Here She Lies

lights, Detective Lazare’s pale skin contrasted ghostily with the dyed frazzle of his pitch-black hair. The large rectangular window behind him showed the rain-beaten bright green leaves of a century-old maple tree.
    “You’re convinced your sister bought the diamonds?” Lazare asked me. The identical-looking yet mismatched earrings lay on a clear space of his neat desk.
    “I can’t say I’m sure, but it seems she might have.”Just saying those words aloud, voicing my tentative doubts, felt shattering. The translation was so stark: my sister hated me. I loved her and she hated me. And she had Lexy. I was starting to feel sick again.
    “I hate to say it, but it doesn’t really surprise me.” Bobby glanced at me, deciding how much he could say before earning a dreaded reaction from me. “I think Julie was feeling rejected by me—”
    “Because you rejected her.” Detective Lazare nodded. Got it, move on. Bobby smiled a little uneasily and agreed.
    “Yes, I rejected her. I was really stunned when she came on to me. I mean, she’s Annie’s sister .”
    “With identity theft,” Lazare said, “the wisdom is that it’s often someone who’s got access, someone who works in the home, a coworker, even a family member.”
    “That’s right. I read that in the book I picked up.” Bobby hadn’t mentioned exactly that to me before, about it often being someone close to you, and I now wondered how much that notion had contributed to his thinking about Julie.
    “Have you reported this yet?” Lazare asked.
    “We put a fraud alert on our credit reports,” Bobby said.
    “I mean to the FBI.”
    “No,” Bobby said. “We just found out last night. We drove straight to the house this morning, then went to the appraiser.”
    “You can reach the FBI twenty-four hours—”
    I had to interrupt the detective. “It was my fault. When Bobby first said he thought Julie might havesomething to do with it, I wouldn’t listen. We decided to get the earrings appraised first. I couldn’t just accuse my sister of something like this.”
    “The thing is, you don’t have to solve this, Annie.” Detective Lazare’s eyes smiled, seeming to forgive my hesitation. I had the sense that he comprehended my emotional plight, the delicacy of what was at stake for me. “The FBI has a Cyber Division — they’ve been bringing us up to Boston for conferences this past year to brief us on cyber crimes and offer help if we need it. They’ll work with us. They know how to investigate exactly this kind of crime.”
    He picked up his phone and crooked it between neck and ear while searching for something on his computer. A phone number, presumably, because then he dialed. Waited. Pushed a few buttons, obviously navigating a voice-mail system. Finally telling some stranger that we needed help from the federal government.
    “It appears to be identity theft,” he said, “and yesterday she was picked up on a felony warrant she claims is false. In New York City. Bail bond, yes. Yes. I don’t know yet. It’s under review.”
    Claims was false? His choice of words shook me, but I kept quiet.
    Lazare hung up the phone and opened one of his desk drawers, saying, “It’s all set. They’re sending us one of their computer fraud specialists this afternoon. I mean it when I tell you they’re very serious about this kind of crime these days.” He withdrew a sheet of paper from the drawer and set it on his desk: APPLICATIONAND AFFIDAVIT FOR SEARCH & SEIZURE WARRANT .
    As we spoke, he filled it out.
    “That’s what the book says.” Bobby nodded. “That it took a while, but they’re finally starting to put some manpower behind dealing with it.”
    “Have to,” Lazare said. “It’s running rampant.”
    Rampant? Well, it was almost a relief to hear that the criminal malignancy that was threatening to ruin my life was common, not rare, meaning that identity theft was already a contagion run amok (something I had unfortunately never paid much attention to). Was it possible that I had been chosen arbitrarily, that my thief could be any one of many invisible thieves stalking cyberspace? But then I thought of the earrings. I thought of Julie, felt her in my soul, and couldn’t speak.
    “They say you can only do so much to protect yourself,” Detective Lazare said. “One thing that might make you feel better, Annie, is that once ID theft’s been confirmed by law enforcement, the victim is pretty much off the hook for the