“And me and Wingo used to hang out sometimes. During lunch I’d come down when nothing much was going on.”
A shadow crossed his face. Wingo was the best, most sensitive morgue supervisor I’d ever had. Several years ago he died of smallpox. I squeezed Hodges’s shoulder.
“I still miss him,” I said. “You have no idea how much.”
He looked around and leaned closer to me.
“You keep up with his family any?” he asked in a low voice.
“From time to time.”
He knew from the way I said it that his family didn’t want to talk about their gay son, nor did they want me calling. Certainly, they didn’t want Hodges or any of Wingo’s friends calling, either. Hodges nodded, pain dimming his eyes. He tried to smile it away.
“That boy sure was crazy about you, Doc,” he said to me. “I’ve been wanting to tell you that for a long time.”
“That means a lot,” I said to him with feeling. “Thank you, Rick.”
I passed through the scanner without incident, and he handed me my satchel.
“Don’t stay away so long,” he said.
“I . won’t;” I said, meeting his young, blue eyes. “It makes me feel safer having you around.”
“You know where you’re going?”
“Think so;’ I said.
“Well, just remember the elevator has a mind of its own.”
I took worn, granite steps to the sixth floor, where Sinclair Wagner’s office overlooked Capitol Square. On this
dark, rainy morning, I could barely see the statue of George Washington astride his horse. The temperature had plummeted twenty degrees during the night, and rain was small and hard like shotgun pellets.
The waiting area of the Secretary of Health and Human Services was handsomely arranged with graceful colonial furniture and flags that were not Dr. Wagner’s style. His office was cramped and cluttered. It bespoke a man who worked extremely hard and understated his power.
Dr. Wagner was born and raised in Charleston, South Carolina, where his first name, Sinclair, was pronounced Sinkler He was a psychiatrist with a law degree, and oversaw person-service agencies such as mental health, substance abuse, social services and Medicare. He had been on the faculty of the Medical College of Virginia, or MCV, before his appointment to a cabinet-level position, and I’d always respected him enormously and knew he respected me, too.
“Kay.” He rolled back his chair and got up from his desk. “How are you?”
He motioned for me to sit on the couch, and he closed the door and returned to the barrier of his desk, which was not a good sign.
“I’m pleased with how everything’s going at the Institute, aren’t you?” he asked.
“Very much so,” I replied. “Daunting, but better than I ever hoped.”
He picked up his pipe and pouch of tobacco from an ashtray.
“I’ve been wondering what’s been going on with you,” he said. “You seem to have vanished off the face of the earth
“I don’t know why you’d say that,” I answered him. “I’m doing as many cases as always, if not more.”
“Oh, yes. Of course, I keep up with you through the news.”
He began tamping tobacco into the pipe. There was no smoking of any sort in the building and Wagner tended to suck on a cold pipe when he was ill at ease. He knew I hadn’t come here to talk about the Institute or tell him how busy I’d been.
“I certainly know how busy you are,” he went on, “since you don’t even have time to see me.”
“I just found out today, Sinclair, that you tried to see me last week,” I replied.
He held my gaze, sucking on the pipe. Dr. Wagner was in his sixties but looked older than that, as if bearing the painful secrets of patients for so many years had finally begun to erode him. He had kind eyes, and it was greatly to his advantage that people tended to forget he also had the shrewdness of a lawyer.
“If you didn’t get my message that I wanted to see you, Kay,” he said, “then it would seem to me you have a staffing problem.”