“Waddell never had a chance,” I said. “Not that he necessarily deserved clemency in light of the severity of his crime. But from the moment he was arrested, Norring was a worried man. He knew he had left his briefcase at Robyn’s house, and he knew it had not been recovered by the police.”

Why he had left his briefcase at Robyn’s house was not clear, unless he’d simply forgotten it on a night that neither of them could know was her last.

“I can’t even begin to imagine Norring’s reaction when he heard,” I said.

Wesley glanced at me over the arm of his glasses as he continued perusing paperwork. “I don’t think we can imagine it. It was bad enough he had to worry about the world discovering he was having an affair, but his connection with Robyn would have instantly made him the, prime suspect in her murder.”

“In a way,” Marino said, “he was lucky as hell Waddell took the briefcase.”

“I’m sure in his mind he was unlucky either way he looked at it,” I said. “If the briefcase had turned up at the scene, he was in trouble. If the briefcase was stolen, as it was, then Norring had to worry about it turning up somewhere:” Marino got the coffeepot and refilled everyone’s cup. “Somebody must have done something to ensure Waddell’s silence.”

“Maybe.”

Wesley reached for the cream. “Then again; maybe Waddell never opened his mouth. My guess is he feared from the beginning that what he had stumbled upon only made matters worse for him. The briefcase could be used as a weapon, but who would it destroy? Norring or Waddell? Was Waddell going to trust the system enough to badmouth the AG? Was he going to trust the system enough years later to badmouth the governor - the only man who could spare his life?”

“So Waddell remained silent, knowing that his mother would protect what he had hidden on the farm until he was ready for someone else to have it,” I said.

“Norring had ten damn years to find his briefcase;” Marino said. “Why did he wait so long to start looking?”

“1 suspect Norring has had Waddell watched from, the beginning,” Wesley said, “and that this surveillance was stepped up considerably over the past few months. The closer Waddell got to the execution, the less he had to lose, and the more likely he was to start talking. It’s possible someone was monitoring his phone conversation when he called Jennifer Deighton in November. And it’s possible that when word got to Norring, he panicked.”

“He should have,” Marino said. “I personally searched through all of Waddell’s belongings when we was working the case. The guy had next to nothing, and if anything belonging to him was back on the farm, we never found it.”

“And Norring would have known that,” I said.