No Such Person (15 page)

Jack arrives. He is wearing jeans, a T-shirt and bright floppy sneakers without socks. A small backpack hangs from one strap on his shoulder. The iPad must be in the backpack.

In his hands is some huge concoction. When he is closer, she sees that it is a fruit arrangement: the kind where they carve cantaloupe into daisies and put them on sticks in a watermelon basket. Jack is fending off bees and wasps that want some of the sweet juice.

With the minister holding the front door open and waving the bees off, Jack scoots in first, then Miranda, and then the minister.

One bee gets in. Jack carefully deposits his fruit bouquet on the coffee table, lets his backpack slip to the floor, picks up a magazine and efficiently swats the bee. He beams proudly. He doesn't pick up the dead bee.

The minister repeats his statement that Miranda must not be here alone. “We are talking about drug traffickers who shoot each other. I want to be sure that you are safely among friends, Miranda. Now. Have you had dinner? My wife and grandson and I would love to take you to dinner.”

Sunday is the only midday meal referred to as dinner. Miranda hasn't eaten since yesterday. She loves the minister, who is on her team, and she loves his grandson, of whom she has never heard and who could be sixteen or forty, and she loves his wife, a pretty lady now deep in dementia, who has retained nothing but her beautiful smile.

There is no question about dinner, however. Miranda must stay here and stay focused. She has to read up on Jason Draft. She will fib, and say that her good friend Candy's family is driving down to get her.

Jack has a better move. “She's coming to the ball game with us. It's in Norwich. Have you ever been to that stadium?”

“I have,” says the minister, smiling. “I love baseball. This is perfect, Miranda. It will take your mind off a situation you cannot change.”

I can change it, thinks Miranda. I have to change it.

“I will stop worrying,” says the minister, giving her a last hug. He gets into his car. “And I will keep praying,” he promises.

When he is out of sight, Jack says, “I think you should come to the ball game.”

She shakes her head. She is probably the only person in the whole world who hasn't yet seen the posts on Jason Draft. And she has to check out the rest of the neighborhood. She's done only the Nevilles and the Warrens.

Jack says hopefully, “Do you think he's right? Do you think drug traffickers and killers are hanging around right now?”

“I think they're done killing,” says Miranda. But is anybody ever
done
with drug dealing? Isn't it always going on?

Jack is reluctant to leave, even for a great baseball game. Or a bad one, which is often the case in the minor leagues. “Keep texting,” he says. “I want to know everything.”

“If we knew everything,” says Miranda, “we would be getting Lander out of jail.”

Jack gives her a funny look, and she realizes that he does not expect Lander to get out of jail at all.

This time when the detectives question Lander, the lawyer will be with her.

The police will ask questions she isn't going to answer and the lawyer will tell her not to anyway.

She drags herself down the hall. She is so tired she could sleep for a week.

The lawyer says it is Sunday.

Day of rest. Day of worship. Day of thick heavy newspapers.

She is religious. But she cannot pray. If she has shot a man in the back, she cannot face God. God forgives the person who repents, but he also knows that Lander fakes repentance. Lander's usual sins are brushing somebody off, speaking sharply to somebody she thinks is stupid or ignoring somebody when she knows perfectly well they're there. She does it constantly, knowing she's being ugly, but enjoying herself. It's fun being superior. On Sunday, routinely, she repents, knowing she'll behave the same way next week.

Today it is possible that her sin is murder.

God knows. Perhaps Jason knows. But Lander still does not know.

She is desperate to get her mind on something else. She throws her thoughts toward summer visitors, summer days, summer church. During that boring date with Stu, he laughed at her for attending church.
“Weed,”
 he had said,
“does the job just as well.”

“Just as well as what?”
Lander had asked.

“All that prayer stuff. Smoke a little weed, Lanny, and you'll drift off into heaven. Plus, weed is more portable than church. And it never judges you.”

Lander got to her feet then, saying,
“Stu, I have better things to do with my time than listen to somebody whose only skill is getting high.”

“Come on, Lanny, loosen up. Let's go to the movies tomorrow.”

“I don't loosen,”
Lander had said, grateful that she had driven her father's car to meet Stu and was not depending on him for a ride home. She left him sitting at the table.

I don't loosen, thinks Lander now. But do I murder? Dear God, have I been priding myself on stupid things like never loosening up when in fact I kill people?

God, please don't let me be a killer.

Please let my parents visit.

Please don't let them ask if I did it.

If I did fire the shot that killed Derry Romaine, I didn't know,
she tells herself.
Murder is less murderous if you didn't mean to.

Or is it? Certainly not to the dead man.

She gags.

“Stop it,” snaps the policeman. “Just stop it.”

But out it comes, nothing but drool this time, a guilty little puddle on the floor.

She is now wearing jail clothing. It resembles the hospital scrubs she has worn for every volunteer position since her sixteenth birthday, throwing herself into medical work at any level, just to be there; to breathe in the excitement and speed and action of medicine.

Except that printed in block letters on the back of the shirt she wears now is the name of the jail. She can feel the letters against her bare skin. She's a cow, branded.

Stop it!
she yells at herself.
You cannot feel the letters against your skin. They are printed on the outside of the fabric.

Lander has always told people that clothing is of little interest to her; she is above fashion. But of course this is not true. She loves style. She believes she has achieved that classic look of effortless perfection.

Jail clothes are pretty effortless. But perfect? She thinks of her beautiful future, her success as a doctor, her life in some great city, her renown as a scientist. It's a mirage. She will be nothing but a felon.

Lander cannot let herself sink into self-pity. She must consider every detail of Friday morning. There is an explanation. She just has to find it. She closes her eyes and steps back into Friday.

As Jason arranges, on Friday morning, Lander paddles down to Two Willows Marina in her kayak. He is waiting on the dock, grinning and waving. They get into a car. It is his father's, Jason tells her, not his style.

Lander is not interested in cars and does not have one herself, either. She gives it no thought that an adult is borrowing his father's car.

Was it his father's car? she wonders now. Or stolen, like the boat?

She and Jason drive down Route 9, the north-south parkway on the west side of the Connecticut River. There's no such road on the east, where the cottage is. The land on the east is too rough, chopped up by marshes, massive rock outcrops and creeks.

Jason drove across the river where it meets Long Island Sound on the I-95 bridge and took the first exit. They were surrounded by pretty white houses and pretty green lawns, pretty tawny marsh grass and pretty seabirds floating in a pretty sky.

Jason is saying that his hobby is danger. As if anybody around here knows anything about danger. This zip code is all about ease and safety.

He loves doing things on the edge, he tells her. He loves when his pulse races, his heart rips and his nightmares deepen.

At the time, this sounds like movie dialogue. Now she wonders if Jason was simply telling the truth. If part of his flirtation with danger was to tell Lander right up front that she too was in danger.

Jason turns into a marina she has never noticed. Anchored in a small private bay were breathtakingly beautiful yachts. Docked is an immense cruiser, which probably requires a crew of half a dozen, plus a chef.

She and Jason saunter around. When he smiles at her, Lander feels like a million dollars; a yacht owner has nothing on her.

A few people are being motored out to their boats by the marina attendant. But on a Friday morning, there is not much other activity. Jason helps her into a small motorboat with a console for the driver, a second comfy seat, a storage locker and no head. Lander's main thought is how she will pee. She believes this is why most boaters are men. They don't care about a flush toilet in a separate room with a door.

She says, “This isn't the
Paid at Last.
”

“It's the
Water Fever,
” he replies. “It belongs to a friend. I use it all the time.” They putter out of the marina, weaving slowly among the yachts.

The police say that she and Jason steal this motorboat.

When they stroll around, is Jason looking for the right boat to steal? Does he know already which one he wants and is just waiting for the moment nobody is looking? Has he stolen that very boat before and then just returned it, so that it was stealing but also borrowing?

A large percentage of pleasure boats never leave their marina. They are just inexpensive weekend places, the cost of docking a boat being a lot cheaper than buying waterfront. Boats are not cars. They are not used every day, ten times a day. They are not used when the owners are at work or when there are lightning storms. Mainly, boats sit and wait.

Does Jason keep track of which boats are never used? Does he know which owner never comes on a Friday? Or is he simply betting that the odds are in favor of the casual thief with the beautiful girlfriend?

Why steal a boat at all?  Why not just own one? If he is dealing drugs on a large scale, he can certainly afford a boat. Or does stealing a boat satisfy Jason's zest for danger?

But the danger for a drug dealer is not the boat. It's the jail sentence. She knows now that jail is shame, isolation, fear, stench, boredom. Risk all that just to motor up and down a river for a few hours?

And there are other risks. Delivering the cocaine, for one. Is the package already in the
Water Fever
when she and Jason take it? Or does Jason bring the package with him? He has binoculars, hanging in a case around his neck. Is that case in fact full of drugs?

But the only reason to deal drugs is to make money. Why then did Jason abandon the package and leave her standing there to be found with it?

And there is of course the final risk. Death. Being shot, like Derry.

But Lander has these thoughts far too late. She is not thinking about anything except Jason when they head upstream in the
Water Fever,
completing the pointless circle by boat. But she says nothing because who cares? Lander cares only that Jason wanted her company.

Back in high school, back in the college dorm and the cafeteria, the classrooms and the labs, guys are always glad to see Lander. They do not ask her for dates. They simply assume that she will hang out where they hung out.

Is she in love with Jason for the simple pathetic reason that he singles her out? That he doesn't want a crowd; he wants her?

Lander thinks of herself as supremely confident. But if this is why she falls for Jason, she has no self-confidence at all.

In the jail corridor, she stops walking. She understands now why Jason arranges for her to kayak across the river to meet him Friday morning: because it is a slow method of travel. Followed by a forty-five-minute drive around the mouth of the river and a second little boat.
Jason is killing time.

Killing time. So that they could then kill a man?

Jason motors behind one of the marshy islets that crowd the eastern bank of the Connecticut above its wide mouth. The waters are shallow. Jason finds a narrow channel winding through tall grass. Lander feels like an egret in an unexpected wilderness.

Now she thinks Jason was waiting for high tide. It would be impossible to reach that little woods at low tide, when the channel would be a trickle.

In the thready little creek, they go too slowly to make their own breeze. She is sweating and thirsty. They arrive at a low-lying woody swamp. It is not pretty. She is assuming they will do something delightful. Picnic, perhaps. It is lunchtime. She is vaguely aware that there is no food in the boat. Not even bottled water. But all their dining so far has been in restaurants. Perhaps this is the back way to some delightful country inn.

Jason is talking about hunting, which he loves. He always has a gun with him, he explains, in case there's a chance to hunt. She is repelled and he teases her, saying that she's missing one of the great hobbies of life.

Jason motors as close to the shore as he can. There are a few big flat stones, and behind them a profusion of vines, wildflowers and poison ivy. He steps off the boat, drags it onto the mud and gives Lander a hand out. She steps on one of the big stones and leaps to dry land.

“Wait here,” he says. He walks into the woods and ties his bandanna about chin level on a slender sapling. She is so dopey with love for this man that she actually envies the tree; she would have liked Jason to tie that precious bandanna on her. When Jason turns and comes back, she cannot erase her smile.

Jason explains how to hold the gun.

At what point does she agree to try it?

The gun fits her palm. She doesn't need two hands, the way they do for a rifle on TV. The word “rifle” briefly penetrates her mind as she stands beside him, aiming at the bandanna. Don't people hunt with rifles? Or shotguns? Do they really hunt with whatever this is, a revolver or a pistol?

Jason does not put his own hand on that gun. In fact, the gun is produced lying in a special box, with a hinged lid. He holds out the box and tells her to pick the gun up and not be afraid of it. But he does not touch it himself.

So many clues. So many warnings. Lander ignores them all. She is not thinking in terms of warnings. She is thinking how much she likes Jason's company.

“Get going, Miss Allerdon!” barks the guard.

She has almost forgotten she is in jail. Her entire mind is standing in those woods.

When the police walk her out of the woods, there is a driveway. Whose house? What road does it connect to? When she is shoved into the back of the police car, she is too terrified to think of scenery and geography.

But the little wood is not far north of the interstate. I-95 is the conduit for all the drug traffic on the entire East Coast. Traffickers have to leave the highway to make their deliveries. Does Jason know this driveway well? Along with scoping out good boats to steal, does he scope out potential delivery sites?