Now such proceedings took place in the spacious new building next door, and as I drove past, heading to the back, I felt sad. Such constructions were a monument to rising crime, and I missed simpler times when I had first moved to Virginia and was awed by its old brick, and its old war that would not end. I had smoked back then. I supposed I romanticized the past like most people tend to do. But I missed smoking and waiting around in miserable weather outside a courthouse that barely had heat. Change made me feel old.

The sheriff’s department was the same red brick and white trim, its parking lot and jail surrounded by a fence topped with razor wire. Imprisoned within, two inmates in orange jumpsuits were wiping down an unmarked car they had just washed and waxed. They eyed me slyly as I parked in front, one of them popping the other with a shammy cloth.

“Yo. What’s going,” one of them muttered to me as I walked past.

“Good afternoon.” I looked at both of them.

They turned away, not interested in someone they could not intimidate, and I pulled open the front door. Inside, the department was modest on the verge of depressing, and like virtually all other public facilities in the world, had profoundly outgrown its environment. Inside were Coke and snack machines, walls plastered with wanted posters and a portrait of an officer slain while responding to a call. I stopped at the duty post, where a young woman was shuffling through paperwork and chewing on her pen.

“Excuse me,” I said. “I’m here to see Keith Pleasants.”

“Are you on his guest list?” Her contact lenses made her squint, and she wore pink braces on her teeth.

“He asked me to come, so I should hope I am.”

She flipped pages in a loose-leaf binder, stopping when she got to the right one.

“Your name.”

I told her as her finger moved down a page.

“Here you are.” She got up from her chair. “Come with me.”

She came around her desk and unlocked a door with bars in the window. Inside was a cramped processing area for fingerprints and mug shots, a banged-up metal desk manned by a heavyset deputy. Beyond was another heavy door with bars, and through it I could hear the noises of the jail.

“You’re gonna have to leave your bag here,” the deputy said to me. He got on his radio. “Can you get on over here?”

“Ten-four. On my way,” a woman answered back.

I set my pocketbook on the desk and dug my hands in the pockets of my coat. I was going to be searched and I did not like it.

“We got a little room here where they meet with their lawyers,” the deputy said, jabbing his thumb as if he were hitching a ride. “But some a these critters listen to ever word, and if that’s a problem, go upstairs. We got an area up there.”