No Such Person (16 page)

It's a ghastly vision: people who peddle crack and coke and crystal meth, driving down every driveway, examining every garage, exploring every little branch of every little river. Looking for the place that is sufficiently isolated so that they can make unseen deliveries.

But why include Lander? It surely adds risk. Okay, Jason likes risk. But then why does he waste six days on dating her?

She admits to herself that only Jason could have tipped off the police. But why do it?

Why not let Derry's body lie there? As the tides came in and out, the body would have been consumed by land, sky and sea predators. It could have been years before the remains were found. It could have been never.

Her guard stops. There's a sign on a door.
INTERVIEW ROOM.

“Interview” is a soft word. A word for the college admissions office or getting a job. This is an interview for prison.

It comes to her at last that a third person must have been involved. The circular motion across, down and around the river gives this other person time to set up Derry Romaine's murder. How could that person be sure that Lander will aim right? That Derry will stand there, waiting?

Furthermore, the only way Jason could vanish after the target practice is for that other person to wait up on the road with a car, or down in the marsh with another boat.

But who?

And why?

And why Lander?

Does somebody hate her enough to arrange a murder that would, as a by-product, also destroy her?

I am the most conceited person on earth, she thinks, staring at the vacant chair that is meant for her. I can actually pretend the murder of Derry Romaine happens because I am important.

SUNDAY AFTERNOON

With every visitor gone, Miranda is at last looking down at a screen that shows the real Jason Firenza: Jason Draft.

Whatever he calls himself, he's way too attractive to be a criminal.

The sofa is so soft and she is so tired. Her eyes burn with exhaustion. If she closes her eyes, she's done. Miranda stands up to prevent herself from napping.

Her next step is Jason Draft's Facebook page. She will study all his friends. A guy as handsome, aggressive and cocky as Jason will not bother with privacy controls because he will want everybody to admire him. Perhaps she will recognize a friend of Jason Draft's. He is the type to have seven hundred friends. Everybody he ever met in high school, work, college, games, bars. That person will…what?

Truly, what is she expecting to achieve here?

Snuffling happily at the front door is Barrel. How come he's loose?

Maybe the housekeeper has let Barrel out so that Miranda will be distracted while a drug delivery is made next door. Except that the Nevilles don't have water access or dock rights, and their cliff is even steeper and rockier than hers. Maybe the delivery is made to our dock, thinks Miranda. Maybe the drug dealer crashes through the bushes like any other young man and drops the package at the Nevilles' front door, like FedEx.

Having recently cleaned the living room, she doesn't want Barrel inside. The iPad in hand, she slips out of the house. It is hideously hot on the front porch. There is not even a ceiling fan to riffle the heavy air. Barrel himself is so hot it's like standing next to a fireplace. She lacks the energy to trudge all the way over to his run and put him back.

But it doesn't matter.

Down the driveway comes a Crown Vic. The bright-orange rectangle of the iPad in her hand is highly visible. Everything she does is too late and wrong.

She can't help it. She's crying again. She has a headache from all this crying. The detective from yesterday sits down with her. “How come you're in the front yard, Miranda? The view is in back.”

“I was saying good-bye to the minister. And Jack was here to tell me he's going to a ball game. And Barrel is loose. He's always loose.”

“May I have Lander's iPad, please?”

She hands him Lander's iPad. “I haven't even found out anything about Jason Draft yet.”

He sits on the step and pats it and she sits too. “We'll look together.” He enlarges one of the photos of Jason Draft.

“Jason Draft is real,” the detective tells her. “We've got his high school record and his college record. We've been to his old neighborhood. His parents moved to Florida a few years ago, and we haven't found out where Jason lives now. He showed his ID as Jason Firenza when the barge incident happened. Maybe he purchased that online, easy enough to do. As Jason Draft, he has a huge friend list. We're working through it.”

Miranda is dizzy with all the things the police have done in—what?—forty-eight hours, maybe. And what has she done? Nothing. She hasn't even managed to clean up an egg.

“So, Miranda, did you do all this stuff accusing Jason Firenza? The Facebook, the tweets, the Tumblr?”

“Um. Kind of.”

“Somebody helped?”

“Um. Kind of. But the point is, I'm helping my sister.”

“You're a good sister, Miranda. But here's the deal. Nothing,
nothing at all,
is good about drug dealers. No matter what level—running cartels in South America or delivering cocaine packages to the shoreline—drug dealers are dangerous. They are greedy. Quick to panic. Always on the edge of betraying or being betrayed.”

She hates being lectured. She has already read all this stuff online.

“Listen to me, Miranda. Dealers are always armed. And here's the other thing. They're always high.”

Miranda shrugs.

“Miranda, do you know what ‘high' means? It doesn't mean happy and giddy and pleased with the world. It means everything is off. Your judgment, your timing, your emotions, your decency.”

“Lander didn't know anything about that! Lander isn't that person! She doesn't know people like that!”

“She knows Jason. She was probably swept away by him. But not recently, Miranda. You're the one who took the photograph that shows how close they are.” From his briefcase he takes Miranda's iPad, in Lander's mint-green case, and hands it to her. “Miranda, it's possible for you to go on posting, searching, asking. But I don't want you to. Your parents wouldn't want you to if they had any idea what's going on. Jason may be very handsome and he is definitely very glib, but under that pretty skin, he is very bad.”

“But my
sister
isn't bad. I have to get her out of this.”

“You have to stay away from this. The man you're trying to find doesn't want to be found. You let us do it. No drug dealer works alone. He has bosses and colleagues and runners and customers. You can't tell what you'll step into.”

Miranda is stepping into nothing. It is the Internet. There are dozens, maybe hundreds, of responses on Lander's Facebook page. No one is going to think about Lander's little sister, whose existence and name they do not even know.

“I don't want you to be alone here,” says the detective, and immediately she is not alone, because Henry and Hayden are racing over. “We had lunch!” screams Henry. “Let's walk Barrel again!”

“Does the other brother talk?” asks the detective softly.

“Hayden mainly listens. I don't think there's anything wrong with him. They just share life and Henry's share is speech.”

The detective smiles at her. Miranda is good at making friends. Lander, not so much. Miranda's heart is pierced again with fear for Lander. Good people, like this detective, believe Lander is a killer.

The detective is reassured by the presence of little boys. He drives away, content in the thought that Miranda is not alone.

Her plan, if she can give it such a grandiose term, is to study Jason Draft's friend list. Read every post on Lander's Facebook page. Collate information. But the police are on that. They have squadrons of experts who can do everything faster and better than she can.

The boys wrestle each other and Barrel.

The heat thickens.

Miranda feels as if centuries pass. Summers are always slow, but this particular Sunday is lasting forever.

A van inches down the driveway. The logo of the Hartford television station is bright and gaudy on its side. A big professional camera pokes out the open passenger door.

“Get out!” screams Miranda. “Get out! Get out of here!”

The camera points at her. Probably the sister of the killer is pretty good copy too.

She wants to attack the van. Beat her fists on it. Kick it. But they will film her and the evening news will show proof that both Allerdon girls are violent.

Geoffrey appears. His towel is wrapped skirt-style around his waist. His bushy hair is wild, half wet, half dry. He walks slowly up to the van, squinting, as if the huge logo is difficult to read. He is not an authority figure. His hands dangle at his sides. They are huge hands. Football hands. His body, although large, does not yet match the size of the hands.

He stands by the open window like a big galoot. The towel falls to the ground, revealing green-and-black-striped swim trunks. With his huge football hand, Geoffrey grips the snout of the camera and wrenches it away.

“Hey!” shouts the crew.

Geoffrey swings the camera loosely in his huge fingers, as if he might drop it and say,
Oh, goodness. A smashed camera. What a shame.

The crew is cursing now, telling Geoffrey he's a thief.

“Drive out,” says Geoffrey in a bored-sounding voice. “I'll give it back to you when you're out in the road. The public road. Where you belong.” He has his cell phone in his other hand. His fingers are so large Miranda can't imagine how he manages the keypad. Into the phone Geoffrey says, “The police just left the Allerdon property but we need them back. There are trespassers.”

“We're going, we're going!” yells the van driver, reversing and making a tight circle. They want their camera more than they want to film Miranda.

Geoffrey walks ahead of the van, leading it up the drive, and they disappear beyond the trees. Miranda tries to see through the trees; see if the TV van is really leaving. All she can spot are glittering bits of glass high on the hill. Stu's half-hidden house. Is he watching?

She is filled with horror. The
world
is watching. The world is waiting with sick bated breath to see what else happens with Lander Allerdon and her family.

Geoffrey comes back.

The police come back.

Miranda wants to faint. Go, go, go,
go!
she thinks. Everybody, go.

At last everybody but Geoffrey and the little boys are gone.

“Are we still going to walk Barrel?” asks Henry hopefully.

Geoffrey sighs. “First, lock the house, Miranda.”

He's handsome, actually. Miranda is amazed. How has she not noticed this? The big features are coming together in a big way: when all his body parts catch up to each other, Geoffrey is going to be a hunk. Miranda is embarrassed for not noticing before and even more embarrassed that she's noticing now. “I'm not sure where the key is,” she admits.

“I'll wait while you find it,” he says, like an older brother, complete with irritation.

“I know where it is!” shrieks Henry. He dashes inside, returns with a key and proudly locks the front door.

Geoffrey sighs again. “You can't just lock the front.” He takes the key, goes in again, bolts the back two doors that open onto the screened porch, walks out the front, key-locks that door and hands Miranda the key.

“Thank you,” she whispers. “Thank you for everything, Geoffrey.”

But she feels ill. The cottage truly does lie open. Little children know where the keys are, neighbors pee in their toilet, TV stations know where the drive is.

She has a sense of a thousand mistakes that nobody in the Allerdon family even knew were mistakes. All their bad choices are piling up, making mountains and cliffs, and they're going to fall off that cliff, and it will be their own fault.

The boys share Barrel's leash and tumble after the dog. They could be exploring a jungle, they are so excited. What a day! TV vans, police cars!

Miranda trudges after them. Geoffrey seems to be waiting for something but she is too tired to look back at him.

I have to solve
something,
she thinks. Although a person who doesn't even have the key to her own cottage probably won't find the key to an unsolved murder.

She puzzles about the package of cocaine left in the boat. She doesn't know anybody who does drugs or would ever deal them. But statistically, that cannot be true. She must know plenty of them, and is too dense to see, or they are too clever to be seen.

Why would Jason abandon the package? And how did he get safely away before the police came, while Lander didn't?

The boat in which Jason and Lander arrived at that little swamp has been towed by the Coast Guard, and—of course—somebody has videoed this and put it online, and everybody has seen the
Water Fever.
It's just a little skiff with a single storage compartment.

Maybe Jason couldn't risk Lander seeing the package. Didn't dare lean into the skiff, grab a plastic bag filled with white stuff and say,
Just getting my coke. Back in a minute. Stay put, Lanny.

But if Lander could go along with a murder, she could surely go along with a package.

It's all so stupid.

Maybe that's what crime is. Things go wrong, everybody panics, they do stupid things, and Miranda can't look for a rational explanation because nothing was ever rational.

Hayden has to pee, so the walk ends after a few hundred yards and everybody goes into the Warren house, including Barrel. Mrs. Warren stops folding little jeans and T-shirts and offers a cold drink.