“Fine, fine.” Wooldridge waved a dismissive hand once more. “Are we done here, detective?”

“I don’t have any more questions at the moment, no. If I have any more I will let you know.”

“You will let Garrett know,” Wooldridge said. “I won’t have time for any more of this until after my Elaine’s funeral.”

Langdon and I stood. “Thank you for your time,” she said, to Wooldridge.

“There’s a security man in the hall. He’ll show you out.”

“I think we can make it down the stairs on our own, but thank you.”

“Fine. If you see Garrett downstairs, tell him to come up. I need him again.”

“We will.”

“Then goodbye, detective.” Wooldridge looked over at me. “And goodbye, Mr. Valdez.”

“Goodbye, sir,” I said.

“You’re wrong, you know.”

“Sir?”

“God exists. God exists and he sees what men do, and what they don’t. And he judges them accordingly, Mr. Valdez. When you meet up with Mr. Albert again, tell him that. God knows. God judges. And God punishes.”

“All right, I don’t know what the hell just went on in there, but I’m creeped the fuck out,” I said, as we left the Wooldridge mansion.

“Keep it together,” Langdon said.

“There’s something going on with him.”

“We don’t disagree. But you’re no good to me creeped out. I need to you to focus.”

We exited the grounds. “I am focused. I am focused on the fact I need a drink.”

“The Pump Room is three blocks away. We can get something there.”

“I’m charging it to my expense account.”

“You don’t have an expense account.”

“I do now.”

“Relax, Valdez. I’ll buy the first round. Fair enough?”

“Fine.”

“Now tell me, specifically, what creeped you out.”

“All the God stuff, for one.”

“You told me before that when you go on dates you get to theological issues.”

“That’s different from this.”

“How is it different?”

“That is friendly, flirty ‘oooh do you think God really exists’ cocktail chatter. What was coming out of Wooldridge was ‘sinners in the hands of an angry god’ level. He’s pissed.”

“His wife just died.”

“Yeah, and I think he blames Jimmy for it.”

“You think he dispatched her, and it failed.”

“It seems like it.”

“I pulled her death certificate data before we came over. It didn’t say anything about it.”

“They never do. ‘Failure to dispatch’ is never an official cause of death. It’s whatever was causing the need for dispatch in the first place.”

“Do you think Wooldridge is involved in Albert’s disappearance?”

“I don’t know. Maybe? He seems pissed off enough.”

“The man’s something like eighty years old. He’d been married for fifty-five years or some ridiculous number like that. If he wasn’t pissed off about his wife being dead his heart would probably have stopped from grief by now.”