No Such Person (8 page)

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.”

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.

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?”