The Passenger

by Lisa Lutz

  “Why is the front seat all wet?”

  I could feel Domenic’s hands sliding down the seat along my back.

  “I spilled coffee,” I said.

  “Over your shoulder?”

  We ended up on a country road that I hadn’t studied on any of my maps. I didn’t know where it would take us, but we wouldn’t be going far.

  “I know you’re not Debra, so who are you?”

  “Nobody,” I said.

  “Who is Debra Maze?” Domenic asked.

  “She’s just a woman I met along the way.”

  “A woman who’s been missing for over a year. It’s a bit convenient, isn’t it?”

  “More inconvenient, if you think about it,” I said.

  Domenic sighed deeply. “What am I gonna do with you, teach?” he said. He said it the way a grown-up might say it to a delinquent teenager. But I knew he saw the situation as a bit more sinister.

  “What am I going to do with you?” I said, although I had already decided.

  We were traveling about fifty miles an hour. I was buckled up; Domenic wasn’t. He was still leaning over that front seat, oblivious to all of the health risks involved in automobile travel. I slammed on the brakes and aimed the car at the cement guardrail. The front right fender of that classic beauty crumpled like an aluminum can.

  Domenic went flying over the front seat and hit his head on the dashboard, then bounced back and wedged himself on the floor. His feet got caught in the steering wheel. He moaned, which I considered a good sign. I had hoped to keep his injuries minor. I’m not exactly a stunt driver, but I did my best. I shoved his feet out of the way, backed out of the wreckage, and pulled off the road about a mile away. I found a side street with solid tree cover and parked on the shoulder.

  I got out of the car, opened the passenger door, helped Domenic onto a gravelly patch of dirt. Blood trickled down his forehead, but I figured if he got medical attention soon enough, he’d be just fine. I put an old blanket under his head and found his cell phone in his pocket. I dialed 911 with my knuckle and gave his coordinates and condition as best I could. I was about to leave when Domenic started muttering something. I leaned in and asked him what he needed.

  “Thirsty,” he said.

  I found a bottle of water in the car and left it for him.

  “I’m sorry about this, Domenic. Nothing personal. Survival makes you do things you never thought you were capable of.”

  “Don’t leave.”

  “The ambulance should be here soon. Try to stay awake.”

  As I started to get up, Domenic grabbed my wrist in a vise grip. “Who are you? Who are you really?”

  “I don’t know anymore.”

  March 30, 2014

  To: Jo

  From: Ryan

  Where are you? Are you still alive?

  July 19, 2014

  To: Jo

  From: Ryan

  I know you’re on the run. I’ll still check this e-mail on occasion, as long as I can. If you need something that I can give you, I’ll try.

  I’m sorry.

  R

  Emma Lark

  Chapter 16

  * * *

  TO my best calculations, I gave Domenic just over an hour to be found by paramedics and recover his senses enough to provide them with my license plate number or other identifying information. I figured that gave me two or so hours before I’d have to lose the car. I took Highway 16 West and drove for fifty minutes, barely cracking the speed limit. I watched enviously as other cars left me in the dust. Then I exited onto I-25 toward Casper, Wyoming. I had one hundred and ten miles, one hundred and ten minutes to contemplate my next destination. Since I didn’t have a solid identity in my back pocket, I’d have to live off the grid; I also knew I should put as much distance as I could between myself, the body of the real Jack Reed, Domenic, and all of the people who had come to know me as Debra Maze.

  I found the Greyhound station in Casper, drove a mile away, parked in a strip mall, and walked back to the bus depot. I went to the kiosk and bought a ticket to Denver, Colorado.

  I boarded the bus at 1:05 a.m. I was awake for every single jostle, vibration, pothole, pit stop, toilet flush, and destination callout of the entire six-hour journey. At 10:00 a.m., I gazed bleary-eyed at the black-and-white departure board in the Denver Amtrak station. There are only two routes out of Denver. If you head west, your final destination is either Los Angeles or San Francisco; east, you end up in Chicago. I had a simple choice to make. East or west?

  I had a strict policy against the West Coast, so the choice was simple. Unfortunately, the California Zephyr brought me into the vicinity of Wisconsin, Tanya Dubois’s old stomping grounds. I’d have to tread carefully during my layover.

  The Zephyr didn’t depart for another four hours, which gave me ample time to find a fellow passenger with a credit card I could borrow. I had a few options—all women with their handbags on display. I chose the one with the nicest shoes. They were a strappy pump that dangled off of her heel as she napped on a bench. She didn’t stir as I strolled past. Her purse was wide open; I could pluck the wallet right out. I took inventory of my surroundings and everyone was minding their business. I shrugged off my jacket and threw it over my right arm. I walked past the woman again, dropped my phone in front of her bench, and as I retrieved it, I plucked her wallet right out of her handbag. Once I was out of sight, I took her credit card and purchased a ticket to Chicago, splurging on a roomette. I needed the rest, and the fewer people who saw me while I still looked like the second Debra Maze, the better. My benefactress, Virginia White, also had $182 in her purse. I kept one credit card and the cash, but I didn’t want to leave her stranded without any ID.

  As I breezed back in her direction, I had planned to drop the wallet back in her bag. But she was already scavenging through her purse in a panic. I strolled to the other end of the train station and dropped her wallet on the ground. Maybe a good Samaritan would find it and return it to her.

  During the four hours I had before I boarded the train, I found a thrift store, where I bought a small backpack and a change of clothes. Then I stopped in a drugstore, where I purchased water, energy bars, and a disposable cell phone.

  I BOARDED the train without incident and slept for the first ten hours, waking here and there to guzzle water and reemerge into the nightmare that had become my life. When I had finally slept long enough to recover some from the last forty-eight hours, I woke to a hunger so incapacitating that the stroll down the train to the café car felt like a two-day journey through the desert. I wove through the narrow aisle like a drunk frat boy, steadying myself on the backs of the seats. When I finally arrived in the car and sat down at the bar, the menu appeared to be written in a foreign language.

  The café car attendant—I think she said her name was Grace, or maybe I was just playing with names in my head—asked if I needed assistance. That was how in need of assistance I must have looked. It occurred to me that I probably shouldn’t be behaving in any suspicious manner since people recall suspiciously behaving people better than normally behaving ones. I made a very strong mental note to start behaving normally.

  “What’s good?” I said.

  “Everything,” she said.

  I admired her sense of pride in her product, but I had made so many complex, arduous, and life-altering decisions over the last two days that I needed to have one taken off my plate.

  “Let me rephrase that,” I said. “What would you have if you were sitting down for a meal?”

  “A burger. I always order a burger,” said Maybe Grace.

  “I’ll have a burger,” I said.

  The burger was adequate but not excellent. The speed with which I consumed it would only reinforce Maybe Grace’s opinion of her favorite dish.

  As she cleared my plate, she asked me where I was heading. Since I hadn’t yet chosen a final destination, I said, “Chicago.”

  “Got family there?”

  “A
round there.”

  I bought a bag of potato chips, almonds, an apple, and water to hold me through the rest of the journey. Innocuous questions always lead to more personal ones, and I didn’t have any answers at the moment. I returned to my roomette. There I sat by the picture window and watched the landscape dash by so fast I felt like I was in a perpetual state of just missing something important.

  By the time we got to Nebraska, tedium had set in. Everything started to look the same, and I lost that nostalgic feeling I had for the landscape we’d left behind. I began checking my watch with a ticlike frequency as the first leg of my journey was coming to an end. Roomettes are a nice idea, but they’re smaller than a prison cell and unless you’re accustomed to that minimalist lifestyle, it gets old fast.

  Detraining in Chicago gave me a fleeting sense of exultant freedom, until I came to the honest conclusion that I probably ought to get out of the Midwest with haste. If I hopped into a post office in Chicago, I’d likely find a grainy photocopy of my face thumbtacked to a bulletin board right next to the FBI’s most wanted.

  Chicago’s Union Station was more populous than the entirety of Recluse, Wyoming. Fellow passengers, commuters, and lingerers jostled past me. I felt like I was in the middle of a swarm of bees, the movements so alarmed my quieted senses. It had been a long time since I’d experienced the bustle of city life. I have to admit, I’d longed for it. I missed being invisible in a room full of people, getting lost in a crowd.

  Just as that hopeful vision cropped up, I stamped it down. Big cities require pricey apartments, which require well-paying legitimate jobs, and both of those require references and work history and, far more importantly, a goddamn ID, which I was currently lacking.

  I contemplated the departure board. The one clear decision I had already made was that I should put more miles between myself and the Midwest. It was only a two-and-a-half-hour drive to Waterloo, Wisconsin, most of that along I-94 if I remembered correctly.

  Virginia White’s cash bought me a ticket on the Lake Shore Limited to Albany, New York. The train didn’t depart for another six hours, so I stuffed my bag in a locker, bought a couple of local newspapers, and hoped I wouldn’t find a police sketch of myself inside those pages. I found a poorly lit and poorly populated bar that wasn’t blasting sports on the television, and sat down four bar stools away from the other solo customer.

  “What’ll it be?” the bartender asked.

  I ordered a beer, opened the newspaper, and realized the light was all wrong for reading. Still, if you’re a woman sitting alone in a bar, it’s always best to look occupied, even if you’re faking it. Most men think they’re doing you a favor, keeping you company, curing you of the shame of being alone in public.

  It didn’t take long for a fellow traveler to take a seat next to mine. I tensed my shoulders and raised the newspaper in a defensive posture. Some men would have read my body language for what it was—an indisputable DO NOT DISTURB sign. But some men can only read their internal weather report and have no concept that another human might not want the same things they want.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw that he was in a wrinkled shirt, his tie at half mast, and his collar frayed and yellow, the way a man’s collar gets when there’s no woman around to tell him that he needs to buy a new shirt. I decided he was a salesman. They need to travel in suits, and they’re skilled at driving a conversation until it crashes and burns at the bottom of a cliff. My cursory gaze provided all of the information I needed. The Salesman kept his money close to his chest—in his breast pocket to be precise. If it had been in a more accessible location, I might have engaged in conversation. As it was, he was no use to me.

  The Salesman hadn’t ordered his drink before he asked his first question. “What are you reading?”

  I tried ignoring him, keeping my newspaper up like a riot shield.

  He cleared his throat. “What are you reading?” he said again.

  “Newspaper,” I said. Sometimes being laconic will force your opponent to match your conversational style.

  “My name’s Howard.”

  “Uh-huh,” I said because sometimes when you ignore people, they just repeat themselves.

  “You got a name?”

  I lowered the paper and looked him dead in the eye. “As a matter of fact, I do not.” This had to be one of the greatest conversation stoppers that ever was.

  But Howard would not be thwarted. “You reading anything interesting?”

  “Nope.”

  The bartender approached the salesman and took his order. Whiskey from the well. The Salesman downed his shot and tapped the bar, his glass refilled just moments after it was drained. He cleared his throat again and turned to me.

  “You got a whole newspaper—no, two newspapers—and you’re going to tell me that there’s nothing of interest in them?”

  The laconic method was obviously failing. “You could get your own newspaper and find something of interest for yourself,” I said, holding my gaze on the fuzzy black-and-white print.

  “I was just making conversation, honey,” the Salesman said.

  “But I’m not interested in conversation,” I said, “so this transaction seems pretty simple to me. You want to talk. I don’t want to talk. I win,” I said.

  “Women these days,” the Salesman said. “They don’t have any manners.”

  “No, they don’t. That’s what the women’s movement was all about. Not equal rights, but the right to be rude. We don’t have to make polite conversation anymore. So you might as well find another way to keep busy,” I said as I dropped the newspaper in front of him and left the bar.

  In my brief reading time, I found no mention of me, but domestic crimes only get copy space when there’s a new development. I had to get to a library one of these days and check on the inquiry into Frank’s death.

  I strolled under the grand arches of Union Station for an hour or so, stretching my legs in anticipation of the cramped journey ahead. Eventually I found a bench occupied by a teenager bobbing his head to the beat of whatever was blasting out of his earbuds. I sat down next to him. You can always count on the youth of the day to mind their own business.

  Chapter 17

  * * *

  TRAVELING at close to eighty miles an hour made it feel like the train was doing the running for me. I couldn’t risk using Virginia’s credit card again, so I had purchased only a regular seat on the Lake Shore Limited.

  I found my way to the café car sometime after the lunch crowd dispersed. I ordered a turkey sandwich and found a table by the window, facing the cab. I looked around to see if anyone might give me trouble. I saw a teenager transfixed by her phone, a small family with children they were trying to quiet, and a stately, plump gentleman in an impeccable tweed suit who was snoring so loudly that the woman sitting across from him began to gather her belongings. She was an older lady, maybe seventy-five, tall, thin, but probably once a real beauty, judging from her bright blue eyes and pronounced cheekbones. Her hair was completely white and cut plain and short, probably by her own hand. The wrinkles on her face were heavy around her mouth and eyes, as if she got them all from smiling.

  She gazed in my direction and rolled her eyes at the snorer. I smiled; she smiled. She approached my table.

  “Do you mind if I sit?” she said.

  There were other free tables in the vicinity, but more passengers began to file into the car. On first glance her company seemed preferable to that of just about anyone else on the train, and I wasn’t in a position to take my chances. I still had another ten hours to go.

  “Please,” I said.

  She slid into the booth across from me and winked. On her it worked.

  “For forty years I listened to my husband saw wood eight hours a night, seven days a week. I missed him when he died. I did not miss that sound,” she said.

  “Where are you headed?” I asked.

  “Erie. You?”

  “Buffalo,” I said. It was the stop
right after. I’d asked her first, so I wouldn’t have to unnecessarily give away my final destination. Besides, if anyone had a Debra Maze or Tanya Dubois sighting and they said I’d landed in Buffalo, the general consensus would likely be that I’d hopped into Canada. Which was not a bad idea at all, if I could find a trunk in a car that would have me.

  “Are you going on vacation or returning home?” I asked.

  “Neither,” she said drolly. “I’m babysitting my grandchildren for the weekend. My son and daughter-in-law think it’s a vacation. But I’ve been to Paris. I know better. And you?”

  “I’m visiting a friend,” I said.

  “A vacation?”

  “You could call it that,” I said. Sometimes I’d take in the landscape and try to trick myself that I was on a holiday. It never worked.

  “My name is Dolores,” she said. “Dolores Markham.”

  By providing a last name, Dolores was suggesting that I too should provide a last name. If I didn’t, it would seem unfriendly and perhaps suspicious, although my heightened sense of paranoia might have been playing tricks on my sense of social conventions.

  “Hi, Dolores. I’m Emma Lark.”

  I’d had the name in my back pocket if I needed to use one, but I was trying to stay as anonymous as possible on this journey. I’d never practiced saying it, so when I did, I paused. It was a brief pause, a split second, but I could tell from the shift in Dolores’s gaze that she’d caught it.

  “You look very familiar, Emma.”

  “I must have that kind of face.”

  “Maybe. Where are you from?” Her eyes locked into mine, scrutinizing, yet somehow kind. Her open smile didn’t waver, but she was reading me as I answered her questions.

  “Outskirts of Seattle. You?”

  “Madison.”

  I was in trouble. Madison is just thirty minutes from Waterloo, where Tanya Dubois was a wanted woman. My mug must have been all over the papers there. If I had to guess, Dolores Markham knew exactly who I was. My travel itinerary through the Midwest was clearly a lapse in judgment. My brain had been misfiring ever since I killed Jack.