Bolton’s mobile command post was a black RV with tinted windows. It was waiting for us, idling, when we came out onto New Sudbury Street.
Inside, two agents, Erdham and Fields, sat at a black-and-gray computer station that took up the right wall. On the tabletop was a serpent’s nest of cable, two computers, two fax machines, two laser-jet printers. Above the hutch was a bank of six monitors with a matching bank of six across from them on the left wall. Down at the end of the work center I could see digital receivers and recorders, a dual-deck VCR, audio- and videocasettes, diskettes, and CDs.
The left wall supported a small table and three captain’s chairs bolted to the wall. As the RV lurched into traffic, I fell into one and rested my hand on a small fridge.
“You take this thing on camping trips?” I said.
Bolton ignored me. “Agent Erdham, you have that writ?”
Erdham handed him a piece of paper and Bolton slipped it into his inside pocket.
He sat beside me. “You’ll be going into the meeting with Warden Lief and the chief prison psychologist, Doctor Dolquist. They’ll brief you on Hardiman, so there’s very little I can bother adding except to say that Hardiman is not to be taken lightly, no matter how pleasant he may seem. He’s suspected in three murders behind bars, but no one in the entire population of a maximum-security pen will come forward with evidence. These are multiple murderers and arsonists and serial rapists, and they’re all afraid of Alec Hardiman. You understand?”
I nodded.
“The cell in which the meeting will be held is completely wired. We’ll have both audio and video access from this control booth. We’ll be watching you every step of the way. Hardiman will have both legs manacled and at least one wrist. Even still, tread lightly with him.”
“Hardiman gave you consent for the audio and video?”
“The video isn’t up to him. Only the audio infringes upon his rights.”
“And did he give consent?”
He shook his large head. “No, he did not.”
“But you’re doing it anyway.”
“Yes. I’m not looking to take it into court. I could need to consult it from time to time as the case goes on. You have a problem with that?”
“Can’t think of one.”
The RV lurched again as it swung past Haymarket and made the turn onto 93, and I sat back and looked out the windows and wondered how I’d ever gotten myself into this.
Doctor Dolquist was a small but powerfully built man who’d only meet my eyes for a moment before glancing away at something else.
Warden Lief was tall, with his black head shaven so smooth it gleamed.
Dolquist and I were left alone for several minutes in Lief’s office while Lief met with Bolton to hammer out surveillance details. Dolquist looked at a photograph of Lief and two friends holding a marlin by a stucco hut under a blazing Florida sun while I waited for the silence to become less uncomfortable.
“You married, Mr. Kenzie?” He stared at the photo.
“Divorced. A long time ago.”
“Kids?”
“No. You?”
He nodded. “Two. It helps.”
“Helps what?”
He waved a hand toward the walls. “Dealing with this place. It helps to return home to children, to the clean smell of them.” He looked at me and then away.
“I’m sure it does,” I said.
“Your work,” he said, “must bring you into contact with a lot of what’s negative in humanity.”
“Depends on the case,” I said.
“How long have you been doing it?”
“Almost ten years.”
“You must have started young.”
“I did.”
“Do you see it as your life’s work?” That quick glance again, skipping across my face.
“I’m not sure yet. How about you, Doctor?”
“I believe so,” he said with extreme slowness. “I do believe so,” he said unhappily.
“Tell me about Hardiman,” I said.
“Alec,” he said, “is an unexplainable. He had a very proper upbringing, no history of child abuse or childhood trauma, and no early indicators of a diseased mind. As far as we know he didn’t torture animals or display morbid obsessions or act out in any notable way. He was very bright in school and quite popular. And then one day…”
“What?”
“We don’t know. Around the time he was sixteen or so, trouble started. Neighborhood girls who claimed he’d exposed himself to them. Cats strangled and hung from telephone wires near his house. Violent outbursts in the classroom. And then, nothing again. At seventeen, he reverted to an appearance of normalcy. And if it weren’t for the falling out with Rugglestone, who knows how long they would have gone on killing.”
“There had to be something.”
He shook his head. “I’ve worked with him for almost two decades, Mr. Kenzie, and I haven’t found it. Even now, to all outward appearances, Alec Hardiman seems a polite, reasonable, perfectly harmless man.”
“But he isn’t.”
He laughed, a sudden harsh sound in the small room. “He’s the most dangerous man I’ve ever met.” He lifted a pencil holder off Lief’s desk, looked at it absently and set it back down. “Alec has been HIV positive for three years.” He looked at me and for a moment, his eyes held. “Recently his condition has worsened into fullblown AIDS. He’s dying, Mr. Kenzie.”
“You think that’s why he called me here? Deathbed confessions, last-minute change in morals?”
He shook his head. “Not at all. Alec has no morals. Since he’s been diagnosed, he’s been kept out of general population. But I think Alec knew he’d contracted long before we did. In the two months leading up to his diagnosis, he raped at least ten men. At least ten. It’s my firm belief that he did this not to satisfy his sexual urges, but to satisfy his homicidal ones.”
Warden Lief stuck his head back in. “Show time.”
He handed me a pair of tight canvas gloves, and he and Dolquist donned pairs of their own.
“Keep your hands away from his mouth,” Dolquist said softly, his eyes on the floor.
And we left the office, none of us speaking as we took a long walk down an oddly hushed cellblock toward Alec Hardiman.
22
Alec Hardiman was forty-one years old, but looked fifteen years younger. His pale blond hair was plastered wetly across his forehead like a grade-schooler’s. His eyeglasses were small and rectangular—granny glasses—and when he spoke his voice seemed as light as air.