Laura Lippman - I'd Know You Anywhere

Things. That was Jeff’s way of saying this was real, that Walter was going to die this time. Twenty-plus years, a literal record on Virginia’s death row, if not in other states. Twenty-plus years, and he wasn’t even fifty yet. Who wouldn’t do what he was doing, in his situation? Who wouldn’t fight for his life?

The girls—the girls had fought, struggled to breathe. He had felt terrible, doing what he did to them. But if they lived, they would have told, and that seemed so unfair. It wasn’t his fault. It had taken him a long time to get to a place where he realized that it was possible to feel remorse without accepting the labels that society put on things. He was sorry that he had to kill those girls, but it wasn’t his fault . He wasn’t stupid enough to say that out loud, even to Barbara, although he had confided in her a few details no one knew. To Jeff, he talked only about the remorse, his belated understanding that no one should take another person’s life.

But if he had come to that realization all on his own, why couldn’t the commonwealth of Virginia have the same epiphany? That was the true unfairness of things. He agreed: It had been wrong to kill those girls because it was wrong to kill, always. Always.

He decided to put Jeff on the defensive, make him be explicit: “So this is it, huh? No chance this time of anything stopping it.”

“There’s always a chance, and you know we’ll cover it from every angle. Appeal to the Supreme Court, ask the governor for a commutation.”

“Be straight with me.”

A pause. “It’s hard to see any other outcome at this point.”

If only you knew! It was hard not to brag to this earnest young man, a top-flight thinker, about the plan Walter had concocted. It was hard not to tell him that his discovery of Elizabeth’s picture, while a coincidence, had happened after months and months of Barbara trying to get a lead on her. (At one point, she had even called her mother and sister, claimed to be an old friend, but they had been appropriately skeptical. He liked Barbara, surely he did, but that voice! You just couldn’t imagine a girl like Elizabeth being friends with someone who had that voice.) He knew that Jeff wouldn’t approve of his tactics, but he would be pleased with the result, downright proud of him. Jeff put him in the mind of Earl, the mechanic back at his father’s place, the one person who seemed to realize that Walter had something to offer. He wondered what had happened to Earl, if he had gotten out of the Marines alive, if he had ever opened up his fix-it business. Did he know of Walter? He hated to think of Earl, reading about him in the paper all those years ago, believing he was a monster, lower than low.

“I understand,” he assured Jeff.

“It’s just—it would be awful if this meeting didn’t bring you the peace you expected.”

“I can deal with that, Jeff. It’s not about me. It’s about her.” A beat. “How did she strike you?”

A pause on Jeff’s end. “Nice.”

“You said that already. That’s one of those say-nothing words.” Nice was ice with an n butting in front of it, making it even colder and more colorless. Nice was nothing.

“Okay, kind of placid, then. Her husband has the big personality, and she seems to be used to letting him run things.”

“You mean, he’s bossy? Domineering?”

“No, just very much in charge, the fighter in the family. She doesn’t seem to have much appetite for conflict.”

Oh, I know that. I’m counting on that.

He didn’t press Jeff further on the subject of Elizabeth, feeling that was too risky, might tip his hand. Now, lying on his bunk and staring at the ceiling, the sounds of Sussex I sharp and harsh around him, he allowed himself to remember the affection he had felt for her, almost in spite of himself. Was it love? He wasn’t sure it could be called love. But they had something, all those years ago. There was a bond. He could make her do anything. Wasn’t that proof of something between them? He had granted her life. If you thought about it, he was kind of a god. And it was time to call that marker in.

“WHO’S TRUDY TACKETT? ISO ASKED.”

“How do you know that name?”

They had just crossed the threshold in a cranky heap, tired and worn-out from the trip, in which they had been stuck in a terrible backup on I-66. The precipitating accident was apparently quite bad, according to WTOP, which Peter had switched off after hearing that two people had been killed in the collision. By the time their car inched past the accident site, the ambulances and helicopters had long departed, leaving behind two cars so mangled that it was impossible to imagine anyone surviving the crash. If they had left Monticello earlier, as Iso had urged repeatedly, they might have been here when it happened, their car could be another one in the pileup.

Eliza couldn’t help saying that out loud, without the Iso part, hoping her daughter would make that connection. “If we had left earlier, we might have been in this very spot when it happened.”

“At least that would have been interesting,” Iso said. “Unlike the rest of the day.”

Monticello had been a bit of a bust. Iso had attempted to wear her iPod headphones the entire time, and when Peter remonstrated, she had stalked through the tour with a boredom so palpable it felt like a weapon, aimed at them all. Albie, sensitive to his sister’s moods, had found it hard to take in the old house, and his confusion about Thomas Jefferson hadn’t helped. (Midway through the tour, it became obvious that he thought they were going through George Washington’s house. Eliza and Peter really needed to help him with his American history. He could rattle off the Tudor monarchs but couldn’t even name the first three presidents.) At any rate, Eliza’s nerves were already raw when Iso casually tossed out a name that always made her flinch.

“Trudy Tackett,” Iso repeated. “She signed this note that was with the mail, although it’s not in an envelope. See? Says she wants you to call her.”

Eliza glanced at Peter, knowing the name would not necessarily resonate with him, but hoping he would step up and say something, which she could not imagine doing just now. She felt as if a piece of clay was lodged around her larynx, slowly hardening. Trudy Tackett. As Jefferson Blanding had told her a mere two days ago, she wasn’t that hard to find.

“She went to school with your mom,” Peter said. “At least, I think that’s how you know her. Right, Eliza?”

She nodded, then managed to croak: “Her daughter. It was her daughter I knew.”

“Why would she leave you a note?”

“She was probably in the neighborhood.” Again, it was Peter who spoke.

Iso had expended about as much curiosity as she could on her mother’s behalf. She went into the family room and turned on the television, and Albie joined her at the opposite end of the sofa. He would spend the next hour stealthily closing the distance between them, patiently taking territory one inch at a time. Eventually, he would get too close and Iso would scold: “Get away from me. You smell” or “You breathe too loudly. You make funny noises.” Albie would retreat, then start over again. He loved her so much. Why couldn’t Iso see that, glory in it? Eliza had felt the same way about Vonnie when they were young, and she bet that Vonnie missed it, regretted the way she had squandered that affection. No one in the world loved you quite the way a younger sibling did.

She and Peter rushed upstairs, as if unpacking their small overnight bag was an urgent, complicated matter, requiring them both. And it felt good, Eliza discovered, to have something to do with her hands, to sort the dirty clothes into piles, to get a wash going.