You Can't Catch Me(6)

“That’s right.”

“What type of crime?”

“A theft.”

She hands me a form. “Fill in the details here and then take a seat over there.” She points to a row of upholstered gray chairs against the wall. Her phone rings shrilly as she hands me a pen. I take a seat with my form. This room feels like where people go to die by waiting, but what choice do I have? In order to file a claim with the bank for the money Jessica Two stole, I need a police report. The bank manager had made it clear that because she had access to all my security passwords, the only money I was likely to get back was that taken from the ATMs. But I might as well make a claim anyway, he said, handing me the forms, because you never know.

I fill out the form.

Officer Richardson—property crimes—doesn’t call me ma’am when we’re introduced later that day, but he’s not very reassuring either. In his midfifties, with a runner’s build, he has a weariness about him that’s discouraging.

He’s got his suit jacket draped over the back of his chair. His dress shirt is yellowed, and his suit has the shiny look suits get when they’ve been dry-cleaned too many times. There are twenty other cubicles in the room, and it’s loud in here, many people on the phone, being interviewed like myself. Despite the ambient noise, Officer Richardson talks low, almost mumbling, so I have to lean forward to hear him. It creates a sort of intimacy that I suspect is purposeful.

I give him the bare facts. I show him copies of my bank statements and the photographs from the ATM. He raises his eyebrows at the name thing, then chuckles to himself. These criminals and the things they get up to. I don’t find it funny.

“Any chance I’ll get my money back?”

He looks at me for a moment, sizing me up with large brown eyes that I suspect have seen twenty years of people asking him the same question as his hairline slowly receded. “You seem like a reasonable person. Are you a reasonable person?”

“I’d like to think so.”

“Then the short answer is probably not.”

“You should put that in the brochure.”

“You asked.”

“I did.”

He meets my gaze. “I’m speaking of probabilities. I’ve seen a lot of things in my career, so you never know. For instance, way back when I was starting out, there was this gang that ended up doing a B&E on every house on the same block. That was in Brooklyn. Back before it was . . .”

“Brooklyn?”

“Right.”

“Every house?”

“Pretty much.”

“Was there something special about them?”

“Not really, other than the fact that they hit so many houses without getting caught.”

“How is that possible?”

He raises a shoulder. “Low priority, lack of resources. It happened over several years, and most of what was taken was covered by insurance.”

“Not like what happened to me, then.”

“True,” he says. “Anyhoo, about five years later, they caught the guys, and the funny thing was, they had this massive storage locker out in Jersey City. They hadn’t gotten rid of most of the stuff they’d stolen.”

“Why not?”

“They hadn’t thought it through. They were good at casing places, getting in and out undetected. But they didn’t have a way to offload what they stole. All the VCRs—this was in the early nineties—and family jewelry and such. I’ll tell you one thing, though.” He leans forward, mimicking me.

“What’s that?”

“I was there when the folks whose stuff was stolen went to the warehouse to identify it.”

“That must’ve been nice.”

“It was a letdown, actually.”

“How come?”

“The family heirlooms, people were happy to get those back. Their charm bracelets and such. Their memories. But the VCRs and other electronics that had been replaced with newer models by the insurance companies? You could see them, one by one, recognizing their things and turning the other way.”

“Isn’t that insurance fraud?”

“Probably. But who was going to do anything about it?”

“You?”

He straightens up. “Like I told you, personal-property crimes are a low priority. But I learned something that day. Even the most honest people, when it’s their interest on the line, well, they’re often willing to look the other way.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Just making conversation.”

“And what about my crime?”

“The other Jessica?”

“I call her Jessica Two.”

He loosens his tie. “Probably not her real name, though. But you never know . . .”

“She showed me her ID.”

“That’s easy enough to fake.”

“But she went through airport security . . .”

He nods. “There is that . . . though she could have used other ID to get through security.”

“She had it planned out,” I say.

“Clearly. How did she know you’d be at the airport, though?”

I explain to him about Twitter. Show him the tweet I’d sent. “She had at least a week to plan. And I was in the news a whole month before that.”