At seven P.M., I was in the kitchen again, and Wesley, always punctual, eased his silver BMW into my drive. He was still in the suit he had been wearing earlier, and he had a bottle of Cakebread chardonnay in one hand, and a fifth of Black Bush Irish whiskey in the other. The rain, at last, had stopped, clouds marching on to other fronts.
‘Hi,’ he said when I opened the door.
‘You profiled the weather right.’ I kissed him.
‘They don’t pay me this much money for nothing.’
‘The money comes from your family.’ I smiled as he followed me in. ‘I know what the Bureau pays you.’
‘If I was as smart with money as you are, I wouldn’t need it from my family.’
In my great room was a bar, and I went behind it because I knew what he wanted.
‘Black Bush?’ I made sure.
‘If you’re serving it. Fine pusher that you are, you’ve managed to get me hooked.’
‘As long as you bootleg it from D.C., I’ll serve it any time you like,’ I said.
I fixed our drinks on the rocks with a splash of seltzer water. Then we went into the kitchen and sat at a cozy table by an expansive window overlooking my wooded yard and the river. I wished I could tell him about Wingo and how it felt for me. But I could not break a confidence.
‘Can I bring up a little business first?’ Wesley took off his suit jacket and hung it on the back of a chair.
‘I have some, too.’
‘You first.’ He sipped his drink, his eyes on mine.
I told him what had been leaked to the press, adding, ‘Ring’s a problem that’s only getting worse.’
‘If he’s the one, and I’m not saying he is or isn’t. The difficulty’s getting proof.’
‘There’s no doubt in my mind.’
‘Kay, that’s not good enough. We can’t just throw someone out of an investigation based on our intuition.’
‘Marino’s heard rumors that Ring’s having an affair with a well-known local broadcaster,’ I then said. ‘She’s with the same station that had the misinformation about the case, about the victim being Asian.’
He was silent. I knew he was thinking about proof again, and he was right. This all sounded circumstantial even as I said it.
Then he said, ‘This guy’s very smart. Are you aware of his background?’
‘I know nothing about him,’ I replied.
‘Graduated with honors from William and Mary, double major in psychology and public administration. His uncle is the secretary of public safety.’ He piled worse news upon bad. ‘Harlow Dershin, who’s an honorable guy, by the way. But it goes without saying this is not a good situation for making accusations unless you’re one hundred percent damn sure of yourself.’
The secretary of public safety for Virginia was the immediate boss of the superintendent of the state police. Ring’s uncle couldn’t have been more powerful unless he had been the governor.
‘So what you’re saying is that Ring’s untouchable,’ I said.
‘What I’m saying is, his educational background makes it clear he has high aspirations. Guys like him are looking to be a chief, a commissioner, a politician. They’re not interested in being a cop.’
‘Guys like him are interested only in themselves,’ I impatiently said. ‘Ring doesn’t give a damn about the victims or the people left behind who have no idea what has happened to their loved one. He doesn’t care if someone else gets killed.’
‘Proof,’ he reminded me. ‘To be fair, there are a lot of people — including those working at the landfill — who could have leaked information to the press.’
I had no good argument, but nothing would shake me loose from my suspicions.
‘What’s important is breaking these cases,’ he went on to say, ‘and the best way to do that is for all of us to go about our business and ignore him, just like Marino and Grigg are doing. Follow every lead we can, steering around the impediments.’ His eyes were almost amber in the overhead light, and soft when they met mine.
I pushed back my chair. ‘We need to set the table.’