Of course, there was acute interest in what was immediately dubbed the first murder in America, a rather presumptuous claim since we can’t say for a fact it is a murder or the first one and the New World was hardly America yet. We did prove from forensic testing that JR was shot with a combat load fired from a European weapon called a matchlock musket and that, based on the spread of the shot, the gun was fired from a distance of approximately fifteen feet. He could not possibly have shot himself accidentally. One might deduce that a fellow settler was to blame, leading to the not so far-fetched notion that America’s karma, sadly, seems to be for us to kill each other.
“Everything’s moved indoors for the winter.” Edith slips out of her jacket and drapes it over the back of the sofa. “Cataloging artifacts, writing up the findings, all the things we can’t get around to while we’re working on the site. And of course, fund-raising. That awful part of life that tends to fall in my lap more and more these days. Bringing me to my point. I got a rather disturbing phone call from one of our legislators who read about the motel death. He’s in an uproar, which is unfortunate, because he’s only going to end up doing the very thing he says he doesn’t want, which is to draw attention to the case.”
“Uproar over what?” I frown. “There was very little information in the newspaper.”
Edith’s expression stiffens. Whoever this legislator is, she obviously has no use for him. “He’s from the Jamestown area,” she tells me. “He seems to think the case might be a hate crime, that the victim was gay.”
Footsteps sound softly on the carpeted stairs and Aaron appears with a tray, a bottle and three tumblers etched with the seal of the commonwealth.
“Needless to say, such a thing could severely compromise what we’re doing out there.” She chooses her words carefully as Aaron pours Black Bush. A door off the sitting area opens and the governor emerges from his private office in a draft of cigar smoke, his tuxedo jacket and tie off.
“Kay, I’m sorry to keep you waiting,” he says to me with a hug. “Brushfires. Maybe Edith has given you the hint.”
“She was just getting around to it,” I reply.[“_Toc37098920”]
CHAPTER 18
GOVERNOR MITCHELL IS VISIBLY DISTURBED. HIS wife gets up to allow us a private conversation and the two of them have a quick exchange about a call that needs to be made to one of their daughters, then Edith tells me good night and leaves. The governor lights another cigar. He is a rugged, good-looking man with a former football player’s strong body and hair as white as Caribbean sand. “I was going to try to get you tomorrow but didn’t know if you might be off somewhere for the holidays,” he begins. “Thanks for coming over.”
Whisky heats up my throat with each swallow as we engage in a polite exchange about Christmas plans and how things are going at the Virginia Institute of Forensic Science and Medicine. With every breath, I think of Detective Stan-field. The fool. He obviously divulged sensitive case information, and of all people, to a goddamn politician, his brother-in-law, Representative Dinwiddie. The governor is an astute man. More importantly, he began his career as a prosecutor. He knows I am furious and why.
“Representative Dinwiddie has a tendency to stir up a hornet’s nest,” the governor confirms who the troublemaker is. Dinwiddie is a militant pain in the ass who never lets the world forget his lineage can be traced back, albeit very indirectly, to Chief Powhatan, the father of Pocahontas.
“The detective was wrong to have told Dinwiddie anything,” I reply, “and Dinwiddie was wrong to have told you or anyone else. This is a criminal case. This is not about the four-hundredth anniversary of Jamestown. It’s not about tourism or politics. This is about a man who was most likely tortured and left to burn up in a motel room.”
“No question about it,” Mitchell replies. “But there are certain realities we have to consider. A hate crime that might in any shape or fashion seem connected to Jamestown would be catastrophic.”