"Uh-Huh" the sheriff said. That might have meant he wondered if they'd come up here to fool around. Rules or no rules, Justin wouldn't have minded. But Cochrane was also thinking of something else. "You weren't by any chance up here while it was raining, were you?"
They were white. He had to be careful how he questioned them. But Justin knew what he meant. He wanted to know if they had anything to do with the Negro and the assault rifle. That was what they got for being strangers. They both shook their heads at the same time. "You can ask my grandmother and Mr. and Mrs. Snodgrass," Beckie said. "Besides, I would have drowned if I went out in that."
"My uncle will tell you I was with him all the time," Justin said.
"Another stranger," Sheriff Cochrane said. But he went on, "Well, I've known the Snodgrasses since dirt. They wouldn't have any truck with a thing like this, that's a fact." He got to his feet. "You kids come on back to the car with me. I'll take you into town."
"What about Charlie?" Justin asked.
Sheriff Cochrane looked back at the janitor's body. "He's not going anywhere," he said, and Justin couldn't very well argue with that. The sheriffs voice took on the snap of command: "Come on, I told you."
Down Jephany Knob they went, all of them skidding when they hit slick patches of mud. Nobody fell, which Justin took for a minor miracle. The sheriff started to open the back door to the bright red car, then changed his mind and opened the front door instead.
"Crowd in beside me," he said. "If I put you in back, everybody who sees you in there'll figure I've jugged you, and I've got no call to do that." As with most police cars, this one had a fine metal grill between front seat and back to make sure prisoners didn't kick up any trouble.
The front seat was crowded with three people in it. Justin, in the middle, didn't mind getting squeezed against Beckie.
Sheriff Cochrane was a different story. He smelled of tobacco, and the pistol on his right hip was an uncomfortable lump. Justin was glad it wasn't more than a couple of minutes' ride back to Elizabeth.
Cochrane stopped the car at the corner of Route 14 and Prunty. "Guess I'll let the two of you out right here, if that's okay," he said.
"Sure," Beckie said, and got out in a hurry. Justin slid out after her. The sheriffs car headed on up toward the courthouse. "Shall we go back to the Snodgrasses'?" Beckie asked.
Justin shook his head. "Let's just wait here for a little bit." She looked puzzled, but she didn't say no.
Inside of ten minutes, the sheriffs car raced down Route 14 toward Jephany Knob again. This time, Sheriff Cochrane had his deputy along with him. "Oh," Beckie said. "Is that what you were looking for?"
"Yeah," he answered. "Weren't you?"
"I guess," she said. "I'm not from here, so I don't know for sure—how much trouble is what we found going to cause?"
Even though Justin wasn't really from this alternate's Virginia, either, answering that was easy as pie. "Lots," he said.
"Charlie?" Mrs. Snodgrass said. "Charlie up there on the knob with a rifle? I don't believe it."
"I don't want to believe it," Mr. Snodgrass said, which wasn't the same thing at all. "If Charlie could do a thing like that. . ."
"Ungrateful, is what it is," his wife said. "Everybody in town treated him almost like he was one of us."
That almost was the problem. Beckie could hear it, and could hear that it was wrong. By all the signs, nobody born and raised in Virginia could. She thought about saying something, but she was sure nobody would listen to her. She'd hoped her grandmother might, but Gran was nodding along with what Mrs. Snodgrass said—for once, she'd found something she agreed with. You could take the young woman out of Virginia, but taking Virginia out of the young woman was much harder. Virginia's attitudes stayed in Gran even though she wasn't young any more.
"If things are like that here," Mr. Snodgrass said, "what's it like places where they have lots of colored people?"
"The TV hasn't talked about anything bad," his wife said.
"It wouldn't, not unless things are so bad it can't pretend they're good," he said darkly.
"Maybe the sickness has something to do with keeping everything else quiet," Beckie said.
"Maybe it does. I wouldn't be surprised," Mr. Snodgrass said. "And when you've got to go and thank a disease for something, you know you're in a pile of trouble." Beckie wished she could think that was wrong, too, but she feared it was much too right.
Late that afternoon, somebody rang the doorbell. When Mrs. Snodgrass opened the door, she exclaimed in surprise—it wasn't Mr. Brooks and Justin, and it wasn't any of her neighbors, either. "Who are you?" she asked, her voice a startled squeak.
"We're from the Virginia Bureau of Investigation," one of the men at the door said in a hard, flat voice. "Here is my identification."
"And mine," another man said.
"We're here to see a Miss, uh, Rebecca Royer. Is she staying at this address?" yet another man added.
"Yes, she is," Mrs. Snodgrass answered. She turned and raised her voice: "Beckie! Three men from the VBI to see you!"
Beckie wanted to see men from the VBI, or even one man from the VBI, about as much as she wanted to lose her appendix without anesthetics. Nobody cared what she wanted, though. She was just a foreigner here, and Virginia, as Sheriff Cochrane had reminded her and Justin, was at war. If she gave these people trouble, they could give her more and worse. "Here I am," she said.
In came the men from the Virginia Bureau of Investigation. They weren't quite so alike as three peas in a pod, but they came close. They wore sober suits, two of gray, one of navy. Their hair was cut short, military style. They were about the same size, and they all had serious expressions. The one in the blue suit said, "Miss Royer, I am Senior Agent Jefferson. With me are Agent Madison and Agent Tyler." They all flashed badges. Jefferson's was gold, the other two silver. The senior agent went on, "May I see your passport, please?"
"Here." Beckie pulled it out of her purse. When you were in a foreign state, you always had to have it with you. She knew that.
Senior Agent Jefferson didn't just examine the passport. He took a jeweler's loupe from his pocket and stuck the magnifier in front of his eye. Even that didn't satisfy him. He used some kind of handheld electronic sniffer on the passport, too. Only after a green light came on did he grudgingly hand the booklet back. "This does appear to be genuine," he said. "What is the purpose of your visit to Virginia?"
"My grandmother grew up in Elizabeth," Beckie answered. "She and Mrs. Snodgrass are cousins."
"That checks out," Agent Tyler said—Beckie thought the one on Jefferson's left was Tyler, anyhow.
"Well, it would, whether or not. The other side isn't about to miss that kind of trick," the senior agent said.
"What other side?" Beckie asked.
Jefferson didn't answer her, or maybe he did: "What was the purpose of your stops in Ohio prior to entering Virginia?"
They think Fm a spy. The certainty she was right filled Beckie with fear. They even think Gran's a spy. If that didn't prove they'd never had thing one to do with Beckie's grandmother, nothing ever would. "Two of Gran's sisters live in Ohio," she said, as calmly as she could. "We stayed with them before we came here."
"That also checks," Agent Madison said.
"I told you—it would." Senior Agent Jefferson seemed to make a career out of not letting anything impress him. He turned back to Beckie. "And by chance you were one of the people involved in the discovery of Charles Clark's body?"
"If that's what his last name was. I never knew. Nobody here ever used it." Beckie couldn't resist the little sarcastic dig.
She might have done better to let it go. Jefferson looked at her with no expression at all on his face. "What is your opinion of Virginia's social structure, Miss Royer?"