The Twelfth Card

by Jeffery Deaver

  Midwest--maybe Ohio. Where the other murder that fit the profile took place. "Call somebody at Ohio Corrections," Rhyme whispered to Cooper, who nodded and grabbed another phone.

  "What about Charlie Tucker, the guard who was killed? Boyd left around the time of the murder?"

  "Yes, sir, that's right."

  "There bad blood between them?"

  Pepper said, "Charlie worked under Thompson for a year 'fore he retired. Only Charlie was what we'd call a Bible thumper, a hard-shell Baptist. He'd lay chapter and verse on pretty thick to the condemned sometimes, tell 'em they was goin' to hell, and so on. Thompson didn't hold with that."

  "So maybe Boyd killed him to pay him back for making prisoners' lives miserable."

  My people . . .

  "Could've been."

  "What about the picture we sent? Was that Boyd?"

  "J. T. just showed it to me," Pepper said. "And, yeah, it could be him. Though he was bigger, fatter, I mean, back then. And he had a shaved head and goatee--lotta us did that, tryin' to look as mean as the prisoners."

  " 'Sides," the warden said, "we were looking for inmates, not guards."

  Which was my mistake, Rhyme thought angrily.

  "Well, damn." The voice of the warden again.

  "What's that, J. T.?"

  "My gal went to pull Boyd's personnel file. And--"

  "It's missing."

  "Sure is."

  "So he stole his record to cover up any connection to Charlie Tucker's murder," Sellitto said.

  "I'd reckon," J. T. Beauchamp said.

  Rhyme shook his head. "And he was worried about fingerprints because he'd been printed as a state employee, not a criminal."

  "Hold on," the warden drawled. A woman was speaking to him. He came back on the speakerphone. "We just heard from a fella at county records. Boyd sold the family house five years ago. Didn't buy anything else in the state. At least not under his name. Must've just took the cash and disappeared . . . . And nobody knows about any other relations of his."

  "What's his full name?" Rhyme asked.

  Pepper said, "Think his middle initial was G, but I don't know what it stood for." Then he added, "One thing I'll say for him, Thompson Boyd knew what he was doin'. He knew the EP backward and forward."

  "EP?"

  "The Execution Protocol. It's a big book we have, givin' all the details of how to execute somebody. He made ever'body who worked the detail memorize it, and made 'em walk around recitin' to themselves, 'I have to do it by the book, I have to do it by the book.' Thompson always said you can't never cut corners when it comes to death."

  *

  Mel Cooper hung up the phone.

  "Ohio?" Rhyme asked.

  The tech nodded. "Keegan Falls Maximum Security. Boyd only worked there for about a year. The warden remembers him because of the eye problem, and he did whistle. He said Boyd was a problem from the beginning. Got into fights with guards about the treatment of prisoners, and spent a lot of time socializing with inmates, which was against the rules. The warden thinks he was making contacts to use later to get jobs as a hitman."

  "Like hooking up with the man who hired him to kill that witness there."

  "Could be."

  "And that employment file? Stolen?"

  "Missing, yep. Nobody knows where he lived or anything else about him. Fell off the radar."

  Average Joe . . .

  "Well, he's not Texas's or Ohio's problem anymore. He's ours. Do the full search."

  "Right."

  Cooper ran the standard search--deeds, Department of Motor Vehicles, hotels, traffic tickets, taxes . . . everything. In fifteen minutes all the results were in. There were several listings of Thompson G. Boyd and one of T. G. Boyd. But their ages and descriptions weren't close to the suspect's. The tech also tried variant spellings of those names and had the same results.

  "AKAs?" Rhyme asked. Most professional perps, particularly contract killers, used also-known-as names. The ones they picked were usually like passwords for computers and ATMs--they were some variation on a name that meant something to the perp. When you found out what they were, you could kick yourself for the simplicity of the choice. But guessing them was usually impossible. Still, they tried: They transposed the given-and surnames ("Thompson" was, of course, more common as a last name). Cooper even tried an anagram generator to rearrange the letters in "Thompson Boyd," but came up with no hits in the databases.

  Nothing, Rhyme thought, inflamed with frustration. We know his name, we know what he looks like, we know he's in town . . .

  But we can't goddamn find him.

  Sachs squinted at the chart, cocked her head. She said, "Billy Todd Hammil."

  "Who?" Rhyme demanded.

  "The name he used to rent the safe house on Elizabeth Street."

  "What about it?"

  She flipped through a number of sheets of paper. She looked up. "Died six years ago."

  "Does it say where?"

  "Nope. But I'm betting Texas."

  Sachs called the prison once more and asked about Hammil. A moment later she hung up the phone and nodded. "That's it. Killed a clerk in a convenience store twelve years ago. Boyd supervised his execution. Seems like he's got this weird connection with the people he killed. His M.O. comes from the days when he was an executioner. Why not his identities too?"

  Rhyme didn't know, or care, about "weird connections," but whatever Boyd's motive, there was some logic to Sachs's suggestion. He barked, "Get the list of everybody he's executed and match it to DMV here. Try Texas first then we'll move on to other states."

  J. T. Beauchamp sent them a list of seventy-nine prisoners Thompson Boyd had put to death as an execution officer in Texas.

  "That many?" Sachs asked, frowning. Though Sachs would never hesitate to shoot to kill when it came to saving lives, Rhyme knew she had some doubts about the death penalty, because it was often meted out after trials involving circumstantial or faulty, and sometimes even intentionally altered, evidence.

  Rhyme thought of the other implication of the number of executions: that somewhere along the line of nearly eighty executions, Thompson Boyd had lost any distinction between life and death.

  What happens but they get themselves killed in this car accident . . . and Boyd, he didn't blink. Hell, he didn't even go to the funeral.

  Cooper matched the names of the male prisoners executed to government records.

  Nothing.

  "Shit," Rhyme snapped. "We'll have to find out the other states he worked and who he executed there. It'll take forever." Then a thought came to him. "Hold on. Women."

  "What?" Sachs asked.

  "Try the women he's executed. Variations on their names."

  Cooper took this, the smaller, list and ran the names, and all possible spellings, through the DMV computer.

  "Okay, may have something here," the tech said excitedly. "Eight years ago a woman named Randi Rae Silling--a prostitute--was executed in Amarillo for robbing and killing two of her johns. New York DMV's got one too, same last name, but it's a male, Randy with a Y and middle name R-A-Y. Right age and right description. Address in Queens--Astoria. Got a blue Buick Century, three years old."

  Rhyme ordered, "Have somebody in plain clothes take the composite picture around to some neighbors."

  Cooper called the deputy inspector--the head of the local precinct, the 114. This house covered Astoria, a largely Greek neighborhood. He explained about the case and then emailed him the picture of Boyd. The dep inspector said he'd send some street-clothes officers out to subtly canvass tenants in Randy Silling's apartment.

  For a tense half hour--with no word from the canvass team in Queens--Cooper, Sachs and Sellitto contacted public records offices in Texas, Ohio and New York, looking for any information they could find about Boyd or Hammil or Silling.

  Nothing.

  Finally they received a call back from the inspector at the 114. "Captain?" the man asked. Many senior officers still referred to Rhyme by
his old title.

  "Go ahead."

  "We've had two people confirm that your man lives at the DMV address," the man said. "What are you thinking of in terms of prioritizing our approaches, sir?"

  Brass, Rhyme sighed. He dispensed with any caustic responses to the bureaucrat-talk and settled for a slightly bemused, "Let's go nail his ass."

  Chapter Thirty

  A dozen Emergency Services Unit tactical officers were moving into position behind Thompson Boyd's six-story apartment building on Fourteenth Street in Astoria, Queens.

  Sachs, Sellitto and Bo Haumann were standing at the hastily set up command post behind an unmarked ESU van.

  "We're here, Rhyme," Sachs whispered into the stalk mike.

  "But is he there?" the criminalist asked impatiently.

  "We've got S and S in position . . . . Hold on. Somebody's reporting."

  A Search and Surveillance Unit officer came up to them.

  "Get a look inside?" asked Haumann.

  "Negative, sir. He's masked the front windows."

  The S and S man in Team One explained he'd gotten as close to the apartment's front windows as he dared; the second team was around back. The officer now added, "I could hear sounds, voices, water running. Children, it sounded like."

  "Kids, hell," Haumann muttered.

  "Might've been TV or radio. I just can't tell."

  Haumann nodded. "CP to S and S Two. Report."

  "S and S Two. Little crack beside the shade--not much, though. Nobody in the back bedroom I can see. But it's a narrow angle. Lights on in the front. Hear voices, I think. Music, K."

  "See kids' toys, anything?"

  "Negative. But I've only got a ten-degree view of the bedroom. That's all I can see, K."

  "Movement?"

  "Negative, K."

  "Roger. Infrared?" Infrared detectors can locate the position of animals, humans or other sources of heat inside a building.

  A third S and S technician was playing a monitor over the apartment. "I'm getting heat indications, but they're too weak to pinpoint the source, K."

  "Sounds, K?"

  "Creaks and moans. Could be the structure settling, utilities, HVAC. Or could be him walking around or shifting in a chair. Assume he's there but I can't tell you where. He's really got the place blacked out, K."

  "Okay, S and S, keep monitoring. Out."

  Sachs said into her mike, "Rhyme, you get any of that?"

  "And how could I get it?" came his irritated voice.

  "They think there's activity in his apartment."

  "Last thing we need is a firefight," he muttered. A tactical confrontation was one of the most effective ways to destroy trace and other clues at a crime scene. "We've got to secure as much evidence as we can--it could be our only chance to find out who hired him and who his partner is."

  Haumann looked over the apartment once again. He didn't seem pleased. And Sachs--who was half tactical officer at heart--could understand why. It would be a difficult takedown, requiring many officers. The unsub had two front, three back and six side windows. Boyd could easily leap through any one of them and try to escape. There was also a building next door, only four feet away--an easy jump from the roof if he made his way to the top. He could also have cover from behind the facade on the crown of the building and could target anyone below. Across the street, facing the killer's apartment, were other houses. If it came to a fight, a stray bullet could easily injure or kill a bystander. Boyd could also intentionally pepper those buildings with gunfire, hoping to inflict random injuries. Sachs was recalling his practice of targeting innocents solely for diversion. There was no reason to think he'd handle this situation any differently. They'd have to clear all these residences before the assault.

  Haumann radioed, "We just got somebody into the hallway. There're no cameras like Boyd had on Elizabeth Street. He won't know we're coming." The tactical cop added darkly, though, "Unless he's got some other way of telling. Which he very well may, knowing this prick."

  Sachs heard a hiss of breath next to her and turned. Decked out in body armor and absently touching the grip of his service pistol, snug in its holster, Lon Sellitto was examining the apartment. He too looked troubled. But Sachs knew immediately that it wasn't the difficulty of a residential takedown that was bothering him. She could see how torn he was. As a senior investigating detective, there was no reason for him to be on an entry team--in fact, given his paunchy physique and rudimentary weapons skills, there was every reason for him not to do a kick-in.

  But logic had nothing to do with the real reason for his being here. Seeing his hand rise once more compulsively to his cheek and worry the phantom bloodstain, and knowing that he was reliving the accidental discharge of his weapon yesterday, and Dr. Barry's being shot to death right in front of him, Sachs understood: This was Lon Sellitto's knuckle time.

  The expression had come from her father, who'd done plenty of courageous things on the force but had probably been the bravest during his last fight, against the cancer that ended his life, though hardly defeated him. His girl was a cop by then and he'd taken to giving her advice about the job. Once, he'd told her that sometimes she'd find herself in situations where there was nothing to do but stand up to a risk or challenge all by yourself. "I call it 'knuckle time,' Amie. Something you've got to muscle your way through. The fight might be against a perp, it might be against a partner. It might even be against the whole NYPD."

  Sometimes, he'd said, the hardest battle was within your own soul.

  Sellitto knew what to do. He had to be the first man through the door.

  But after the incident at the museum yesterday he was paralyzed with fear at the thought.

  Knuckle time . . . Would he stand up or not?

  Haumann now divided his entry officers into three teams and sent several others to the street corners to halt traffic and another one into the shadows beside the building's front door to intercept anybody who happened to be entering the building--and to be prepared to take down Boyd himself if he happened to wander outside on an errand, unsuspecting. One officer climbed up to the roof. Several more ESU cops secured the apartments next door to Boyd's--in case he tried to escape the way he'd done on Elizabeth Street.

  Haumann then glanced at Sachs. "You're going in with us?"

  "Yup," she replied. "Somebody from Crime Scene's got to secure the place. We still don't know who hired this SOB and we've got to find out."

  "Which team you want to be on?"

  "With whoever's going through the front door," she said.

  "That'd be Jenkins's."

  "Yes, sir." She then explained about the residences across the street and reminded them that Boyd might target the civilians living there in an attempt to escape. Haumann nodded. "I need somebody to clear those places, at least get people away from the front windows and keep 'em off the streets."

  Nobody wanted this job, of course. If ESU cops had been cowboys, Haumann was asking for somebody to volunteer to be cook.

  The silence was broken by a voice. "Hell, I'll take it." It was Lon Sellitto. "Perfect for an old guy like me."

  Sachs glanced at him. The detective had just flunked his knuckle time. His nerve had broken. He gave a carefree grin, maybe the saddest smile Sachs had ever seen in her life.

  Into his mike the ESU head said, "All teams, deploy to holding perimeter. And S and S, let me know the minute there's a change in the premises, K."

  "Roger. Out."

  Sachs said into her microphone, "We're going in, Rhyme. I'll let you know what happens."

  "Got it," he said tersely.

  Nothing more was said between them. Rhyme didn't like her going into combat. But he knew how driven she was, how any threat to an innocent infuriated her, how it was important for her to make sure people like Thompson Boyd didn't get away. This was part of her nature and he'd never suggested she stand down at times like this.

  Didn't mean he was going to be cheerful about it, though.

  B
ut then thoughts of Lincoln Rhyme faded as they started into position.

  Sachs and Sellitto were walking up the alley, she to join the entry team, he to continue on to the residences across the street and get the people there under cover. The lieutenant's phony grin was gone. The man's face looked puffy and was dotted with sweat, despite the cool temperature. He wiped it, scratched the invisible bloodstain and noticed her looking at him. "Fucking body armor. Hot."

  "Hate it," Sachs said. They continued steadily down the alley, until they got close to the back of Boyd's apartment, where the troops were deploying. Suddenly she grabbed Sellitto's arm and pulled him back. "Somebody's watching . . . " But as they stepped close to the building, Sachs tripped over a trash bag and went down hard on her leg. She gasped, wincing and cradling her knee.

  "You okay?"

  "Fine," she said, climbing to her feet with a grimace. She called into her radio, in a breathless voice, "Five Eight Eight Five, I saw movement in a second-floor window, rear of the building. S and S, can you confirm?"

  "No hostiles. That's one of our people you're seeing, K."

  "Roger. Out."

  Sachs started forward, limping.

  "Amelia, you're hurt."

  "Nothing."

  "Tell Bo."

  "It's not a problem."

  The fact that she suffered from arthritis was well known to the inner circle--Rhyme, Mel Cooper and Sellitto--but that was about it. She went to great lengths to hide her malady, worried that the brass would sideline her on a medical if they found out. She reached into her slacks pocket and pulled out a packet of painkillers, ripped it open with her teeth and swallowed the pills dry.

  Over the radio they heard Bo Haumann's voice: "All teams form up, K."

  Sachs moved forward to the main entry team. The limp was worse.

  Sellitto pulled her aside. "You can't go in."

  "It's not like I'm going to run him to ground, Lon. I'm just going to secure the scene."

  The detective turned toward the CP truck, hoping he'd find someone to ask about the situation, but Haumann and the others had already deployed.

  "It's better. It's fine." She limped forward.

  One of the officers on Team A called in a whisper to Sachs, "Detective, you ready?"

  "Yeah."

  "No, she's not." Sellitto turned to the officer. "She's getting the civvies out of the way. I'm going in with you guys."

  "You?"

  "Yeah, me. There a fucking problem?"

  "No, sir."