Chapter XLVII
CHAPTER XLVII
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 was tenuous-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 reading PRIVATE 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 worth making 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.
“Tell me again what you saw,” he said.
“A man, tied to a post in the middle of the barn,” said Britney—or maybe Paris, because they both looked the same to Wen: white blondes with perfect teeth, puffed-up lips, and the kind of makeup applied by the pound. Britney—or Paris; anyway, the one doing most of the talking—struck him as the smarter of the two, though even a rock might have given her buddy a run for her money. The latter had dull eyes that weren’t going to get any brighter as she grew older, just like her future. “He was naked, with blood all over him: his body, his mouth. And—”
“The flower,” said the other one. “Tell him about the flower.”
“Like, I was just going to. He had a flower stuck to his chest.”
“A flower?”
“An orange one.”
“Did you touch him?”
They both shook their heads, before the sharper one—Wen concluded it was definitely Britney—added: “We just went over to check. You know—”
“If he was, like, alive,” said Paris.
“But he wasn’t,” said Britney.
“Nuh-uh,” said Paris, shaking her head again. “He was dead for sure.”
She started to cry again. She’d been crying when the deputies arrived but stopped soon after, distracted by all the activity. Britney had remained dry-eyed throughout, but she was paler than her friend, even under all the makeup. Wen guessed that Paris would make a drama out of it the next day. Britney would be more subdued, and what she had witnessed in the barn would stay with her for longer.
“Did you recognize him?” asked Wen.
“No,” said Britney.
“He was all messed up,” said Paris.
“Why were you in the barn to begin with?”
“We just wanted to hang out,” said Paris, who had commenced a theatrical hiccuping hyperventilation.
“Somewhere that wasn’t home,” added Britney with feeling, and Wen made a mental note to check on Britney’s domestic situation when he had the chance.
“You go up there alone?”
Hesitation gave them away. Wen let them see there was no point in lying.
“We were meeting someone,” Britney admitted.
“A couple of someones,” Paris added.
“Guys?”
They nodded.
“You want to give me their names.”
They shook their heads.
“That wasn’t a question,” said Wen.
“Ah, hell,” said Britney. “They didn’t go inside the barn. They were slugging it, and by the time they got to us, we were already halfway to the car. We told them to make dust.”
“Slugging it” was local parlance for dragging one’s heels. Wen, being first-generation Virginian and raised by parents with aspirations—not to mention notions of superiority, if not quite on the FFV level— preferred not to use colloquialisms. He was already enough of a disappointment to his mother and father, who had groomed him for entry into a profession they could be proud of. As a teenager, when he’d told his father over dinner one evening that he wanted to be an actor, his old man turned to the rest of the table and said, “It’s spelled ‘doctor.’?” A life in the performing arts continued to remain out of Wen’s reach for the present, but to get himself through the bad days, he liked to think of himself as an actor temporarily moonlighting as a sheriff’s deputy.
“I’ll still need their names,” said Wen.
Britney exhaled hard enough to visibly deflate.
“Taylor Goff and Levi Hixon.”
Bang goes your local pot source , thought Eric. Goff and Hixon, twenty-eight and twenty-nine respectively, were minor local troublemakers inexorably mutating into something worse. Goff was reputed to like his girls young, and Hixon liked them even younger. Britney and Paris would have earned whatever they were due to consume in that barn—earned it, and then some.
“Did you see them walk away?” asked Wen.
“I wasn’t looking back,” said Britney. “I just wanted to put distance between us and that barn.”
Whatever Britney might claim to the contrary, Eric doubted Goff and Hixon had exited without first taking a peek for themselves. He just hoped they hadn’t screwed with the scene. Detectives would also need to ask them how often they convened their little social club up at that barn, in the faint hope that they might have noticed something odd in the preceding days. Wen didn’t make Goff and Hixon for killers, though, or not like this. If they ever got around to doing the deed, they’d be smart enough not to abandon the body to be found by a pair of teenagers they were due to meet in a sex-for-joints arrangement.
“Are we in trouble?” asked Paris.
“We’ll see,” said Wen, keeping them dangling. He’d leave any further questions to the detectives, in case one or both of these girls knew more about the man in the barn than they were telling. “For now, I want you to get back in your car and stay warm.”
“We’ll need the keys to turn on the AC,” said Britney. “The other cop took them from us.”
“That’s not going to happen,” said Wen. He didn’t want anyone panicking and deciding to lead law enforcement on a merry dance. If a call from Broadway or Hollywood didn’t result from his work in local theater, Eric Wen hoped to make a career of policing by rising through the ranks, and nothing was better guaranteed to wreak havoc on those plans than having witnesses—or, worse, potential perpetrators, whatever his instincts to the contrary—flee the scene because a sheriff’s deputy was foolish enough to leave them with keys in the ignition.
Wen headed over to his colleague, Inge Schuler. Her first name was actually Ingina, from High German, and Wen could only begin to imagine how much grief that had caused her during her school years. Some relief would have arrived with adolescence because Schuler was tall, blond, and striking, bordering on beautiful. Wen might have fallen a little in love with her were he not already in love with his Chinese-American fiancée, and were said fiancée not above burying him upside down in a hole in the woods if she suspected him of so much as contemplating relations with a rangy Germanic blonde, or even a short one.
“I don’t like this,” said Wen. “We ought to be up there already.”
“Do you want to get shot by the Dolfes?” asked Schuler.
“I don’t want to get shot by anyone.”
“Neither do I, which is why we’re still down here.”
Schuler hadn’t called the dispatcher but instead contacted the station commander at Western Loudoun directly, because some conversations were better off not conducted across open lines. He’d promised to get back to her in five minutes, but the best part of ten had elapsed by the time her cell phone rang again. Wen was beginning to fret about when the medics might get there, for fear the two witnesses were wrong about the guy being dead. Schuler put the call on speaker for Wen to hear, but kept the volume low so it didn’t carry to the girls in the car.
“That’s not Dolfe land, not yet,” they were assured. “There’s a holdup on the paperwork. The Realtor responsible for the sale says she doesn’t know anything about any barrier or sign on the road, so you just take it down and get on up to that barn to secure the scene. Backup’s on the way, with medics and detectives close behind.”
Wen could already see the lights of the first of the approaching vehicles as the call was ongoing, which meant that someone would be available to watch Britney and Paris. The deputies might have to draw straws to pick who stayed behind and who got to enter territory that the Dolfes now regarded as theirs, with all the potential associated difficulties, but the more guns they had once they moved past the roadblock, the better. Perhaps they could handcuff the girls to the steering wheel and deal with the civil rights implications later.
“What if someone starts shooting?” Wen asked the station commander.
“You have my permission to shoot back, and possibly the sheriff’s too, if he thinks you have any chance of hitting a Dolfe.”
“Seriously.”
“I am being serious. What it comes down to is, the Dolfes don’t own that land and have no business pretending otherwise. Now do what you have to and find out whether there really is a body in that barn or someone is playing games with a scarecrow.”
The station commander hung up. Wen stared at Schuler, and Schuler stared at Wen. They were then joined by a third deputy, Howard Negus, who had just arrived and commenced staring at both of them.
“What’s the deal?” Negus asked. “You find out who the dead guy is yet?”
“Nope, but the Dolfes think they own the land that barn sits on,” Schuler told him.
“The Dolfes think they run the whole county,” said Negus, who was not Virginian by birth and walked with a heavy tread.
“You want to be the one to knock on their door and tell them they don’t?” asked Wen.
“Fucking crackers,” said Negus. “I have a shotgun in the car, if that helps.”
“I think they prefer ‘hillbillies,’?” said Schuler. “Still, I’d get that shotgun if I were you.”
“What about the kids?” asked Wen, indicating Britney and Paris. “Someone ought to stay with them.”
“Pussy,” said Schuler.
“It was worth a try. The question stands.”
Schuler walked to the Dodge, where the two girls sat huddled in their coats, looking miserable. Schuler opened the passenger door and Paris whined: “You going to give us our keys back? It’s cold.”
Schuler held out a hand.
“No. Driver’s licenses, both of you.”
The girls surrendered their licenses, which Schuler photographed with her cell phone before returning them.
“You move from that car,” said Schuler, “and I’ll personally make you wish you’d died in the womb.”
“What if whoever killed that guy is still around?” asked Britney, which Schuler had to admit wasn’t an unreasonable question.
“All the more reason to stay in the car.” Schuler pointed to the southeast, where more lights were scouring the night. “But they’ll be with you in a matter of minutes.”
“We could be dead in a matter of minutes,” said Paris.
“Then you’ll get fired,” said Britney. “And sued.”
“Jesus,” said Schuler. “Fine, we’ll stay until they get here.”
They waited until a fourth car arrived, which disgorged a deputy named Eustace Ferris, known to his colleagues as Useless Ferris, even to his face. Useless Ferris’s portrait could have been used to illustrate the word timeserver in a picture dictionary.
“You’re the babysitter, Useless,” Schuler told him, jerking a thumb at the Dodge.
“Better than being shot at by Dolfes,” said Useless, but he was already speaking to Schuler’s back. Wen followed after, leaving only Negus. He’d gone to his car to get the shotgun. In his experience, the sight of a big pump-action was useful for focusing attention and calming unrest.
“Don’t you object to being called ‘Useless’?” asked Negus.
“I’ve been hearing it since high school. I don’t much notice anymore.”
Negus turned away.
“I would,” he said.
“That’s because you’re sensitive,” said Useless, unwrapping a stick of gum. “If you get killed up there, I’ll make sure it’s mentioned in the eulogy.”