"Prints were recovered?”
"A number of them. The city had them, and you know how their backlog is. With all the homicides, B-and-Es aren't a top priority. In this instance, the latents had been processed and were just sitting. Pete intercepted them right after Lucero got the call. Vander's already run them through the system. He got a hit in exactly three seconds.”
"Waddell again.”
Wesley nodded.
"How far is Sullivan's condo from Spring Street?”
"Within walking distance. I think we know where our guy escaped from.”
"You're checking out recent releases?”
"Oh, sure. But we're not going to find him in a stack of paper on somebody's desk. The warden was too careful for that. Unfortunately, he's also dead. I think he sent this inmate back out on the street, and the first thing he did was burglarize a condominium and probably find himself a set of wheels.”
"Why would Donahue free an inmate?”
"My theory is that the warden needed some dirty work done. So he selected an inmate to be his personal operative and set the animal loose. But Donahue made a slight tactical error. He picked the wrong guy, because the person who's committing these killings is not going to be controlled by anyone. My suspicion, Kay, is that Donahue never intended for anyone to die, and when Jennifer Deighton turned up dead, he freaked.”
"He was probably the one who called my office and identified himself as John Deighton.”
"Could very well be. The point is that Donahue's intention was to have Jennifer Deighton's house ransacked because someone was looking for something perhaps communications from Waddell. But a simple burglary isn't enough fun. The warden's little pet likes to hurt people.”
I thought of the indentations in the carpet of Jennifer Deighton's living room, the injuries to her neck, and the fingerprint recovered from her dining room chair.
"He may have sat her in the middle of her living room and stood behind her with his arm yoked around her neck while he interrogated her.”
"He may have done that to get her to tell him where things were. But he was being sadistic. Possibly forcing her to open her Christmas presents was also sadistic," said Wesley.
"Would someone like this go to the trouble to disguise her death as a suicide by placing her body in her car?” I asked.
"He might. This guy's been in the system. He's not interested in getting caught, and it's probably a challenge to see who he can fool. He eradicated bite marks from Eddie Heath's body. If he ransacked Jennifer Deighton's house, he left no evidence. The only evidence he left in Susan's case was two twenty-two slugs and a feather. Not to mention, the guy altered his fingerprints.”
"You think that was his idea?”
"It was probably something that the warden cooked up, and swapping records with Waddell may simply have been a matter of convenience. Waddell was about to be executed. If I wanted to trade an inmate's prints with someone, I'd choose Waddell's. Either the inmate's latents are going to come back to someone who is dead or - and this is more likely - eventually the dead person's records will be purged from the State Police computers, so if my little helper is messy and leaves prints somewhere, they aren't going to be identified at all," I stared at him, dumbfounded.
"What?” Surprise flickered in his eyes.
"Benton, do you realize what we're saying? We're sitting here talking about computer records that were altered before Waddell died. We're talking about a burglary and the murder of a little boy that were committed before Waddell was dead. In other words, the warden's operative, as you call him, was released before Waddell was executed.”
"I don't believe there can be a question about that.”
"Then the assumption was that Waddell was going to die," I pointed out.
"Christ.”
Wesley flinched. "How could anyone be certain? The governor can intervene literally at the last minute.”
"Apparently, someone knew that the governor wasn't going to.”
"And the only person who could know that with certainty is the governor,” he finished the thought for me.
I got up and stood before the kitchen window. A male cardinal pecked sunflower seeds from the feeder and flew off in a splash of blood red.
“Why?” I asked without turning around. “Why would the governor have a special interest in Waddell?”
“I don't know.”
“If it's true, he won't want the killer caught. When people get caught, they talk.”
Wesley was silent.
“Nobody involved will want this person caught. And nobody involved will want me on the scene. It will be much better if I resign or am fired - if the cases are screwed up as much as possible. Patterson is tight with Norring.”
“Kay, we've got two things we don't know yet. One is motive. The other is the killer's own agenda. This guy is doing his own thing, beginning with Eddie Heath.”
I turned around and faced him. “I think he began with Robyn Naismith. I believe this monster has studied her crime scene photographs, and either consciously or subconsciously re-created one of them when he assaulted Eddie Heath and propped his body against a Dumpster.”
“That could very well be,” Wesley said, staring off. “But how could an inmate get access to Robyn Naismith's scene photographs? Those would not be in Waddell's prison jacket.”
“This may be just one more thing that Ben Stevens helped with. Remember, I told you that he was the one who got the photos from Archives. He could have had copies made. The question is why would the photos be relevant? Why would Donahue or someone else even ask for them?”
“Because the inmate wanted them. Maybe he demanded them. Maybe they were a reward for special services.”
“That is sickening,” I said with quiet anger.
“Exactly.”
Wesley met my eyes. “This goes back to the killer's agenda, his needs and desires. It is very possible that he'd heard a lot about Robyn's case. He may have known a lot about Waddell, and it would excite him to think about what Waddell had done to his victim. The photographs would be a turn-on to someone who has a very active and aggressive fantasy life that is devoted to violent, sexualized thought. It is not farfetched to suppose that this person incorporated the scene photographs - one or more of them - into his fantasies. And then suddenly he's free, and he sees a young boy walking in the dark to a convenience store. The fantasy becomes real. He acts it out.”
“He re-created Robyn Naismith's death scene?”
“Yes.”
“What do you suppose his fantasy is now?”
“Being hunted.”
“By us?”
“By people like us. I'm afraid he might imagine that he is smarter than everybody else and no one can stop him. He fantasizes about games he can play and murders he might commit that would reinforce these images he entertains. And for him, fantasy is not a substitute for action but a preparation for it.”
“Donahue could not have orchestrated releasing a monster like this, altering records, or anything else without help,” I said.
“No. I'm sure he got key people to cooperate, like someone at State Police headquarters, maybe a records person with the city and even the Bureau. People can be bought if you have something on them. And they can be bought with cash.”
“Like Susan.”
“I don't think Susan was the key person. I'm more inclined to suspect that Ben Stevens was. He's out in the bars. Drinks, parties. Did you know he's into a little recreational coke when he can get it?”
“Nothing would surprise me anymore.”
“I've got a few guys who have been asking a lot of questions. Your administrator has a life-style he can't afford. And when you screw with drugs, you end up screwing with bad people. Stevens's vices would have made him an easy mark for a dirtbag like Donahue. Donahue probably had one of his henchmen make a point of running into Stevens in a bar and they start talking. Next thing, Stevens has just been offered a way to make some pretty decent change.”<
br />
“What way, exactly?”
“My guess is to make sure Waddell wasn't printed at the morgue, and to make sure the photograph of his bloody thumbprint disappeared from Archives. That was probably just the beginning.”
“And he enlisted Susan.”
“Who wasn't willing but had major financial problems of her own.”
“So who do you think was making the payoffs?”
“They were probably handled by the same person who originally made Stevens's acquaintance and sucked him into this. One of Donahue's guys, maybe one of his guards.”
I remembered the guard named Roberts who had given Marino and me the tour. I remembered how cold his eyes were.
“Saying the contact is a guard,” I said, “then who was this guard meeting with? Susan or Stevens?”
“My guess is with Stevens. Stevens wasn't going to trust Susan with a lot of cash. He's going to want to shave his share off the top because dishonest people believe everybody is dishonest.”
“He meets the contact and gets the cash,” I said. “Then Ben would meet with Susan to give her a cut?”
“That's probably what the scenario was Christmas Day when she left her parents' house ostensibly to visit a friend. She was going to meet Stevens, only the killer got to her first.”
I thought of the cologne I smelled on her collar and her scarf, and I remembered Stevens's demeanor when I'd confronted him in his office the night I was looking through his desk.
“No,” I said. “That's not how it went.”
Wesley just looked at me.
“Stevens has several qualities that would set Susan up for what happened,” I said. “He doesn't care about anyone but himself. And he's a coward. When things get hot, he's not going to stick his neck out. His first impulse is to let someone else take the fall.”
“Like he's doing in your case by badmouthing you and stealing files.”
“A perfect example,” I said.
“Susan deposited the thirty-five hundred dollars in early December, a couple of weeks before Jennifer Deighton's death.”
“That's right.”
“All right, Kay. Let's go back a bit. Susan or Stevens or both of them tried to break into your computer days after Waddell's execution. We've speculated that they were looking for something in the autopsy report that Susan could not have observed firsthand during the post.”
“The envelope he wanted buried with him.”
“I'm still stumped over that. The codes on the receipts do not confirm what we'd speculated about earlier - that the restaurants and tollbooths are located between Richmond and Mecklenburg, and that the receipts were from the transport that brought Waddell from Mecklenburg to Richmond fifteen days prior to his execution. Though the dates on the receipts are consistent with the time frame, the locations are not. The codes come back to the stretch of I-95 between here and Petersburg.”
“You know, Benton, it very well may be that the explanation for the receipts is so simple that we've completely overlooked it,” I said.
“I'm all ears.”
“Whenever you go anywhere for the Bureau, I imagine you have the same routine I do when traveling for the state. You document every expense and save every receipt. If you travel often, you tend to wait until you can combine several trips on one reimbursement voucher to cut down on the paperwork. Meanwhile, you're keeping your receipts somewhere.”
“All that makes good sense in terms of explaining the receipts in question,” Wesley said. “Someone on the prison staff, for example, had to go to Petersburg. But how did the receipts then turn up in Waddell's back pest?” I thought of the envelope with its urgent plea that it accompany Waddell to the grave. Then I recalled a detail that was as poignant as it was mundane. On the afternoon of Waddell's execution, his mother had been allowed a two-hour visit with him.
“Benton, have you talked to Ronnie Waddell's mother?”
“Pete went to see her in Suffolk several days ago. She's not feeling particularly friendly or cooperative toward people like us. In her eyes, we're the ones who sent her son to the chair.”
“So she didn't reveal anything significant about Waddell's demeanor when she visited him the afternoon of his execution?”
“Based on what little she said, he was very quiet and frightened. One interesting point, though. Pete asked her what had happened to Waddell's personal effects. She said that Corrections gave her his watch and ring and explained that he had donated his books, poetry, and so on to the N-double-A-C-P.”
“She didn't question that?” I asked.
“No. She seemed to think it made sense for Waddell to do that.”
“Why?”
“She doesn't read or write. What's important is that she was lied to, as were we when Vander tried to track down personal effects in hopes of getting latent prints. And the origin of these lies most likely was Donahue.”
“Waddell knew something,” I said. “For Donahue to want every scrap of paper that Waddell had written on and every letter ever sent to him, then there must be something that Waddell knew that certain people don't want anyone else to know.”
Wesley was silent.
Then he said, “What did you say is the name of the cologne Stevens wears?”
“Red.”
“And you're fairly certain this is what you smelled on Susan's coat and scarf?”
“I wouldn't swear to it in court, but the fragrance is quite distinctive.”
“I think it's time for Pete and me to have a little prayer meeting with your administrator.”
“Good. And I think I can help get him in the proper frame of mind if you'll give me until noon tomorrow.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Probably make him a very nervous man,” I said.
I was working at the kitchen table early that evening when I heard Lucy drive into the garage, and I got up to greet her. She was dressed in a navy blue warm-up suit and one of my ski jackets, and was carrying a gym bag.
“I'm dirty,” she said, pulling away from my hug, but not before I smelled gun smoke in her hair. Glancing down at her hands, I saw enough gunshot residues on the right one to make a trace element analyst ecstatic.
“Whoa,” I said as she started to walk off. “Where is it?”
“Where's what?” she asked innocently.
“The gun...
Reluctantly, she withdrew my Smith and Wesson from her jacket pocket.
“I wasn't aware you had a license for carrying a concealed weapon,” I said, taking the revolver from her and making sure it was unloaded.
“I don't need one if I'm carrying it concealed in my own house. Before that I had it on the car seat in plain view. “
“That's good but not good enough, “I said quietly. “Come on.”
Wordlessly, she followed me to the kitchen table, and we sat down.
“You said you were going to Westwood to work out,” I said.
“I know that's what I said.”
“Where have you been, Lucy?”
“The Firing Line on Midlothian Turnpike. It's an indoor range.”
“I know what it is. How many times have you done this?”
“Four times.” She looked me straight in the eye.
“My God Lucy.”
“Well, what am I supposed to do? Pete's not going to take me anymore.”
“Lieutenant Marino is very, very busy right now,” I said, and the remark sounded so patronizing that I was embarrassed. “You're aware of the problems,” I added.
“Sure I am. Right now he's got to stay away. And if he stays away from you, he stays away from me. So he's out on the street because there's some maniac on the loose who's killing people like your morgue supervisor and the prison warden. At least Pete can take care of himself. Me? I've been shown how to shoot one lousy time Gee, thanks a lot. That's like giving me one tennis lesson and then entering me in Wimbledon.”
“You're overreacting.”
“No. The problem is you
're under reacting.”
“Lucy...”
“How would you feel if I told you that every time I come visit you, I never stop thinking about that night?”
I knew exactly which night she meant, though over the years we had managed to go on as if nothing had happened.
“I would not feel good if I knew you were upset by anything that has to do with me,” I said.
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