No Such Person

by Caroline B. Cooney

  The constables retrieve Miranda’s cell phone from Stu’s pocket. They give it to her. There is a text message from her parents. We’re almost there.

  Mrs. Warren takes Miranda’s phone and taps the dial-back button. Miranda hears her mother’s voice: “Rimmie?”

  “No, it’s Wendy Warren here. Don’t panic. Miranda is fine. I’m at the cottage with her. Stu Crowder is the murderer, not Lander. Miranda is the heroine of the day. She caught Stu. The police have Stu in custody. I don’t think there will be an arraignment tomorrow. I think they will accept that Lander was a bystander.”

  It is a generous summary. Miranda does not feel like a heroine and in fact, she did not catch Stu. The police did. And it’s Geoffrey who is the hero.

  The ambulance is here.

  “I don’t want to go,” she protests again.

  “I’ll go with you,” says Geoffrey.

  Mrs. Warren shakes her head. “No, Geoffrey, you stay here and tell the police everything Stu said. I’ll go with Miranda. Now buck up, Miranda. You protected my sons, you saved your sister, you’re brave, brave, brave. You have the perfect name, too.”

  “I do?”

  “Miranda. The name is Shakespeare’s invention, you know. It means ‘a woman to be admired.’ ”

  —

  At the hospital, she gets antibiotics, a tetanus shot and eleven stitches on the fat side of her hand. She hangs on to Mrs. Warren until her parents arrive in a police car with the siren going. Her parents are the most wonderful sight in the world.

  They hold her and rock her. Then it is their turn to sob and they do it well, but Miranda is fine, partly because it’s over, and partly because the doctors have given her a sedative.

  Mr. Warren drives up to the hospital in the Warrens’ massive van, with the boys in car seats in the middle row, thrilled to be up so late and part of the action. The three Allerdons squash into the back row of the van so that they can all go home together. The detectives follow in their own vehicles. They have a lot of questions for Miranda and Miranda has a lot of questions for them.

  First she wants a shower. She has Stu’s fingerprints in her hair.

  “No,” says her mother. “You have to keep the stitches dry. I’ll sponge you off later.”

  The sedative makes her groggy. It will be crummy if she doesn’t manage to stay awake for the rest of the evening. When they reach the cottage, Miranda is so worn out she can barely swing her feet out the van door. But once she is standing, she’s okay.

  The living room is full of neighbors and police.

  Jack is here. Look what happens while he is wasting time on a ball game and a slow restaurant. He misses all the good stuff. Jack is grumpy.

  Geoffrey, however, is pretty puffed up. He saved Miranda’s life. Her father shakes Geoffrey’s hand again and again, each time having forgotten the previous shake. Everybody slaps Geoffrey on the back. They are careful not to slap Miranda on the back.

  Miranda starts her questions in the middle of nowhere. “Mr. and Mrs. Crowder aren’t home after all, are they?”

  “No,” says a detective. “We don’t know where they are. Most likely, Stu drove them to an airport months ago and has all three cars.”

  Mrs. Warren says, “We always thought Stu was weird. We joked about it. We’d say, His parents aren’t in Australia; Stu buried them in the basement. It never occurred to me that Stu being weird had anything to do with Lander being arrested. It never occurred to me to tell the police that one of the neighbors is weird. I didn’t think of Lander’s nightmare as a neighborhood thing.”

  Miranda defends her precious neighborhood. “It wasn’t a neighborhood thing. It was Stu and only Stu.”

  Everybody is starving. Miranda does not mention the casseroles in the refrigerator, although they are probably safe to eat. So improbable that the Allerdon family has ever had to think about murder and prison, let alone serial killers with casseroles.

  Her father resorts to his favorite activity. He turns on the grill and tosses frozen hamburgers over the fire. It is a midnight cookout. The detectives are as hungry as everybody else. Henry and Hayden miss it because they fall asleep on the sofa.

  “Why did Stu make a casserole?” asks Miranda.

  “Maybe he needed an excuse to walk over and ask you about Lander. He may have hoped to hear that Lander was suffering. But he claims to love her, so maybe he was hoping to hear that there wasn’t enough evidence, even though he’s the one who set it up, and that Lander was on her way home.”

  The other detective says, “He may have made the casserole in order to pass himself off as the good neighbor. He might even think of himself as a good neighbor. Plus, he’s a dramatic kind of guy. Needs props and occasions. Like the whole stupid attempt to drown Derry. Your normal drug dealer would just shoot the guy in the street and drive off.”

  Is there such a thing as a “normal” drug dealer? Miranda wonders.

  She joins her father at the grill. He sets down his spatula to hug her (carefully) yet again.

  I don’t care that they never saved money for me, she thinks. I might care one day, when I have to go to college online instead of on campus, but right now, all I care about is that my family is safe.

  “Daddy?” she says softly. She loves his size, his smell, his hug. “Will we still have to sell the cottage?”

  He stares into the dark moonless night. Then he nods and shrugs at the same time, and Miranda sees written on his face all the debt, all the mistakes, all the overspending, all the bills yet to come. “Yes, baby. We will. There’s no silver lining to this nightmare, Rimmie, but at least your mother and I recognize now that we can’t be so careless about dollars.”

  How easily a person can make bad judgments.

  Her parents made a lot of bad calls. Lander made the most of all.

  Geoffrey made only good calls. Yet she hasn’t really thanked Geoffrey, about whom she’s had nothing but bad judgment. She has her actual life to thank him for. But even after all that’s happened, and all that’s gone down, Miranda is still awkward around a boy her own age. Even a boy in whose arms she has drifted downriver. Maybe especially a boy in whose arms she has rested.

  Miranda can no longer make out her father’s face. It must be getting dark very fast. But that doesn’t seem right. It’s been dark for a long time.

  “She’s asleep on her feet,” says a voice. “Let’s put her to bed.”

  It’s delicious to be carried like a toddler.

  To sleep as babies do, knowing that the world is safe.

  Sunday night passes in an agony of sleeplessness, tears and regret. The whole word “arraignment” is a disaster. What will Monday be like?

  Lander does not find courage during the long hours of fluorescent light and snoring prisoners, but she bottoms out. Whatever is coming, she can face it.

  In the morning, they bring her to yet another interview room. They don’t put cuffs on her. Perhaps they realize that she is beaten. How quickly I give up, thinks Lander. It isn’t even seventy-two hours and I am whipped.

  This isn’t the same as the other interview rooms. It’s a real room, with real windows, real furniture and a lot of people.

  “So your sister, Miranda,” says one of the detectives—they all look alike to her, even the ones of different races; in her horror she cannot distinguish them—“is a heroine.”

  She is too exhausted to understand. “No, no! It’s bad enough you’re accusing me. Miranda would never do drugs. She would never touch heroin. Leave my sister out of this. She’s a good person!”

  The detective says, “Put an e on the end of the word ‘heroin,’ Lander. Your sister has saved you. She found out what really happened.”

  An e on the end of the word.

  Heroine.

  Miranda.

  “She told us she’d rescue her sister, and she did. Along with some really great neighbors of yours.”

  They are actually smiling at her.

  She is rescued? It’s over? M
iranda saved her?

  Lander stares at the detective, wanting him to say that again.

  “Stu Crowder killed Derry Romaine,” says the detective.

  “Stu?” How could Stu have anything to do with this?

  “He deals,” says the detective. “Mainly college campuses. Keeps records on his laptop. We’re pretty happy with all we’re going to learn from that laptop.”

  Boring Stu? All along he’s been a dealer and a murderer? She almost argues with the police, it seems so improbable.

  “One of his dealers was a man named Jason Draft. Jason Firenza to you. Stu also murdered Jason. That’s why we couldn’t find Jason. He was dead on the Crowders’ kitchen floor.”

  Jason?

  Wonderful, handsome, romantic Jason is dead on a kitchen floor?

  She covers her face. It is wonderful to have free hands, but horrible to weep for the wasted life of Jason. Oh, Jason, I truly loved you, she thinks. No matter what you’ve done, I don’t want you to be dead.

  “The two of them set you up. It was both revenge and a game.”

  Stu and Jason were a team?

  “Why wouldn’t you talk to us about anything?” asks the detective. “The whole crime scene on the river was squirrelly, and the whole situation was cockeyed. If you had just talked to us, maybe we could have pieced things together earlier.”

  It’s going to be my fault they were too dumb to figure it out? Lander glares at them, and anger rescues her a little bit. “I didn’t know what happened!” she snaps. “I was the only one who shot that gun. And I’m still the only one who shot the gun! What if I really had killed somebody? I had to think it through. I couldn’t say anything until I knew.”

  “Stu killed Derry before you got there. He wiped the gun and left it there for Jason to give you.”

  So when they arrived at that swampy little peninsula, Jason already knew that Derry was lying there dead. The target practice was a charade he had rehearsed. All his smiles and compliments were a game.

  Miranda can think of nothing she has done to Stu or Jason to deserve any punishment, let alone be set up for murder. Is she going to find out that some of this is her wrongdoing after all? She whispers, “I don’t understand the package of cocaine.”

  “It was mostly powdered sugar. Stu and Jason didn’t abandon a whole lot of product.”

  They abandoned me, though, thinks Lander.

  The police tell her everything Miranda has gone through. Everything Miranda did for Lander’s sake. Every wound she received.

  Lander weeps again.

  Her family did not abandon her.

  Her parents were willing to sacrifice the cottage. Her grandmother sacrificed her home. And Miranda almost sacrificed her life.

  Lander is thick with grief and shame.

  She not only has misunderstood her own self. She has misunderstood what family is. Lander may test well, but Miranda gets it right.

  The interviews go on and on. It’s as hard for Lander to cooperate leaving jail as it was entering. But she answers everything. She is shocked by her cumulative bad judgment. Even more shocked to realize that she still loves Jason. How long will it take for that to pass?

  And then the last door opens.

  Lander walks into a room where her mother, her father and her sister race forward, beaming and shouting her name.

  MONDAY MORNING

  Miranda and her parents wait two hours for Lander to be processed out.

  They’re whiny about the delay and the officer at the front desk gets testy.

  Miranda keeps thinking about Geoffrey. She never has properly thanked him, let alone admitted that she sees him so differently now. But how could she admit it? She can hardly say I thought you were just a big lug without a brain.

  When the Allerdons get home, Geoffrey will eventually come over to swim off their dock. She will try to act normal and join him and then…then what?

  Her parents call Grandma while they wait, telling her that Lander is innocent, will be coming home today, does not need an attorney. Thank you, thank you, thank you, but they will not need Grandma’s house and money after all.

  Grandma is a little deaf and shouts so loudly into her phone that Miranda hears her easily. Grandma’s voice always makes her happy. “I don’t care about the money!” yells Grandma. “You bring her to see me so I can tell for myself that she’s all right.”

  Miranda’s eyes blur with tears. I need to call Geoffrey, she thinks. Right now.

  Miranda is not fond of phone calls. Texting is more fun; easier; less emotional.

  She thinks of Geoffrey on Saturday and Sunday, walking back and forth so many times at the cottage. He wasn’t just going home for lunch. He was checking on her, ready to be a big brother for her.

  She is brave, but not brave enough to admit that she likes Geoffrey. And perhaps not as a big brother.

  She composes a text: thank you Geoffrey for saving my life.

  Seriously? She’s going to thank him electronically? He’s not even worth a few commas? Miranda gets a grip, deletes the unsent text and calls him.

  “I’m so glad to hear from you!” says Geoffrey. “Are you okay? Is Lander okay? How are your parents doing? Are you coming back to the cottage or is it ruined for you? Is it true that you might sell it?”

  And they are talking. Really talking, the way they never have. She fits in a thank-you, and then fits in another. It’s like with Grandma, she realizes. You can never say enough thanks enough times, but the person who rescues you just wants to know if you’re all right. “We’ll probably drive to the cottage once they let Lander out,” Miranda tells Geoffrey. “If we do, come on over. Maybe we can go out in the Zodiac for a while.”

  “I think you’ll just want to be with Lander.”

  “Historically,” says Miranda, “Lander’s interest in me dwindles pretty fast.”

  —

  It is lunchtime before Lander is out. At last, the whole family is in a parking lot without a single policeman. It is hard to get in the car because it is hard to stop hugging, and it is hard to snap seat belts because it is hard to be separated. Miranda’s hand throbs, but she cannot take more pain meds if she wants to stay awake.

  Lander looks awful. She is thin and gray and unclean. But she is the most beautiful thing they have ever seen. They pat her constantly, to reassure themselves that she’s really back with them.

  Lander looks cornered, even when she is safe in the backseat of their father’s car. Whatever happened in that jail; whatever Lander saw when she was with Jason; whatever Lander saw inside herself—perhaps these things are too terrible to say out loud. Because Lander sidesteps all questions.

  “I’m starving to death,” Lander says instead. “I didn’t eat a thing the whole time.”

  “Neither did we,” says Miranda. “I’m totally starving.”

  Suddenly, the day feels kind of normal, which is amazing, considering they just experienced the most abnormal weekend in suburban America.

  “Let’s go to McDonald’s!” cries Lander.

  They stare at her. Lander is opposed to salt, grease and fast food.

  Maybe it’s all she can come up with, thinks Miranda. Maybe she’s desperate for us to stop asking questions. She wants us to chew french fries instead. “I love McDonald’s,” says Miranda, supporting her sister.

  Lander takes Miranda’s hand, carefully checking to be sure it’s the unhurt one. Tears leak out of Lander’s eyes. “Oh, Rimmie, thank you. Thank you for everything.”

  “Miranda,” she corrects automatically. She is thinking that Lander looks weak. Not weak from failure to eat. Weak from jail, horror, shame, fear.

  She wonders how she would have done behind bars.

  “Seriously? McDonald’s?” asks their father, taking the turnpike exit that will lead them to the nearest one. “Plenty of real restaurants.”

  “I don’t want to get out of the car,” says Lander. “I don’t want to face people. I don’t even want to face myself yet.”
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  Their parents exchange frightened looks.

  “Until I’ve showered and fixed my hair,” says Lander quickly. Their parents are pacified by this answer, but Miranda suspects that hair has little to do with it.

  Bags of food and cardboard trays of drinks are passed into the car. Their father does not park but meanders along pretty shoreline roads rimmed with old stone walls, and they catch glimpses of the lighthouse. Lander is right. Hot food helps a lot. And Miranda loves everything salty.

  Lander takes a deep breath. “I’m not going to medical school after all. You’ve spent too much money on me. I didn’t understand how much. Or I understood and didn’t care. You can’t rack up more debt. I refuse to let you sell the cottage. I’m going to live at home for a few years. Earn money. Pay back everything. And besides, I need the time to think. I’m not who I thought I was.”

  There is a pause in which they consider the joy of keeping the cottage.

  But Stu Crowder has done a vicious thing to the Allerdons and Miranda is not going to let him win. And Lander is a pretty quick thinker. She doesn’t need two years to sort out her thoughts. Probably two afternoons will suffice.

  “Oh, stop blubbering, Lander,” says Miranda. “Of course you’re going to medical school. You think we went through all this so you could run a donut franchise?”

  “But what about your college costs? There’s no money now, let alone after I’ve been in medical school. You saved me, Rimmie. How else do I repay you?”

  Miranda does not believe that she can be repaid for what she has been through. Suffering isn’t about payment anyway. You do what you have to do for your family.

  “The medical school will probably agree to postpone my enrollment,” Lander continues. “Meanwhile, we hang on to the cottage and I pay you back for my college bills.”

  It sounds good now, when Lander hasn’t even showered jail off her body. But tomorrow? Next week? In fact, Lander’s ordeal lasted only from Friday noon to Monday noon. Will Lander still feel like sacrificing a month from now? Miranda has her doubts.

  But this decision is not in Miranda’s hands.