The Passenger

by Lisa Lutz

  “Madison,” I said, as if it were the first time that word had rolled off my tongue. “I’ve heard good things.”

  “You’ve never been?”

  “No. Never,” I said.

  I could change my hair, even my eyes, but you can’t change your bones. Anyone with a good eye for faces would be able to pick me out of a lineup. I held onto Dolores’s gaze, even as I felt my heart beating a hole in my chest. I kept my expression steady and warm as I tried to figure out a plan.

  “Maybe one day,” I said.

  “That probably wouldn’t be a good idea,” said Dolores.

  “Why is that?”

  “You’re the spitting image of a woman wanted for murder there.”

  The car seemed to have heated up ten degrees in the last five seconds. My brain felt like a corn maze. Each corner I turned, I’d find another dead end.

  Dolores was forcing me to rethink all of my plans; I wasn’t too keen on her at that moment. Still, killing Dolores was out of the question.

  “How unusual,” I said.

  “Well, she’s a person of interest. Husband was found at the bottom of the stairs and then the wife disappears. Why would she run, if she were innocent?”

  “Maybe the real killer kidnapped her.”

  “There was no sign of a struggle, and she took her purse and at least one suitcase.”

  As far I could tell, Dolores was having herself a jolly good time chatting with a potential murderer. Well, a real one now. But did Jack really count?

  It would have been suspicious and most certainly rude if I got up and left, so I let the conversation run its course.

  “That is suspicious, indeed,” I said.

  “Interesting that you look just like her,” Dolores said.

  “They say everybody’s got a doppelgänger,” I said.

  “I’m not convinced that the woman was guilty. Maybe he had it coming,” she said.

  “Maybe he just fell down the stairs,” I said.

  The loudspeaker whined before the conductor’s voice cracked the rhythm of Dolores’s educated interrogation.

  “Next Stop: Erie.”

  Dolores sat perfectly still.

  “That’s you, isn’t it?” I said.

  “It is,” she said, slowly gathering her purse and coat. “It’s been nice chatting with you, Tanya.”

  If I had been standing, my knees would have buckled. “Emma,” I whispered without any conviction. What was the point?

  Dolores detrained, but I figured it would be a matter of minutes before she called the police with a Tanya Dubois sighting. I watched her walk along the platform into the station. I raced down the aisle and jumped off the train right before the doors closed.

  I didn’t dare go into the station until I was sure Dolores had departed. I strolled to the end of the tracks and sat on a bench for a half hour, breathing slow and steady, trying to calm my nerves. Then I walked into Erie’s Union Station, bought a baseball cap and a pair of oversized black sunglasses, and left, strolling down Peach Street until I saw a sign for a motel that looked like it would take cash and forgo that pesky ID check.

  Room 309 of the Dragonslayer Inn was about as medieval as my mother’s bedroom circa 1985. If I had to hazard a guess at the age of the carpet and bedspread, I’d go with ten to fifteen years. The walls carried the grime of what I gathered was a Smoking Only policy, and the faucet in the bathroom sink was so caked with rust I tried to recall my last tetanus shot.

  Yet, it felt good to be alone for a night, to have time to think. When I tried to count back, I realized I had been a killer for only four days, but it felt like forever. I took off my clothes, shucked the ancient duvet off the bed, and crawled between the scratchy sheets. I slept for as long as my mind would let me.

  MY CONSCIENCE gave me only a three-hour reprieve. When I woke, the flip clock by the side of the bed read 9:09 p.m. I figured I might still have time to find an open drugstore, so I threw on my clothes and left.

  Certain purchases can seem highly suspect. For example, if I worked in a hardware store I’d be inclined to call the cops on a customer who purchased only rope and duct tape. However, if that same customer purchased rope, wood glue, lumber, hinges, a leveler, and duct tape, I wouldn’t think much of it. At the drugstore I picked up scissors, hair color, a disposable cell phone, an assortment of makeup, and a scarf, and added mixed nuts, a new toothbrush, toothpaste, shampoo, and a multivitamin to my cart to throw the cashier off. It’s quite possible I was overthinking the endeavor; the cashier didn’t give me a second glance.

  Back at the Dragonslayer Inn, I gazed into the mirror and thought about what I could do to make myself unrecognizable. I took the scissors from the plastic bag, grabbed a chunk of hair, and sliced it off right at the scalp. Then I sliced off another chunk and another chunk, until my head was the texture of badly mowed lawn. I had saved those blue contact lenses, just in case, and put them back in. I left the hair color alone. You never know when you might need another layer of camouflage. When I looked in the mirror I resembled a cancer patient, maybe one you wouldn’t want to mess with. I figured I could roam safely looking like this, until I found a new place to land.

  I cleaned up my shorn locks off the linoleum floor as best I could, having more sympathy for the hotel maid than your average guest. I set the alarm and went to bed.

  I woke an hour later with my conscience in a vise. Domenic had seemed mostly okay when I left him, but head injuries are unpredictable. I began to fear that I had done more than just incapacitate a man who was probably pretty decent, on the whole.

  I found his card in my wallet, took out the cell phone that I’d bought in Denver, and called his number. He answered on the third ring. At least, I was fairly certain it was him. I probably should have hung up, but I couldn’t.

  “Domenic?”

  “Yeah, who’s this?”

  “How’s your head?”

  “Debra?”

  “Don’t call me that anymore.”

  “Okay, sweetheart. Just tell me where you are. Denver?”

  “I’m not in Denver,” I said. “What’s your condition?”

  “Concussion. Did you call to check up on me?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m touched. Where are you?”

  “Do you have any other injuries?”

  “A few stitches. Tell me where you are, sweetheart.”

  “As long as you’re all right. Bye, Domenic.”

  It was three a.m. when I left the hotel. I dropped the phone in the bin and the keys in the slot at the front desk so no one would see me. I returned to the train station and bought another coach fare with my own cash on the Lakeshore Limited to Albany. I boarded the train at seven fifteen a.m.

  As far as identities were concerned, Emma Lark turned out to be a layover. Even with the copy of her ID and passport that I’d stolen from the records room at JAC Primary, I wouldn’t get any use out of her. I’d managed to chew her up and spit her out in less than three days, thanks to a sharp old dame named Dolores Markham. I wouldn’t last long without a name, so I got straight to work.

  As soon as I boarded the train, I began stretching my legs through the cars, noting all of the female passengers in my age range. Then I narrowed them down to the ones I bore some physical resemblance to. I had three promising choices. It would have been nice to take my time, to carefully study their bone structure, verify their height, maybe even be so bold as to engage in a brief conversation, learn her age, place of birth, point of departure, destination, before I made any more decisions. But opportunity knocked, and I answered.

  A woman with long brown hair, whom I could definitely pass for after a cancer scare, left her purse in a virtually empty car as she went to use the restroom. I quickly reached inside, swiped her wallet, and shoved it into my bag. I found a restroom in another car and pulled her driver’s license, several bills, and a credit card, with barely a glance. Then I casually walked back through her car. She hadn’t returned to he
r seat, and she was less likely to notice a theft if her wallet remained in her bag, so I returned most of the stolen goods. Then I moved on to the next car. Every step went so fast I didn’t even see the name on the ID.

  My imprudent almost-lookalike got off the train in Syracuse, New York. It was only then I dared scrutinize my new identity. I plucked the driver’s license from my bag with heady anticipation.

  Sonia Lubovich from Bloomington, Indiana. Lubovich. Was that Polish, Russian? Maybe it was a name I’d acquired through a brief marriage to a man who never spoke much about his family. Lack of communication would certainly be a key ingredient in a failed marriage—although it might have been the ingredient that kept me and Frank together for so long.

  I decided the ID could work. She was only two years older and one inch taller than I was, and we looked enough alike. The photo had been taken a few years ago, and the way I looked now could easily be explained away by life and illness taking their toll. I no longer had great expectations for my lives, but I figured I’d have a longer run as Sonia Lubovich than I did as Emma Lark.

  April 17, 2015

  To: Jo

  From: Ryan

  Jo,

  Why did you call him, ask for his help? You could have called me.

  I would have helped you.

  R

  June 22, 2015

  To: Jo

  From: Ryan

  Jo,

  It’s been ten years since you left. People are talking about you again. Your face—god, I wish I knew what you looked like now—has been in the papers. It made me miss you all over again.

  Be careful. Jason Lyons has come back to town. He’s a prosecutor now. He doesn’t care that you’ve been declared dead. He thinks you’re still out there.

  R

  Sonia Lubovich

  Chapter 18

  * * *

  I DIDN’T know where I was going when I left Recluse. I don’t know when the precise plan took shape. Perhaps it was always there, lost in pieces at the bottom of my luggage like a puzzle that I had to put together. My mother lived in Manhattan as a child, in a one-bedroom apartment with her mother. She had a paternal grandmother who didn’t chip in much for the bare essentials but every summer paid for camp in upstate New York. For eight weeks my mom was shipped away from the steam box of that concrete island to run free among pine, maple, oak, cypress, and willow trees. She swam in lakes, canoed in rivers, engaged in leisure activities that were rarely afforded to her schoolmates back home.

  These places sounded like such an adventure to my ear, I often asked my mother why I wasn’t sent to camp. She pointed in the direction of the Waki Reservoir, where I swam every season except winter, and suggested I pitch a tent on the shore. It was only a partial joke. Our house was so small, I’m sure she wouldn’t have minded the extra space.

  Still, these majestic camps from her memory held court in my mind and on occasion I’d ask her questions about her time there. Did she have her very own canoe? How many hours a day was she allowed to swim? Was anyone attacked by a bear? Did she stay in contact with any of her old cabin mates?

  “No. We lost touch,” my mother said as she took a sip of her third gin and tonic of the afternoon.

  “Did anyone ever drown in the lake?”

  “What’s your obsession with drowning?” she asked.

  I don’t think I ever answered the question. In retrospect, it was a mild preoccupation of mine before it became an obsession.

  “Did you have any boyfriends there?” I asked.

  “Sure.”

  It was easy to tell when my mother was done talking. Her eyes would turn skyward, even if there was no sky worth seeing. I would always try to get one more morsel out of her.

  “What would happen to the camp after summer ended?”

  “Nothing,” she said. “It was like Brigadoon until the children turned up the next year.”

  ONLY TWO HOURS were left in my journey when I sat down, looked out the window, and saw a glorious world passing me by. I realized that I’d found the perfect metaphor for my life. The color of the trees reminded me it was fall, now the middle of October. The leaves had changed and were starting to die, but the colors in the landscape were as extraordinary as anything I’d ever seen. For a little while I could forget all of the lives I was running from and gaze in awe at how beautiful this incredibly cruel world could be.

  Before I knew what was happening, tears were running down my cheeks. I threw on my sunglasses and hoped no one had seen me. But the sunglasses dimmed the magic colors and I thought, Fuck it, I want to see this, because I wasn’t sure how many more autumns I’d have left in my life, or how many I’d get to see as a free woman. I took the sunglasses off. I didn’t care who saw me cry.

  I got off the train in Albany sometime before three p.m. I purchased a ticket on the Empire Service, one stop to Hudson. I walked along Warren Street until I spotted in my peripheral vision the kind of motel to which I’d grown accustomed. I took a detour and checked into the Roosevelt Inn. I needed to clean up after being on the road, but I knew it was a luxury I couldn’t afford much longer.

  I paid cash so nothing would show up on her credit card, but I used the name Sonia Lubovich so I’d get used to it. I was surprised how easily the eastern European consonants rolled off my tongue. The clerk didn’t give my pronunciation a second glance. Sonia and I were going to get along just fine.

  “How long will you be staying?” the motel clerk said. He was heavily tattooed and looked like his ambitions far outreached his current station. Our exchange bored him immeasurably.

  “Just one night.”

  I checked into my four-hundred-square-foot stopover, removed those stinging blue contact lenses, and took a long, hot shower. I changed into my other set of clothes and left the Roosevelt Inn to stretch my legs, enjoying a feeling that I could only describe as freedom. I picked up some practical items from a thrift store, washed my new and old hand-me-downs at the Laundromat, bought a couple of disposable cell phones, and checked the pockets of my new ten-dollar wool coat. It was a shabby, oversized checkered number, but one that looked like it might keep you invisible. I found a quarter in the pocket.

  I located the library, which was closed for the day. I stopped in at an old-style diner, ordered a burger, and returned to the Roosevelt for my last night in a real bed.

  In the morning, I took a hot shower and checked out of the motel, carrying all of my worldly possessions over my shoulder, and returned to the Hudson Area Library. Despite a gripping curiosity, I didn’t check up on any of my past lives. Instead, I collected a list of summer camps in a thirty-mile radius and perused the classifieds for a used car.

  After three hours, I had a list of five camps and three possible cars that were just a short stroll or cab ride away. After a few calls, I found an old lady who was selling her 1982 Jeep Wagoneer for $1,000. The price was steep considering my finances but a steal otherwise. I figured I’d be needing a vehicle with four-wheel drive and decent clearance on these country roads.

  I made an appointment to meet with Mrs. Mildred Hensen at eleven a.m. I double-checked my finances, hoping that money had mysteriously appeared in my wallet, but things were as dismal as ever. After I purchased the car, I’d be down to just over five hundred dollars, and that wasn’t much to live on without any source of income. I took a taxi to the seller’s house in Red Hook.

  Mrs. Hensen was a lovely old lady. Hard of hearing, which somehow facilitated our communications. She didn’t bat an eye when she saw Sonia’s Pennsylvania license, and she swatted her hand dismissively when I tried to explain that I needed to take the car registration papers and fill them out myself after I got my New York State driver’s license sorted out. I’d contrived a whole long-winded story about an ex who was hanging on to my passport, but it was all unnecessary.

  I took the Wagoneer for a spin. The shocks needed some work; it had the bounce of a horseback ride. The engine rattled more than it purred. But it worked and it was
the right price and I wouldn’t last long without a mode of transportation, so we made the deal over a cup of strong tea and homemade jam cookies.

  When I left her house I drove through the windy, arborous roads trying to find my way to these camps that had no real landmarks or addresses one could discern under the thick awning of foliage. Eventually I came upon a maple sign adorned with the unremarkable name Camp Rodney. I followed an overgrown private drive past the NO TRESPASSING sign to a clearing with several cabins, painted white, evenly spaced apart, with one main building: white with blue trim, in the colonial style, but the structure appeared to be new.

  I got out of the car, walked up the front step, and put my hand on the solid oak door. It was locked with a dead bolt that wouldn’t budge. Curtains blocked the view through the window, so I walked around and peered through the side. I saw a room with several desks, like in a schoolhouse, and large steel closets in the back with more secure locks. I noticed a chart in the back of the room in binary code.

  I took in the rest of my surroundings. One small badminton court, a tiny pond for a few rowboats, a fire pit, and a mess hall. My skills of deduction led me to the conclusion that Camp Rodney was a computer camp. With that kind of equipment on hand, I couldn’t trust that they didn’t have some kind of routine security. I moved on.

  A few miles away, I explored the grounds of Camp Horizon. They had a lovely lake with rowboats, and their cabins were easy to trespass and seemed insulated enough that I could survive through early winter. But a pesky groundskeeper met me immediately, and I had to make up a story about vetting summer sleepaway camps for my finicky son next summer.

  Camp Weezil had all of the amenities I required, but its grounds were too visible to the main roads, and I could easily be spotted.

  It wasn’t until late afternoon that I found Camp Wildacre, just north of Dutchess County and bisected by the Wildacre River. It was hidden one mile down a private drive. I didn’t see any tire marks or signs of life. There was a short chain-link fence with a solid lock. I hopped the fence and explored the grounds. It felt like home right away. I just needed bolt cutters and a new padlock. I jumped back over the fence, got into the Jeep, and backed onto the main road. I stopped at a gas station and asked for directions to the closest shopping mall and followed the signs to the Rip Van Winkle Bridge. Travel on major roadways was generally something I would have to avoid. Every time I saw a state police cruiser, my heart would lurch. I could barely look at the road ahead of me, my eyes were so focused on keeping my Jeep in the sweet spot on the speedometer. The moment those lights whirled in my rearview mirror, my life would be over.