31

Lucas Welding. Write it down." Hardy was in his car, speeding north, talking to Glitsky. It was 10:30 and he'd left Catherine Bass fifteen minutes before. His right hand was sore from taking notes, but he remembered everything he'd written. "In 1984, he strangled and murdered his wife, Ginny. Got tried and convicted in San Francisco in '86, sentenced to LWOP."

"But he's out now?"

"Looks like."

"How'd that happen?"

"I don't know. But Mrs. Bass, Mooney's ex-wife, is a lawyer herself now and remembered Boscacci distinctly as the prosecutor. She's followed his career ever since. I'll bet you a million dollars that your Elizabeth Cary was on the same jury."

"You said you're in your car. Where are you?"

"Just passing the airport."

"Meet you at the Hall," Glitsky said. "Twenty minutes."

Since the ground floor of the Hall of Justice was the location of SFPD's Southern Station, the building was open. Hardy and Glitsky opened the front door together and passed through the metal detectors and security cops in the lobby. Lanier was already waiting for them in the hallway outside Glitsky's office, and the three of them filed into the small conference room behind the reception area.

By earlier that afternoon, they'd finally managed to set up a total of six borrowed computers for the use of the two General Work officers and the twenty-two others that both Jackman had provided and Glitsky had recruited out of their respective clerical staffs. All overtime expenses paid.

It had taken a good part of the afternoon to get the computers up and connected, but when Glitsky had left work that night, all of them had been in use. Six volunteers at a time worked the list of four hundred recently released convicts, while six others- armed with case numbers from the computer searches- went downstairs and under the building to Records, where they searched for the physical files on the Boscacci "hits."

By the time of Glitsky's departure earlier that night, out of the first 154 they'd identified seven cases where Boscacci had been the actual trial prosecutor. At 8:00 P.M., the second "shift" of twelve was scheduled to come in and continue through the night and then the next morning, until they got something.

But now the room was empty.

"Where is everybody?" Glitsky asked.

"They're all downstairs," Lanier said. "They got the case number on Welding five minutes after you called. Finding the physical records isn't so easy. It may be a while. He wasn't in your original four hundred, you know."

"So he didn't get out in the last two months," Glitsky said.

"Where'd they keep him?" Hardy asked.

"Corcoran, according to the computer."

Hardy threw a glance at Glitsky, came back to Lanier. "And he's out now?"

"Pretty much got to be if he's killing people, don't you think?"

Glitsky took Hardy's silent cue. "We call, tie it up. If it turns out this guy is the Executioner, we want to know everything about him. The warden gets a wake-up."

Hardy and Lanier followed him around the corner to his office, where he flipped through his Rolodex and picked up the telephone. After a short wait, he identified himself by name and rank and said he needed a record on one of the prison's inmates immediately. It was urgent.

Glitsky listened for a while, then said, "Yes, I realize that. But if he's the only one with that access at this time of night, then I need to talk to him." Another pause while the scar in Glitsky's lips went white. Then: "Could I get your name and rank, please? Thank you, Sergeant Gray. Listen, I could have the mayor of San Francisco call again in five minutes, and possibly even the governor after that, but that seems like a lot of unnecessary trouble. I'll take full responsibility."

Glitsky spelled his name, left his badge and telephone number, hung up. "I guess the warden likes his beauty rest," he said.

They heard the elevator and the scuffle of feet, and in a minute the small army of twelve volunteers had gathered again in the computer room. They'd brought up two large gray rolling trolleys, each about four by six feet wide and three feet high, and on them were piled what looked to be about twenty cardboard boxes. The lead guy, who was in uniform, saluted Glitsky. "This is the case, sir, or as much of it as we could find. Lucas Welding. Eighty-six. There's no room and worse light down there, so we thought we'd bring it up. What are we looking for?"

"The jurors," Glitsky said. "Also, just to be thorough, let's make sure Allan Boscacci tried the case."

Everyone, including Hardy, took a box and started going through the paper- endless, endless reams of paper, the complete record of a California murder trial. The boxes contained everything from the initial police reports to the autopsy and forensics information, to witness interviews, as well as all discovery, prosecution notes, expert witness testimony and background, the transcript of the trial itself. After fifteen minutes, one of the workers said, "I've got Boscacci. Here's the what-do-you-call-it, the front page."

"The caption page," Hardy said, although nobody looked up or seemed to care.

Glitsky jumped, though, and was looking at it. "Okay. So far so good." He flipped through a few of the following pages in that document, then closed it and handed the whole thing back. "Let's keep going," he said.

A long twenty-five minutes after that, Lanier's easy delivery broke the silence. "Here we go." He was sitting across the table from Glitsky, and slid the document across, while everyone else- some from out in the reception area- stopped what they were doing to look.

Glitsky read for a moment, then put a hand to his scar and pulled at it. "He's the one," he said in a hoarse and strangled tone. Then, clearing his throat, he read aloud. "Philip Wong, Michael Mooney, Edith Montrose, Morris Tollman."

"What about Elizabeth Cary?" Hardy asked.

Glitsky looked down, nodded. "Elizabeth Reed. That was her maiden name."

"Jesus Christ," someone whispered.

"I doubt it," Lanier said. "He wouldn't have come back for a murder trial." To a titter of nervous laughter.

But Glitsky was already punching numbers into the phone on the desk, a muscle working in his jaw. While he was waiting, another phone rang in his office. "Diz. That's the warden. Get it," he ordered. "Tell him I'll be right there." Hardy jumped.

"Marcel." Glitsky handed Lanier the conference room phone he'd been using. "That's Batiste. When he picks up, tell him what we've got and that I'll be right back. Now or sooner we're going to need eight teams at least, at least, to protect the people who are left." He was moving back to his office. "And when you're done, put out an all points on Welding ASAP."

In his own office, Glitsky strode in and grabbed the phone from Hardy. "Warden Fischer," he said. "This is Glitsky. Thanks for getting back to me. I don't know if you're familiar with these Executioner killings we've been having… Okay, great. In the last hour or so, we've developed a tentative ID on the suspect and believe he was staying at your place until recently. We're going to need all the information you have on him immediately- last known address, next of kin, the works. He went up in '86, LWOP. I know. I wondered about that, too. Welding. W-E-L-D-I-N-G. Lucas. Yeah, I'm sure. Why?"

Hardy watched Glitsky's face, already hard, turn to stone. The eyes narrowed, the lips went tight, the jaw muscle by his ear quivered. His hand went to his side and he pushed in as though trying to reposition his intestines. Then, for a long frozen moment, he ceased to move entirely. Finally, he asked, "You're sure?" Then, "Yes, of course, I see. Thank you."

He hung up, raised his head, saw Hardy standing there. "Lucas Welding is dead," he said.