. She feels like the illustration of an atom—her thoughts like electrons racing around in their orbits, getting nowhere.

  The minute the police pick up the iPad they find in Lander’s room, they will flick to email. Miranda herself rarely uses email. It’s work to write an email. But she gets quite a few because teachers send assignments, the choral director sends rehearsal reminders, the church youth director sends field trip instructions.

  All these will be addressed to Miranda.

  The police will then flip open the iPad in Miranda’s room and see that it’s the one they want.

  If she’s lucky, though, they won’t start their iPad research while they’re in the house or in the driveway. It’s now ten o’clock in the evening. They must be tired. They must want to go to bed. If she’s lucky, they will drive to some headquarters and deposit the iPad there, planning to work on it in the morning. Miranda will have the night to do her own—

  Her own what?

  What is she doing? Why is she doing it? Now there will be two sisters in trouble. And it will totally look as if Miranda is covering for Lander. As if Miranda has reason to believe Lander has done bad things.

  Her desperate parents sit on the sofa and open their contact lists. They try to think of somebody to phone. They have no knowledge of criminal lawyers. And how can they possibly say to a close friend, neighbor or business acquaintance, Our daughter has been arrested for murder and we need help?

  Murder. The most terrible thing a person can do.

  A life is cruelly ended. A human being shot or stabbed or run over. Murder is irrevocable. There is no do-over.

  Oh, Lander, thinks Miranda.

  The police search the bathroom, but it’s so little and stripped down that this takes hardly a minute. They glance into Miranda’s room, the kitchen, her parents’ room. They do not search. The only thing they take away is the wrong iPad.

  As the police walk to the front door, Miranda’s mother gets up, panting and brushing away hot tears. “We have to see Lander. Tell us exactly where she is. We’re driving down there.”

  The burly officer with the very deep voice shakes his head. “There’s a lot to do in a homicide. I’m not sure when you can see her. Call tomorrow morning. But tomorrow afternoon is more likely. Maybe you can coax your daughter to talk to us. She isn’t saying anything.”

  “But isn’t silence best?” asks Miranda’s father, eyes darting around, as if he hopes to find an escape route from this nightmare.

  “It might be,” agrees the officer, implying that since Lander is guilty, the less she says, the safer she is.

  Lander. A killer.

  Horror crowds up against them, sneering.

  Miranda wants the last word. “Look for Jason Firenza,” she orders them. “He did it.”

  “We haven’t found him,” admits the officer. “In fact, there doesn’t seem to be anybody by that name in Connecticut.”

  I didn’t find him either, Miranda remembers. But he’s out there. I will not let him disappear. He’s guilty. I’m finding him.

  The last officer out the door pauses. He says gently, “Reporters and TV stations like to cover homicides. Brace yourselves. This will be on the morning news, online and in the morning paper.”

  —

  The police are gone.

  Her parents shudder, deny that this is happening and beg God to make it end.

  Miranda sits cross-legged on the sofa, staring at the crowded screen of Lander’s iPad.

  Icon after icon. Folders and files by the dozen. It would take weeks to make a dent in this. She scans the last few days of emails, but Lander does not email much and there is nothing personal.

  Lander has not tweeted lately. Why not? Is she so busy with Jason she doesn’t have a minute? But that’s not possible. Their lives are geared around communication. Texting, tweeting, Snapchat—they come first, not last. Is Jason so exciting she doesn’t care about anybody else?

  Or has Lander learned a dark secret? The first fact of her existence that she cannot share?

  Lander’s Facebook page, however, has loads of pictures. It looks as if Lander spends most of her time with Jason, photographing him. The photos are visible only to Lander’s friends. The police, should they go to her Facebook page—presumably they already have, on their own computers—cannot see this.

  The authorities can probably circumvent this easily. But how interested will the police be in tracking Jason down? Not very, since they think they have the killer in custody.

  Once Lander’s arrest is on television and in the papers, and people are tweeting the news and sharing it, everybody out there will Google Lander Allerdon. All of eastern Connecticut will click over and take a look at Lander’s Facebook page.

  If Derry Romaine goes to college in Connecticut—and that’s still iffy—perhaps Jason does, too. For sure, Jason lives around here and keeps boats here. Somebody somewhere in Connecticut knows Jason. Somebody somewhere in Connecticut knows where to find him.

  It’s a matter of letting that person know that Miranda needs the information.

  Miranda will post her own photograph of Jason Firenza on Lander’s Facebook page. She will include a caption. This man calls himself Jason Firenza, but that is not his name. He murdered somebody. Lander has wrongly been arrested for that murder. Please help Lander. Please identify him.

  Lander has privacy controls. Only her 347 friends can see the content. To advertise Jason Firenza, Miranda needs to open that site to the world. And that means she has to change the privacy controls.

  She may or may not know Lander’s password. When Lander got her first iPad, Miranda was not old enough to be given one, and she was miserable with envy and grief. Amazingly, her big sister let Miranda cuddle up for a few minutes as Lander experimented with her new prize. Miranda watched Lander enter pass codes. At the time, Lander used her own name
and the numbers of her birthday, August 6. L8AND6ER.

  Years have passed.

  Is Lander the type to change her password on a regular basis?

  Yes.

  In fact, Lander is the type to purchase a password app, so that the app itself assigns new alphanumeric codes every so often.

  Lander, for once in your life, don’t be anal. Cherish your first password so much that you never change it!

  She carefully enters L8AND6ER.

  Yes!

  Miranda almost shouts with joy. Instead she grits her teeth so that her parents will be aware of nothing. Actually, her parents aren’t aware of anything. They are frozen, blinded, by what has socked them.

  A minute of editing and Lander no longer has privacy. Everybody in the world who looks her up on Facebook can see everything.

  Lander will hate this. She will hate Miranda for doing it.

  Her parents are mumbling the same things over and over. This can’t be true. This is a bad dream.

  Maybe it is. Maybe Miranda will wake up Saturday morning, having taken irrevocable steps of her own, naming Jason Firenza as a murderer. Maybe even now, the police have seen their error and are letting Lander go.

  Miranda cannot publicize this nightmare before the world publicizes it. During the night, it might all solve itself. And if Miranda posts this—why, the medical school might read it! Reject Lander. Miranda will have ruined Lander’s future.

  She needs a second opinion.

  Her parents are hopeless. They can’t even make themselves call a close neighbor in West Hartford who is a judge and surely knows criminal lawyers.

  “It’s after midnight,” says Miranda’s mother. “We never phone people at this hour.”

  “Mom, it’s a murder,” says Miranda. “Don’t worry about waking anybody up. Make the call.”

  But although Miranda can be firm about what her parents should do, she cannot be firm about what she ought to do. She wants to call Candy and talk, but she does not want to say out loud the horrible claims of the police. She thinks of texting, but it’s too huge for a few thumb taps.

  The night passes.

  Lander has two national papers on her tablet. Miranda adds two local papers and two local TV stations, Hartford and New Haven, and watches them endlessly. Waiting for the worst.

  Around two in the morning, Miranda goes to bed. She doesn’t turn on a light. The screen of Lander’s iPad is enough to see by.

  She lies there endlessly checking the local news. There is no risk of falling asleep. She is pumped with fear for Lander and rage at Jason Firenza.

  At four a.m., the website of the Hartford television station displays a new banner. WEST HARTFORD WOMAN ARRESTED IN RIVERSIDE MURDER.

  It’s not a bad dream. It’s real.

  There are two photographs.

  One is from the high school yearbook. Lander looks like a million other pretty blond high school girls. Her character and brilliance do not show. When people gaze at this, they will think, So even in rich suburbia, girls go wrong.  What kind of parents raise a monster who deals in cocaine and kills for it?

  The second photograph is a mug shot. Lander has been crying. Her hair is tangled. Her eyes are open so wide that Miranda actually wonders if her anti-drug sister is on something.

  Miranda goes to Facebook.

  Her hands are quivering.

  Miranda’s accusation that Jason Firenza is a murderer appears on Facebook at 4:10 a.m. on Saturday morning.

  Night passes. Down the corridors of the jail, the lights are dimmed, but in Lander’s cell, the light does not go out. She sleeps a few minutes now and then, but mostly she lies there, knotted with fear and grief.

  The sheet is rough. At home, she sleeps on five-hundred-count percale. She may never sleep on that again. She may never even see it again. She may never go to a department store and buy new sheets, or try on shoes, or stop at the makeup counters and get her face done.

  She cannot tell the time. She does not wear a watch. They have taken her cell phone.

  She misses her cell phone more than any one person. How sick is that?

  She thinks a lot about Miranda. Her sister warned her several times. He’s dangerous, Lanny, don’t go anywhere with him. But it is Lander’s habit to ignore Miranda.

  She ignores every warning. A good physician constantly considers warning signs in patients; medicine is probably all about warning signs. But she, Lander, scorns them.

  She is a Valentine’s Day cartoon, shot by a snickering cupid. It is love that has brought her down. Even now, in this hideous lonely night, her fear, horror and shame are less important than her love for Jason. There has to be an explanation. One where she can still love him, and he will still love her.

  But the police are correct to be skeptical. Who doesn’t know her boyfriend’s cell phone number? Who doesn’t know his email address? Who doesn’t follow him on Twitter?

  How can she possibly be unable to name the make of the cars in which he drives her? Why does she not question Jason when they take more than one boat from more than one marina?

  And as for their final trip, weaving down tiny brooks that carve the acres of marsh along the eastern edge of the river, why does she not question every bit of this? They pointlessly circle from Lander’s house to the marina, down the highway, across the I-95 Connecticut River bridge and back up the other side. Then they stop at a flood-ugly swamp, with rotting driftwood and muddy banks, perhaps the only place on the river that is not beautiful. And then he talks her into target shooting? Really?

  But he doesn’t have to talk her into anything. She is so in love she would kill for him.

  She hears this thought and wants to scrape her fingernails through her brain.

  I didn’t think that, she tells herself. I did not kill for him.

  Or did I?

  She wants to scream. In another cell, a woman does scream, hour after hour, and also bangs her head against a wall. The police keep shouting at her to stop. Eventually they fasten her to some sort of chair, telling her it’s for her own good, and the woman screams, “It takes four of you, doesn’t it? I hate you! Get me out of this chair! I’ll never stop screaming!” But she does stop. Because of exhaustion, a gag or an injection?

  Lander wants to stop practically everything. She wants to stop her own thoughts. Stop being here. Stop loving Jason. Stop being without her cell phone.

  Does she truly love Jason? Or does she love being asked?

  Her heart is ill with how much she wants Jason to show up and get her out of this. She imagines all sorts of dramatic scenes, from his confession to storming the jail.

  But if she really did shoot the gun that really did kill Derry Romaine, nothing can save her. And maybe nothing should. Murderers should not get off.

  She prays over and over. God, please, please, please, get me out of here. This is not my life.

  She knows it’s morning only because trays are delivered to a cell out of sight. A furious male voice shouts, “Call that breakfast? Call that coffee?” This is followed by a stream of obscenities.

  She hasn’t been here twenty-four hours and already jail is so hard she cannot bear it.

  Lander is used to control over her own time. Time is her arena, to do with as she chooses. But time and meals now belong to her jailers.

  If they find her guilty of murder, she will have nothing but time. Armloads, years, decades of time. Hard time, it’s called, and she can see already why that adjective is used.

  She does not move when a tray of food and liquid is placed in her cell. It is all she can do not to throw up at the smell of it. She clenches muscles from her jaw to her belly, to keep from screaming. Because things can get worse. They can strap you to a torture chair. Down the hall, the angry man hurls his hot coffee at his jailer and Lander totally identifies with that decision.

  The policewoman comes for her again.

  Lander doesn’t blink, as if being motionless will protect her; as if she is prey and the predators w
ill not spot her if she is frozen in place.

  “Lander,” says the policewoman sharply. “Get up. Come.”

  These are commands given to dogs. Lander is no longer a bright, beautiful vision of a brilliant future physician. She is a dog in a crate.

  “Lander!” yells the policewoman.

  From the unseen cells come cheers. “Hey, Lander!” screams a female voice. “Fight back! You show ’em, girl! You a killer! You don’t do what some cop ask!”

  Lander is paralyzed.

  These strangers know what she’s accused of? How can they know? Who else knows? Does the world know? Do her parents know?

  The voice from the cell is not jeering. The voice is entertained. Lander is a sideshow.

  My arrest is online, thinks Lander. On TV news. People are tweeting.

  “My” arrest. As if she possesses it. But she doesn’t. The arrest belongs to the police. Her whole life belongs to the police now.

  She approaches the bars of her cell. It’s not a long walk. This is a tiny compartment. She dimly recognizes the policewoman from yesterday.

  “Turn around.”

  Lander turns around.

  The door is opened. Handcuffs encircle her wrists again. The heavy cuffs are not on her wrists solely to control her. They are reminders. You are in jail.

  Without hands, she is as helpless as a swaddled infant.

  In the corridor, the air conditioning is arctic. She tries to lift her chin and be brave, but she is dirty and needs a shower. Her hair is a mess, her clothes are wrinkled and she has no hands. The construction of the hall is also cement block and the word “block” springs up in her face, shouting, Prison block, prison block.

  Can my life dissolve like this? Just slide down the drain?

  She is aware of her selfishness, thinking only of how hard this is on her. Grotesquely, she is thinking more about the loss of her cell phone than the death of Derry Romaine.

  They pass the women’s holding cell. A half dozen females—skinny, fat, white, black, wearing tiny little skirts or big sagging sweat suits—are sprawled alone in misery or standing alone in rage.