The Twelfth Card (Lincoln Rhyme 6)

"Yes'm. And he was right good at it. Sometimes he'd give the condemned a song or two to send 'em off."

"What about his eyes?"

"That too," Pepper said. "Thompson had hisself bad eyes. The story is he was runnin' a electrocution--wasn't here--and somethin' went bad. Happened sometimes, when you'd use the chair. A fire started--"

"The man being executed?" Sachs asked, wincing.

"That's right, ma'am. Caught hisself on fire. He mighta been dead already, or unconscious. Nobody knows. He was still movin' round but they always do that. So Thompson runs in with a riot gun, gonna shoot the poor fella, put him out of his misery. Now, that's not part of protocol, I'll tell you. It's murder to kill the condemned before they die under the writ of execution. But Boyd was gonna do it anyway. Couldn't let one of 'his people' die like that. But the fire spread. Insulation on the wire or some plastic or somethin' caught and the fumes knocked Boyd out. He was blinded for a day or two."

"The inmate?" Sachs asked.

"Thompson didn't hafta shoot him. The juice did the trick."

"And he left five years ago?" Rhyme asked.

" 'Bout that," Pepper drawled. "Quit. Think he went up to some place, some prison, in the Midwest. Never heard nothin' 'bout him after that."

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."