“Oh, I have your name. I have everybody’s name,” said the guard, not unkindly. “But no one’s going in today. They found something in Sussex II last night, and the whole prison went into lockdown. You’ll have to come back for the next scheduled visiting day, which should be in two weeks.”
“The man she’s visiting will be dead next week,” Vonnie put in, leaning across her.
“That a fact?” Bland, unmoved. “Well, there’s nothing I can do about anything. Nobody’s going into there today, I can tell you that much. And no one’s any happier about it than you are.”
“There has to be a way,” Vonnie continued. “There’s always a solution if-”
“Naw,” the guard said. “There doesn’t and there isn’t. No visiting hours today. Y’all can come back in two weeks.”
Eliza wanted to put her head on the steering wheel and weep. The only thing that stopped her was that she wasn’t sure if she would be crying for the families she had hoped to comfort, or for being thwarted in her own selfish desires. But she couldn’t help thinking that it was her own disingenuousness that had undone her, that this would never have happened if she had been completely honest about what she hoped to achieve. With Peter, with Vonnie. With herself.
“Buck up,” Vonnie hissed, and Eliza realized a tear was trickling down her cheek. “This is a roadblock, nothing more. Trust me, I will get you in to see him.”
VONNIE PROVED TO BE RIGHT, although she would never have the satisfaction of going back and flinging that knowledge into the face of the imperturbable guard. And Eliza knew she wanted to do just that. Her sister had never been a gracious winner.
But she was a shrewd strategist, with sound instincts. Her first decision was to extend their stay in Richmond, where she furiously worked her iPhone and MacBook all day Saturday and into Sunday, often simultaneously. Walter was to be moved to Jarratt, home of the so-called Death House, Sunday evening. Visits there were rare, even for lawyers, Jefferson Blanding warned them, and sure enough, Eliza’s request was turned down by every official at the Department of Corrections. A part of her was almost relieved. She wasn’t going to face Walter after all, but it wasn’t her fault. She had tried to do the right thing. Why not go home, content with that knowledge? She said as much to Vonnie, who had turned their B and B into her command center, cursing its unreliable Internet connection as she searched for numbers and e-mailed journalist friends who knew how to find people on the weekends.
“Is that what you want?” Vonnie asked. “I’m doing this for you.”
“I don’t know. I didn’t want to see him, but-if there are other girls, don’t their parents and relatives deserve to know?”
“Deserving is a tough word. Yes, it would probably be better for them to know. And better for others to stop pinning their hopes, as it were, on Walter Bowman. But it’s not your responsibility, E. Don’t shoulder this burden if you can’t.”
“I can, however. I can do this, and I should.”
“Then I’ll keep calling.”
Vonnie, now turning her attention to politicians, was cagey. She didn’t tell anyone what Eliza might accomplish in her visit until she made it to the top of the food chain, the governor’s chief of staff. Instead, she kept telling everyone that these were special circumstances. Eliza wasn’t even sure to whom she was speaking when she finally said, “Look, there’s something else you should know.” It might have been the governor himself. All Eliza knew was that Vonnie said “Uh-huh, uh-huh” many times over, scribbled a few notes, and spent lengthy intervals on hold before saying good-bye in her terse way.
“You’re in. But there are a few ground rules. Security in the facility itself is different, which is why this is such a big deal. You won’t be speaking to him through glass, but bars. They’re going to have the deputy put masking tape on the floor, and you cannot cross that line. Get me? You cannot come within arm’s reach of him, or the deputy will physically drag you away and it will be over.”
“So not an issue. Anything else?”
Vonnie paused. “They also want us to record the conversation.”
Us. Eliza liked the sound of that first person plural, actually. “Is that legal?”
“If it isn’t, that’s their problem. I could take notes anyway. I have a pretty competent shorthand. The final thing is, they want us there first thing Monday, as soon as he’s had breakfast. That gives them a full day to deal with whatever Walter tells you.”
“Deal?”
“The way I understand it, let’s say he confesses to you about, I don’t know, even as few as four murders. In each case, they want to be able to go to the families, tell them what’s happened, then have the families agree that they’re comfortable with the fact that there won’t be actual court cases, even though Walter’s confessions aren’t legally binding. Feel me?”
“Vonnie, you sound ridiculous when you use that ghetto argot.”
“Thanks. The point is, they can’t have a glory-hog prosecutor coming forward and declaring that he wants to try the case. Which may, in fact, be Walter’s real agenda, Eliza. He probably thinks that these twenty-third-hour confessions start the clock over. And this is a complicated issue for the governor. He’s anti-death penalty, personally, and has fought the expansion of the death penalty while in office. But he’s a lame duck, and he doesn’t like to interject himself into these cases. Yet if some grandstanding prosecutor from outside Virginia insists on a trial, he’ll have no leverage over that person. He’s already reaching out to governors he thinks might become involved.”
“As you said, Walter could be counting on this. But what if he’s lying simply for the hell of it? What if he confesses to things he didn’t do and then he’s executed? Is that fair to the families involved?”
Vonnie sat on the soft, fluffy, inevitably overdecorated bed. The room was even more quaint than their famed one in the Martha Washington Inn. Used to five-star hotels, Vonnie had been sneering at every item in the room-the pillows, the crockery, the embroidered samplers on the wall-since their arrival. But now she put her arm around Eliza, something she hadn’t done-well, ever.
“Presumably, he’s cagey enough not to overreach. In total, according to the governor’s people, there are eight missing person cases, from 1980 to 1985, that he conceivably could be linked to, based on geography and opportunity. If he claims anything off that list, then they’re going to decide he’s disingenuous and let this whole thing drop, very quietly. Eliza-you have to sign a confidentiality agreement with the state in order to have this meeting. Frankly, it pisses me off. They have no right to do this. But given that you’ve never wanted to speak about any of this, I didn’t think I was wrong to give that up.”
Uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh. So that’s what it was all about. Vonnie wasn’t wrong, but Eliza felt a strange surge of anger. She had chosen to be silent all these years, but that was her prerogative. How dare someone else impose that condition on her? She felt as she had when she was fifteen, going on sixteen, and all the various adults-prosecutors, judges, even her parents-kept insisting her story was hers to tell, yet instructed her in how and when to tell it.
“Okay, so I sign a confidentiality agreement. If that’s what it takes, that’s what it takes. At least I’ll be telling the truth when I say I can’t speak of it.”
“One more thing-”
Vonnie’s voice sounded dire, but Eliza couldn’t imagine what else she had to impart.
“They wanted to know if you want to be a witness.”
“God, no.”
“That’s what I thought, but I didn’t answer for you on that score. Said okay, conditionally. Look, let’s go to that Caribbean place for dinner if it’s open on Sunday. Go out for dinner and see a girly movie, something you’d never see with Peter or the kids.”