12

Over the next few days, I retained Nicholas Grueman, delivering to him my financial records and other information he requested, the health commissioner summoned me to his office to suggest that I resign, and the publicity would not end. But I knew much that I had not known even a week before.

It was Ronnie-Joe Waddell who died in the electric chair the night of December 13. Yet his identity remained alive and was wreaking havoc in the city. As best as could be determined, prior to Waddell's death his SID number in AFIS had been swapped with another's. Then the other person's SID number was dropped completely from the Central Computerized Records Exchange, or CCRE. This meant there was a violent offender at large who had no need of gloves when he committed his crimes. When his prints were run through AFIS, they would come back as a dead man's every time. We knew this nefarious individual left a wake of feathers and flecks of paint, but we could surmise almost nothing about him until January 3 of the new year.

On that morning, the Richmond Times-Dispatch ran a planted story about highly prized eiderdown and its appeal to thieves. At one-fourteen P.m., Officer Tom Lucero, head of the fictitious investigation, received his third call of the day.

“Hi. My name's Hilton Sullivan,” the voice said loudly.

“What can I do for you, sir?”

Lucero's deep voice asked.

“It's about the cases you're investigating. The eiderdown clothes and things that are supposedly hot with thieves. There was this article about it in the paper this morning. It said you're the detective.”

“Right”

“Well, it really pisses me off that the cops are so stupid.”

He got louder. “It said in the paper that since Thanksgiving this and that have been stolen from stores, cars, and homes in the greater Richmond metropolitan area. You know, comforters, a sleeping bag, three ski jackets, blah, blah, blah. And the reporter quoted several people.”

“What is your point, Mr. Sullivan?”

“Well, obviously the reporter got the victims' names from the cops. In other words, from you.”

"It's public information.”

"I don't really give a shit about that. I just want to know how come you didn't mention this victim, yours truly? You don't even remember my name, do you?”

"I'm sorry, sir, but I can't say that I do.”

"Figures. Some fucking asshole breaks into my condo and wipes me out, and other than smearing black powder everywhere - on a day when I was dressed in white cashmere, I might add - the cops don't do a thing. I'm one of your fucking cases.”

"When was your condo broken into?”

"Don't you remember? I'm the one who raised such a stink about my down vest. If it wasn't for me, you guys would never have even heard of eiderdown! When I told the cop that among other things my vest had been taken and it had cost me five hundred bucks on sale, you know what he said?”

"I have no idea, sir.”

"He said, What's it stuffed with, cocaine?’

And I said, 'No, Sherlock. Eider duck down.’

And he looked around nervous as hell and dropped his hand close to his nine-mil. The dumb-shit really thought there was some other person in my place named Eider and I'd just yelled at this person to duck down, like I was going to pull a gun or something. At that point I just left and-"

Wesley switched off the tape recorder.

We sat in my kitchen. Lucy was working out at my club again.

"The B-and-E this Hilton Sullivan's talking about was in fact reported by him on Saturday, December eleventh. Apparently, he'd been out of town, and when he returned to his condo that Saturday afternoon, he discovered that he'd been burglarized," Wesley explained.

"Where is his condo located?”

I asked.

"Downtown on West Franklin, an old brick building with condos that start at a hundred grand. Sullivan lives on the first floor. The perpetrator got in through an unsecured window.”

"No alarm system?”

"No.”

"What was stolen?”

"Jewelry, money, and a twenty-two revolver. Of course, that doesn't necessarily mean that Sullivan's revolver is the one that was used to kill Eddie Heath, Susan, and Donahue. But I think we're going to find that it is, because there's no question that our guy did the Band-E.”

"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.”