He was vastly relieved as he gave me the information and I scribbled it down.

“I called you because I didn’t know where else to go,” he started talking again. “Can’t somebody do something to get me out of here?”

“I understand your bond has been set at five thousand dollars.”

“That’s just it! Like ten times what it usually is for this, according to the guy in my cell. I don’t have any money or any way to get it. Means I got to stay here until court, and that could be weeks. Months.” Tears welled in his eyes again, and he was terrified.

“Keith, do you use the Internet?” I said.

“The what?”

“Computers.”

“At the landfill I do. Remember, I was telling you about our satellite system.”

“Then you do use the Internet.”

He did not seem to know what that was.

“E-mail,” I tried again.

“We use GPS.” He looked confused. “And you know the truck that dumped the body? I’m pretty sure now it was definitely Cole’s, and the Dumpster may have come from a construction site. They pick up at a bunch of construction sites on South Side in Richmond. That would be a good place to get rid of something, on a construction site. Just pull up your car after hours and who’s to see?”

“Did you tell Investigator Ring this?” I asked.

Hate passed over his face. “I don’t tell him anything. Not anymore. Everything he’s been doing is just to set me up.”

“Why do you think he would want to set you up?”

“He’s got to arrest someone for this. He wants to be the hero.” He was suddenly evasive. “Says everybody else doesn’t know what they’re doing.” He hesitated. “Including you.”

“What else has he said?” I felt myself turning to cold, hard stone, the way I did when I had moved from anger to determined rage.

“See, when I was showing him around the house and all, he would talk. He really likes to talk.”

He took his cigarette butt and clumsily set it end-up on the table, so it would go out without burning Styrofoam. I helped him light another one.

“He told me you have this niece,” Pleasants went on. “And that she’s a real fox but has no more business in the FBI than you have being a chief medical examiner. Because. Well.”

“Go on,” I said in a controlled voice.

“Because she’s not into men. I guess he thinks you aren’t, either.”

“That’s interesting.”

“He was laughing about it, said he knew from personal experience that neither of you dated because he’d been around both of you. And that I should just sit back and watch what happens to perverts. Because the same thing was about to happen to me.”

“Wait one minute.” I stopped him. “Did Ring actually threaten you because you’re gay or he thinks you are?”

“My mama doesn’t know.” He hung his head. “But some people do. I’ve been in bars. In fact, I know Wingo.”