Assuming Names: a con artist's masquerade (Criminal Mischief Book 1) (3 page)

I told the same story over and over, backwards and forwards without confusion. And while I could give details about the scenery and weather, I could offer no specifics such as license plate numbers or names.

“Extraordinary,” the preacher declared.

Mike showed neither belief nor disbelief. “Who were you staying with in Kenya?”

I paused and looked away to make it appear I was lying, mumbling, “I don’t know.”

The preacher jumped in saying, “But you know the address.”

Even more uncomfortable, I answered, “No.” Such details would obviously be known, but they could also be confirmed, and that had to be avoided. It was best to let them think I was too afraid to say.

The preacher was bewildered, but Mike showed nothing, he merely asked, “Do you know anyone’s name from Kenya?”

“Alistair.”

“He’s long gone,” the preacher announced.

“Anyone else?”

I covered my mouth and shook my head.

“You stayed six months in this house, and you learned only one name?” Mike was harsh. He had at last decided to show an opinion about my story.

The devil in me smiled. Mike hadn’t thrown his skepticism on the story as a whole, just the small part that I didn’t know anyone’s name. In doing so, he began to accept the bigger lie. I knew he wasn’t convinced, not entirely, but it was a start.

I had my eyes fixed in my lap when Mike asked, “Is Alistair the only person you interacted with for six months?”

“No.”

“Who else?”

“A man.”

“What was his name?”

I stopped breathing, looked away, and barely whispered, “I don’t know.”

“Then how did you address him? What did you call him?” Mike thought he had me.

I tried to make it apparent I was tearing my brain apart searching for an answer that would appease. I practically smiled when it occurred to me. My face lit up with hope that it would be believed. I said, “I called him master.”

~~~~~~

I had no idea what I had just implied. I was fifteen and had never heard of submissives, slaves, gimps, or dominatrixes. I had read a couple fantasy novels with masters of magic, but I was mostly thinking of the martial arts where the respected sensei might be called something like Master Musashi.

Of all the things, I had not meant to turn my tale into one of human trafficking and prostitution.

I did not understand why the preacher sighed out, “No, child,” and appeared distraught.

I couldn’t account for Mike’s abrupt discomfort, or his shift to gentle inquisition. He was staring at my left wrist. He’d been preoccupied with it for some time. He said, “Let me see,” and held out his hand.

The fence at Wolf Meadows had left a three-inch fresh cut straight down my forearm from my wrist. It was bloody red and ghastly to see, but as far as I knew, the only way to suicidally slit your wrists was from side to side, so the injury running down my arm seemed entirely innocent.

In under a minute, I had gone from merely confounding to fantastically tragic, and my smiling assurance that, “It looks worse than it is,” did little to dissuade Mike’s interest. I flipped my hand to get it out of sight.

Mike asked, “When did you do that?”

“Three nights ago.”

His next question, “What did you do it with?” did not register as
how did you do it to yourself
?

I answered, “A nail,” and the preacher sighed so sadly, I became convinced he was dramatically oversensitive. I said to alleviate his stress, “It didn’t hurt. It was just a stray nail in the railing of the ship.”

But Mike saw a problem with my explanation. “So you weren’t completely confined to a cabin.”

Damn it
. And I knew I looked like I was thinking damn it, too. I smiled guilty contrition. “I convinced one of the crew to let me out to walk the deck, but I promised not to tell.”

“A nail in the railing,” Mike repeated. “Don’t you think someone would have removed it?”

“I’m sure they did after I discovered it.”

But it was clear Mike wasn’t buying it. Of all the things I had dropped on them in the last two hours, I could not fathom why he would fixate on my wrist. It was, as far as I could tell, entirely inconsequential, yet it was the point Mike was going to come back to time and again.

“How old are you?”

“Twenty-three.”

“How did you cut your wrist?”

“On a nail.”

“How do you know you’re twenty-three?” And when I look puzzled, Mike asked, “Have you seen your birth certificate?”

“No.”

“Then how do you know?”

“I was told.”

“What did you cut your wrist with?”

“A nail in the railing.”

“You’ve always been addressed as countess?”

“Yes.”

“When did you cut your wrist?”

“Three nights ago.”

“Where were you before Kenya?”

“China.”

“And before that?”

“Germany.”

And before that South Africa, and before that Brazil, and between each, “How did you cut your wrist?”

“On a nail.”

“Can you tell me a single name from any of the places you’ve lived in your twenty-three years?”

I let my eyes float slowly around the room, and then answered with an unconvincing, “No.”

“Most of the homes you’ve described staying in were large. They would have had staff.”

My silence forced Mike to prompt, “
Yes
?”

“Yes.”

“You never learned any of their names?”

I blushed hard and let my eyes stray again. The act was an unfamiliar paradox. To make these lies work, I had to look like a bad liar.

Mike pressed, “You must have heard them talking to each other.”

I slowly shook my head to deny it.

“You never heard them talking? You never heard them call out to one another?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

I gaped back dumbfounded.

“Were they mute? How could you not have heard them speak to each other?”

I made an obvious show of hunting for a plausible answer, and then answered weakly, “I seldom left my room.”

Mike stared at my wrist and thought about it. “So, staying alone in the cabin on the ship would have been familiar.”

“The environment was different.”

“I imagine you got quite depressed,” the preacher said.

That was an emotion I had never experienced or imagined. I responded brightly, “No, not at all.”

“Explain the cut on your wrist,” Mike said.

“It was dark. I didn’t see the nail in the railing.”

“It didn’t bother you to be alone?”

“No.”

“You’re accustomed to it?”

I gave an uncertain “Yes,” as though I was afraid of the trap Mike was laying.

“You make it sound as though the only people you have spoken to in your adult life are the various hosts you’ve lived with.”

My expression acknowledged that this was an unfortunate absurdity, but one I was going to have to stick with.

“In the twenty-nine countries you’ve lived, you never once heard your host’s name?”

I rolled my lips between my teeth to indicate my mouth was sealed and shook my head.

Mike found another opening. “How did other people address your host? By what name?”

I made a silent “Oh” with my mouth as though I had been irrefutably caught and recognized only the truth would pass. I nearly answered but changed my mind, and then almost said something else before shaking my head and deciding firmly, “Master. They were known to everyone as master.”

~~~~~~

Two hours in and I was a suicidal submissive when what I had really been going for was more along the lines of mysterious smuggler. But I didn’t know that yet. I still thought I was successfully fabricating the image of a naive woman protecting dangerous allies.

I would occasionally try to give the impression of bringing Mike’s questioning to a close by saying, “All I really need is to get to Egypt. If you could just help me arrange a flight …” but Mike’s expression would always turn pained and I’d trail off while the preacher emphatically shook his head.

Finally, the preacher informed me, “Alistair went to a great deal of trouble to get you clear of that life and we’re not going to send you back to it.”

“Even if we could,” Mike added.

At the end of four hours, I went home with a member of the church, and the next day, Mike took me to the FBI.

We were in a front interview room with two agents. Mike outlined my story, and then I answered the same questions as the night before.

The agents admitted they had known for some time that white women were being smuggled around the globe, but I was the first evidence they had seen.

It was clear that everyone was fixated on the word master, and as it held their interest so keenly, I stopped trying to make it obvious I was lying. But it was going to be years before the sexual use of the word was explained to me, so in the meantime, I was thinking, “Wow, an international circle of masters smuggling women across the continents.” It sounded fascinating. I thought the women must be trained assassins, and if anything, I wished to join them.

There was a master in every country, I assured the FBI.

But it was beyond me to understand why the agents wanted to know if I had sex with the masters. I was insulted, answering with a frown, “No, never.”

No one in the room believed me.

But my genuine confusion as to why they would think it made them doubt. “Then, what were you doing with them?” one agent asked.

“Well, certainly not that,” but I wouldn’t elaborate further.

As I could give no details of a crime, the FBI couldn’t investigate. But they took my fingerprints, telling Mike they would run them through the system, and while they were at it, probably send the report to Washington headquarters, and maybe have a little look around, ask a few questions. But ultimately, the agents were of the opinion that this was the sort of thing Interpol should be brought in on. And because of the valise, we should go to the DEA.

The start of the next week, Mike and I did the whole thing again with the DEA. They took my fingerprints, made a report, and said they’d look into it. But as I wouldn’t admit any knowledge of what I was transporting, they couldn’t assume it was drugs. They told Mike to come back when it was clear.

The following day, Mike took me back to the church. There was a psychologist waiting to talk. Again, it was the wrist. I was flummoxed as to why it kept coming up.

The psychologist asked, “Do you want to tell me what really happened?”

“I promise you, it was a nail. I didn’t see it in the dark, and ran my arm over it.”

I could think of no way to explain what had happened any more convincingly unless I changed my story by adding a chain link fence to the boat.

“You’re safe here. You can tell me. We’re alone. No one else has to know.”

I looked suddenly troubled, but it wasn’t for any reason the psychologist suspected. I took a breath, he thought I was about to confess, but it was a breath of patience, because I needed patience if this was going to continue. I said, “Thank you, but I sincerely do not care in the least who knows. It was a stray nail in the railing.”

From his briefcase, he pulled out the Rorschach inkblot test, and I could not stop myself from laughing.

“Why do you find this funny?”

“Am I going to be labeled insane over a nail?”

“Do you think the nail is the issue?”

“Is it not?”

“What do you see in this card?”

After the first card that looked like a butterfly, I steadfastly contended, “I see nothing.”

He thought I was being obstinate.

Next he handed me paper and pen, saying, “We are going to do a word association exercise. Write down the first word that comes to mind. If I say salt, what is the first word that enters your mind? Write it down.” Halfway through, he was quite impressed with how fast I was responding, but then when it was over, he saw I had only written down exactly what he had said.

I defended myself, “The word you said would be the first word that would come to mind.” Now he knew beyond doubt I was being difficult.

“You’re not going to tell me how you cut your wrist?”

“It was a nail.”

I went straight to a night admission at the psychiatric hospital.

~~~~~~

On the third day under observation, I was sitting on the side of the bed, my hands over my eyes, saying with exasperation bordering on despair, “It was a nail.”

The psychiatrist said, “One more chance, and then I’m leaving. I’m going to petition the court to continue holding you. You’ll be moved to the state mental hospital. It won’t be pleasant.”

I was racking my brain trying to figure out how a nail injury could look so significantly different from a chain link fence injury that everyone except me could see it.

I couldn’t fathom, and no one was whispering even a hint about their suspicions. I was playing twenty-three and worldly, so it was probably assumed that I knew the most efficient way to slit your wrist was down the vein, and it was probably suspected that I wasn’t outright denying or admitting an attempt at suicide because I was ashamed, or was in denial, or in some other psychological quandary, but the reality was I didn’t have a clue. I had only just turned fifteen and none of this had been covered in ninth grade.

Hollywood had taught me that suicide was done with razor sharp precision across your wrist, and I had a savage cut down my arm. To my mind, no one would deliberately scar themselves like that, so it was clearly an accident.

It was the cause of the accident that was at issue. Apparently boats did not have stray nails in the railings. I didn’t know, but I still argued with the psychiatrist like I did. “You’re not a carpenter, yet you’re going to tell me that railings are not assembled with nails. How do you know that? Why would you tell me they’re not when I have seen for myself that they are?”

He wouldn’t explain. He only warned, “Last chance. Tell me how you cut yourself.”

But I had never been one to change a story. I’d stick with it to the bitter, twisted end, and before it was over, I’d wear everyone else down into believing it through sheer stubborn consistency.

I threw a hand up in resignation, telling the psychiatrist, “It was still a nail.”

And he left without saying a word.

~~~~~~

It went exactly as the psychiatrist threatened. The judge sent me to Wichita Falls State Mental Hospital, and, as was warned, it wasn’t pleasant.

The place was a square grid of thirty-odd brick buildings. Most were residential halls, long sprawling two- and three-story structures arranged around treeless green lawns. It almost could have passed for a college campus, except most of the windows were barred and it lacked any sense of external life. Expressionless faces were watching from the windows, but no one was on the grass. The vibe was so subdued it felt threatening.

It was built in the 1920s and retained little glimpses of another era when electroshock therapy and lobotomies were acceptable. During admission, I saw leather restraints, harnesses, and straight jackets; then later, I took a shower in a wide open, tiled hall with two cast iron tubs that had once been used for cold shock therapy. The place had not been modernized, so the threats remained.

I was put into an adult ward with two dozen other females. Most of them were schizophrenics, a few were manic-depressives, and all of them seemed tipped for violence. But worse, a majority of the women were round-the-clock shrieking maniacs.

The screaming started on my arrival and never stopped. It was constant and of every variety. Hysterical screaming. Angry screaming. Tear-filled accusations led to monosyllabic screaming. Huge men in white coats would wrestle someone to the floor, and while a nurse injected them with sedatives, other screamers on the sidelines would cheer and curse and throw whatever wasn’t bolted down until someone else got restrained. Then everyone would scream some more.

I was pressed into a corner thinking this was not nearly as funny as I imagined it would be. Having arrived late on Friday, it was going to be three nights before the doctors I had to convince I was sane came back to work, and by Sunday night, I was pretty certain I had been sent to hell.

When Monday arrived, I had already woken up to a woman sitting next to me with a pair of scissors saying, “Your hair is real pretty.” So, when I was called before the panel of twelve psychologists and psychiatrists, I was careful not to pitch my voice too high or out of control like everyone else.

They sat on one side of a long table and I sat alone in the center of the room.

We went through my whole story as Mike, the FBI, and the DEA had heard it, and at no point did anyone express skepticism.

At the end they asked, “Do you know why you’re here?”

I was not about to bring up the nail. I went with, “I’m not entirely certain.”

“You want to take a guess?”

“No, not particularly.”

“You want to tell us why not?”

It was the only earnest sentiment I would willingly share with them, “A person who goes wildly stabbing in the dark might stab herself, and I have never been inclined to cripple myself.”

They said, “Very well then, you can leave.”

Oh thank god
. I was smiling relief and said sincerely, “Thank you.”

A little too sincerely, so they felt the need to clarify, “You can leave the room.”

~~~~~~

Legally they were only allowed to hold me for two weeks before the court required a formal diagnosis of insanity to continue detaining me. I had already spent three days at the first hospital and another three at the Falls, which left the psychiatric panel eight days to determine if I was sane.

Just minutes free of the initial interview, I fell into conflict with one of the psychologists.

I had refused the physical exam required upon admittance, and I continued to reject the psychologist’s demands that I submit. She called the men in white coats, and while they stood outside her office door, she informed me, “You have a choice: you can either walk to the clinic or be carried.”

“That is not a choice.”

“Of course it is. Now which will it be?”

I chose to walk. My wrist was again the focus of interest. The doctor clucked over it, “You poor thing. This is a terrible place for someone as young as you to be.” He looked at my other wrist and said, “I’m glad there is only one.”

I laughed, “I can’t imagine what events would lead to this happening twice.”

And he sighed, “We never can and I hope you never do.”

Goodness, it seemed everyone in Texas was intensely melodramatic.

The psychologist was in an angry drama that saw her slamming her hands down on the desk. She’d lost all patience with me, commanding on my return, “For the last time, the truth!”

“It was a nail.”

“I’m not going to listen to your lies. Get out of my office!”

The next morning, I was woken with a rough shake and opened my eyes to someone’s face just an inch from mine, shouting like a Marine drill sergeant, “What is your name? What is your name? Full name now!”

He had me by the arms and I gave him what he wanted in a rush, “Tanya Thompson.” Then backing up the wall to escape, made the correction, “Constance Mitchell.”

With a smile and a wink, he turned and left.

The aftermath was a shocking quiet calm. I looked over the room, taking in the white stone walls, the bars over the windows, and then, at the open door, was the psychologist. I was full of contempt. “Bloody hell, is this how you people amuse yourself?”

“Tanya?”

“No, Constance.”

“Who is Tanya?”

“A sister. A friend. Someone I know.”

“Then why did you give her name?”

“We look very similar and I’ve used her name before.” And when she rolled her eyes in disbelief, I asked in defense, “If you woke to some unknown man on top of you wanting your name, would you give your real one? Well, of course
you
might, but then you are rather witless.”

We didn’t become any greater of friends as the days passed.

She demanded, “Why are you so thin?”

But I was stumped to explain it.

“They say you don’t eat.”

“The food here is different than what I am accustomed.”

“You will eat it, or you will be confined to the cafeteria until you do.”

After four hours, the mess on my plate was no longer a steaming spread of unidentifiable mush but was instead something congealed and sickening. The men in white left their positions at the exit to come stand beside me and shake their heads. They reached a whispered agreement between themselves and then silently took pity on me, dumping the whole tray in the trash and swearing to the nurse I had eaten.

The next day, the psychologist turned it all around by saying, “Until you tell me the truth about how you cut yourself, you are not allowed to eat. Don’t even bother going to the cafeteria because I have instructed them not to feed you.”

By evening I was uncomfortably hungry. The woman with the scissors who had thought my hair was pretty pulled me aside to dig bits of bread out of her pockets. She’d collected slices from other patients at the table and then balled them in her fist to shove into hiding. The bread was caked in pocket fluff, and I wasn’t that desperate, but it was a touching gesture that sided the patients against the staff. I thanked her for the effort but had to decline.

She granted it wasn’t perfect, saying, “Next time, I’ll wrap it in a napkin.”

The following morning I was starving and started performing physics experiments in my head. I was trying to determine if it was the angle or the depth that betrayed the cut to my wrist had not been a nail but a chain link fence. Again and again, I replayed the dark tangle with the fence in the night, but it had happened so fast I didn’t notice the cut until the blood started dripping from my fingers. Instead, I tried to imagine swiping my hand over a railing and how easily the same injury could be done with a nail. I could not find the flaw in my lie.

I studied my wrist and had to consider that I was out of my depth. I had to concede that I was dealing with people far more intelligent than I had assumed. Everyone in Texas could see something I couldn’t. They were all decades older than me, and some experience gave them insight that I lacked. It was frustrating. I wondered repeatedly if I should just give up and admit my real name, but I was not yet prepared to return home.

The psychologist tried again, her temper barely concealed. “Tell me the truth.”

I asked, “About what?”

“Anything.”

“The only constant in the universe is change?”

She shouted, “Get out!”

But always later, someone would find me trying to make myself small and unseen in some corner of the corridor, hoping to avoid the violent screaming in the dayroom, waiting for evening when the doors to the bedrooms were unlocked and I could hide from the madness. I’d be escorted back with the explanation the psychologist wanted to talk again.