There’s a bench warrant out for me in a county I’ve never been to. Failure to appear, 2011. I found out at the DMV when my license wouldn’t renew. The underlying charge is from 2008, and the address on it is my sister’s, and she lived there alone. I called her before I called a lawyer, which everybody has since told me was a mistake. She didn’t ask what the charge was. That’s the thing I keep coming back to—she didn’t ask.
She was quiet for a second and then said, “I thought they stopped looking.” I asked her what she meant, but she wouldn’t explain. Instead, she told me to check the old storage unit where our parents had kept family documents. I hadn’t been there in years, but she still had the key. Inside, I found a cardboard box with my name written on it and several envelopes dated between 2007 and 2012. None had been opened. One of them was from the same county listed on the warrant.
I called the lawyer and asked him to investigate before I touched anything else. He found the original court file and said the charge was attached to a driver’s license number that had been issued to me, but the photograph in the file wasn’t mine. The signature wasn’t mine either. Then he found something even stranger: someone had appeared in court using my name on the exact date the warrant was issued. The court record described the person as “cooperative” and listed my sister’s old address as the place where they could be reached.
My lawyer asked me whether my sister had ever had access to my identification documents. I told him she had helped me move in 2007 and had been alone in my apartment for several hours while I was at work. He told me not to confront her yet. That evening, she called me herself and asked whether the lawyer had found the photograph. I asked her what photograph she meant. She went silent, then finally said, “The one they took when they booked you.”:::
