You Can't Catch Me(81)

“No.”

“Besides, living her life, being on the run . . . that’s not something I want to do.”

“We wouldn’t have to live her life.”

She looks at me. “It would be, though, in some way, wouldn’t it? You’d never get to be yourself again.”

“I guess.” That doesn’t sound that bad to me, if I’m being honest. What’s so special about my current life?

A carload of teenagers drives by with their windows down. They’re blasting a Kanye song, singing along to the lyrics.

“You’re not going to give me some crap about how we’re never ourselves, are you?” JJ says.

“Ha! I was thinking of it.”

“That something Todd used to say?”

“No, I thought of that one all on my own.”

“Well, it’s crap. We’re always ourselves. Every God damn day. And you know what? Before Jessie came along, or whoever the fuck she was, I was happy. I had a good thing going. It wasn’t perfect, but that whole relentlessly positive thing wasn’t a total act.”

“So, you’ll go back to that?”

“That’s the plan.”

“I don’t know if I can go back.”

“Why not? Isn’t Liam waiting for you?”

“Yeah, but who knows if that’s going to work out. Plus, my career’s in tatters.”

“So, start over.”

“Easy to say, hard to do.”

She rubs at the spot where her prosthetic arm meets what’s left of her real arm. I’ve never heard her refer to it as a stump, and so I don’t feel like I can, even in my thoughts.

“Yeah, it is hard. But that’s okay. We’re still young. And soon, if you’re right, we’ll have our capital back. The world’s our oyster, I say.”

“You do have a positive attitude.”

She flashes me a smile. “I’ve got an idea for a new show.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Turning around the lives of depressed people through teaching them how to cook for others.”

“That’s pretty good.”

“You want to be the first guest?”

“That’s sweet of you, but I think I’ve had enough exposure for a while.”

“Understood. But do something, okay? Don’t just sit around and brood.”

“I won’t.”

I look at the building again. A patrol officer is leaving. He stops when he sees us.

“Can I help you, ladies?”

We glance at one another, and then I say, “We’re here to report a crime.”





Chapter 37

Home Again, Home Again

Three days later, we’re at the airport saying goodbye.

It turned out that we had nothing to fear in reporting Jessie, not in the short term, anyway. But once we did, it seemed weird for us to leave immediately. Even though we made it clear that she wasn’t our friend, it felt as if we had to show some concern for her well-being, and the well-being of the others she might be trying to scam. So, we stayed, and cooperated, and asked for details on the investigation like we cared whether they found her when we both very much hoped they wouldn’t.

After a few go-rounds with the initial officer we spoke to, we ended up in the investigative unit of the Teton County Sheriff’s Department. Sergeant Axel Johansson, the head of investigations, was about forty-five and as fit and tall as the citizens he was sworn to protect. He wore a tan uniform, with a crest that had a moose’s head in profile on its breast. He had an open and friendly air about him that we feared hid a keen investigative mind. And perhaps it did. He asked all the questions we thought of and many, many more, listening for the full two hours it took us to go through everything that had happened to JJ and me, and then all of us together.

We’d done the right thing in telling him, he said. She might still be in the vicinity, and she sounded like a highly dangerous person. That’s what he called her, a “highly dangerous person.”

I tried not to laugh as I agreed with him. Besides, he wasn’t wrong. She was still highly dangerous to both of us.

We stuck to our story. They issued an APB. They uncovered her plane ticket and took JJ’s computer to analyze it. They checked in with the officer I’d reported the theft to in New York, and JJ’s one in Chicago. They were thorough.

In some ways, the investigation that Liam was conducting on the other end of things was the harder one to get through. He kept texting me with questions, like what she was wearing the last time we saw her, what exactly her last words were, and how she’d gotten her hands on JJ’s computer to book her ticket. What had we asked her on the paddle? Why had we even gone on that paddle in the first place, knowing who she probably was?

I called him when I got the paddle text.

“I thought maybe she’d loosen up. I didn’t have a lot of time to think about it. You’d just told me that her backstory was probably made up. I was trying to think of what to do.”

I stopped talking. I was saying too much, sounding defensive.

I was sitting in the town square eating an ice cream. It was the only thing I could get down these days, its cool creaminess slipping past the permanent lump in my throat. There was a family sitting on the grass having a picnic, their two little kids running around in circles chasing one another and laughing.