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Chadwick’s father and decided to cut their losses. Val Chadwick would plead to second-degree murder. They said that Val Chadwick was really pissed off about that, called his father a coward where other people could hear him. His remorse seemed to be nearly invisible.
    Still, they thought the judge would go easy. Maybe he’d get ten years, be out in five. He’d still have a life.
    But sometimes judges fool you, even ones that belong to your club. Judge Tayloe, it turned out, was offended enough by Val Chadwick’s crime and lack of regret that he put aside any past or future favors from the Chadwick family.
    Val Chadwick got fifty years. He would, even with parole, spend most of his adult life in prison.
    They said things got somewhat messy in the courtroom after the weight of the sentence settled on Chadwick and his family. Screams and threats led to both Val and his father being led away in different directions. A photo in the paper the next day shows Chadwick’s father, his wide, flushed face in a grimace, his jaw set back, with two deputies gripping each arm firmly, as he’s led down the steps.
    Somehow, though, they got the court to set bail. It was for half a million, and Chadwick’s father posted it the next day. Val Chadwick spent exactly one night in jail.
    And then, Val Chadwick apparently decided he could not do the time.
    They found the boat drifting about twenty miles off Virginia Beach. It was a thirty-footer registered to the Chadwicks. Val supposedly had gone down there and taken the Unfiltered out by himself. There was a suicide note, and the anchor was missing.
    There was a lot of conjecture for several months, and people would claim they’d seen Val Chadwick here or there. Some clothing that appeared to have been his washed up on shore at Sandbridge that fall. Eventually even the most hardheaded knucklehead on the Hill accepted that, faced with a lifetime in prison, young Val just couldn’t take it.
    David Junior was an only child. I think his mother kind of lost it after the shooting, and she was in and out of Central State, and then committed for good. David Junior, like Dewey Tate, wound up being haphazardly reared by an aunt. I lost track of him, just knew he left right after his senior year and joined the Army. One day, when I was in college, somebody told me he had become a cop.
    When I’d run into him from time to time over the years, we never had much to say, and I can’t really blame him for treating my suggestion that we “catch up” as the bullshit suck-up ploy that it is.

    I have to write a story about the arrest, after, of course, posting everything I knew to our free Web site.
    I can feed the Web monster from my laptop, but before I go back to the office, I do want to make at least a token effort at contacting the girl Andi knows from high school.
    I call around noon and am semi-surprised when the girl, Stephanie, answers.
    I explain quickly that I’m Andi Black’s father and that Andi said she knew Isabel Ducharme. And could I talk with her just a bit, to get some idea of what Isabel was like.
    She surprised me by saying, “Sure. I don’t want to go back there anyhow. All those creeps hanging out, all running up at once every time somebody tries to get in or out.”
    She doesn’t seem to lump me with all the other creeps, maybe because it’s just me and not the pack, maybe because of the Andi connection. Either way, I’m grateful.
    We meet at a place off campus that’s vegan. Tobacco is about the only vegetable I have much use for, so I order some kind of organic tea and nibble on the club crackers.
    Stephanie says her parents want her to come home. They probably didn’t want her to come to VCU to start with, or at least they wanted her to live at home. I see their ilk every fall, the parents parking loaded-down SUVs and pickups beside Monroe Park, eyeing the bums over there, looking around at all the old buildings and the art students with their pink-and-green hair,