I'd Know You Anywhere: A Novel (12 page)

Then again, what if Walter had been driving along Route 40
and a sudden rain had come up and he had stopped and offered her a ride? She had taken a ride from a man under those circumstances, just once. He had asked her where she wanted to go and she was scared to give her home address, scared to let her parents know she had hitched a ride, so she told him she was headed to the bowling alley, the Normandy Lanes, only a mile or so away. He nodded thoughtfully, started in that direction, but then announced: “The rain's too heavy. I'm going to wait it out. Better safe than sorry.” He had pulled into a parking lot, then reached across to where she was—and opened the glove compartment, bringing out a little cut-glass bottle of amber liquid, from which he took a long swallow.

“You shouldn't drink and drive,” Elizabeth had said.

“And you probably shouldn't hitchhike,” he'd said. There was surprisingly little menace in his words. He took another swallow, sat there with the motor running, listening to a radio station that played oldies. When the rain slackened, he took her to the bowling alley.

So, yes, Elizabeth had gotten into a strange man's car, once. But would she have allowed Walter to give her a ride on a bright, warm August day? She thought not. Why had Maude agreed? Had she agreed, or had Walter grabbed her by the arm, as he had seized Elizabeth, and forced her into the cab of the truck?

Walter seldom spoke of Maude, except in passing, as a warning. He liked to talk about the girls he saw, though. “I could show her a good time,” he would say when he glimpsed a girl with a good figure. “I know what I'm doing. These girls, they sell themselves cheap, don't realize what's out there, waiting for them. They're too busy thinking about movie stars.”

And now he was speaking about Maureen that way in great, horrible detail, yet so matter-of-factly that one might think he was talking about a trip to the grocery store. What he would put where first—his mouth on the hollow of her throat, his tongue in her
ear, then his fingers—
Oh, please stop
, Elizabeth thought, desperate to block out his voice, but Walter continued his play-by-play. Not even he seemed to find it sexy. He might have been reciting a set of instructions he had memorized. It was like listening to a seduction scene from a romance novel, but one read by a robot, so it was reduced to a road map, where he would go when.

“She'd be begging, begging for it,” he said. “But still, I would make her wait. A woman like Maureen, she needs to be broken down. That's what the book is trying to explain. Women have to wait. Their anatomy dictates that. They wait, they receive. Men pursue, men give.”

Elizabeth, who had read the book almost as many times as Walter—it was, after all, the only reading material available when they were in the car or in a motel room, except for a copy of
The Godfathe
r he had allowed her to purchase at a yard sale—did not think the book, awful as it was, meant to say all that. But she knew better than to argue.

“Look at that girl,” Walter said suddenly, slowing the truck. “Look at the shine on her.”

THAT EVENING, ONCE THE CHILDREN
were asleep—well, Albie was asleep, Iso was probably under the covers, sending texts on the un-satisfactory cell phone they had given her—Eliza told Peter about the second letter. She wished now that she hadn't shredded it, that he could read it himself, if only so she wouldn't have to relive it. He listened without comment, although he raised an eyebrow at the peculiar turns of phrase she was able to re-create.
Dean of Death Row. The appeals process is formidable. I won't bore you with it.
Eliza realized she had practically memorized the letter word for word.

“What do you want to do?”

“I don't know,” Eliza said. “I feel as if this is out of my control, all of a sudden.
This woman—or Walter—could go to the media anytime, tell them who I am and where I am.”

“I can't imagine a responsible news organization that would write about you, if you weren't interested in cooperating,” said Peter. He wasn't arguing with her, only puzzling things out, trying to imagine every angle.

“Unfortunately, the world is full of irresponsible news organizations. What if she found Jared Garrett? Do you realize how exposed we are, how exposed everyone is?”

She showed him what happened when she plugged their address into Google maps, then clicked through to street view. There was their house. Of course, this was no revelation to Peter, whose career as a journalist had taken off, in part, because of his expertise with computer-assisted research. Still, she could tell that he found this image as arresting as she did. Looking at the photo of the white brick house—complete with the clichéd picket fence—Eliza could not help imagining the score of a scary film pulsing beneath the placid image. Barbara LaFortuny had seen this house, had driven by it, then reported back to Walter—what, exactly? Anything was too much. The woman was probably gathering a dossier on Peter, the easiest household member to track, the one who had left the largest public trail. But would she stop there? What if she showed up on the sidelines at one of Iso's soccer games? Or followed Eliza en route to school with Albie, exciting his imagination, keying him up to ask all sorts of questions.
Who is that lady? Why does she want to talk to you? Why does she have a scar on her face?
What if Barbara LaFortuny tried to befriend Reba, sneaking scraps through the fence? What if she poisoned Reba, who had growled at her? Would she—

A child's all-too-familiar scream tore through the night.

“Albie,” Eliza shouted, letting him know that she was coming.

“Albie,” Peter repeated. “I hoped this was behind us.”

I hoped a lot of things were behind us,
Eliza thought as she took the stairs, two at a time.

 

ALBIE'S NIGHTMARES HAD STARTED
shortly after they moved to London. Every pediatrician and book that Eliza consulted said it was normal for a child to have bad dreams in the wake of an enormous change, but Albie's nightmares seemed unusual to Eliza. They were incredibly detailed, for one thing, with such intense imagery and plot twists that she almost itched to write them down. It was interesting, too, to see how his unconscious reshaped the innocent stuff of the daylight hours. A book such as, say,
In the Night Kitchen,
which Eliza found wildly creepy, did not affect Albie at all. But other, almost bland icons popped up. The Poky Little Puppy foamed at the mouth. (She blamed Peter for this, because he had shown the children
To Kill a Mockingbird
.) Madeline, the usually admirable Parisian girl, turned out to be a witch, the kind of person who pinched people and then lied about it. Peter Rabbit seldom escaped Farmer McGregor's pitchfork. That particular dream had started after Eliza had eaten a rabbit dish in front of Albie at a London restaurant they particularly liked.

But the more striking aspect of Albie's nightmares was that Iso usually appeared, and always in peril. Tonight, between heaving sobs and sips of water, he told a chilling story. The family had gone to a new bakery and Iso had refused to wear her glasses, not that Iso wore glasses in real life. (Eliza and Peter glanced at each other over Albie's head; they recognized this detail from
The Brady Bunch,
the movie, which Albie loved beyond reason. He did not experience it as a hip, winking joke, but as an honest exhortation to live exuberantly, indifferent to what others thought was cool. Burst into song, chat up carjackers, be nice to everyone, and you will prevail.) The family could not enjoy the new bakery with Iso gone, and they searched for her frantically. They found her in a
storeroom filled with bags of flour and she was flat, as if someone had rolled her into a gingerbread girl—and taken her legs.

“She had no legs?”

Albie nodded guiltily, as if he knew the dream could be interpreted as evidence of conflicted feelings toward his accomplished sister, whose strong, fleet limbs had granted her effortless entrée into a new peer group, while he was still struggling to make friends here. But Eliza believed Albie wasn't the least bit conflicted about Iso. He loved her, he wanted to be her. He would never hurt her, even in his imagination. He was genuinely worried that she might be harmed. What did Albie know, or suspect, about his sister? Did he have insights that Eliza lacked? Or was he simply mirroring the anxiety she felt?

“Are you concerned about Iso? In life, not in your dreams.”

Albie thought about this. “No, I never worry about Iso. And she doesn't seem to worry about me. I wish she did, sometimes.”

That was interesting. “In what way?”

“I wish she would ask me about school, how my day went.”

“Do you ask her?” Eliza asked.

“I do. We all do. Except Iso. You ask Daddy, and Daddy asks you, and you both ask me, and you both ask Iso, but Iso never asks anyone anything anymore.”

“She's a—” Peter began.

“A teenager,” Albie finished for him. “You say that all the time, but what does that mean???”

“That's a big question for the middle of the night,” Peter said.

“It's not even midnight,” Albie pointed out. Their little dreamer could be quite literal.

“Okay, I'll tell you this much,” Peter said. “When you're a teenager, there is so much going on in your body that it makes you a little different, for a while.”

Albie thought about this. “Like a Transformer?”

“Sort of, but it's all on the inside. It wears you out, growing so much so fast. That's why Iso is cranky sometimes.”

“She's cranky all the time.”

Eliza wanted to defend Iso, but Albie was right. She was cranky all the time. It was sad, hearing this spoken aloud, and having to admit that Iso wasn't merely moody. She had one mood, at least at home, a snarling grouchiness.

“Do you want to sleep in our bed tonight?” she asked instead, knowing it would make for a cramped, sleepless night for the two adults. Plus, Reba had started sneaking into their bed.

“No, I'm too big,” Albie said. “But may I leave the real light on?” The real light meaning his bedside lamp, not the night-light that guided his way to the hallway bathroom he shared with Iso. They left him there in the glow of the real light. He was asleep by the time they crossed the threshold, but Eliza did not backtrack to turn out the light. If he awoke again, it would be important to him that the light was still on, that the promise had been kept.

“It's my fault,” Eliza said when they were back downstairs. “He's so sensitive he can tell that I'm jumping out of my skin these days.”

“Maybe. But it could also be a coincidence.”

“He might have read the letter,” she said guiltily, as if her carelessness with the document indicated some subconscious agenda of her own.

“What?”

She explained how she had come to lose track of it, Albie's drawing on the back. “Truthfully, I'm fearful that Iso is the one who threw it in the trash can by the desk, although I suppose I could have thrown it out by accident, forgotten what I had in that pocket. She's a terrible snoop. She's been going through my purse lately, and lord knows what else.”

“Okay, but here's the thing,” Peter said, pouring himself a
glass of wine and putting on the teakettle for her, rummaging behind the pots and pans for a brand of high-end cookies that Eliza hoarded, one of the few things she refused to share with her children because they ate them too carelessly, too quickly. “If either one of them had read the letter, they wouldn't be able to hide that fact from you for long. Even if they were worried about getting into trouble for snooping. Albie, especially. So put that out of your mind for now. What's the real issue here?”

She shook her head. She couldn't put her worries out of her mind just by drinking a cup of tea, eating one of her beloved biscuits. She wasn't Albie.

“This is how I see it,” Peter said. “Walter wants to make actual contact with you. He's not entitled to that wish, which he realizes. He says as much. Yet what he's doing is threatening you, implicitly. He keeps circling closer, letting you know how much he's learned about you, that he can get to our family via this LaFortuny person. If he made a direct threat, or even a demand, you could go to the prison authorities and complain. You could get him in trouble for what he's done to date, but you haven't because you believe that every person who knows about your past exponentially increases the possibility of the story getting out, which bothers you because you don't want the kids to know.”

“Or anyone, really. People change, when they find out.” She thought of the one girl from high school she had taken into her confidence just partway, and how badly that had ended when they decided they liked the same boy. The other girl, who knew Eliza had been raped, started a whisper campaign that she was a slut, a girl who would do it with anyone, and that's why the boy had chosen her.

“Walter wants to see you,” Peter repeated. “And the point of all this—the letters, the phone calls, his accomplice—is to let you know that if you don't come see him, then maybe he will go public. Grant an interview. Start dropping hints again that he'll
reveal at last how many girls he's killed. Yes, I think the Washington and Baltimore papers will protect your privacy if you decline to be interviewed on the record. But, as you said, all sorts of unsavory types won't. I think Walter is suggesting that if you go see him, he'll spare you that.”

“That's so unfair,” Eliza said.

“It is. But you have to focus on what
you
want, not what's right or principled. You don't want to tell the kids yet what happened to you, but you don't want the kids to find out from someone else. How do you best achieve that goal?”

“Maybe Walter wants money, cash to purchase some privilege or item he can't afford on his own.”

“Maybe. But his friend Miss LaFortuny is well fixed, right? I think Walter would be offended if you offered him money.”

“Walter has no right to be offended by anything I do.”

“Agreed. Walter has no right to anything. And if you're prepared to weather the consequences of ignoring him, I say go for it. If you're ready to bring the kids down here and give them the PG-13 version of what happened to you when you were fifteen, I'll back you up. We can even ask your parents to point us to some experts in the field, get their advice on how to talk about it. We always knew this day was going to come. We just didn't expect Walter to be the one who forced the issue.”

“No,” Eliza said, nibbling at her biscuit, trying to make it last. “Albie can't handle it, and Iso won't be able to keep the secret if we tell just her.”

“Iso's very good at keeping secrets. Too good, in my experience.”

“Her own,” Eliza said, thinking about her rifled purse. “Not anyone else's. Besides, she might tell him in order to upset him.”

“Okay, that was one alternative. The other is to do nothing, and see what happens, which basically puts us at the mercy of Walter and the loose cannon that is Miss LaFortuny.”

Eliza grimaced. She disliked the woman and felt guilty about disliking someone ostensibly well intentioned. But there was something creepy about her.

“The final option is to let Walter have some sort of direct contact with you. A call, or a visit. Clearly, a letter didn't satisfy him.”

The teakettle sang. It had belonged to Eliza's mother and was an anachronistically silly item, emblematic of the late 1970s, an enamel kettle that was meant to resemble a puffer fish. Inez had decided she hated it soon after buying it. Eliza hated it, too, but she hadn't been in any position to disdain her mother's hand-me-downs when she and Peter started living together the final year of school. Now this fish had traveled with them from Wesleyan to Houston to London and back again to its home state of Maryland, earning Eliza's affection on the basis of its sheer longevity, its staying power. Her kitchen held many of Inez's castoffs—simple things, with no stories, no distinction—and she loved them all. Her mind cataloged them now, all those little relics of the house back in Roaring Springs—a particular mixing bowl, a bottle opener, a long spoon used to stir Sunshines. She had wept—wept—when a ceramic jar, used for holding kitchen utensils, had been misplaced during the move back to the States. Eventually it was found, unharmed, in a mislabeled box, and she had wept again with joy.

“A call,” she said. “I can handle a call. But it has to be understood that we will talk during school hours, only.”

“And do you think,” Peter asked, “that he'll be satisfied, then, that you'll have nothing to worry about?”

She chewed her cookie with unusual care. “Probably not.”

“Eliza—do I know everything about what happened?”

“No,” she told her husband. “But then—I'm not sure I do, either.”