27

TRUDY TACKETT HATED THE WORD privilege. It was tricky, loaded, another benign word that had been twisted into an insult. It now was some comfortable zone above the fray, life lived at an altitude so rarefied that one didn’t even know the fray existed.

But Trudy had always been aware that she was fortunate-in her family, in her family’s wealth. She was aware that she and Terry lived in a charmed universe, where there was little worry about money, even when they had to contemplate up to four college tuitions. But they were not extravagant or showy people, especially by the standards of Middleburg. She looked at price tags. Sometimes. And she had never taken their good fortune for granted. That was what galled her. She had been grateful in her prayers, aware of the luck in which her life was steeped. Even when she had the string of miscarriages, she had not railed against God, had not asked Why me? In the wake of Holly’s death, she had turned to the church for strength, praying for the courage to find some kind of meaning in it all. Father Trahearne had recommended the book of Job. Which, in retrospect, was the beginning of the end of Trudy’s life as a true Catholic.

But, no, she had never used money, and never expected special treatment because of it. Trudy had always felt vaguely embarrassed by the perks of money-boarding an airplane first because one was in business class, for example. That seemed a little gauche to her. But then she met a problem that all the money in the world couldn’t solve, and her ideas began to change. She and Terry didn’t pay for Walter Bowman’s prosecution, which meant they also had relatively little say. Oh, everyone was nice. It was the dawn-flowering?-of the victims’ rights movement, with Mothers Against Drunk Drivers and Parents of Murdered Children chapters. There was no doubt in Trudy’s mind that everyone, from the sheriff’s deputy who had found Holly’s body to the lowliest clerk in the prosecutor’s office, cared about Holly almost as much as if they had known her in life. That’s how amazing her daughter was. Not even death could vanquish her charisma. It helped that the Tackett family had been early adapters, in terms of video, and had hours of those old clunky VHS tapes of Holly. They had played an edited clip, during the closing arguments, and Walter Bowman’s attorney had barely objected. Even he, Trudy believed, understood how extraordinary Holly was. Later, the new attorney, the unfortunately super-capable Jefferson Blanding, had argued the videos were introduced improperly and should have been screened only during sentencing, not at the actual trial. In hindsight, it would have been better if Blanding had been Bowman’s attorney all along. The first one’s incompetence had caused them all sorts of problems and delays. In a state more lenient than Virginia, it might have resulted in the death penalty being vacated altogether.

So-privilege, money. They were not things of which Trudy had ever availed herself. Until the day that a young clerk at Sussex had called Terry out of the blue and said she was the person who read all of Walter’s incoming and outgoing correspondence, to make sure it met the prison’s standards.

“Is there something specific we should know?” Terry had asked.

“Oh no,” the woman had assured him. “He’s careful. He understands the rules and he wouldn’t violate them. But the women who write him-they’re all over the map. I mean, there’s nothing that interesting now. But there might be. You never know.”

“Interesting?”

“Who’s on his call list, for example. Whether he thinks he has a valid shot at an appeal. I mean, all the lawyer stuff-that’s in person or on the phone, strictly confidential. That’s a right that can’t be tampered with. But when Walter turns around and tells someone else what’s going on-that’s not protected.”

Trudy had picked up the extension at Terry’s invitation. It was hard for her not to break in, explain to Terry what was going on. She’s inside, she wants a bribe, she’ll tell us what we need to know. Since Holly’s murder, Trudy had learned that Terry, like his daughter, was dangerously trusting. She had to be the vigilant one, the mean one, the cynic.

“If you knew,” the woman continued, “how little they pay us to work here. It’s really kind of shocking.” The voice had a youthful twang, yet Trudy believed it had to be someone older, someone who had put in enough time in state government and was ready to play the angles. Did she make this offer to the victims of every man on death row? Granted, it wasn’t a large population, and as Trudy had learned, most victims were as poor as the perpetrators. But even if this clerk picked up ten, twenty dollars a month from five families, that would be quite the little stipend.

“We would appreciate,” Terry said carefully, “any help you could give us.”

“Same here,” the woman said. “Why don’t you write me? I’ll give you my PO box.”

The first month, Terry had sent twenty-five dollars, in cash, and they had received a rather perfunctory report back. The next month, he sent an American Express gift card of $100, and the report lengthened considerably. Yet, over the years, the information hadn’t amounted to much. Walter was not as loose with details about his legal situation as the clerk had led them to believe, although one of his correspondents, Barbara LaFortuny, was more reliably indiscreet. And it was distressing to be told of the women who wrote him what could only be called love letters. What was wrong with people? With women? Trudy couldn’t imagine men writing lovelorn letters to female murderers.

It was more distressing still to hear that Walter and Elizabeth had corresponded and that it had somehow slipped through their source’s net. “We spot-check,” she had defended herself, when called on this oversight. “And her letter might have arrived on a day when I wasn’t working. But I can swear to you up and down that he did not send any letters to Elizabeth Lerner from this facility. We would have been on that like white on rice.”

“But she’s not Elizabeth Lerner,” Terry had pointed out to their source, careful not to offend, but also perturbed at what thousands of dollars had failed to buy. “She’s Eliza Benedict.”

“Right, and how do you know that? Because of me. You also have her phone number, which you can drop into any online reverse directory and get an address. That’s more important than any ol’ letter she sent.”

Trudy did not agree. But now she found herself studying the ten digits. What would she say, if she dared to dial them. (Trudy was still old enough to think “dial,” even if she was modern enough to use a cell phone.) The words How dare you came to mind. Those would cover a multitude of sins.

That phrase jolted her and she pulled out her Bible, tried to find the reference, but she had to cheat and use the Internet to narrow it down. Various things covered a multitude of sins, apparently. Love and charity. In Peter, it was written: Love covers a multitude of sins. That was not a passage that interested Trudy today, or any day. She kept clicking until she found a Web site whose interpretation worked better for her. From James 5:20. Remember this: Whoever turns a sinner from the error of his way will save him from death and cover over a multitude of sins. Love could help a sinner repent, the Web site instructed, but it must not turn a blind eye. That was not justice. Perhaps Trudy had been affiliated with the wrong church all these years, perhaps she should have embraced the hard-core fundamentalists. Her parents, both descended from Charleston ’s French Huguenots, had been scandalized enough by her conversion to Catholicism upon her marriage to Terry. If Trudy had joined a church where people rolled on the floor and spoke in tongues, they would have been just as mortified by the sheer tackiness of it all. Her parents were alive, distressingly healthy. Distressing because it meant that Trudy was genetically predisposed to live a long time.