Laura Lippman - I'd Know You Anywhere

Even to her own ears, she sounded unpersuasive.

“Your children—they don’t know, do they?”

“No.”

“Is that because you’re ashamed?”

“It’s because I want them to feel safe.”

“No one is safe in this world, ever. I proved that to you today, didn’t I? Your daughter let me into your home, simply because my name was familiar to her. I could have been anyone. I could have done anything. I could have hurt your child.”

A sudden memory. The Lerners were in a beach town where parking was at a premium and the street was crowded. Eliza couldn’t have been more than seven. Her father started to back out of his parking place just as a little boy burst away from his mother and ran behind the Lerners’ car. Her father stopped in time, but the mother turned on him, screaming. Later, as they crossed the main boulevard, the same woman leaned out of her car and yelled: “I ought to run over your kids, see how you feel about it.”

“Your husband was an army surgeon, wasn’t he? Assigned to hospitals where he treated casualties from Vietnam, as I recall. Was it only when your own daughter was killed that you figured out the world wasn’t safe? Or was that simply when you began to care?”

“You think you care. You think you know. Believe me, you don’t.”

“That’s probably true.”

Mrs. Tackett bit her lip, apparently more offended by Eliza’s concession than anything else she had said. She gathered her purse and stood to leave. “The book—the book said you might have been his girlfriend.”

“The book is wrong. He raped me.”

“But Holly and the other girl”—the other girl. Couldn’t she hear herself? Was it asking too much that she know Maude’s name? “They never found any proof of sexual assault.”

“He wore a condom. At least he did with me. I can’t speak for the others.”

“A rapist who wore a condom. But we only have your say-so for that.”

“My say-so? Do you think I’m a liar, Mrs. Tackett?” She felt the color rising in her cheeks, a pulse pounding in her temples, her neck.

“I didn’t trust you then, and I don’t trust you now. I’ve waited a long time for justice, and it just seems terribly coincidental that you’re talking to Walter now, when he’s scheduled for execution.”

“What would be justice in your eyes?”

She steeled herself to hear: For you to die and for my daughter to come back to life . But Trudy Tackett was not that cruel.

“This. The execution. This is what Terry and I get. It’s not enough, but it’s all we get. Please don’t interfere.”

“I assure you—”

“Your assurances don’t carry much weight with me. I’m sorry if that sounds rude, but it’s true. You’ve never been completely truthful about what happened. No one’s ever called you on that. But now I have.”

“And do you feel better?”

Trudy Tackett had to think about this. “Never.”

LYING IN BED WITH PETER,who had fallen asleep even as his hands worked her shoulders and stroked her hair, Eliza wondered if Mrs. Tackett—she could never call her Trudy, nor had she been asked to, she realized—was replaying the conversation in her head, in her bed. Was Dr. Tackett with her? Was he still alive? Yes, she had spoken of him in the present tense. Did he know what his wife had done today, what she had been doing? She had been to their house at least once before, delivering the note that Eliza had mistakenly ignored, and Eliza supposed she was the source of the off-hour calls on the Walter phone, as she thought of it.

The thing was, Mrs. Tackett wasn’t wrong. Eliza had never told everything. The part about McDonald’s—Eliza had been forced to testify about that in open court, the prosecutor reasoning that it would seem far more damaging if the defense introduced it. Not that Walter’s overmatched attorney knew what to do with the information. His only objective seemed to be to get Eliza off the stand as quickly as possible. But the fact was, after she had seen the prosecutor’s reaction, not to mention her own parents’ momentary dismay, Eliza had stopped being completely forthright about what had happened during her last forty-eight hours with Walter. She didn’t lie. Even she knew she was no good at it. But, like the daughter she would one day have, she was exceptional at keeping secrets, and that was the path she had chosen. Certain things would remain unsaid. No one was ever going to look at her that way again.

After their McDonald’s supper, their unhappy meals, they had driven up a switchback in the mountains, near the national park, but not a part of it. Walter hadn’t wanted to pay to enter the park, much less interact with the ranger at the gate. It was dark, and they had to move slowly, the headlights catching deer, who looked malevolent to Eliza. Holly was weeping openly, constantly by then. Eliza yearned to comfort her but didn’t know how. She tried, at one point, to pat her shoulder, only to have Holly recoil as if Eliza intended harm.

Once he found a place to camp, Walter set up the tent he had bought at a Sunny’s Surplus and unzipped one of the sleeping bags, telling the two girls to lie on it. The night was chilly, but Eliza understood that Holly wanted no contact with her. “I’d give you both sleeping bags,” Walter said, “but I need something to pad the bed of the truck, if I’m going to sleep there and give you your privacy.” Eliza curled up into a ball, shocked by the cold, wondering how much longer they could sleep outside at this rate. The tent was another one of Walter’s big ideas. It had been expensive, but he had argued it would pay for itself quickly. Only, it hadn’t, not by a long shot. He hadn’t realized, when he bought the tent, that most camping sites, the ones with showers and restrooms, had charges, too. It had been days since he had landed any work. Holly’s money was the first real cash they had known in a while. She wondered how much there was, if they might check into a motor court the next night—

“Elizabeth?” Walter had entered the tent and was standing over them.

“Yes?”

“Go sit in the truck for a bit. I want to talk to our new friend here.”

She did. She always did whatever Walter told her to do. She went and sat in the truck. Not in the bed, as Walter had probably intended, but in the cab, in her usual seat, the windows tightly rolled up. Still, she couldn’t help hearing what happened next. Screams, sobs, a terrible bellow, like a lion’s roar, then a streak of white, which must have been Holly’s hair flying behind her as she ran, Walter not far behind her. She studied the keys in the ignition, which hung from a chunk of turquoise. Even if she could figure out the clutch, she could never drive back down that switchback. Still, she reached for it, flicked it, hoping to turn on the heater. No, you had to press the clutch in to turn the engine on, and Walter would be mad if she used just battery power. She slid behind the wheel, managed to turn it over after a few tries, then returned to her seat. Warm air filled the car, along with the sounds of a country song, “Have I Got a Deal for You.” She and Walter had worked out a compromise on the radio. He controlled it for forty-five minutes and then she got fifteen. He said that was fair because he was older and it was his truck. He said he really didn’t have to let her listen to those pop stations at all, that he was a good guy. He told her they were bad girls, Madonna and Whitney Houston and the Mary Jane Girls and Annie Lennox, and even Aimee Mann, although all she did was let the world know that her boyfriend was hitting her. He didn’t like any of the songs that Eliza liked except for one, “Every-y body Wants to Rule the World.” When that one came on, he would nod in agreement, say it was very true. He also liked—