Page 68 of The Children of Eve

“Almost certainly,” I said.

Macy finished her grapefruit.

“The Riggins tangle, the part you don’t want to talk about, how bad could it get?”

“As bad as you can conceive.”

“So what will you do?”

“I’ll give it another day or two, but then I may hand it off to someone.”

“Police?”

“Or the FBI,” I said.

“When you’re ready, call me. I may be able to smooth the way.”

“Okay.”

“Just try not to get me fired,” said Macy.

“If you do get canned, we can go into business together.”

“In that case, it would be Donato and Woman-Who-Looks-Young-Enough-to-Be-His-Daughter.”

I patted her hand.

“That eye exam is long overdue.”

Macy grimaced.

“It’s on the list.”

4

What lonely death am I to die / In this cold region?

John Keats,Endymion

CHAPTERXLVII

Loudoun County was situated in the Commonwealth of Virginia, with a population of some 430,000 spread over more than five hundred square miles. Loudoun had always been prosperous, even before Dulles Airport opened near Sterling in 1962. After Dulles, the only way for Loudoun was up, with aviation, defense, and tech companies mushrooming along the border with Fairfax County, as well as, more recently, a slew of new data centers to serve Amazon’s needs. The result had been a migration from the countryside to urban areas and the growth of planned communities to meet housing demand, making parts of Loudoun hardly more than commuter suburbs of Washington.

On the other hand, the farther west one went, the sparser the population, and out beyond the lower southern ridges of Catoctin Mountain, the natives regarded themselves as geographically distinct from the rest and looked askance at what they considered to be unrestricted development threatening their way of life. To that end, the region of Catoctin, with a heritage that was largely German and Quaker, had been rumbling about seceding from Loudoun since the end of the last century, the efforts of its citizens being stymied only by what they regarded as vested interests in Richmond, who had no desire to offend developers capable of facilitating jobs and enterprise and were not unknown to make generous campaign donations come election time.

All of which made the job of sheriff of Loudoun County, while undeniably a powerful position, a challenging exercise in diplomacy, though not one that was the recipient of universal acclaim. The sheriff’s office had only recently avoided seeing the county switch from an elected system to a police department under an appointed chief. This would have made Loudoun one of the outliers among Virginia counties, traditionally the fiefdoms of sheriffs. The pushback against the move had been successful, not least because the transition would have cost more than $200 million at the most conservative estimate, tax dollars which many of the good folks of Loudoun preferred to see spent in other ways.

This would have been just so much background chatter were it not for the fact that, on this particular March evening, a pair of Loudoun County sheriff’s deputies had arrived within minutes of each other at the entrance to a disused property off Chestnut Hill Lane. That property adjoined the homestead of the Dolfe clan, one of whose scions, Katie Dolfe, not only sat on the board of supervisors but was also among those most hostile to the current law enforcement dispensation. Katie, an attorney, no longer lived in the area, having long since decamped for fancier digs in Leesburg, but most of her kinfolk remained in the Dolfe heartland, and the extended family had no more affection for the sheriff and his department than their beloved Katie had.

The Dolfes’ territory was off Route 9, bordered by Chestnut Hill Lane to the west, Berlin Turnpike to the east, and the Potomac to the north. The strip was long but narrow; the Dolfes had never tried to claim more territory than they could control. The landscape—all hollows, decaying trees, and falling rocks, spotted with trailers, junkyards, and private property signs—was a reminder of the persistence of an older, often poorer Virginia alongside the fancy wineries and farm shops, a relic of a time when people didn’t advertise the presence of distilleries on their land. The Dolfes claimed descent from one of the First Families of Virginia, even though the connection wastenuous-verging-on-nonexistent, the general view being that, frankly, the Dolfes were clutching at fucking straws, genealogically speaking. Nobody with an ounce of sense cared to be caught up in that inbred FFV horseshit, the Commonwealth of Virginia having more than enough horseshit to be getting along with. On the other hand, there was no accounting for cussedness, delusion, and the deep-seated human desire to declare oneself better than one’s neighbor. The Dolfes might have been hillbillies, but they were hillbillies with pretensions.

What the two Loudoun County deputies were trying to clarify, before they proceeded any further, was whether the Dolfes, blue-blooded or otherwise, had succeeded in purchasing the land on which the property stood. Given the nature of the 911 call received, the two deputies, who were both local, technically didn’t require the Dolfes’ permission to enter, but politics and common sense dictated that they step with care, even as representatives of the county. There was also the matter of a barrier erected across the road, consisting of a tree trunk on two X-shaped supports, attached to which was a sign readingPRIVATE ROAD—ARMED RESPONSE. If the Dolfes had posted it—and it was hard to conceive who else might be responsible—they weren’t kidding about the armed-response part, and nobody wanted to get into an argument in the dark with a bunch of gun-toting Dolfes. Their ancestors had been partisans during the War of Northern Aggression, killing Union soldiers at will before melting back into the woods, and the years since had failed to dilute the Dolfes’ fondness for a fight.

While they awaited the go-ahead, one of the deputies, Eric Wen, spoke with two young women standing by a red Dodge Challenger near the turnoff for the blocked road. In Wen’s view, Dodge Challengers and Chargers were the chariots of choice for those who believed irony was an adjective, somewhere between coppery and steely. Loudoun County had a lot of Challengers and Chargers.

Wen was known locally as Chinese Eric, but didn’t consider it worthmaking a fuss over. In his experience, incidents of racism—the whole “Chinese Eric” business apart, which might have counted—were encouragingly rare, helped by the fact that he was six feet tall, possessed a neck broader than his head, carried a big gun, and brooked no nonsense from anyone, regardless of race, color, or creed.

The two girls, Britney and Paris (Heaven preserve us, thought Wen), were both eighteen, and their breath smelled so strongly of mint that it made his eyes burn. Stashed somewhere nearby, no doubt, were some unopened cans of Coors or PBR, and possibly a half-drunk bottle of cheap vodka. He wasn’t about to give them a hard time over it, not yet, and then only should they prove recalcitrant. He first wanted to hear what they had to say, and didn’t want to frighten them more than was necessary in case it came back to haunt him in court.

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