“Then what happened when you finally reached her?”
“That was when she divulged that they had corresponded for eight years and that they loved each other. She claimed that the truth would never be known. I asked her what she meant but she would not tell me and got off the phone. Finally, I wrote her a letter imploring her to speak with me.”
“When did you write this letter?” I asked.
“Let me see. The day after the execution. I suppose that would have been December fourteenth.”
“And did she respond?”
“She did, by fax, interestingly enough. I did not know she had a fax machine, but my fax number was on my stationery. I have a copy of her fax if you would like to see it.”
He shuffled through thick file folders and other paperwork on his desk. Finding the file he was looking for, he flipped through it and withdrew the fax, which I recognized instantly. “Yes, I’ll cooperate,” it read, “but it’s too late, too late, too late. Better you should come here. This is all so wrong!”
I wondered how Grueman would react if he knew that her communication with him had been recreated through image enhancement in Neils Vander’s laboratory.
“Do you know what she meant? What was too late and what was so wrong?” I asked.
“Obviously, it was too late to do anything to stop Ronnie’s execution since that had already occurred four days earlier. I’m not certain what she thought was so wrong, Dr. Scarpetta. You see, I have sensed for quite some time that there was something malignant about Ronnie’s case. He and I never developed much of a rapport and that alone is odd. Generally, you get very close. I’m the only advocate in a system that wants you dead the only one working for you in a system that doesn’t work for you. But Ronnie was so aloof with his first attorney that this individual decided the case was hope- less and quit. Later, when I took on the case, Ronnie was just as distant. It was extraordinarily frustrating. Just when I would think he was beginning to trust me, a wall would go up. He would suddenly retreat into silence and literally begin to perspire.”
“Did he seem frightened?”
“Frightened, depressed, sometimes angry.”
“Are you suggesting that there was some conspiracy involved in his case and he might have told his friend about it, perhaps in one of his earlier letters to her?”
“I don’t know what Jenny Deighton knew, but I suspect she knew something.”
“Did Waddell refer to her as ‘Jenny’?”
Grueman reached for his lighter again. “Yes.”
“Did he ever mention to you a novel called Paris Trout?”
“That’s interesting” – he looked surprised. “I haven’t thought of this in quite sometime, but during one of my early sessions with Ronnie several years ago, we talked about books and his poetry. He liked to read, and suggested I should read Paris Trout. I told him I had already read the novel, but was curious as to why he would recommend it. He said, very quietly, ‘Because that’s the way it works, Mr. Grueman. And there’s no way you’re gonna change nothing.’
At the time I interpreted this to mean that he was a southern black pitted against the white man’s system, and no federal habeas remedy or any other magic I might invoke during the judicial review process was going to alter his fate.”
“Is this still your interpretation?”
He stared thoughtfully through a cloud of fragrant smoke. “I believe so. Why are you interested in Ronnie’s recommended reading list?”
He met my eyes.
“Jennifer Deighton had a copy of Paris Trout by her bed. Inside it was a poem that I suspect Waddell wrote for her. It’s not important. I was just curious.”
“But it is important or you wouldn’t have inquired about it. What you’re contemplating is that perhaps Ronnie recommended the novel to her for the same reason that he recommended it to me. The story, in his mind, was somehow his story. And that leads us back to the question of how much he had divulged to Miss Deighton. In other words, what secret of his did she carry with her to the grave?”