“Most people aren’t going to string someone up and torture him and then let him go to tell the story,” I reply. “I’ll pend his cause and manner for now until we see what tox has to say.” My eyes light on Marino’s. “But I believe you’d best treat this as a homicide, a very awful one.”
We contemplate this later in the morning as we drive toward James City County. Marino wanted to take his truck, and I suggested we follow Route 5 east along the river, through Charles City County where eighteenth-century plantations fan out from the roadside in vast fallow fields that lead to the awesome brick mansions and outbuildings of Sherwood Forest, Westover, Berkeley, Shirley and Belle Air. There isn’t a tour bus in sight, no logging trucks or roadwork, and country stores are closed. It is Christmas Eve. The sun shines through endless arches of old trees, shadows dapple pavement and Smoky the Bear asks for help from a sign in a gracious part of the world where two men have died barbarically. It does not seem that anything so heinous could happen here until we get to The Fort James Motel and Camp Ground. Tucked off Route 5 in the woods, it is a hodgepodge of cabins, trailers and motel buildings that are rusting and paint-peeled, reminding me of Hogan’s Alley at the FBI Academy: cheaply constructed facades where shady people are about to get raided by the law.
The rental office is in a small frame house overwhelmed by scrubby pines that have carpeted the roof and earth in brown tags. Soft-drink and ice machines in front glow through overgrown bushes. Children’s bicycles lie wounded in leaves, and ancient seesaws and swings aren’t to be trusted. A homely mixed-breed dog that sags with a history of chronic breeding
rises to her old feet and stares at us from the sloping porch.
“I thought Stanfield was meeting us here.” I open my door. “Go figure.” Marino climbs out of the truck, his eyes moving everywhere.
A veil of smoke drifts out the chimney and streams almost horizontally with the wind, and through a window I catch winking, gaudy Christmas lights. I feel eyes on us. A curtain moves, the sounds of a television muted from deep within the house as we wait on the porch and the dog sniffs my hand and licks me. Marino announces our arrival with a fist pounding the door, and finally calls out, “Anybody home? Hey!” Banging his fist hard. “Police!”
“I’m coming, I’m coming,” an impatient woman’s voice sings out. A hard, tired face fills the space of the opening door, the burglar chain still anchored and taut.
“You Mrs. Kiffin?” Marino asks her.
“Who are you?” she asks him back.
“Captain Marino, Richmond P.D. This is Dr. Scarpetta.”
“What you bringing a doctor for?” Brow furrowing, she glances at me from her shadowy crack. A stirring at her feet, and a child peeks out at us and smiles like an imp. “Zack, you go back inside.” Small bare arms, hands with dirty nails wrap around mama’s knee. She shakes him loose. “Go on!” He disconnects and is gone.
“Going to need you to show us the room where the fire was,” Marino tells her. “Detective Stanfield with James City County should be here. You seen him?”
“No police been here this morning.” She pushes the door shut and the burglar chain rattles as she removes it, then the door opens again, this time wide, and she steps out on the porch, pushing her arms into the sleeves of a lumberjack’s red plaid coat, a ring of keys jingling in her hand. She yells into the house, “Y’all stay! Zack, don’t you get into the cookie dough! I’ll be right back.” She shuts the door. “Never seen anybody love cookie dough like that boy,” she tells us as we go down the steps. “Sometimes I buy the premade in rolls and one day I catch Zack eating one, wrapper peeled down like a banana. Ate half of it by the time I caught him. I told him, You
know what’s in it? Raw eggs, that’s what.”
Bev Kiffin is probably no more than forty-five, her pretti-ness hard and garish like truck-stop cafes and late-night diners. Her hair is dyed bright blond and is curly like a French poodle, her dimples deep, her figure ripe on the way to matronly. She has a defensive, obstinate air about her that I associate with people who are used to being worn down and in trouble. I would also call her shifty. I am about to distrust every word she says.