“The envelope he wanted buried with him.”

“I’m still stumped over that. The codes on the receipts do not confirm what we’d speculated about earlier - that the restaurants and tollbooths are located between Richmond and Mecklenburg, and that the receipts were from the transport that brought Waddell from Mecklenburg to Richmond fifteen days prior to his execution. Though the dates on the receipts are consistent with the time frame, the locations are not. The codes come back to the stretch of I-95 between here and Petersburg.”

“You know, Benton, it very well may be that the explanation for the receipts is so simple that we’ve completely overlooked it,” I said.

“I’m all ears.”

“Whenever you go anywhere for the Bureau, I imagine you have the same routine I do when traveling for the state. You document every expense and save every receipt. If you travel often, you tend to wait until you can combine several trips on one reimbursement voucher to cut down on the paperwork. Meanwhile, you’re keeping your receipts somewhere.”

“All that makes good sense in terms of explaining the receipts in question,” Wesley said. “Someone on the prison staff, for example, had to go to Petersburg. But how did the receipts then turn up in Waddell’s back pest?” I thought of the envelope with its urgent plea that it accompany Waddell to the grave. Then I recalled a detail that was as poignant as it was mundane. On the afternoon of Waddell’s execution, his mother had been allowed a two-hour visit with him.

“Benton, have you talked to Ronnie Waddell’s mother?”

“Pete went to see her in Suffolk several days ago. She’s not feeling particularly friendly or cooperative toward people like us. In her eyes, we’re the ones who sent her son to the chair.”

“So she didn’t reveal anything significant about Waddell’s demeanor when she visited him the afternoon of his execution?”

“Based on what little she said, he was very quiet and frightened. One interesting point, though. Pete asked her what had happened to Waddell’s personal effects. She said that Corrections gave her his watch and ring and explained that he had donated his books, poetry, and so on to the N-double- A-C- P.”

“She didn’t question that?” I asked.

“No. She seemed to think it made sense for Waddell to do that.”

“Why?”

“She doesn’t read or write. What’s important is that she was lied to, as were we when Vander tried to track down personal effects in hopes of getting latent prints. And the origin of these lies most likely was Donahue.”

“Waddell knew something,” I said. “For Donahue to want every scrap of paper that Waddell had written on and every letter ever sent to him, then there must be something that Waddell knew that certain people don’t want anyone else to know.”

Wesley was silent.