Page 74 of The Business Trip

“Do we?” He pushed down harder on her back and twisted one arm behind her. She winced. “Then why’d you run?”

“I’m not a murderer. I’m a regular person, just a waitress.”

“Just a waitress, huh?” asked Officer Healy. “You did a pretty good job impersonating a news director in San Diego, Jasmine. Your time is up. Give it up. Do it for Diana. Do it for Allison. Don’t you owe them at least that?”

“Who’s… Diana?” She sputtered as a trickle of mascara started making its way down one cheek.

Finally, I had steadied my breath enough to speak.

“Diana was an actress.”

“An actress?” Her eyes were wild. “What do you mean?”

I sighed. It all seemed like a bizarre dream now, how I had concocted this idea for a little weekend fun to scratch my rebellious itch, how it came to me the day Lucy had shown me the website: Find My Doppelganger. We both laughed as she pointed out how you could put in a picture of yourself and watch it spit out an actor or actress from its database whose facial features and skin tone closely resembled yours. For an extrafee, you could send them a picture and sample of your hair, and they would clone it for a high-end wig, so professionally done it wouldn’t come off and a person could shower or sleep in it.

I played with the site a few times, just for kicks, late at night when I had trouble sleeping, and I thought of the absurd idea of using it one day. When my boss, Dave, told me I was going to Southern California for a conference, this one with people I had never met, and it was so close to Tijuana, where I wanted to explore, it just seemed like a crazy thing to try. It was the sort of adventure I hadn’t allowed myself to have since DePaul, a true “carpe diem” moment. I imagined sharing the story with Robert afterward, the shocked look on his face, the awe in his voice, but first I needed to accomplish this trip. Telling someone beforehand would have cracked my courage. Just a few nights in Mexico, that was all I wanted. No one would get hurt; no one would know. It was fun.

Diana could have been my sister, we were so close in looks, and I was shocked at the further resemblance when I used the “transfer my hair” option to swap her hair for mine. I paid the premium for the high-end wig.

We met at the hotel and exchanged phones so that she could make sure everyone back home thought I was at the conference by sending pictures to my Facebook, Instagram, Threads, and Twitter accounts. For added insurance of my whereabouts, if anyone tried “Find My iPhone,” for any reason, it would ping in San Diego. We traded all of our clothing except underwear and bras, and we thankfully wore the same size shoes. I gave Diana the passwords to both my laptop and phone on a Post-it note that I stuck on the laptop screen. When I told Diana that I had to take notes at the conference for Dave, she told me not to worry, she was an excellent note-taker, the best in her acting classes, and she would write down everything in a Google Doc I had waiting for her on the laptop. We pored over the conference schedule. I noted the one session I wanted to have especially great notes on, mental health, as it was so important to me, Dave, and our HR team back in Madison. The National Press Foundation was spending a lot of money to bring in the best experts in the country, and Dave was counting on me for my takeaways. Diana told me mental health was her own highest priority, and she would be a sponge.

With a suitcase full of her shorts, T-shirts, and sundresses, and my passport in hand, I took off happily to the Baja peninsula to peruse beach cottages and think about whether I wanted to actually move. At night after house hunting, I would drink a Dos Equis on the beach and walk up and down looking for shells. It was a perfect weekend escape, just what I needed, and I even found a few places I loved. I felt like my old college self, and more genuinely me than I had been in a while.

Diana promised to alert me right away if anything was amiss. When I didn’t hear from her, naturally I assumed all was well. She was supposed to text Robert that I was extending the trip by one day just to give me a bit more time on the beach and to let all the other conference attendees go home Saturday before I returned to the hotel for the swap. I was planning to fly back to Madison Sunday in time for work Monday. Diana and I were supposed to meet to switch back phones, wallets, and clothes, but when I texted her, she said she was out of town for a week and then stopped responding.

I panicked, calling her over and over and then racing to the hotel in La Jolla, but she was nowhere to be found. In a frantic haze, I drove to LA, but no one answered at her address. I contacted the Find My Doppelganger website for help, but they pointed out that I had signed a waiver absolving them of any responsibility. I hadn’t even read what I had signed. It was tenpages long, and I had just clicked “Acknowledge” and added my electronic signature.

Still in LA, I was trying to figure out my next move when national news hit about me, some guy named Trent McCarthy, and a woman named Jasmine Littleton in Atlanta. I was so confused. I remembered a woman named Jasmine from my flight to Denver. Was this the same person?

Petrified with indecision, I did nothing but curl into the fetal position at my hotel for days. Going public would mean exposing my lies, but I realized I had to… for Diana. She was an innocent person, a struggling actress. She was getting ready for a revival ofThe Golden Girls, but had some time before rehearsals and just wanted to make a little money.

So I went back to San Diego and walked into the police station closest to the hotel, asking to speak with a detective. Soon I was sobbing and confessing everything. They asked me to keep it quiet until they could find out what happened to Diana, allowing me only to contact a handful of close family members and friends. They didn’t want knowledge of my existence to hamper the investigation or to get back to someone who had potentially done something criminal. When they finally cracked the case and asked me to come along on the arrest for identification purposes, I knew I owed Diana’s family at least that.

Now Officer Rodriguez turned to me:

“Is this her? The woman from the plane?”

I looked at her again. The hair was different, short and black, and she had tattoos I didn’t remember, but the face was undoubtedly Jasmine’s.

“Yes,” I said. Her eyes and mine locked. I narrowed mine. She did the same. A rage rose into my throat and I yelled out, “What the hell did Diana or I ever do to you? You met me on aplane and stalked me. You stole my money. What’s wrong with you? You’re a pathetic excuse for a human being.”

She didn’t reply, but turned her head to look down the sidewalk. Following her gaze, I could see a turquoise cottage with aFOR SALEsign in Spanish.

“Is that what this was all about? A beach cottage?” I asked. “How ironic. We both wanted the same thing. You know what? We could have been friends in another life if you weren’t a psychopath.”

Officer Healy jumped in again.

“That’s probably enough, Stephanie. We know you’re angry.” Then he addressed Jasmine directly. “Raven told us we would find you in this town. In fact, she told us everything.”

“Whaaat??” Jasmine cried. Her body began to shake violently. “But… how did you find Raven?”

“You want to know? I’ll tell you how itallhappened,” Officer Healy said. “First we got a tip from someone at your table at the conference in San Diego that certain things didn’t make sense and that it wasn’t actually Stephanie in attendance. We looked up airline records and saw that you sat in the same row as Stephanie on the way to Denver, and we learned you subsequently bought a ticket to San Diego at the Denver airport and rented a minivan with a wheelchair lift in San Diego. After that, you seemed to fall off the grid. There was no record of you until your wallet was found at Trent’s. So how did you get to Atlanta? There was security footage of someone who looked like Stephanie—same clothes, same hair—going through the San Diego airport on the way to Atlanta, but we soon learned from the real Stephanie that she never left Southern California. It all started to add up, but the thing that really did you in was the guy in purple taking your picture with Raven in Trent’sneighborhood. With enhanced photo technology, we knew it was you, not Stephanie. Then your ex-boyfriend called Madison police to say some high school friend might have been in on this with you. He had an address and everything. All we had to do was track down Raven. That’s when we found out she was dealing drugs and helping a passport ring. Raven was looking at fifteen to twenty years in federal prison, and I’ll tell you what—she turned on you so fast it would make your head spin.”

“Noooo…” Jasmine moaned. Her body went from agitated to limp as the realization of the predicament she was in seemed to overtake her. She added softly: “The cardboard box… the birthday card… I should have burned it all… the bastards are going to win, aren’t they?”

“Who are the bastards?” I asked, venom still boiling over in my voice. To me, she was the bastard.

Jasmine paused, gulping air for a few moments before speaking.

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