No Such Person (12 page)

“I don't think so,” says Miranda. “I think there are times when they can't, like when a grown-up isn't home.”

The detectives ask Henry if
his
parents are home. They don't want little boys around while they detect.

“No, they're never home,” explains Henry. “We're always here.”

This is a wild exaggeration but it certainly distracts the detectives. Miranda doesn't clear things up. Besides, it's never been clear. Where
are
Mr. and Mrs. Warren all the time?

Geoffrey chooses this moment to show up. He doesn't shove through the bushes as usual, but comes down the driveway. Either he's grown up or— No. He just has his hands full and can't fit through bushes. He's carrying his fishing equipment and with difficulty is balancing something else as well. He sees the two men, he sees the Crown Vic, he sees Miranda on the porch and he pauses.

She wonders vaguely why his towel is still lying on the dock when he's coming from his house. It can't mean anything except that he forgot it when he headed home. Doesn't she have enough trouble without worrying about other people's towels?

“Who's this?” the police ask Miranda.

“Another neighbor. We let people who don't have their own docks use ours. Geoffrey likes to fish off our dock.”

Geoffrey is wearing khaki shorts and a huge T-shirt, which makes him look even heavier. Miranda and Geoffrey are not Facebook friends, although Miranda generally wants to know everything about everybody and never turns down a friend request. I'm judging him by his extra pounds, thinks Miranda.

She has a sick, swampy vision of a life in which
she
is judged; judged as the sister of a murderer. A life in which she visits that murderer in prison. In which everybody will wonder what it's like to grow up with a murderer. In which Miranda carries this hideous truth through every hour of every class for two more years of high school.

“Are you okay, Rimmie?” asks Geoffrey. He sets his fishing gear carefully on the grass and straightens, throwing back his shoulders, as if willing to beat the police up should Miranda require this.

Normally she would be insulted. Of course she's okay. But this time she blinks away tears. “No. I'm not okay,” she says, hoping this will touch the hearts of the detectives and they'll get in their car and leave.

Geoffrey comes forward with the other thing he has been holding. It's a platter of cookies. There is no wrapping over them. The scent of cinnamon is strong. “My mom made them for you,” he says.

“Thank you,” she says, but she is not thankful. Food is what you send for funerals. Geoffrey's mother must believe that Lander did it; that Lander is now a death in the family.

Geoffrey's mother has not brought the cookies herself, because she doesn't know what to say. She's forcing poor Geoffrey, tongue-tied at the best of times, to do the talking.

Miranda does not have to hold the plate, because Henry and Hayden take it, biting into cookies they do not finish, then trying another one to see if the icing is thicker. Henry offers the police some cookies. “Take the bitten one,” he says generously.

Geoffrey says to the detectives, “Are you here because of Lander?”

“Yes. What's your name, son?”

He spells his name. “Lander didn't do it,” he says calmly.

His firm factual voice is reassuring. The detectives' skeptical nods are not. Miranda sits down hard, her knees buckling from anxiety.

The detectives say, “Geoffrey, why don't you sit here on the porch and keep Miranda company while we're inside?”

“Are they allowed to do that?” Geoffrey asks Miranda. “You think I should go get my dad?”

Geoffrey's father is yet another invisible parent. He too works in Hartford, but unlike Miranda's father (who during the school year commutes only two miles from the West Hartford house), Geoffrey's father commutes year-round from here. It's a hard drive in summer, and a brutal drive in winter. Geoffrey's mother is an interior decorator who works anywhere and everywhere. Geoffrey is usually alone.

“They are allowed,” says Miranda. “Have a seat,” she adds, desperate for Geoffrey to stay; desperate for allies.

Geoffrey sits. He's a very solid person. He completely fills that chair. She tries to smile at him but her lips are quivering. He half reaches toward her, as if to pat her hand or her shoulder, but it isn't a gesture he's comfortable with, and the hand hangs there, not knowing what to do.

Me too, thinks Miranda, very close to sobbing. I have no idea what to do.

“Miranda,” says one detective, “it turns out we took your iPad yesterday when we wanted Lander's.”

“Oh,” she says. “Is that what happened to my iPad? May I have it back please?” She can't even look at them. She is supposed to be the world's best exaggerator and she can't even fake innocence for five seconds. She looks at Geoffrey instead. He looks more alert than usual. Almost shocked.

Why?  What is it to Geoffrey that the police do or don't have Lander's iPad?

“Miranda, where is Lander's iPad?” says the detective sharply.

“Don't yell at her,” says Geoffrey just as sharply.

Is he protecting Miranda or the iPad? Does
Geoffrey
know something?  What could
Geoffrey
know about Lander's situation?

Towels, she thinks. Rivers. Drugs.

“I don't know where Lander's iPad is,” she says. This is a true statement, because Jack could have taken it anywhere, although it's a fairly safe bet that Jack has run up to his room, which is crowded with electronic devices, and is now working with Tanner on sending the entire world messages.
Find Jason Firenza.
She wonders how fast Tanner and Jack work and what they have in mind, anyway, since her own mind is empty.

“Why was your iPad in Lander's room?” asks the detective.

“We share sometimes.”

This is untrue. The sisters share approximately never. In fact, the white shirt with the lace sides may be the last thing they ever share. Miranda bursts into tears. When will she and Lander be real sisters? Ever? Probably not. They had their chances and blew them all. “What have you found out about Jason Firenza?” Miranda cries. “He really did it. I know you know that! You know Lander hasn't done anything!”

The detectives look at her gently and go into the house.

They can believe that Jason Firenza is the driver of the boat and the trafficker of drugs. But Lander is the killer.

Geoffrey coaxes Henry and Hayden to go home. Then he sits awkwardly on a rocking chair, not rocking, staring at the front yard.

Ants crawl up on the cookie plate.

“I brought the kayak back,” he says.

What is he talking about? Miranda focuses on Geoffrey again. He has a large head: big jaw, big forehead, big amounts of hair. Now he shrugs a little. Big shoulders, too, she thinks.

“Lander paddled down to Two Willows to meet Jason,” says Geoffrey. “That was on TV. So that meant your kayak was still at the marina. So I brought it back.”

“Your parents drove you all the way and dropped you off and you paddled back?”

“No. I swam down.”

“Two miles? And then across the whole river?”

“I do that all the time. I'm captain of my swim team.”

Miranda sits in the terrible heat, overcome by how little she knows about anybody. Even Lander. Does she know a single thing that matters about her own sister?

Yes,
she tells herself.
I know my sister is innocent.

But Miranda does not know this.

The awful possibility of Lander's guilt wavers in her mind, like a heat mirage on a hot tar road.

She is in an interview room with a woman who claims to be her lawyer.

The woman is heavy and lumpy. She wears a navy-blue suit in a fabric Lander would never put on her body. A tight knit shirt reveals rolls of fat. The lawyer wears no earrings, necklace or bracelet. Her watch has a leather band. Her hair is yanked back into a thin, graceless ponytail.

It is frightening. No kind, gentle attorney for a homicide case, but a woman who can't be bothered with frills. Because when you face prison, everything else is a frill.

The policewoman removes one cuff and fastens it to the chair. Lander brings her free hand to her face, reassuring herself that the hand still works.

The policewoman leaves them in private.

“Your parents retained me,” says the lawyer.

My parents know I'm here.

Lander's pretense that this would go away in the night, that nobody would ever know, that she would walk away stained in heart but not in public, is destroyed.

Her parents, who spend their lives admiring her, displaying her, bragging about her—her parents know that she is in jail, accused of murder. They have found this criminal attorney. It is late Saturday afternoon. They found this woman at jet speed. Lander can't imagine her parents achieving this.

“How are they?” whispers Lander. She knows the answer. They are in the same shape Lander is in.
How can this be happening?
they are screaming silently.
Make it end! Make it go away!

She struggles to breathe evenly.

The lawyer says, “Lander, you were brave and correct to say nothing to the police. That was a good decision. But I am your lawyer. You must talk to me or I cannot help you. We don't have much time because your parents cannot afford much time. I am expensive. Your parents are broke.”

This is such an odd statement that fear gives way to annoyance. “Broke?” she echoes irritably.

“They are mortgaged to the hilt on both their houses. They have loans on both their cars. They have huge credit card debt. They have no savings. They have spent it all, my dear, on you. Your orthodontist, your riding lessons, your piano lessons, your clothes, your costly summer music camps in the Berkshires, your college, your ski weekends, your trips to Europe and now your medical school. But they don't have to worry about that particular payment because you are not going there.”

Her father often says,
Kiddo, we can't do that.  We don't have a dime.
Or,
Maybe next year. Right now I just barely have my head above water.

It has never occurred to Lander that he means it. She has always thought of these as just little sayings, tossed out to stop a conversation.

Her parents have no money. Because of her.

“Listen up, Lander. A lot of what I'm telling you I got from television, Twitter or Facebook. People have been very cooperative with the media and very free online. First of all, two crew members on that barge and one person with riverfront property believe that Jason Firenza intentionally dropped his friend Derry Romaine into the water in front of the barge.”

The very thing Miranda had said. A thing so dreadful that Lander considered it unthinkable, so she didn't think it. If only she had paid attention to her little sister. But does she ever pay attention to Rimmie?

Yet another burden of guilt to carry. Her failure as a sister.

And how, if Lander is confined behind bars, will they ever be close sisters?

“If so, it was an intended homicide,” says the lawyer. “I'm not sure that killing via barge and water ski could be proved in a court, but it's an interesting detail, because a minute later, Jason Firenza was at your dock, drinking your coffee. He did not participate in the search for his friend. Strangers saved the friend while Jason Firenza chatted with you. Think that doesn't creep people out? And the café at Two Willows Marina reports that you and Jason were laughing and flirting only a few hours later. You posted pictures of yourself and Jason on Facebook. None of the photographs predate the barge day, but your captions imply long-term friendship. So the assumption is that Jason Firenza was no stranger to your family in spite of claims to the contrary, and that you are probably part of the first attempt on Derry Romaine's life.”

Lander tilts back in the chair, as if to avoid these terrible words. The wrist still chained to the chair catches painfully in the metal cuff.

She probably took a hundred pictures of Jason, and just as many selfies of the two of them laughing into her cell phone camera. She loved tilting her head and body close to his, so that they fit in the frame. In her hopes, Jason would fit into the frame of their lives together.

The frame of her life is now a jail cell.

“Derry Romaine disappeared from the hospital bed,” says the lawyer. “He was not well enough to walk out on his own. A hospital desk clerk has identified Jason Firenza as a frequent visitor. It is likely that Jason Firenza got Derry Romaine out of the hospital, possibly with your assistance.”

Lander never actually saw Derry Romaine. When he was rescued, emergency personnel made everybody leave the dock. By the time the stretcher was maneuvered up the cliff stairs, Lander was across the grass, listening to Jason answer the trooper's questions.

“Killing a colleague is not uncommon among drug dealers,” says the lawyer. “The media speculates that when drowning him in the river didn't work, you two lured him down to that marsh, or carried him if he was that weak, and shot him in the back.”

Lander's body is nodding and jittering as if she is some ancient, pathetic creature with palsy. “No! Nothing like that happened.” But how else could Derry Romaine have arrived in that grim little woods except by Jason bringing him there?

She imagines Jason sneaking Derry into those woods. But however Derry got there, it couldn't have been Jason, because Jason was with her.

In her imagination, she sees the gun in her hand. She sees the bullet leave the gun. She sees it hit Derry, puncture his flesh, explode in his chest. She sees the poor boy's body as it contorts, convulses, collapses.

It is so real that Lander wonders if she
has
seen this. If she knew at the time what she was doing. If she
is
a murderer.

The lawyer says, “I'm quoting the media. That's their story and a large amount is not fact. For example, one TV station claims that your fingerprints are the only ones on the murder weapon. But it's the weekend. Labs don't work that fast. The gun you held is not yet proven to be the murder weapon and neither has it been fingerprinted. Now tell me your story.”

Lander closes her eyes tight to squash the vision of Derry Romaine dying from her bullet. Could it have been some
other
gun that did it? But there is no other gun and nobody else was shooting.

“Have you arranged bail yet?” she whispers. She is quoting television shows. People are always getting out on bail. There are entire companies whose sole purpose is to provide bail. Even if you're broke—she has a hard time accepting that her family is broke—they figure out a way to fund bail for you.

“You're accused of homicide, Lander. A judge isn't likely to give you bail.”

“I can't stay here!”

“Pull yourself together, Lander. You are twenty-two years old. You are in trouble, and you aren't going anywhere. The facts are grim. Talk to me.”

You aren't going anywhere.

Lander's entire life is about freedom. She has always gone anywhere. To the top of the class. To the mall. To Europe. To ski resorts.

She tries not to be a crybaby, but the only thing she wants to do is fling herself facedown on her own bed and bawl, something she has not done since middle school. She swallows hard and finds her voice. “Can my parents be here while I talk to you?”

The lawyer stares incredulously. “I've heard of helicopter parents, how they go to college interviews with their children. How they even show up at the kid's job interviews. But they don't share jail, Lander. You get a prison term, it's
your
prison term.”