Here She Lies

book. When ChoicePoint’s data bank had been compromised by the thieves, the sensitive information of hundreds of thousands of people, both credit and personal, was suddenly out there. Data-aggregation companies collected information on individuals, including birth certificates, DMV records, credit and medical histories, court records and consumer transactions to create database reports on billions of individuals. They made money by selling the data to direct marketers to help them target products to consumers — so that people like me, lovers of stuff, could browse and dial or point and click from a consumer menu that had been designed just for us. According to the book, the government wasn’t exactly on top of it, evidence of which I had now experienced more personally than I could ever have imagined.
    The microwave buzzed and its light turned off.Bobby opened it and, using oven mitts, removed a no-longer-frozen pizza.
    “It isn’t much,” he said, “but we’ll split it three ways.”
    “Not for me, thanks,” Lazare said. “Remember that wife I told you about?”
    “Of course,” I said. “Good night.” I kissed his cheek and he pulled back, startled.
    “Good night.” He folded the e-mail into his pocket and quietly left.
    Bobby and I split the pizza onto plates and poured ourselves glasses of wine. We ate across from each other at the kitchen table, listening as the whir of Lazare’s car engine melted into the deep silence.
    “So,” I said, “I guess that’s why we never saw those other bills.”
    “Must be.”
    “I’m having trouble believing this. Julie?”
    He put down his wineglass and reached across the table to touch my arm. I reciprocated with my palm over the back of his hand. I felt so stupid. I had followed Julie right into the trap: leaving Bobby, running to her for shelter and support, trading clothes like we were little girls and, worst of all, agreeing to wean Lexy. I had just begun to recognize Julie’s envy, but not the strength of it. How could I, when all our lives we’d been better-than-best friends? How could I have foreseen that she would plan all this, set the stage, make me her puppet? There I was — here I am — jerking and dancing on an invisible web she wove just for me. Cobs and dumps and drops and algos. Okay, she’d proven she was smarter than me, but that was nobig surprise. I was the one who was supposed to have emotional intelligence and now she had taken that away from me, too. She had siphoned off my identity so slowly and cannily I hadn’t noticed. And she had my baby. My baby. Julie had taken my soul.
    The phone rang just before seven the next morning. The caller ID read “GBPD” — Great Barrington Police Department.
    “Yes?” I answered, hoping for the best and fearing the worst. We found your daughter. She’s here and she’s well; or...
    “Detective Gabe Lazare asks that you turn on your TV,” a woman’s voice said.
    Bobby and I had slept chastely beside each other and now I woke him. We rushed downstairs to the living room and turned on the TV that hung over Julie’s living room fireplace. The local news station held their camera steady on a microphone-festooned podium on the police station’s front lawn. Tying the belt of my robe, I realized my hands were shaking.
    Bobby sat down on the couch and I joined him. I forced myself to breathe deeply, and again. Finally Detective Lazare arrived in the screen’s limited perspective, walking through shadows thrown by overhead branches that obscured the golden morning sun. He settled himself behind the podium and cleared his throat. The dark swaths beneath his eyes told me he hadn’t slept and I noticed that his badge, which he usually didn’t wear, was positioned front and center on his lapel.
    “As you know,” he began, “a week and a half agoZara Moklas was murdered on Division Street in Great Barrington. Now, for those of you from out of town, that’s a quiet country road, a residential area. Her body was found in front of a house from which a baby was abducted yesterday.”
    “Baby Lexy?” a pretty television reporter asked.
    “Yes.”
    “Any news on the baby, Detective?” asked a walnut-faced reporter holding a small pad and a pen.
    “Nothing substantial, but we’re following every lead, so to the folks out there watching: Please keep on calling.”
    I let out an involuntary moan and Bobby wrapped his arm around my shoulders, pulling me close. On the screen, a reporter in