“All I know is, she was spooked. She told me that during the first week of this past November, Waddell called her collect and said he was ready to die and didn’t want to fight it anymore. Apparently, he was convinced nothing could save him, and he asked her to go to the farm in Suffolk and get his belongings from his mother. He said he wanted Jenny to have them, and not to worry, that his mother would understand.”

“What were those belongings?” I asked.

“Just one thing.”

He got up. “I’m not real sure of the significance - and I’m not sure I want to be sure. So I’m going to turn it over to you, Dr. Scarpetta. You can take it on back to Virginia. Share it with the police. Do with it what you want.”

“Why are you suddenly being helpful?” I asked. “Why not weeks ago?’

“Nobody bothered to come see me,” he said loudly from another room. “I told you when you called I don’t deal with people over the phone.”

When he returned, he set a black Hartmann briefcase at my feet. The brass lock had been pried open and the leather was scarred: “Fact is, you’d be doing me a big favor to get this out of my life,” Willie Travers said, and I could tell he mean it. “The very thought of it makes my energy bad.”

The scores of letters Ronnie Waddell had written Jennifer Deighton from death row were neatly bundled in rubber bands and sorted chronologically. I skimmed through few in my hotel roam that night, because their importance all but disappeared in the light of other items I found.

Inside the briefcase were legal pads filled with handwritten notes that made little sense, for they referred to cases and dilemmas of the Commonwealth from more than ten years ago. There were pens and pencils, a map of Virginia, a tin of Sucrets throat lozenges, a Vick’s inhaler, and a tube of Chapstick. Still in its yellow box was an EpiPen, a 3 milligram epinephrine auto-injector routinely kept by people fatally allergic to bee stings or some foods. The prescription label was typed with the patient’s name, the date, and the information that the EpiPen was one of five refills. Clearly, Waddell had stolen the briefcase from Robyn Naismith’s house on the fateful morning he murdered her. It may be that he had no idea who it belonged to until he carried it off and broke the lock. Waddell discovered he had savaged a local celebrity whose lover Joe Norring, was then the attorney general of Virginia.