I put on fresh gloves and pick up the letter written on what looks like my own office stationery, holding it up to the light again, relieved there is no watermark and at the same time suspecting that whoever forged a letter from me doesn’t seem to know that the CFC uses an inexpensive recycled twenty-five percent rag paper with a custom watermark to protect our correspondence and documents from this very threat. While it would be possible to create a reasonably good facsimile of my letterhead or any document I might generate, it is impossible to counterfeit such a thing and get away with it unless one has access to authentic CFC paper. It occurs to me that whoever sent this letter may not care whether the police, scientists, or even I am fooled. Possibly the only purpose of this faked letter was to fool Kathleen Lawler into believing it came from me.
I fold the letter in half, the way I found it, and return it to its large envelope, puzzled by the size, again wondering if something may have been included. If so, what else did I supposedly send to Kathleen Lawler? What else did she receive that she believed was from me? Who is impersonating me, and what is the ultimate goal? I recall Tara Grimm’s oblique references yesterday to my being accessible, and then Kathleen mentioned my generosity. I found their comments perplexing, and I try to conjure up exactly what Kathleen said. Something about people like me giving a thought to people like her, about my supposedly paying attention to her, and at the time I assumed she was alluding to my coming to see her.
But what she really was saying was she appreciated my writing to her and perhaps sending her something. She would have received the forged letter before I saw her yesterday. It was postmarked in Savannah on June 26 at four-fifty-five p.m., mailed from a location, possibly a post office, with a 31401 zip code. Five days ago, a Sunday, I was home, and Lucy took Benton and me to a tequila bar that’s become a favorite hangout of hers, Lolita Cocina. The waitstaff certainly could testify to the fact that I was there that night. I could not have been a thousand miles south in Savannah at four-fifty-five p.m. and in Boston’s Back Bay by seven p.m., having dinner.
“Gonna grab a few things and find the little boys’ room.” Marino squeezes past me.
“I’ll have to take you,” I hear Officer Macon’s voice as it occurs to me that someone could claim Marino mailed the letter for me. He was down here by June 26, or at least nearby in South Carolina.
My attention returns to Chang. He is standing in the open doorway, his dark eyes watching me.
“If you’re fine with my checking a few more things, then I’ll be done in here and can show you what I’d like collected,” I say to him.
He looks at his watch. He looks behind him as Officer Macon escorts Marino to a men’s room.
“Has the van gotten here?” I ask.
“Ready when you are.”
“What about Colin?”
“I think he’s depending on you to wind it up. There’s nothing else he wants to do until we get her in.”
“Fine. I’ll bag her hands, photograph her, if that’s all right.”
“I’ve got plenty of photos.”
“I’m sure you do. But as you can tell, I like to overdo things,” I say to him.
“How about a real camera? And while you’re overdoing things, there’s also a locker box.”
“A locker box?” I look around the cell to see what he might be talking about.
“Attached to the foot of the bed.” He points. “Hidden by the covers.”
“I’d like to take a look.”
“Knock yourself out.”
“I’ll be quick so you can get in and collect a few things that need to go to the labs. I’m sure you’re ready to get out of here.”
“Not me. I love prisons. Reminds me of my first marriage.”
I resume examining what is on top of Kathleen’s desk, a thin stack of cheap white paper and plain envelopes, a see-through Bic pen, a book of self-adhesive postage stamps, and a small tablet with the cover flipped back that seems to be an address book. I don’t recognize any names, but I riffle through the pages, looking for Dawn Kincaid and Jack Fielding. I don’t find them. In fact, most of the names have Georgia addresses, and when I come across one for Triple Q Ranch outside of Atlanta, I realize how old the address book is. Triple Q was where Kathleen was a therapist when she got involved with Jack in the mid- to late seventies. More than thirty years old, at least, I think, as I continue turning pages. Whoever she’s been writing recently most likely isn’t in here, I decide. If she had a current address book, it appears to be missing.
“This should go in, too,” I tell Investigator Chang.
“Yeah, I noticed it.”
“Old.”
“Exactly.” He knows what I’m implying. “Course, she might not have any friends, anyone to write or call anymore.”
“I was told she liked to write letters.” I open the book of stamps, noting that six out of twenty are missing. “She worked in the library to fund her commissary account. And maybe got a few contributions now and then from family.” I mean from Dawn Kincaid.
“Not from family in the past five months or after she was moved in here, not in maximum security.”
“No,” I agree Kathleen wasn’t in a position to fund her account since she was moved to Bravo Pod, and certainly Dawn couldn’t have been doing it from Butler, and before that, from the Cambridge jail. “It might be interesting to see how much money is left in that account and what she might have bought of late,” I suggest.
“Good idea.”
There is a pocket dictionary and a thesaurus, and two library books of poetry, Wordsworth and Keats, and next I go to the bed. I crouch at the foot of it, moving the blanket and sheet out of the way, and I’m mindful of Kathleen Lawler’s legs draped over the side. My left shoulder brushes against her hip, and it is warm against me but not warm as in life. Minute by minute, she continues to cool.
I open the locker box, a single metal drawer filled with a hodgepodge of personal effects. Drawings and poetry, family photographs, including several of an exquisite little blond girl who got more gorgeous as she got older, and then suddenly was a temptress, overly made up, with a voluptuous body and dead eyes. I find the photograph of Jack Fielding that I gave to Kathleen yesterday, included with the others, as if he was her family. There are a few of him when he was young, perhaps ones he mailed to her in the early years, and the photographs are worn and torn at the edges, as if they have been handled frequently.
I don’t find any other diaries, but there is a booklet of fifteen-cent stamps and also stationery with a festive border of party hats and balloons, which seems a strange choice for an inmate, possibly left over from someone who used it for invitations to a birthday celebration or some other fun event. The stationery isn’t something that would be sold in a prison commissary, and I suppose it’s also possible Kathleen has had it from a time that predates her being locked up for DUI manslaughter. Maybe that’s the explanation for fifteen-cent stamps that feature a white sandy beach with a bright yellow-and-red umbrella beneath a vivid blue sky, a seagull flying overhead.
The last time I paid fifteen cents for a stamp was at least twenty years ago, so either she was saving them for a special reason or someone sent them to her, and I recall Kathleen mentioning to me the hardship of affording postage. The book originally contained twenty stamps, and the top pane of ten is missing. I pick up the thin stack of white copying paper from the desk and hold up a sheet of it to the light, finding no indentations that might have been made by writing on a sheet of paper that was on top. I try the party stationery next, holding up a sheet, tilting it in different directions as I make out indentations that are fairly deep and visible: the date, June 27,and the salutation, Dear Daughter.