PATRICIA CORNWELL. Unnatural Exposure

‘Keith, do you use the Internet?’ I said.

‘The what?’

‘Computers.’

‘At the landfill I do. Remember, I was telling you about our satellite system.’

‘Then you do use the Internet.’

He did not seem to know what that was.

‘E-mail,’ I tried again.

‘We use GPS.’ He looked confused. ‘And you know the truck that dumped the body? I’m pretty sure now it was definitely Cole’s, and the Dumpster may have come from a construction site. They pick up at a bunch of construction sites on South Side in Richmond. That would be a good place to get rid of something, on a construction site. Just pull up your car after hours and who’s to see?’

‘Did you tell Investigator Ring this?’ I asked.

Hate passed over his face. ‘I don’t tell him anything. Not anymore. Everything he’s been doing is just to set me up.’

‘Why do you think he would want to set you up?’

‘He’s got to arrest someone for this. He wants to be the hero.’ He was suddenly evasive. ‘Says everybody else doesn’t know what they’re doing.’ He hesitated. ‘Including you.’

‘What else has he said?’ I felt myself turning to cold, hard stone, the way I did when I had moved from anger to determined rage.

‘See, when I was showing him around the house and all, he would talk. He really likes to talk.’

He took his cigarette butt and clumsily set it end-up on the table, so it would go out without burning Styrofoam. I helped him light another one.

‘He told me you have this niece,’ Pleasants went on. ‘And that she’s a real fox but has no more business in the FBI than you have being a chief medical examiner. Because. Well.’

‘Go on,’ I said in a controlled voice.

‘Because she’s not into men. I guess he thinks you aren’t, either.’

‘That’s interesting.’

‘He was laughing about it, said he knew from personal experience that neither of you dated because he’d been around both of you. And that I should just sit back and watch what happens to perverts. Because the same thing was about to happen to me.’

‘Wait one minute.’ I stopped him. ‘Did Ring actually threaten you because you’re gay or he thinks you are?’

‘My mama doesn’t know.’ He hung his head. ‘But some people do. I’ve been in bars. In fact, I know Wingo.’

I hoped not intimately.

‘I’m worried about Mama.’ He teared up again. ‘She’s upset about what’s happening to me, and that’s not good for her condition.’

‘I tell you what. I’m going to check on her myself, on my way home,’ I said, coughing again.

A tear slid down his cheek and he roughly wiped it with the backs of cuffed hands.

‘One other thing I’m going to do,’ I said as footsteps sounded on the stairs again. ‘I’m going to see what I can do about you. I don’t believe you killed anyone, Keith. And I’m going to post your bond and make sure you have a lawyer.’

His lips parted in disbelief as the deputies loudly entered the room.

‘You really are?’ Pleasants asked as he almost staggered to his feet, his eyes wide on mine.

‘If you swear you’re telling the truth.’

‘Oh yes, ma’am!’

‘Yeah, yeah,’ a deputy said. ‘You and all the rest of ’em.’

‘It will have to be tomorrow,’ I said to Pleasants. ‘I’m afraid the magistrate’s gone home for the night.’

‘Come on. Downstairs.’ A deputy grabbed his arm.

Pleasants said one last thing to me. ‘Mama likes chocolate milk with Hershey’s syrup. Not much else she keeps down anymore.’

Then he was gone, and I was led back downstairs and through the women’s section of the jail again. Inmates were sullen this time, as if I no longer were fun. It occurred to me someone had told them who I was, when they turned their backs on me and someone spat.

13

SHERIFF ROB ROY was a legend in Sussex County and ran uncontested every election year. He had been to my morgue many times, and I thought he was one of the finest law enforcement officers I knew. At half-past six, I found him at the Virginia Diner, where he was sitting at the local table, which literally was where the locals gathered.

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