After we'd cleaned up from our little roll in the hay at his place, Peter Blair took me over to the Loudon County Court offices, which proved to be not more than three blocks from his old townhouse, near the major intersection where Route 7 coming out of Washington, and Route 15 coming down from Maryland at Point of Rocks converged—both old stage coach roads going back to pre-Revolutionary War days.
We had a timed appointment with the Commonwealth's Attorney, Warren Dabney Jr., who kept us waiting for well over a half an hour beyond that just because he could and to show me, I'm sure, how important he was. The bastard left the door between his office and the reception room ajar enough so that we were able to see that he was reading the newspaper and eating a sandwich his secretary took in to just after we arrived.
I got the message without Peter having to say anything. This was going to be a pro forma meeting, just to establish that we had met. And that the only interest the Commonwealth's Attorney had in having me investigate this murder was to keep him—and his son—out of it.
I might not have bothered him at all, except that I was sort of curious who he wanted saved the worse, his son or himself.
"I think there's something we all can agree on from the start, Detective Folsom," Dabney said after we'd finally been given audience. "This Wallace was a scumbag of the lowest degree. If my office had been fully informed that such as he was in our midst, we would have moved him along, federal government or no federal government." And with this, he glowered at Peter Blair, who shrank down in his seat a bit. The relationship between them was obvious, and equally obvious was where Blair sat in all of this, having known who Wallace was and why he had been salted away under Dabney's nose.
I certainly didn't respond negatively to Dabney's statement myself. No one in the room knew as well as I did what a scumbag Wallace had been—although perhaps I shouldn't jump to those conclusions too soon, I corrected myself.
"And we can certainly take care of ourselves here in Loudon County," Dabney continued. "But, under the circumstances, Police Chief Blair thought it best to bring in an outside investigator. And he thought you would be the best one to help us close this case down quickly."
And there, in a nutshell, it was. And I wasn't a bit surprised. They wanted me to investigate as little as possible, conclude that Wallace had been killed by someone outside Loudon County, wrap that up in a nice little report, and, as an entirely independent investigator, let the feds know that Wallace had probably been knocked off by the Mafia, which, by the way, was no real big problem because the case that had gotten him into the witness protection program was dead now anyway. And they thought I was the best one to slap this coat of paint over it all because I had a history with Wallace myself.
Well, they might be right. I didn't begrudge whoever had offed Wallace. But to be able to write a convincing report, I'd have to go through at least a few formalities.
"Yes, well, for the purpose of the report, of course, there will be a few bases I'll have to be able to say I covered," I said.
"Such as?" Dabney asked. He had been leaning back in his swivel chair, his feet on the waxed paper in the center of his desk that his sandwich had come in. He was on full alert now.
"Peter has already told me that there are some possibly embarrassing angles to this case—leading to needing someone from the outside to come into the investigation."
"Oh?" The eyebrows went up even more.
"Well, I think, certainly, that any report I could run through the feds on this would have to pin down good alibis for your son, you, and Peter, here. I understand Wallace had been brought up on rape charges for molesting your son and that Peter was heard publicly to threaten his life on that."
"His murder doesn't have anything to do with that," Dabney said with a snort. "The man was killed by his Mafia buddies. They killed him the same way they had paid him to kill others. It's an obvious message."
"Yes, pretty convincing," I said. "But the feds—"
"My son is away at school," Dabney said in a somewhat strained voice. "And as for Peter and me, when was it that they've placed the time of death, Peter?" Dabney had swiveled around to glare directly at Blair, who had been quite silent the whole time. He certainly wasn't giving me any help.
"Between 10 p.m. and midnight, night before last," Peter said in a small voice that I would have had no idea he could ever be cowed to when he was so forcefully fucking me just an hour earlier.
"There you go, then," Dabney said. And he gave me a broad, victory-laden smile. "Peter and I were at his place playing poker during those hours. So, we couldn't have done it, neither of us."
"Just the two of you playing poker?" I asked. It was instinctive; it had just slipped out without much thought to it.
"Yes, just the two of us. Is there a problem with that?" Dabney's voice had gone hard.
"No, I'm sure there's not," I said. "That's certainly what we can put in the report." I left that lying there in a pregnant pause. Dabney was no dummy, I'm sure, on how good an alibi would have to be to keep the feds from taking a closer look. I had no question that by this time the next day, there would be more fine upstanding citizens of Eden willing to say they were in that poker game.
But I also was impressed to have caught that Dabney had thought to protect his son first. Unfortunately, that led me to assume that he was afraid for his son for some reason.
"And your son?" I said. "How far away is this school?"
"It's down in Syria, almost up into the Blue Ridge Mountains. The Spring Hill Academy. A fine post-high school prep school for gifted athletes to help them succeed at the university while carrying a full athletic load. My son is a star football player." The pride shown through the man's gruffness, and I accepted his genuine interest in and concern for his boy.
"And that's how far from here?" I asked.
Dabney didn't respond immediately, so I turned to Peter.
