Laura Lippman - I'd Know You Anywhere

“A PRISON IS A CORPORATION,a world unto itself,” said Jefferson D. Blanding, Walter’s lawyer. “Entrenched, committed to its own rules and policies. They don’t like to make exceptions for anyone .”

“So I learned,” Peter said, “when I called. That’s why we’re here, in hopes that a two-prong approach might help.”

“Here” was Blanding’s office in Charlottesville, Virginia, near the bricked-in Main Street mall. It was a Friday, and the children had an in-service day, which meant that teachers reported but students did not. Eliza remembered these from her Maryland youth, but she certainly didn’t remember so many of them on the calendar. At any rate, the three-day holiday had given them a chance to drive here on the pretext of a visit to Monticello, a trip so drearily self-improving that Iso didn’t smell a rat. Albie was game, if a little vague, about who Thomas Jefferson was. All the more reason to visit Monticello.

“You assume that I’m in favor of this,” Blanding said. “I’m not sure I am.”

“It’s what Walter wants,” Eliza put in. She didn’t mind letting Peter be the more aggressive one in this conversation, but she liked to keep her hand in, not allow Blanding to think she was some sort of throwback who let her husband call the shots. Peter just had more experience in arguing with people.

“I serve my clients’ best interests. That doesn’t mean I blindly do their bidding. Walter has not always been the best steward of what is good for Walter.”

Eliza nodded. “He wanted to take the stand in his first trial,” she told Peter. “He had a different lawyer then and—well, he probably wouldn’t have helped himself, insisting that everything that happened was an accident. But that was a very long time ago. In our conversations, he does appear to have changed. He’s more thoughtful, more measured.”

“Agreed,” Blanding said. “Still, I’m skeptical.”

What could Eliza say to that? Walter’s current lawyer had good instincts. Of course, they hadn’t told him what Walter had promised in return for Eliza’s visit. Peter saw their decision as strategy, nothing more, but Eliza was also protecting herself against the perception that she was being played by Walter, that he was toying with her. She would not be surprised if Walter was luring her to the prison with a promise he had no intention of keeping. Oh, he would tell her something, reveal some nugget of information that fell short of full disclosure, then argue the technicality, claim she had misunderstood. Walter was like a ten-year-old boy that way. Eliza’s mother had long believed that Walter had experienced something particularly wounding in his youth and that he reverted to the boy-self when threatened or upset. There had been times, all those years ago, when Eliza had felt older than Walter, or at least more knowledgeable in the ways of the world. She remembered watching him grab a handful of the pastel mints in a bowl by the cash register at a diner, then telling him later, as gently as possible, that he should have used the plastic spoon. He had been humiliated, offended, and gone on the attack. “I’m clean,” he said. “I wash my hands after everything, which is more ’n you can say.”

He was right about that. Sometimes when Eliza found herself exhorting Albie to wash up, she remembered Walter’s criticism of her young hygiene.

Peter asked Blanding: “Does the fact that he’s been given an execution date give us more or less leverage?”

“A little more,” Blanding said, looking pained. He was sad that Walter was going to die, Eliza realized. Was it a personal sadness, a professional one, or a combination? “But not if there’s publicity. If you want to come in there with a reporter, or if you give interviews before or after the fact—they won’t want to have anything to do with you.”

“Mr. Blanding, I’ve spent my entire life avoiding this topic. I wouldn’t want anyone to know that I’ve visited Walter.”

“Oh, people will know,” the lawyer said. “It’s a state agency, but it’s also just another office, where people gossip about anything out of the ordinary. And it’s extremely unusual for a death row inmate to receive a visitor, especially from one of his—” He paused, groping for a word.

“ Victims ,” Eliza supplied. “But then, I guess that’s the paradox of death row. They don’t tend to have many living victims.”

The lawyer was not particularly handsome, but he had pale blue eyes, made more vivid by his shirt, and a touching earnestness. “Mrs. Benedict, I understand that you are Walter Bowman’s victim. I never forget that. I also don’t allow myself to forget that he killed Holly Tackett and Maude Parrish.”

Maybe more .

“That makes two of us,” she said, and even Peter looked startled at the brittle glibness of her voice, not at all like her, although it was a tone she found herself using more and more with Iso.

“I’ve represented a lot of men on death row,” Blanding said. “They’re not monsters, not a one of them. It would be easier, in some ways, if we could say that of them. They have done monstrous things and most don’t deny that. Some are mentally ill, although they don’t meet the standard that would allow them to plead insanity. Others have IQs so low that it’s hard to imagine how they functioned at all in the world. But they all are capable of remorse, and that’s what most feel. Especially Walter.”

She wanted to believe him. Yet—if Walter had changed, could he answer her other questions? Would he remember the man he was and why he had treated her differently from the others? Assuming there was a new Walter, could he explain the old one?

“Let’s cut to the chase,” Peter asked. “How does she get in to see him?”

Blanding played with a pen and pencil set on his desk, the kind of item that a child gives as a present, thinking it grand. And his coffee mug was a lumpy, garish green thing, made by loving if not terribly skilled hands. “It wouldn’t hurt if you knew someone with some clout in Virginia. Connections are powerful.”

Peter stiffened. “I was a journalist before I went into finance. I don’t have those kinds of relationships and I’m still not comfortable with them. I don’t like trading favors.”

“But your bosses, their friends—”

“They don’t know about me,” Eliza said. “About Walter and me.”

“Mrs. Benedict—”

“Eliza, please.”

“My two cents? As the execution approaches, your ability to remain anonymous recedes. I’m not saying you’re wrong to want to live a life that isn’t defined by what happened to you as a teenager. And if you were still in London, or even on the other side of the country, maybe you could do that. Maybe. But the execution is going to shake memories loose, excite interest. People will almost certainly try to track you down through your parents and sister, who haven’t changed their names.”

“You make it sound like I went into hiding,” Eliza said, bristling. She had never denied her past. She simply had chosen not to let it be the single thing that defined her.

“Didn’t you?” Blanding asked, his manner as mild as his name.

“No. I shortened my name in high school to avoid…complications. Then I met Peter, and we decided to marry, and, well, do you know your Jane Austen? Can you imagine what it’s like to be wonderfully close to Elizabeth Bennet, if only on legal documents? It’s pretty much every Janeite’s fantasy.”