Partner In Crime
The other night, I was sitting in my living room and looking out the window when I saw a police car pull up in front of our house. I was about to say, “Hey Shawn, there’s a cop car in front of the house,” when another police car pulled up behind the first one. So instead I said, “Hey Shawn, there’s two cop cars in front of the house.”

“What are they doing?” Shawn asked.

“Nothing,” I said. “I wonder what they want.”

Shawn looked out at the two silent cruisers, and then looked at me. “Have you done anything I should know about?”

“No,” I said. “Have you?”

“No,” he said.

We stared at each other with paranoid suspicion. And then the two police cars pulled away. Apparently, they had just pulled over to have a bit of a confab, but their visit still proved illuminating.

“Besides being criminally gorgeous,” I asked Shawn, “just what do you think I would have done to bring two squad cars to the house?”

“I was kidding,” Shawn said.

“Uh huh,” I said. Had this not been the second time an unexpected police presence prompted Shawn to ask me this very same question, I might have believed him.

The first time I was accused of being a fugitive from justice was about two weeks after we had moved to Arizona. We were spending the evening puttering about the house in a quiet, law-abiding way, when suddenly the sky was roiling with the sounds of screaming turbines and the thunderous chopping of helicopter blades. The noise was deafeningly disorienting, and we began to run about bumping into things while screaming “What’s going on? I don’t know!”

Eventually we fled the house, only to find ourselves frozen in the front yard by blinding searchlights. A voice hugely amplified and echoing with authority began barking unintelligible orders from above, and we stood clinging to each other and squinting about in confusion. If I believed in things like alien abduction or the Apocalypse, I most certainly would have soiled myself. Clearly we were experiencing an invasion of some sort, but without decipherable sensory input of any kind, it was difficult to decide how best to meet it. A brief reprieve came when the searchlights shifted, sweeping over the house and then down the street. We seized the opportunity and retreated back into the house.

“What’s going on?” Shawn asked.

“I have no idea,” I said.

And that’s when he said it the first time. “Have you done anything I should know about?”

At the time, I was entirely too disoriented to be offended. It didn’t occur to me until much later that I had been accused of being a wanted felon. And I’m fairly certain Shawn wasn’t kidding. After all, he we had just packed up and moved cross-country at my suggestion and within a time frame that flirted with being sudden. Sure, we had known each other long enough, but not quite so long that one of us couldn’t conceivably have found the time to lead a secret life of treacherous debauchery.

But after you’ve lived with someone for a few years, you’d think they’d know better. The question, “Have you done anything I should know about?” becomes difficult to answer because it lacks specifics. Questions like, “Are you secretly a mass-murdering sociopath?” would be better, since then you’ve at least got an idea of the kinds of atrocities your partner thinks you’re capable of. “Anything” is pretty broad. It implies that there’s no deed foul enough to fall outside the realm of possibility. Unpaid parking tickets, setting nuns afire, pimping out meth-addicted fourth graders, jaywalking...they all fit neatly under the “anything” umbrella.

How long Shawn has felt trapped in a blood soaked web of deceit is impossible to tell, since he only shares these suspicions when capture seems imminent....which implies that not only does he think I’m a criminal, but an inept one as well. I like to think that if I did get it into my head to thin the counselor population at a remote summer camp that I’d get away with it, meddling kids or no.

Still, the question remains: What do you say when someone asks you “Have you done anything I should know about?” Now that I’ve had the time to think about it, I’ve come up with a few answers...

“No, but grab a shovel real quick and meet me in the back yard.”

“No, but be a pal and flush this down the toilet.”

“No, but if anyone asks, that head was in the freezer when we moved in and we’ve never been to Toledo.”

“No, but do excuse me for just a moment while I go set fire to my hard drive.”

“No, but if they ask you, my name is Jacques VanHeildelberg. I’m a traveling circus contortionist from Niagara Falls, and we just met last week in a microwave cookery class. Now help me find an eye patch.”

“Ready to be famous?”