I'd Know You Anywhere: A Novel (21 page)

“OCTOBER GIVETH AND OCTOBER TAKETH
away,” Peter intoned the next morning. Golden autumn had been replaced by a dark, lashing storm, almost monsoonlike. Eliza felt she had no choice but to drive Albie to school. She struggled with this, on principle. Was she being overprotective? Hadn't she walked to school in driving rainstorms? And Albie was used to the wet because of England. But this was the kind of downpour in which visibility dwindled to nothing, and she could not bear to think of dreamy Albie walking along the streets in his slicker, which was nowhere near bright enough. If she had her way, Albie would wear a bright yellow coat and hat like the little girl on the Morton salt box, but even Albie had enough fashion sense to choose dark navy. Besides, it was
touching how much Albie cherished the novelty of the ride to school, especially when Reba automatically piled in. Apparently Reba understood that the walk to school was not about her. It had a purpose, a mission, and if she was in on the nice days, she should go along on the dreary ones, too.

Yet the moment they dropped Albie off, the rain stopped, the sky cleared, and the day felt freshly scrubbed, an enticing invitation to do something, anything, outdoors. Eliza, who had no shortage of tasks at home, believed she was heading there when she pulled out of the school's driveway. Somehow, she found the Subaru nosing east and north, toward Baltimore. She did not take the highways, preferring the secondary roads, the very ones on which she had learned to drive, skirting close to her parents' home and even detouring past her old high school—although it wasn't
her
school, the windowless octagon that she remembered more or less fondly. That hopelessly small structure had been demolished back in the 1990s and replaced with a handsome brick-and-glass rectangle that allowed light to pour in from every angle. She continued along Route 40, little changed to her eyes, although the Roy Rogers had been replaced by a Church's Fried Chicken. The road dipped, as it always had, and all the trappings of the suburbs fell away as she descended into the section that was bordered by the state park. The leaves were just beginning to turn, and they glistened in the sun. She parked in the lot and let Reba out. She didn't have a leash, but she knew the dog would stay close to her, even in a novel environment, full of new smells.

They walked, following the spindly waterway that was the Sucker Branch, even after hours of heavy rain. She told herself she couldn't be sure where she was, not really. There were no landmarks, and she hadn't been here since August 1985. It would be impossible to pinpoint the exact place where she had seen Walter, tamping down the earth with his shovel.

That is, it would have been impossible if it weren't for the plastic spray of flowers tucked at the foot of an old oak tree.

A coincidence, she told herself, then Reba. “It's a coincidence.” Reba looked as if she were considering this information. The bouquet was bedraggled; it had been out in the elements for quite some time. It might be trash, for all Eliza knew, something tossed here, not left in memorial. Who would have trudged into these woods to leave a plastic nosegay at a site where Maude had spent barely a day? Eliza tried to remember what she knew about Maude's life. She had attended Mount Hebron High School. She had been on her way to work at an ice-cream parlor on Route 40 and gotten a ride with Walter. She was tall and thin, one of two children whose divorced mother was just scraping by. This was all from information that filtered out during the trials. Walter never spoke of what he had done, except in the most general way.

“He must have said something,” the prosecutor had insisted. Baltimore County was known for the ferocity with which its state's attorney sought the death penalty in all applicable cases, and the Howard County attorney had happily ceded the case to him, saying it was almost certain that Walter had killed Maude here, just over the county line, not where she was taken. But they couldn't prove it was a capital crime if Maude had gotten into Walter's car willingly, and he said she had. And there was no evidence of rape. The assumption was that Walter used a condom, unusual but not unheard of, although this did not explain the lack of trauma to Maude's body. There were a lot of gaps in the case, and they leaned on Elizabeth to fill them in.

He must have said something about Maude,
the prosecutor said.

No, Elizabeth told the prosecutor, Walter had offered varying stories about the girl whose grave he had dug—she fell out of the car, she fell in the park and hit her head. But he spoke vaguely about other crimes he might have committed, and that was only in order to scare Elizabeth to do whatever he asked her to do.
“‘I've done some terrible things,' he would say. ‘I didn't want to do them. I was left with no choice. But I will do what I have to do.'”

In the end, Walter was convicted of murder in the first degree and given a life sentence. He had already received the death penalty in Virginia, so it didn't really matter. The Maryland prosecutor had spun the whole experience as a saving to taxpayers. Maryland would be spared the cost of Walter's appeals, and the cost of his maintenance over the years, yet justice had been done. The prosecutor said.

Eliza and Reba kept walking, inhaling the dense, wet smells of the woods in autumn. The leaves would have been thicker, in summer, it would have been harder to see as far as she could today. If she had been able to spot Walter from a distance—no, she wasn't supposed to think that way.

Eventually the path led back into the old neighborhood, her mother's Brigadoon. It was unchanged, almost as if it had slumbered through the past two decades. Although they probably had cable now, Eliza thought, noting a small satellite attached to one roof. She walked among the stone houses, assigning each one its past, astonished at how much she remembered. The Sleazaks had lived there, old man Traber there. (She had been stunned to learn from his obit, which her mother clipped for her a few years ago, that this stereotypical crank, the original get-off-my-lawn guy, was actually a well-regarded society painter.) The Billinghams' door was still scarlet, a scandalous choice back in the 1980s, when the community board debated if the color might prevent the neighborhood from being included in the National Register of Historic Places, a status it had long coveted.

The primary difference, Eliza deduced from the cars, was that the neighborhood's residents were more prosperous now, or more inclined to flaunt their wealth. Her mother wouldn't have cared for that. And she wouldn't have liked the fact that a woman in a BMW slowed when she saw Eliza and Reba, regarding them
with frank suspicion. She drove past them, turned around, and came past again, rolling down her window as she pulled abreast of them.

“Can I help you?” she asked Eliza. “Are you looking for someone?”

“Just taking a stroll down memory lane. I lived here, as a child.”

Eliza pointed to the house where she had grown up, the house she had never fully appreciated until her family decided to leave it. Could they have stayed? Were they wrong to cut themselves off from their pre-Walter life? Hers was not such an unusual name. Media exposure was not as intense then. She wasn't Patricia Hearst. If she told this woman her maiden name—that quaint term, yet also literal in her case—the woman would probably evince no recognition. Who remembers names, anyway? The runaway bride, the girl killed in Aruba, the girl killed in Italy—they made headlines, yet Eliza couldn't name one of them to save her life.

“Well, it's almost impossible to buy here now,” the woman said. “Houses are sold before they even go on the market.”

“Even since the mortgage crisis?”

“Houses here
never
lose their value,” the woman said. Eliza felt like a blasphemer for suggesting that Roaring Springs could be touched by anything as commonplace as the world economy.

“What do they go for these days?”

Judging by the look on the BMW driver's face, Eliza had progressed from blasphemer to merely classless. The woman lowered her voice:

“I heard that the Mitchells got almost $500,000.”

The number was at once laughably low, relative to what Peter had paid for their house in Bethesda, and shockingly high. Eliza's parents had paid no more than $40,000 for the house in the 1970s and felt like robber barons when they sold it for $175,000 in 1986.
We could have lived here,
Eliza thought. The commute would have
worked out. Iso and Albie would have attended her old schools, walked down Frederick Road to the Catonsville branch library, eaten gyros at the old Greek diner, although Maryland's gyros were thin pleasures when compared to the falafels they had known in London.

They could have walked along the Sucker Branch, too, wandered into the park. Did parents still allow children to do such things? No, probably not.
But that detail did not derail Eliza's fantasy. She had never blamed the location, the park. No, the problem with this spasm of nostalgia was that she was longing for her children to reclaim the territory she had ceded, Elizabethland, the realm of her pre-fifteen-year-old self. And if they wandered back into her past, she would have to tell them everything about the girl that she used to be. As far as they knew, there was no home between the Lerners' early years in Baltimore City and the house they owned now. An entire chapter of the family's life was missing, and Eliza's own children had never noticed.

“That much,” she said to the woman in the BMW, widening her eyes in what she hoped would appear to be wistful awe. In some ways, it was. She and Reba turned around and headed out of the neighborhood. She had a feeling that the woman watched her go. That was okay. It was good to be vigilant. She wouldn't deny anyone that right.

Passing Maude's temporary grave again, she stopped and examined the bouquet. So sad, but then—what did the parents of the missing do? What territory did they mark, what did they visit?
I'll tell you things,
Walter had promised.
Things I've never told
. But was it her obligation to listen?

Released 1983
Reached no. 16 on Billboard Hot 100
Spent 20 weeks on Billboard Hot 100

“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.”

“It seems to me,” Blanding said, “that a woman who loved Austen would be more excited by the prospect of being Elizabeth Darcy.”

This was the moment, small and charged, in which Eliza could tell they were deciding if they were going to be allies or adversaries. She laughed, choosing to be an ally. It was an astute comment, funny and informed. She wished Blanding were
her
lawyer.

“I'm sorry,” Blanding said. “I didn't mean to suggest you were hiding. I suppose it's more correct to say that you don't wish to be found. Yet sitting in Sussex I, Walter did find you. What makes you think that the
Washington Post
can't?”

“I'm not worried about saying no to the
Washington Post
. I am worried about finding the right way—and time—to talk to my children about this. Our son is already prone to nightmares, and Iso went through this terrible obsession with mortality when she was five or so. There never seems to be a right time to tell them about me.”

“And what will you tell them about the death penalty? Will you say that you agree with the commonwealth of Virginia's decision to execute people for certain crimes? Will you inform them that most civilized countries don't put their own citizens to death?”

“How we parent,” Peter put in, “is a private decision. Do you have children, Mr. Blanding?” He, unlike Eliza, had missed the clues: the pen and pencil set, the coffee mug.

“Two, an eight-year-old and a three-year-old,” he said.

“Well, then you understand that some things are off-limits, not for others to comment upon.”

Blanding started to say something, checked himself. “I'll do what I can do because I know it's what Walter wants and I can't see how it will harm him.” Again, Eliza felt guilty, wondered if the guilt read on her face. She didn't like deceiving this man. “I don't expect you to understand this, but I've really come to like him. He has such an interesting mind. I like the way he turns over words and phrases. He sees more than most people.”

But what, exactly, does he see? What did he see in me?

Peter and Eliza walked back to the hotel, hand in hand. “I could live in Charlottesville,” he said, but it was the only time either of them spoke during the walk, and he was just making conversation. Eliza didn't think she could live here, although she didn't blame Virginia for the memories she had of it. Still, it had been odd, skirting Middleburg on the way here. She could tell she and Peter were both weighed down by the secret they had withheld from Blanding. If Walter did confess to her, Blanding would not think her well intentioned. He might, in fact, believe her to be completely disingenuous, a glory hog who had considered only herself in this enterprise. But she could not allow herself to be affected by what Blanding, or anyone, thought of her. She was doing the right thing for the right reason. Almost.

The children wanted to spend the rest of the afternoon at
the indoor pool, delighted as only children can be by the steamy, almost fetid room, with its fogged windows and chlorine smells. Eliza had never really liked swimming. She could do a passable bastard stroke, somewhere between breast and fly, and she was strong enough to swim in the currents of the Atlantic. It had been nice, when Iso was small, to go to the flat, friendly beaches of South Texas, where the steady stream of cars posed far more risk than the lazy wavelets that lapped the shore. But she didn't really care for water. Whereas Peter was in his element, joining the children in the pool. She admired his body, still trim and athletic despite the fact that he had less time to exercise. She wondered if he still admired hers and decided to decide that he did.

“Mommy. Mommy? Mommy, Mommy, Mommy, Mommy?”

“What, Albie?”

“Aren't you going to come in?”

“I didn't bring a suit.”

“Then I'll come out.”

“That's okay, darling, I'm having fun watching you.”

Albie swam-walked back to his father and spent the next half hour squealing happily as Peter flung him away with great force. Peter would move toward the children like a lumbering gorilla, grunting the song about the man on the flying trapeze. Even Iso, presumably too big for such nonsense, begged for a turn, shrieking with laughter. They did this over and over again, never tiring.

Change the sound track and the setting, and it might look terrifying,
Eliza thought. But did that work the other way around? Were there terrible things that could appear lovely if framed differently? She remembered a moment in a Piggly Wiggly, when she had been difficult and obdurate, arguing for a snack that Walter had arbitrarily decided was off-limits. This was toward the end, perhaps a day or so before they happened upon Holly on the road. Walter put his hand on the back of her neck, viselike.

“How nice,” the checker had said, “to see a brother and sister who are affectionate with one another.”

Three days later, he took her to dinner in a nice restaurant, one with linen tablecloths and silver, and told her she could have anything on the menu. Again, the waitress complimented Walter on his solicitous manner toward his little sister.

An hour later, he raped her.

Eliza watched as Albie, then Iso, flew through the air with the greatest of ease, screaming with laughter.