Here She Lies (26 page)

Don’t touch my baby!”

I ran to the cabin door and there she was, gripping one of Lexy’s stroller handles while one cop held the other handle and another tugged her elbow, trying to pull her away.

“
Your
baby?” I hurried down the porch steps. When she saw me, her mouth dropped open. She was mute.

For the first time ever, I had rendered my twin speechless. She had no answer before the question, no end to my sentence. She had
nothing
.

I went straight to Lexy—
my
baby—who was groggy but awake in the stroller and clearly alarmed by all the turmoil. As soon as I saw her my milk dropped, soaking the front of my shirt. Bobby ran ahead and helped the officer detach Julie from the stroller while I knelt down in front of Lexy. Balancing on the balls of my feet, smiling and crying, I unbuckled her straps.

She stared at me. I noticed that she didn’t reach for me as she always had before, so I leaned in closer and whispered, “It’s Mommy! Come here, my sweet angel.” One little hand reached out to touch my face and she started to cry. Leaning forward, she searched behind her for Julie, then looked at me and cried harder.

“Annie, you’re scaring her,” Julie said.

“
I’m
scaring her? Why are you doing this to us?” “Doing what? Did you forget? I told you I was taking her to the house.”

“
What
house?”

“In Maine,” she said. “The house I rented. I told you all about it.”

“You’re a
liar
.” Bobby released her to the cop, who manacled one of her wrists, then the other. “You
bitch
.” She looked shocked at that and even
I
felt shocked, automatically defensive of my sister’s dignity. But I got over it quickly.

“Embezzlement of federal funds?” I said.

“What are you talking about?” Her tone was in-credulous, and her eyes—the eyes I knew so well—

challenged me. There was something new in them, a hoax I had not been let into.

“I was arrested in Manhattan,” I said. “I spent a night in
jail
.”

“Jail?”

“Oh, Julie,
don’t
. The FBI’s got your computer all decrypted, so there’s no way to deny it.” She paused a moment before her eyes clouded over and she looked really scared. “I have no idea what you’re talking about, Annie. Please,
please
help me.

This is all a misunderstanding …”

Misunderstanding?
Help
her? I couldn’t believe my ears.

Lexy was sobbing now and I lifted her out of the stroller. I held her and rocked her and
loved
her with every iota of my being. In the bubble of privacy in which I greeted my baby, I became aware of cameras clicking, reporters talking to video lenses, Julie being read her rights. Without looking back, I carried Lexy into the cabin.

We settled down on the couch, her skin so very soft against mine. She looked healthy and clean and she was
safe
. It was an unrivaled joy to have her back in my arms. But I could see that she was restless, confused. I thought it might help us both if I nursed her, so I lifted my shirt, unhooked my bra and offered her my breast. She turned away. Tears gathering in my eyes, I tried again. It took a while, but finally, tentatively, she latched on—and drank.

The cabin was beautifully quiet while Lexy nursed, pressing her chubby little hands into my swollen breasts, realizing—or remembering—that I was
me
, her real and actual mommy. I could have sat on that couch with her forever. Outside, voices crescendoed, lulled, spiked again. Finally, cars began to drive away.

I had the relieved feeling that I’d been forgotten and would be allowed a long, luxurious seclusion with my child.

But then I heard two voices—Bobby’s and Detective Lazare’s. They were standing outside the cabin, talking about Julie.

“What now?” Bobby asked. “Will she actually be released?”

“If she can post bail, yes.”

“You know she’ll be able to post bail. I can’t
believe
this.”

“We have enough evidence for a federal charge of computer fraud,” Lazare said. “It’s a
charge
, not a conviction. After she’s processed, the legal case will begin. Everyone has the right of innocence until proven guilty.”

“What about kidnapping? That’s a felony.”

“Annie left her sister in charge of Lexy. She had permission.”

“Julie
disabled
the GPS and
buried
her cell phone,” Bobby said. “She made a deliberate effort not to be traced.”

“
Someone
did those things, yes. But you see the dif-ficulty—without a witness we can’t substantiate that it was Julie who hid the GPS and the phone. In the eyes of the law it could have been anyone.”

“That’s
ridiculous
.”

“You heard Julie,” Lazare said. “She claims this was a planned trip. If she can find a way to prove it, then it may not technically be kidnapping.”

“Annie didn’t know anything about a house in Maine. Julie made that up.”

“But we have to investigate first.”

“This is fucking unreal!”

I could picture Lazare in the thick silence that followed Bobby’s outburst—his taut non-smile, his infuriating patience.

“Okay, what about Thomas Soiffer?” Bobby asked.

“Are you telling me he didn’t witness Julie killing Zara Moklas?”

“I’m not telling you anything right now.”

“
Julie
killed her, Detective. I bet that’s what Soiffer told you. It’s part of everything that’s happened so far—our breakup, the identity theft, Annie’s arrest, the kidnapping,
everything
. Just tell me: Am I right?”

“A significant amount of blood matching Zara’s general type was found in Soiffer’s van,” Lazare said, calmly, coolly. “If it isn’t her blood, he’ll be eliminated. If you’re right about Julie, we’ll get there in time.”

“How much time? She’ll cut and run, Detective. I know her.”

“Your daughter’s in there,” Lazare said. “Don’t you want to see her now?”

And suddenly, as their footsteps clomped up the outside steps and across the wood porch, I knew something terrible: I
knew
what Thomas Soiffer had told Detective Lazare. He had witnessed Zara’s murder—

that was already established—but naturally Lazare had his doubts. That was why they had taken as possible evidence the sweater from the trunk. And that was why he wouldn’t arrest Julie for murder.

Soiffer had reported seeing Julie kill Zara—which meant he might have seen
me
.

First thing Monday morning, a full week into this nightmare, there was a chill in the Great Barrington Police Department’s Detectives Unit. It was too late in the season for heat and too early for the sun to have penetrated the windows and worn away the nighttime country cold. Through the window behind Lazare’s desk I watched the leaves of the big maple tree shiver as light bounced off their undersides, flashing like thrown coins. Before leaving me alone here, Lazare had brought me a mug of hot coffee, which was nice-ish of him. I had been told to wear jeans and a plain short-sleeved shirt for the lineup and my arms were covered in goose bumps. I’d been here ten minutes and he hadn’t said much, just the usual pleasantries, but today his über-calm was anything but reassuring. For all my questions this morning, he had offered a single answer:

“No.” No, the blood test results from Thomas Soiffer’s van were not finished being analyzed. No, Soiffer was not being arrested, at the moment, for Zara’s murder.

No, a murder weapon still had not been found.

Why wouldn’t Lazare
talk
to me, just tell me what was going on? It was an
outrage
that I was here at all, waiting, while he went about the business of making sure all the other Annie-look-alike women were gathered so we could stand there being scrutinized by, presumably, Thomas Soiffer.
Person of interest.
Ex-con.

Victim. Witness. The man was so many things, my head was spinning. Was
I
being put in a
lineup
based on
his
word? Not just me, but Julie too. She was to be put through the same paces, at a different time, so our paths wouldn’t cross as we were
processed
. Since our return from Vermont, she had been arrested for fraud, grand larceny and a long list of other crimes all related to the identity theft. Posted bail and been released. (Incredibly, her grand larceny charge did not automatically erase
mine
, which continued to wend its way through the legal system.) We hadn’t laid eyes on each other, nor would we anytime soon. We were officially severed. But Julie—
oh, Julie
—how I missed her! I still couldn’t believe this was happening or that I might actually have lost her, or lost who she used to be. And now, for us to be compared by the police in this light, to be studied with the implication that one of us may have committed murder. I knew
I
hadn’t. Which meant …

No.
I couldn’t go there, couldn’t think that, couldn’t plant that rotten seed in my heart. To save my sanity, for now, I would stick with the probability that Thomas Soiffer had killed Zara. Because
that
was what made sense. I had to assume that Soiffer had lied about witnessing but not committing the murder. That Lazare was just covering his bases by putting us in lineups, crossing us off his list, saving time, on the off chance that Soiffer was telling the truth. A very
remote
off chance. Obviously, the only thing a lineup would reveal was that people couldn’t tell me and Julie apart.

At most, identifying
me
would discredit Soiffer’s statement that it was
definitely Julie
he saw slicing the poor woman’s throat (assuming that’s what he’d said—and why wouldn’t he try to point fingers elsewhere?
His
van was full of blood
). Maybe that was all Lazare was after, discrediting Soiffer. No, not all. He also wanted
our
blood. He had me and Julie scheduled for blood tests; mine was to take place later that day at a local clinic.

The coffee had warmed me somewhat and when I finished it I wanted more, but the pot was all the way across the room. Was I allowed to walk over and get some for myself? I swiveled around to look for Detective Lazare—he wasn’t here—and saw that a few other detectives had trickled in to start their day. All three avoided looking at me, much as the New York City detectives had ignored me in their own precinct. Once again, they were
us
, I was
them
. I was a
suspect
now, a person being readied for a
lineup
. I noticed that one of the detectives, a woman about my height and with my coloring, was also wearing jeans and a plain T-shirt. I guessed she was part of the lineup, too. I tried to catch her eye and smile, just to see what would happen. She put her purse on the desk, took out a small appointment book, set it by the phone and flipped it open. I stared at her, but she wouldn’t look at me, not even a glance, though I knew she knew I was sitting right here.

I got up,
invisible
, and carried my empty mug across the room, making a beeline for the coffeepot. Filling my mug with the steaming coffee, I saw that someone had brought a box of blueberry muffins. I took one, curious to see if
now
the detectives would react. Nothing.

I spread open a paper napkin on the edge of Lazare’s desk, set my muffin down and had broken off just one piece of the top edge when the room’s far door swung open and Lazare waved me over.

“Okay,” he said. “We’re ready now.”

I stood up, chewing my single bite of muffin, a blueberry bursting tartly on my tongue—delicious. I smiled. Now they all glanced at me, just for one quick moment, but there was no satisfaction in this meager attention, just a flush of humiliation as I followed Detective Lazare out of the room.

Down a bright, clean hall. Up a narrow, painted-cinder-block staircase. Directly into a white, white room where three other Annie-and-Julie-sort-of-look-alikes were lined up shoulder to shoulder against a bare wall.

The fifth and final one, the detective from downstairs, now joined us at the end, right next to me. It was even colder in here and I hugged my forearms over my middle until Lazare, turning to shut the door, said, “Arms down, please.” I dropped my arms and smoldered. The chilliest thing right now was the brevity of his words, the crispness of his tone. I
hated
being here.

White women, white room, gray linoleum floor buffed to a high polish, fluorescent lighting that hid nothing and a large panel of one-way glass in which I saw my own reflection multiplied by these strangers who resembled me only on the barest terms. Who
were
these women? I wondered (other than the detective, fifth on the right).

We stood there for about five minutes before a disembodied voice filtered commands into the room.

“Number two, please step forward. Thank you.”

“Number one, please. Thank you.”

“Number four.” That was me. “Turn to the right.

Thank you. To the left. All right. Thank you.” And then, a minute later, it was over. Detective Lazare opened the door, thanking each of us in exactly the same tone as we filed past him. I couldn’t look at him. The women seemed to scatter as we made our way down the stairs, then along a hall that branched in two places. By the time I reached the front lobby, there were only three of us left, and in the parking lot I was alone.

It was still early and there was time to get back to our new, temporary home at a local inn (how could I ever set foot in Julie’s house again?). My appointment at the clinic was at noon, which meant I could do Lexy’s midmorning feeding at my breast and Bobby could give her some cereal and a bottle at around one o’clock, before her afternoon nap. I hadn’t realized just how tense I’d been about the lineup until now, when it was over, and I found myself sitting in the driver’s seat (my replaced license snug in my wallet) of my new silver-gray rental car, the old rental car having been impounded by the police. Still parked in the lot, I wept into the steering wheel. It took ten long minutes to cry myself out, and then, finally, I headed to the inn.