All Shots

“Leave now.”
    She did.
     

CHAPTER 15
     
    I am no thief. And why would I steal someone else’s identity, anyway? The one I have suits me fine. I have no desire to purloin a substitute. As to the possibility of filching a second identity to add to the first, this one is as full and challenging as I can manage: Steve, of course, and Rowdy, Kimi, Sammy, India, Lady, Tracker the cat, my cousin Leah, friends I cherish, a career I love, a funky house in Cambridge, and my beloved stepmother. My father? Well, the possibility of trading Buck in has occasionally crossed my mind, but who knows what flaws the replacement might have? Buck is unstintingly generous with time, attention, love, and money, and he is crazy about dogs. What if the new model were a stingy dog hater? Among other things, having such a father Would transform me, which is to say that it would ruin my As to keeping Buck and acquiring a second father, well, Buck is quite enough, thank you. I’m unwilling to risk what could be insurmountable challenges. For example, what if j ended up with two of him?
    But Holly Winter hadn’t been imagining that I’d wanted to make off with her life as a whole; she’d been thinking exclusively of money. The thinly veiled accusation was outrageous. I am a person of good character. Furthermore, if someone else’s Social Security number, bank account information, credit card numbers, and passwords fell into my possession, I’d immediately get in touch with their owner. If I wanted to use the information to commit financial fraud, I wouldn’t even know how to begin.
    Still, Holly Winter’s suspicion that I had been involved in trying to steal her identity has perhaps left me permanently hypersensitive. Consequently, I want to emphasize that I did not steal a look at her e-mail. Rather, I acquired my knowledge of the message she sent to Dr. Zachary Ho in an honest fashion and did so only later, not on that same Sunday afternoon, when she sent it. But I do know the address she used and the content of the e-mail. The address was the one granted to Dr. Ho by his alma mater, that place down the street from my house that famously leaves its ineradicable mark on its graduates and, if they so choose, leaves its mark on their e-mail addresses, too, in the form of the extension @post.harvard.edu. As an aside, I will mention the obvious, namely, that I am a person who has devoted her life to dogs; who owns two male malamutes; and whose female mala-mute, Kimi, lifts her leg as a matter of routine and even tries to lift both hind legs simultaneously as a means of demonstrating her commitment to a peculiarly urinary version of women’s rights extremism. In other words, when I say that harvard leaves its mark, I’m not using some vague and possibly inaccurate figure of speech; I know what I’m talking about.
    So, Holly Winter composes e-mail to Dr. Zachary Ho at [email protected] . The post-dot-Harvard is simply a forwarding address, as the other Holly Winter knows: Harvard does not go so far as to provide Internet access to alumni; it just forwards mail. Even so, what Holly Winter seeks is the power to reach Zach Ho, in more senses than one, and power is what she trusts Harvard to have. After all, it’s the second wealthiest nonprofit in the world, second to the Vatican, and if that’s not power, what is?
    Big dogs. My answer. Not hers.
    This is not the first time she has ever e-mailed Zach Ho, but it is the first time she has ever sent an individual message to him. The members of the advisory board of the Cambridge Alliance for Media-free Preschools, CAMP, occasionally hold what I presume are media-free meetings at media-free households, but they also use e-mail to communicate with one another. Even when she sends a message to the group, she avoids the ubiquitous e-mail Hi, which offends her.
     
Dear Zach,
 
First, because I have been the victim of identity theft, let me state that I am the Holly Winter you know from Harvard and from CAMP. That having been stated, let me proceed.
 
As you may or may not have heard, a situation has arisen that involves both of us. The police insist that they have been trying to reach you about it, but since they are acting like morons, not to mention archetypes of paternalism, I think it best to get in touch with you directly.
 
In brief, your house sitter has been murdered. Her body was found in your house last Thursday by a woman named Holly Winter (not me). The police are