You Can't Catch Me Read online

  “You don’t actually drink that shit, do you?” Cov asks.

  “It’s a perfectly respectable beer.”

  The waitress brings our drinks, and we spend a few minutes catching up, the small talk of old compadres, banded together like a group that’s gone through war.

  “What’s up?” Daisy asks. “Why the SOS?”

  “I needed to see some friendly faces.”

  “Is it that stuff with your job? I know you didn’t do it.”

  “That’s sweet, D. But I did.”

  Miller flips his bottle cap up in the air and catches it. “Wow, big confession.”

  “Shut up, Miller,” Cov says.

  “It’s okay. It’s true, I did it.”

  “Why?” Daisy asks. Despite her predilection for chemicals, she’s the rule follower of the group. She won’t even jaywalk. She allows herself to break the rules she needs to survive, but needs the regular conventions of society to bind her in. So, cocaine and hash—her medicines—are permitted. Letting your parking meter expire is not. I’m guessing plagiarism falls into the latter category.

  “Did you read the piece?” I ask.

  “I thought it was great.”

  “Yeah, well, that’s because I found someone else’s article that was great, but unread.”

  “You made out okay, though, from what I’ve seen,” Cov says.

  “Thanks for trying to take on some of the trolls.”

  “I like arguing with those guys.”

  “You would.”

  Covington smiles. “Anyway, now you’re on easy street.”

  “Well, that’s where it gets interesting.”

  I tell them about Jessica Two. The airport, the drinks, the ATM, the wire transfer.

  “Fuuuccck,” Miller says when I’ve finished.

  “Yep.”

  “That’s kind of genius, though,” Covington says.

  “Genius?” Daisy says.

  “Yeah, like, figuring out that you have a common name and that this could help you con people . . . It means you have all the ID you need, right? Like at banks and stuff.”

  “Assuming it’s her name,” Miller says.

  “You don’t think so?”

  “It would be a big risk.”

  “Right,” Daisy says. “Can’t they go interview all the Jessica Williamses and figure out who did it?”

  “They say no,” I say.

  “But she wouldn’t have known that beforehand,” Miller says.

  Covington leans forward. “I bet she did. I bet she started off small, years ago. She has ID for this common name. Maybe it’s hers, maybe it isn’t. But she tries something, a small scam. Nothing happens. She gets away with it. She looks for other Jessicas. She researches them, finds one worth bilking. She pulls it off, gets away with it again. The police don’t come knocking. She bides her time. She waits until the right moment. Then, boom. You’re in the news. You’re vulnerable. An easy mark.”

  “Thanks ever so,” I say. But Covington’s right. “It doesn’t matter if it’s her real name or not. Either way, she’s gotten away with it so far.”

  “So far?” Miller asks.

  “Maybe she messed with the wrong Jessica.”

  Covington raises his bottle and clinks it to mine. “You bet she did.”

  Many drinks later, the room’s a bit blurry. I’ve been outside with Covington smoking cigarettes off and on all afternoon. My mouth feels dirty, and it’s that moment in the evening when I regret drinking at all. I’m drunk, too drunk to sober up quickly, and I don’t like being out of control. The music is thumping, and Covington signs that it’s time for another smoke, and I follow him. We’re all ingrained followers, us Toddians. You can take the girl out of the cult . . .

  “Do you ever wonder who did it?” Covington asks when we’re outside, a flame near his face. He has a scar along the edge of his chin that reaches down to his throat—he hit the razor wire on the perimeter fence when he left and almost bled out before making it to Liam’s car.

  “Did what?”

  “Killed Todd.”

  “He had a heart attack.”

  “You believe that story?”

  I take the lighter from him, light the cigarette he offers me, and inhale deeply. I never smoke, usually, but tonight—today, whatever—feels like a day to indulge in bad habits.

  “What do you think happened?” I ask.

  “Someone gave him a drug that caused the heart attack.”

  “How?”

  “Those IVs he was always taking, his vitamin concoctions, or whatever. It would be easy to swap out a bag.”

  I concentrate on the cigarette. “You seem to have given this a lot of thought.”

  “I used to fantasize about it during meetings. Whether it would act quickly. Whether he’d be in pain. Whether he’d know it was me.”

  “Maybe you did it, then?”

  “Nah, I was already free, remember?”

  “So why do you think someone did?”

  “That guy was obsessed with his heart health. His whole diet was designed to make sure he lived as long as possible. He checked his blood pressure every day. He ran six miles every morning up a fucking hill. It doesn’t make sense.”

  I drop my cigarette and crush it. I feel nothing about what Covington’s saying. The good thing about this many drinks is I’ve reached that point. Painless. Blameless.

  “I think it’s safe to say that there’s lots of us who wanted him dead, who thought about it, even. Then it happened. That was a good thing, wasn’t it? Who cares if it makes sense?”

  “Not so good for everyone . . . what about Kiki?”

  I wince, the shot of adrenaline my body releases acting like Narcan, jump-starting my heart. “What the hell, Covington? Are you trying to make me upset?”

  He raises his hand in surrender. “Sorry.” He tosses his cigarette into the street. “I suck, okay? We all suck.”

  “So says Todd.”

  “And Todd is all.”

  I shake my head at the call and response we said by rote a thousand times. “If he was murdered, he deserved it.”

  “He did.” He pulls me into a hug. Touching most people still feels weird to me, all these years later. Physical contact wasn’t allowed in the Upper Camp. Who knows what the kids might get up to if they could embrace?

  “You okay?” Cov asks.

  “I’m fine.”

  “I’m going to head back in.”

  “I’m going to stay out here for a bit.”

  He lets me go and enters the bar. I’m going to leave in a minute, but for now I linger. I watch the group through the window like they’re on a sitcom, talking with big gestures, laughing, free. The leftovers, the side effects, the only family I have left.

  My mind wanders. I check my phone, scrolling through my texts. Jessica Two’s seen my message. So, her phone is working, real. And she has her read receipts on, so she wants me to know she’s read it. A point of connection that I can use. But what words will unlock a reaction? A daily text? Hourly?

  I poke at my phone and tap out: I’m coming to get you, get you, get you.

  “No more drinking,” I say out loud.

  “I tell myself that every day,” the homeless man I didn’t even notice says. He’s sitting on the ground against the side of the building, his possessions jumbled into a shopping cart.

  “We should take each other’s advice.”

  “Easier said and all that.”

  He raises a can in my direction. I toast him with air.

  My phone vibrates. It’s a text from Liam.

  I found her.

  Chapter 7

  Road Trip

  “Let’s just go,” I say, and for once Liam agrees with me. So here we are, in the middle of a Wednesday, driving out of the city.

  It’s a bright, sunny day, and we’re on I-95, heading north. To Wilmington, New York, to be more precise, about five hours away. That’s where this Jessica Williams lives, on a small dirt road outside
of town.

  While the world was still tilting in Brooklyn, I sent her a Facebook friend request. She didn’t answer it. Then I realized I could send her a direct message even if we weren’t friends, and so I wrote to her, setting out the basic details of what had happened and asking if the same thing had been done to her.

  She didn’t write back, but the message might have ended up in her spam folder. You’d have to be a monster not to respond to a cry for help from someone with the same name as you who’d been defrauded because of it, right?

  In the sober morning, I took another tack and sent friend requests to the two women who’d tagged her in my original Facebook post. They were more open to communicating with a stranger and accepted my requests quickly. Then they both started messaging with me. One was named Miranda, and she worked at a high school where Jessie—that’s what Miranda called her—worked a while back in a suburb of Chicago. She couldn’t tell me much about her other than where she lived now, and that Jessie had come into some money, she thought, but she didn’t know the details. Jessie was kind of a private person, you know? She wouldn’t like me telling you these things.

  The other woman was named Leanne, and she lived in Wilmington, half a mile from Jessie. She didn’t know Jessie too well, only that she was new in town these last two years, and kept to herself, and why did I want to know, anyway? What did my post on Facebook mean? Was there some kind of Jessica convention going on down there in New York City?

  I laughed at that one. I had to get in a room with Jessie. Maybe face-to-face, she’d talk to me. A drunken Facebook DM is easy to cast aside. I’m much harder to ignore in person.

  Even Liam knows this. That’s how we ended up in this car, snarled in traffic.

  “So,” I say, digging into the food hamper at my feet when we’ve left the city behind, “I’ve got portable cheese and near-cheese products. Also, many kinds of chocolate. You like chocolate, right?”

  Liam looks over at me. He’s wearing a black T-shirt, aviator sunglasses that reflect me back at myself, and the Mets hat I gave him for his birthday a few years back. “What’s gotten into you?”

  I bounce in my seat. “I’m both nervous and excited. I’m nercited.”

  “That’s not a thing.”

  “It could be a thing.”

  “This is a crazy idea.”

  “Who you calling crazy, sitting next to me, driving me there?”

  Liam smiles what I like to think is his happy smile, and I feel like mission accomplished already. I can’t think of the last time we were alone like this, spending the day driving somewhere. It’s a beautiful day out, crisp and fresh, the sun high in the sky. You forget, living in the city, what the air can smell like, how clean it can be. How green the trees are when they’re not covered in a film of dust and grime.

  I watch Liam drive, his hands sure on the wheel, the route memorized. No GPS or Google Maps for him.

  He glances at me, catching me looking. “What makes you think she’s crossed paths with the other Jessica?”

  “I have a feeling.”

  “That’s it?”

  “She’s only lived in Wilmington for two years, and you said she works at the elementary school as a librarian. But that woman in Chicago said that she’d come into some money, and that’s why she quit her teaching job there and moved away. I googled her and found a story in the local paper about her, you know, one of those ‘Let’s meet our new neighbor’ sort of things, saying that she’d won the lottery. So, if she has money, why’s she working in an elementary school library?”

  “Maybe she likes kids. Or was bored.”

  “Or maybe Jessica Two stole all her money, so that’s why she has to work.”

  “That’s a stretch.”

  “Don’t be so negative.”

  I fiddle with the radio until I find a good station. Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers twenty-four seven. Liam nods in approval.

  “What’s your plan?” he asks. “For when we get there?”

  “Ring her doorbell until she lets me in?”

  “And then?”

  “Get her to tell me if she’s met Jessica Two?”

  “And if she has?”

  “We’ll put our heads together and pool what we know, so we can track her down.”

  “How, though?”

  “I haven’t worked everything out yet.”

  He stares at the road, saying nothing. We pass a sign for the Catskills, and I wonder if Liam notices, but he doesn’t say anything.

  “You don’t think this is going to work?” I ask.

  “Truth be told, I doubt anything’s going to come of it.”

  “Why agree to come along, then?”

  “I thought it would distract you, give you something else to focus on besides all that job stuff.”

  I’m touched, truly, but it’s best not to let him see that.

  “Wait, wait, wait. Hold up. Is Liam Davis confessing to deceiving me?”

  “I wouldn’t call it a full-scale deception.”

  “Semantics.”

  “Sorry.”

  “It’s fine. It’s what I was going to do anyway. But thank you.”

  “For what?”

  “For coming along.”

  “You don’t care that I think there’s no point to this?”

  “Nope. I’m still nercited.”

  Two hours later, I’m less nercited and more plain nervous, anxiety about what’s coming up soon on the road pushing past the adrenaline. The sugar high has worn off, and we’re in a zone on the highway past Albany where there’s intermittent cell reception. Even the radio went fuzzy and then silent.

  “Do you have a girlfriend?” I ask Liam.

  “Where did that come from?”

  “Just making conversation.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Well, do you?”

  “Not at the moment, no.”

  “But you have, right?”

  “What are you asking me, Jessica?”

  I bite the corner of my thumb where it meets the nail. “I was just sifting through stuff in my mind, and it occurred to me that I’ve never met one of your girlfriends. Why is that?”

  “I like to keep my personal life and my professional life separate.”

  “Ouch.”

  His hands squeeze the wheel. “I didn’t mean it like . . . I’m sure you’ve had plenty of boyfriends that you haven’t introduced to me.”

  “No one special.”

  “So, Pete was special?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  Liam shakes his head. “You know I care about you. About all of you.”

  “I know. Forget I brought it up, okay?”

  We’re silent for a few minutes. Then, it happens: we pass the first exit for Schroon, a place I know too well and never intended to come back to. I can feel myself shrinking, folding into myself, as a deeper kind of silence descends in the car, one created by the memories that are rushing past like the pine trees. Without a word, or even a sound, Liam reaches over and takes my hand. I clutch it, weaving my fingers through his, letting the warmth sink in. I look away from the road and hold my breath until that exit and the next are in the rearview.

  Eventually, I let go. I lower the window and fold my arms on the sill. I feel the wind in my hair and breathe in that smell of loamy earth. The smell of home. The only home I knew.

  “What was the reason,” I say to Liam, “that you spoke to me that day at the market?”

  “What’s that?”

  “September 15, 2007, at 11:28 a.m. The Schroon Lake Farmers’ Market. You came up to me. Not Kiki or Sarah or Hughie. Me. Why?”

  I’m not making up the time. I remember everything about that day. The late-summer sun on my neck. The scratchy fabric of the dress I was wearing, what we called a “civilian dress,” one of the few I had for when we left the compound because a group of teenagers in Scout uniforms and Park Ranger outfits would’ve set off alarm bells even in that sleepy town. There was a battery-power
ed clock on the wall behind the cashier. I was holding a ripe tomato and trying to resist the temptation to eat it right there like an apple.

  Then I heard his voice.

  “You were alone,” Liam says now in the car.

  “Well, that’s crushing.”

  “I didn’t mean it like that.”

  We pass a field of cows. The smell of their manure tickles my nose. “What, then?”

  “I went to that farmers’ market every weekend that summer, waiting for a chance to speak to you. But you were never alone.”

  “Travel in twos,” I say in a monotone. “It keeps away the blues.”

  “That’s the worst Toddism ever.”

  “Right? Anyway, I was alone this time?”

  “You were. I watched you get out of the van, and you made a beeline for the tomato stand. So, I took a chance, and it worked out.”

  “Why me, though? Why not the others?”

  “You were someone I could save.”

  He’s holding something back, I know, but I decide to let it lie.

  “You were brave,” he says. “You are still.”

  “I hope so.”

  Now we’re going through one of those granite canyons they carved out when they built the highway. Water runs down the rocks, and it smells like the beginning of time.

  “I never asked you—why were you so hell-bent on saving people from the LOT in the first place? I mean, saving people is kind of your thing, but there are so many choices.”

  “You remember my cousin, Aaron?”

  I sit back in my seat. “Not that well, to be honest. They kept the boys and the girls pretty separate, even in the Upper Camp. And his parents were very close to Todd, like Covington’s parents. He didn’t have to spend much time up there with us.”

  In truth, many of us kind of hated Aaron, or the idea of him at least. He’d seemed too pious, so devoted to the cause. There was speculation that Todd was grooming him to be his second in command and eventual successor, though the idea of the Land of Todd after Todd wasn’t ever something that was discussed. Because Todd was going to live forever.