Unnatural Exposure (30 page)

I had been inside the old Sussex County Courthouse many times over the years, and had grown fond of its antebellum quaintness and inconveniences. Built in 1825 by Thomas Jefferson's master brick mason, it was red with white trim and columns, and had survived the Civil War, although the Yankees had managed to destroy all its records first. I thought of cold winter days spent out on the lawn with detectives as I waited to be called to the witness stand. I remembered the cases by name that I had brought before this court.

Now such proceedings took place in the spacious new building next door, and as I drove past, heading to the back, I felt sad. Such constructions were a monument to rising crime, and I missed simpler times when I had first moved to Virginia and was awed by its old brick and its old war that would not end. I had smoked back then. I supposed I romanticized the past like most people tended to do. But I missed smoking and waiting around in miserable weather outside a courthouse that barely had heat. Change made me feel old.

The sheriff's department was the same red brick and white trim, its parking lot and jail surrounded by a fence topped with razor wire. Imprisoned within, two inmates in orange jumpsuits were wiping down an unmarked car they had just washed and waxed. They eyed me slyly as I parked in front, one of them popping the other with a shammy cloth.

'Yo. What's going,' one of them muttered to me as I walked past.

'Good afternoon.' I looked at both of them.

They turned away, not interested in someone they could not intimidate, and I pulled open the front door. Inside, the department was modest on the verge of depressing, and like virtually all other public facilities in the world, had profoundly outgrown its environment. Inside were Coke and snack machines, walls plastered with wanted posters and a portrait of an officer slain while responding to a call. I stopped at the duty post, where a young woman was shuffling through paperwork and chewing on her pen.

'Excuse me,' I said. 'I'm here to see Keith Pleasants.'

'Are you on his guest list?' Her contact lenses made her squint, and she wore pink braces on her teeth.

'He asked me to come, so I should hope I am.'

She flipped pages in a loose-leaf binder, stopping when she got to the right one.

'Your name.'

I told her as her finger moved down a page.

'Here you are.' She got up from her chair. 'Come with me.'

She came around her desk and unlocked a door with bars in the window. Inside was a cramped processing area for fingerprints and mug shots, a banged-up metal desk manned by a heavyset deputy. Beyond was another heavy door with bars, and through it I could hear the noises of the jail.

'You're gonna have to leave your bag here,' the deputy said to me. He got on his radio. 'Can you get on over here?'

'Ten-four. On my way,' a woman answered back.

I set my pocketbook on the desk and dug my hands in the pockets of my coat. I was going to be searched and I did not like it.

'We got a little room here where they meet with their lawyers,' the deputy said, jabbing his thumb as if he were hitching a ride. 'But some a these critters listen to ever word, and if that's a problem, go upstairs. We got an area up there.'

'I think upstairs might be better,' I said as a female deputy, hefty with short frosted hair, came around the corner with her hand-held metal detector.

'Arms out,' she said to me. 'Got anything metal in your pockets?'

'No,' I said as the detector snarled like a mechanical cat.

She tried it up and down one side and the other. It kept going off.

'Let's get rid of your coat.'

I draped it on the desk as she tried again. The detector continued to make its startling sound as she frowned and kept trying.

'What about jewelry,' she said.

I shook my head as I suddenly remembered I was wearing an underwire bra that I had no intention of announcing. She put down the detector and began to pat me down while the other deputy sat at his desk and watched slack-jawed, as if he were gawking at a dirty movie.

'Okay,' she said, satisfied that I was harmless. 'Follow me.'

To get upstairs, we had to walk through the women's side of the jail. Keys jangled as she unlocked a heavy metal door that loudly banged shut behind us. Inmates were young and hard in institutional denim, their cells scarcely big enough for an animal, with a white toilet, bed and sink. Women played solitaire, and leaned against their cages. They had hung their clothes from bars, and trash barrels were close and crammed with what they hadn't wanted for dinner. The smell of old food made my stomach flop.

'Hey mama.'

'What we got here?'

'A fine lady. Umm-umm-umm.'

'Hubba-hubba-hubba!'

Hands came through bars, trying to touch me as I went past, and someone was making kissing sounds while other women emitted harsh, wounded outbursts that were supposed to be laughs.

'Leave her in here. Just fifteen minutes. Ooohhh come to mama!'

'I need cigarettes.'

'Shut up, Wanda. You always needin' something.'

'Y'all quiet on down,' the deputy said in a bored singsong as she unlocked another door.

I followed her upstairs and realized I was trembling. The room she put me in was cluttered and disorganized, as if it might have had a function in an earlier time. Cork boards were propped against a wall, a hand cart parked in a corner, and some sort of pamphlets and bulletins were scattered everywhere. I sat in a folding chair at a wooden table scarred with names and crude messages in ballpoint pen.

'Just make yourself at home and he'll be up,' she said, leaving me alone.

I realized that cough drops and tissues were in my pocketbook and coat, neither of which I had with me now. Sniffing, I shut my eyes until I heard heavy feet. When the male deputy escorted Keith Pleasants in, I almost did not recognize him. He was pale and drawn, thin in baggy denims, his hands cuffed awkwardly in front of him. His eyes filled with tears when he looked at me, and his lips quivered when he tried to smile.

'You sit down and stay down,' the deputy ordered him. 'Don't you let me hear no problem up here. Got it? Or I'm back and the visit's history.'

Pleasants grabbed a chair, almost falling.

'Does he really need to be cuffed?' I said to the deputy. 'He's here for a traffic violation.'

'Ma'am, he's out of the secure area. That's why he's cuffed. Be back in twenty minutes,' he said as he left.

'I've never been through anything like this before. You mind if I smoke?' Pleasants laughed with a nervousness that bordered on hysteria as he sat.

'Help yourself.'

His hands were shaking so badly, I had to light it for him.

'Doesn't look like they got an ashtray. Maybe you're not supposed to smoke up here.' He worried, eyes darting around. 'They got me in this cell with this guy who's a drug dealer? He's got all these tattoos and won't leave me alone? Picking on me, calling me sissy names?' He inhaled a lot of smoke and briefly shut his eyes. 'I wasn't eluding anybody.' He looked at me.

I spotted a Styrofoam coffee cup on the floor and retrieved it for him to use as an ashtray.

'Thanks,' he said.

'Keith, tell me what happened.'

'I was just driving home like I always do, from the landfill, and all of a sudden there's this unmarked car behind me with sirens and lights on. So I pulled over right away. It was that asshole investigator who's been driving me crazy.'

'Ring.' My fury began to pound.

Pleasants nodded. 'Said he'd been following me for more than a mile and I wouldn't heed to his lights. Well I'm telling you, that's just a flat-out lie.' His eyes were bright. 'He's got me so jumpy these days there's no way in hell I wouldn't know if he was behind my car.'

'Did he say anything else to you when he pulled you?' I asked.

'Yes, ma'am, he did. He said my troubles had just begun. His exact words.'

'Why did you want to see me?' I thought I knew, but I wanted to hear what he would say.

'I'm in a world of trouble, Dr Scarpetta.' He teared up again. 'My mama's old and got no one to care for her but me, and there are people thinking I'm a murderer! I never killed anything in my life! Not even birds! People don't want to be around me at work anymore.'

'Is your mother bedridden?' I asked.

'No, ma'am. But she's almost seventy and has emphysema. From doing these things.' He sucked on the cigarette again. 'She doesn't drive anymore.'

'Who's looking after her now?'

He shook his head and wiped his eyes. His legs were crossed, one foot jumping like it was about to take off.

'She has no one to bring her food?' I said.

'Just me.' He choked on the words.

I looked around again, this time for something to write with, and found a purple crayon and a brown paper towel.

'Give me her address and phone number,' I said. 'And I promise someone will check in with her to make sure she's all right.'

He was vastly relieved as he gave me the information and I scribbled it down.

'I called you because I didn't know where else to go,' he started talking again. 'Can't somebody do something to get me out of here?'

'I understand your bond has been set at five thousand dollars.'

'That's just it! Like ten times what it usually is for this, according to the guy in my cell. I don't have any money or any way to get it. Means I got to stay here until court, and that could be weeks. Months.' Tears welled in his eyes again, and he was terrified.

'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.'