“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?
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 p
eople 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.