Don’t Look Back

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. Someone – the secretary of state, administration officials – will be on all the news programs tomorrow, delivering up these great gobs of sound bites, and people will be blogging like mad. It’s not productive. Foreign policy is too nuanced, too steeped in centuries of history to be reduced to banal homilies. This isn’t a partisan position,’ she said, almost as if rehearsing her own talking points. ‘It’s an intellectual one. These issues must be addressed with gravitas.’

Eliza didn’t disagree. She felt the same way, only her concerns were domestic. The world was moving too swiftly, although it was strange to hear that complaint from caffeinated Vonnie. Iso and Albie were growing up too fast, Peter’s new job gobbled up twelve, fourteen hours a day, in exchange for promises that they might be rich, truly rich, within a year or two.

Her own days, however, were molasses slow. They were full, with places to go and things to do, and she was exhausted at the end of them. But they trundled along like dinosaurs. The sauropod or the stegosaurus, which, according to Albie, were the slowest of the dinosaurs.

After listening sympathetically to her sister for another fifteen minutes, agreeing with virtually everything she said, Eliza begged off, saying she was tired. Yet she remained at the computer, writing. She was self-aware enough to realize that it was not incidental that she suddenly found the words she wanted to write to Walter. She was still at the computer when Peter returned an hour later, although she quickly closed the file, reluctant to discuss the matter again this evening, even with his sympathetic ear. She was, she decided, Waltered-out.

Chapter Ten

1985

She had never gone to the bathroom outside before. She knew it was an odd point on which to fixate, given what was happening to her, but it was embarrassing. She tried to persuade the man that she would behave if he would allow her to use a restroom at a gas station or fast-food place, but he wouldn’t hear of it. He wasn’t harsh or cruel. He simply shook his head and said, ‘No, that won’t work.’

They had been in the truck about three hours at this point. He had stopped and gassed up, but he had pumped his own gas and told her beforehand that it would be a bad idea for her to try to get out. ‘I don’t want to hurt you,’ he said, as if she were in control, as if her behavior would determine what he did. He pulled the passenger side of the truck very close to the pump; if she opened the door, there would barely be room for her to squeeze out, and even then, she would be between the door and the hose. Of course, she could go out the other way, the driver’s side. As the gas pump clicked away – it was an older pump, at a dusty, no-name place, and the dollars mounted slowly, cent by cent – she tested his reactions, leaning slowly toward the left. He was at the driver’s-side door faster than she would have thought possible.

‘You need something?’

‘I was going to change the radio station.’

‘It isn’t on,’ he pointed out. ‘I don’t leave the key in the ignition when I pump gas. I knew a guy, once, he left his key in the ignition and the car blew up. He was a fireball, running in circles.’

‘I was going to change it for later,’ she said, almost apologetically. Why did she feel guilty about switching a radio station? He had kidnapped her. But the odd thing about this man was that he didn’t act as if he were doing anything wrong. He reminded her a little of Vonnie in that way, especially when they were younger. Vonnie would do something cruel, then profess amazement at Elizabeth’s reaction, focusing on some small misdeed by Elizabeth to excuse her behavior. When Elizabeth was three, Vonnie had tied her to a tree in the backyard and left her there all afternoon. Admonished by their parents, Vonnie had said: ‘She was playing with my Spirograph and she wouldn’t stop putting pieces in her mouth. I just wanted to keep her from choking.’ One April Fools’ Day, she had volunteered to fix Elizabeth milk with Ovaltine, then given her a vile concoction with cough syrup and cayenne pepper hidden beneath the pale brown milk. As Elizabeth had coughed and retched, Vonnie had said: ‘You spilled a little.’ As if the stains from the drink were more damning than the devious imagination of the person who had prepared it.

‘You don’t like my music?’

She weighed her answer. They had been listening to country music, which was uncool according to most people she knew. ‘It’s okay,’ she said. ‘But I like other stuff, too.’

‘What do you listen to?’

‘C-c-c-current stuff.’

‘Madonna,’ he said, looking at her fingerless lace mitts. ‘I’m guessing Madonna.’

‘Well, yeah,’ she said. ‘But also—’ She racked her mind for the music she liked. ‘Whitney Houston. Scritti Politti. Kate Bush.’

Except for the first name, these were Vonnie’s musical choices, and Elizabeth wasn’t sure why she was appropriating them. Because they made her seem older, wiser? Or because she sensed that the man wouldn’t know most of them and that would give her some sort of power?

‘She’s a bad girl,’ he said.

‘Kate Bush?’