Walter always had a grandiose streak, a concept of himself as someone much larger than he was, in every sense of the word. He had insisted he was five nine, when he was clearly no more than five six or five seven. He became about as angry as Eliza ever saw him, talking about his height, claiming those inches he didn’t have. It was one of the rare times she felt she had the upper hand with him, which had been terrifying and pleasing in equal measure. She couldn’t afford the upper hand with Walter, or so she thought. Later, when people used terms like ‘Stockholm syndrome’ – not her parents, but people far removed from her, prosecutors, journalists, and that odious Jared Garrett – she had found it offensively glib. That experience of being labeled had left her with a lifelong distaste for gossip, a reticence so pronounced that many people thought her incurious, when her real problem was an almost pathological politeness. She hated Iso’s fascination with celebrities, the way she pored over magazine and Internet photos, passing judgment on dresses and hairdos and habits of people she had never met. But Eliza could never explain the virulence of her revulsion to her daughter, not unless she was willing to tell her everything. She would, one day, not today.
As she dawdled at the computer – it was late, after ten, but Peter had yet another function, one from which she was spared because the babysitter had fallen through – an icon glowed in the lower corner of her screen, announcing her sister’s arrival into this netherworld.
Hi, Vonnie, she typed.
Eliza! The exclamation mark signaled surprise, if not necessarily delight. Eliza had never before initiated an IM conversation with her sister, and had been famously taci-turn when her sister tried to engage her via this mode. What’s up?
Nothing. Just trying to write something.
WHAT? Vonnie might as well have typed: Peter is a writer. I am a writer. You are not a writer. She had always been territorial that way. The funny thing was – neither one was a writer, not anymore. Peter had left journalism for the world of finance, and Vonnie was an editor at a publication so small and arcane that it was essentially unaffected by the Internet-related problems roiling the mainstream media. Something that had never made significant money could not lose significant money. Vonnie edited a foreign policy journal that charged $150 a year and was even stodgier than its subscriber list, whose average age was sixty-five. The sub -scribers were actually beginning to petition for some limited Web-based content, but Vonnie was fighting the change. ‘Life is not a timed event,’ she liked to say. ‘I want to run a magazine that has the luxury of thought, with no stop clock on responses.’
A letter, Eliza wrote, reflexively honest with her family. But she thought before adding: To Walter Bowman.
WHAT????????????????????????????????????????????????????????? ???????????????????????????????????????????????????
It was funny, provoking that kind of adolescent response from Vonnie. Her sister might as well have typed back: For reals? Or: R U Serious?
He wrote me.
The phone rang within seconds.
‘Are you out of your fucking mind?’ Vonnie asked.
‘You know, Iso might have been the one to pick up. It’s not that late.’
‘However, she didn’t. I promise I’ll be more careful in the future. Meanwhile, let me repeat: Are you out of your fucking mind?’
‘No, this is something I’ve been thinking about for a while. His letter came’ – she did a quick calculation – ‘about ten days ago.’
‘And I’m just hearing about it now? I bet you told Mom and Dad.’
Eliza had fumbled that, and badly. But Vonnie was so exhausting, ceaselessly demanding, always pulling focus. She hadn’t told her precisely because she wanted to avoid this conversation. She decided to try and glide by that detail.
‘He recognized me, in one of those society photos taken for a local magazine. Apparently, we’re pretty easy to find, once you know we’re in Bethesda. I think he used property records.’ She was hedging her bets again, not telling Vonnie that Walter clearly had an accomplice in this. Jared Garrett? She couldn’t see him as the owner of that perfect purple penmanship.
‘But why would you write him back?’
‘Because’ – she made up an answer on the spot, then realized it had the virtue of being true – ‘because he’ll write again, and again, until I do. I know him, Vonnie.’
‘He’s a sociopath. No one knows a sociopath. He’s bored, in prison. He has every reason to reach out and poke you, see if he can get a response. That’s his problem, not yours. Ignore him.’
Vonnie had never suffered from uncertainty, about anything.
‘They’ve scheduled his execution date.’
‘Ah, there’s your smoking gun. He’s using the cultural mania for closure to reach out to you. The man’s a sadist. If I were you, I’d write back and ask if he’s trying to get in touch with his victims. Particularly the Tacketts.’
‘Why “particularly”?’ she asked, more sharply than she intended. Eliza had always been sensitive to this sense of hierarchy among Walter’s victims, in part because she had always been at the bottom and the top, if such a thing were possible. She was the most interesting because she lived; she was the least interesting because she lived. Holly was the prettiest, the golden girl. Holly’s death had been particularly violent.
‘Well, hers is the death that will result in his death, right? That’s the one he’s going to die for.’
‘Right.’ Maude had been killed in Maryland, which kept capital punishment on the books but was increasingly disinclined to use it. Holly Tackett had been killed in Virginia, which apparently suffered from no such qualms. ‘But why would he write the Tacketts, what would he say?’
‘He might confess, for once. That’s not so much to ask for, is it?’
Eliza thought, but did not say: For Walter, that’s huge. Walter never said anything that he didn’t want to say. He hated, more than anything, to be forced into saying he was wrong, no matter how small the matter. The first time he had hit Eliza was when she had corrected him on the facts of the War of 1812. It had been a strange hit – a punch, direct to the stomach, something a boy might have done to another boy, and it had knocked the wind out of her. But she never corrected him again, no matter how wrong he was, and he was often wrong. On history, on math, on picayune matters of grammar and usage. And, frequently, about people. Eliza had never known anyone who was more wrong about people, women in particular.
‘Look, Eliza.’ Vonnie had softened her tone. ‘You’re too nice for your own good. Forget Walter. Not forget – I know that’s impossible—’
‘You’d be surprised. I’d barely thought of him, particularly in the past few months.’
‘Hmmphf.’
Eliza knew how to change the subject with her sister. ‘What’s new with you?’
‘Nothing. Everything. I was online at this godforsaken hour because I want to check on events in the Middle East in real time. I can’t wait for the morning paper anymore, or even CNN. I hate how swiftly the world moves now, how glib everyone has become. We need to think more, not more quickly.