New Kent County

Mrs. Washington was a widow.

She'd been married to the wealthiest man in Kent County, a Colonel Custis.

Yes, the name is familiar.

She told me something very enlightening.

Kind of reminds me of the broader pattern of how these Republican officials act when it comes to infrastructure.

You know, we set out to improve I-64 over in New Kent County.

A little less time staring at those brake lights if you're going between Richmond and the Tidewater region.

Construction should be complete soon, by the way, by next summer.

Yeah.

And like I drove up here on 64 through New Kent and they put the cameras on moving trucks now and they move these trucks all over the place.

And the zone is 70 miles per hour.

And then sometimes it's 60.

Fauquier, 22,000 tickets.

But then this is what I was talking about.

New Kent, that speed trap on 64, 106,000 tickets.

Suffolk, 118,000 tickets.

Uh, they are 18 and 21 when they vanish on the way to Virginia Beach.

Daniel's car, a gold 1972 Chevy Nova, is later found abandoned at the westbound Interstate 64 rest stop in New Kent County, Virginia.

It's unclear whether the two of them are gonna be killed here or elsewhere, but both the driver and passenger side doors are unlocked.

The keys are still in the ignition.

So ding, there's our first, there's our first comparison.

She learns that an abandoned car has been found at the New Kent County rest stop on I-64, and she rushes out there to view it while it is in situ.

Ding.

Ding.

[laughs] Like, it, it's, it's still looking and feeling like summer out here.

Mm-hmm.

And so that wraps up the first chapter of the book, and already you can see that there are a number of similarities between this fictionalized crime scene and the actual real-life crime scene in which Annamaria Phelps and Daniel Lauer's car was found at the New Kent County rest stop.

Bill, any color commentary you'd like to add at this point, or [laughs] should we move forward?

James Armistead was born into slavery in Virginia around seventeen forty-eight or seventeen forty-nine.

He was owned by William Armistead, a plantation owner in New Kent County.

And in seventeen eighty-one, with the war raging through Virginia and both armies desperately seeking intelligence, James did something extraordinary.

He volunteered to become a spy.

Washington, for his part, was drawn to her warmth, her refinement, and her ability to navigate the subtleties of social life that had long eluded him.

They were married on a bright January day in 1759 at her estate, known as the White House Plantation near New Kent.

The union was both personal and practical.

With Martha came considerable wealth and the management of vast lands and enslaved workers.