“I didn’t participate in the autopsy,” she went on. “I mean, I helped with the external exam but wasn’t present when you did the post. And I know this is going to be a big case – if they ever catch anyone. If it ever goes to court. And I just think it’s better if I’m not listed, since, like I said, I really wasn’t present.”
“Fine,” I said. “I have no problem with that.”
She placed my keys on a counter and left.
Marino was home when I tried him from my car phone as I slowed at a tollbooth about an hour later.
“Do you know the warden at Spring Street?” I asked him.
“Frank Donahue. Where are you?”
“In my car.”
“I thought so. Probably half the truckers in Virginia are listening to us on their CBs.”
“They won’t hear much.”
“I heard about the kid,” he said. “You finished with him?”
“Yes. I’ll call you from home. There’s something you can do for me in the meantime. I need to look over a few things at the pen right away.”
“The problem with looking over the pen is it looks back.”
“That’s why you’re going with me,” I said.
If nothing else, after two miserable semesters of my former professor’s tutelage I had learned to be prepared. So it was on Saturday afternoon that Marino and I were en route to the state penitentiary. Skies were leaden, wind thrashing trees along the roadsides, the universe in a state of cold agitation, as if reflecting my mood.
“You want my private opinion,” Marino said to me as we drove, “I think you’re letting Grueman jerk you around.”
“Not at all.”
“Then why is it every time there’s an execution and he’s involved, you act jerked around?”
“And how would you handle the situation?”
He pushed in the cigarette lighter. “Same way you are. I’d take a damn look at death row and the chair, document everything, and then tell him he’s fall of shit. Or better yet, tell the press he’s full of shit.”
In this morning’s paper Grueman was quoted as saying that Waddell had not been receiving proper nourishment and his body bore bruises I could not adequately explain.
“What’s the deal, anyway?” Marino went on. “Was he defending these squirrels when you was in law school?”
“No. Several years ago he was asked to run Georgetown’s Criminal Justice Clinic. That’s when he began taking on death penalty cases pro bono.”
“The guy must have a screw loose.”
“He’s very opposed to capital punishment and has managed to turn whoever he represents into a cause celebre. Waddell in particular.”
“Yo. Saint Nick, the patron saint of dirtbags. Ain’t that sweet,” Marino said. “Why don’t you send him color photos of Eddie Heath and ask if he wants to talk to the boy’s family? See how he feels about the pig who committed that crime.”
“Nothing will change Grueman’s opinions.”
“He got kids? A wife? Anybody he cares about?”
“It doesn’t make any difference, Marino. I don’t guess you’ve got anything new on Eddie.”
“No, and neither does Henrico. We’ve got his clothes and a twenty-two bullet. Maybe the labs will get lucky with the stuff you turned in.”
“What about VICAP?” I asked, referring to the FBI’s Violent Criminal Apprehension Program, in which Marino and FBI profiler Benton Wesley were regional team partners.
“Trent’s working on the forms and will send them off in a couple days,” Marino said. “And I alerted Benton about the case last night.”
“Was Eddie the type to get into a stranger’s car?”
“According to his parents, he wasn’t. We’re either dealing with a blitz attack or someone who earned the kid’s confidence long enough to grab him.”
“Does he have brothers and sisters?”
“One of each, both more than ten years older than him. I think Eddie was an accident,” Marino said as the penitentiary came into view.
Years of neglect had faded its stucco veneer to a dirty, diluted shade of Pepto Bismol pink. Windows were dark and covered in thick plastic, tugged and torn by the wind. We took the Belvedere exit, then turned left on Spring Street, a shabby strip of pavement connecting two entities that did not belong on the same map. It continued several blocks past the penitentiary, then simply quit at Gambles Hill, where Ethyl Corporation’s white brick headquarters roosted on a rise of perfect lawn like a great white heron at the edge of a landfill.