Страница 45 из 70
“I will take down your tag number,” she said. “And make a complaint. Did you know that citizens can do that? Complain to the MVA about other motorists’ bad behavior?” She wondered as she said this if her threat might be true. It should be true, and that was good enough.
The woman looked balefully at Barbara, put her car in gear, and lurched forward, almost ru
“Ms. LaFortuny?” he asked.
“Mr. Garrett,” she said, shaking his hand. “I’m such a fan.”
Now that was a lie. She was really piling them up today. She and Walter both considered Garrett’s book a joke, a travesty. But he might be useful, if deployed correctly, and wouldn’t that be a great joke on him?
“How was your trip?” she asked.
“Uneventful,” he said. “I guess that’s all one can ask for. I can’t believe government subsidizes that service.”
She knew she shouldn’t argue with him, but she hated that kind of knee-jerk critique. “I believe the northeastern routes make money for Amtrak. Besides, this country needs more rail service, not less.”
“The covers were torn on half the seats,” he said. “And there was no coffee in the café car.”
“Do you want a cup of coffee? There’s a Starbucks not even three blocks from here-”
“No, I’m fine. I just think that’s outrageous on general principle.”
So it was going to be that kind of day.
She drove toward the county, taking him on a tour of the Lerners’ old neighborhood, driving into the state park, circling back to the now rather worn-looking neighborhood where Maude Parrish had lived. He claimed to have seen these sites before, but Barbara doubted him. Garrett was a lazy man, according to Walter, content to sit in a courtroom and read official records but reluctant to initiate anything on his own. He had never spoken to Walter’s sister, for example, never even tried as far as they knew. (Thank God, given her feelings, but still, how hard would it have been?) He hadn’t even been particularly dogged about getting to Walter, or his lawyer. But that way, he didn’t have to deal with all the messy contradictions. Long before the Internet and blogging, Jared Garrett had the thumb-sucking incuriousness of a person who can’t be bothered to muddle his theories with fact. He now kept a blog on cold cases, throwing up his wildly speculative ideas willy-nilly. His grammar was suspect, and as best as Barbara could tell, he couldn’t even be bothered to spell-check half the time.
They stopped for a late lunch in Clarksville. They were only a few miles from where the Lerners lived. She wondered if Garrett had even gleaned that much information, which was available via property records.
“Vegan?” he said with dismay, studying the menu.
“You’ll never know. I ate here before the switch and found out that most of the entrées I liked were vegan all along.”
He ordered the chili, which Barbara knew to be absolutely delicious, but seemed glum about it. He was probably not much older than Barbara, but he had a bowling ball of a gut and a terrible pallor. Why did people treat themselves so horribly? Barbara was well aware that she had the great gift of leisure, that it was easy for her to go to yoga class and shop the farmers’ market and choose healthful restaurants, but this man was clearly making no effort to take care of himself. She thought of Walter, struggling to maintain his health in prison. She had sent him books with basic yoga instruction and he had adopted a vegetarian diet despite much protest from prison officials, who wanted to honor dietary needs only for religious or medical reasons. Fine, Walter had said, I’m a Muslim now. Put me on the vegetarian diet that you give them.
“Ms. LaFortuny-”
“Barbara.”
“I don’t mean to be rude and I’m sure you mean well, but when you approached me and said you had significant new information to share, I expected more than a tour of places I saw twenty-some years ago.”
“Things change. I thought it might be helpful for you to revisit places, see them anew.”
“Helpful if I were writing about the Walter Bowman case, but I’m not. I devote my time to cold cases now.”
“There are those who think they can link various cold cases to Walter Bowman.”
“Yes, and I’m one of them. But unless Walter wants to give an interview before his execution-?”
She took a bite of her roasted corn quesadilla, sipped her tea. “Well, he might. Walter’s talking a lot these days.”
“To other journalists?”
She forced herself not to smile at Garrett’s sense of himself as a journalist. He was an accountant for the state of Pe
“No, not other journalists.” She lowered her voice. “To her. Elizabeth Lerner.”
His shock was gratifying. “Why?”
She gave a mystified shrug. “He doesn’t tell me everything. I just know he added her to his call list and they’ve been speaking regularly.”
“I always thought-I said-that things between them were much more complicated than anyone wanted to admit. People criticized me, but she did have multiple chances to escape.”
Barbara almost felt bad. Engaging Jared Garrett’s sordid imagination was like teasing an animal or a small child. Too easy to be fair. And she honestly didn’t want to cause the woman pain, but she was their only hope. To save a life, to prevent a terrible miscarriage of justice-why, anything was permissible. Elizabeth Lerner had nothing to be ashamed of. Unless she let Walter die, and then she was a killer, more cold-blooded than any death row inmate.
“And you know where she lives, her phone number? Do you think she would talk to me?”
“No,” Barbara said, relieved to be back in her usual world of blunt, tactless candor. “I mean, Walter has her phone number, but that doesn’t mean I do.” Another white lie. “Besides, I don’t think she would talk to you now, because she’s still keen that no one know her whereabouts, her past. Perhaps if Walter goes, however-”
“If? I didn’t think there was much doubt.”
“I think it’s important to leave the mind open to possibility. Certainly, there’s no harm in hoping.”
“Elizabeth Lerner.” He shook his head as if he had seen a celebrity, albeit one he didn’t particularly admire. “Her parents threatened a libel suit against me. They even talked about an injunction.”
“They were her parents,” Barbara said. “Of course they felt protective of her.”
“Do you have kids?”
“No,” Barbara said. “I never married, not that I needed a husband to have children. But I don’t like children much.”
“Weren’t you a teacher? I mean, I know you had a horrible run-in with one student, but before that, did you like them?”
“I don’t remember, but-no, I don’t think so. I liked my subjects, government and history. I thought they were important, and I wanted to share them with others. But I wasn’t drawn to teaching because of a blanket love for children. I accepted children as a necessary condition. You?”
“Me? I never was a teacher.”
“Do you have children?”
“No. My wife and I-it didn’t happen for us, and we accepted that. God’s will, and all.”
“You didn’t want to adopt?”
He lowered his voice, although there was no one in the restaurant to hear them. “No, never. You do what I do, you learn some things.”