The Twelfth Card

J. T. Beauchamp sent them a list of seventy-nine prisoners Thompson Boyd had put to death as an execution officer in Texas.

“That many?” Sachs asked, frowning. Though Sachs would never hesitate to shoot to kill when it came to saving lives, Rhyme knew she had some doubts about the death penalty, because it was often meted out after trials involving circumstantial or faulty, and sometimes even intentionally altered, evidence.

Rhyme thought of the other implication of the number of executions: that somewhere along the line of nearly eighty executions, Thompson Boyd had lost any distinction between life and death.

What happens but they get themselves killed in this car accident…and Boyd, he didn’t blink. Hell, he didn’t even go to the funeral.

Cooper matched the names of the male prisoners executed to government records.

Nothing.

“Shit,” Rhyme snapped. “We’ll have to find out the other states he worked and who he executed there. It’ll take forever.” Then a thought came to him. “Hold on. Women.”

“What?” Sachs asked.

“Try the women he’s executed. Variations on their names.”

Cooper took this, the smaller, list and ran the names, and all possible spellings, through the DMV computer.

“Okay, may have something here,” the tech said excitedly. “Eight years ago a woman named Randi Rae Silling – a prostitute – was executed in Amarillo for robbing and killing two of her johns. New York DMV’s got one too, same last name, but it’s a male, Randy with a Y and middle name R-A-Y. Right age and right description. Address in Queens – Astoria. Got a blue Buick Century, three years old.”

Rhyme ordered, “Have somebody in plain clothes take the composite picture around to some neighbors.”

Cooper called the deputy inspector – the head of the local precinct, the 114. This house covered Astoria, a largely Greek neighborhood. He explained about the case and then emailed him the picture of Boyd. The dep inspector said he’d send some street-clothes officers out to subtly canvass tenants in Randy Silling’s apartment.

For a tense half hour – with no word from the canvass team in Queens – Cooper, Sachs and Sellitto contacted public records offices in Texas, Ohio and New York, looking for any information they could find about Boyd or Hammil or Silling.

Nothing.

Finally they received a call back from the inspector at the 114. “Captain?” the man asked. Many senior officers still referred to Rhyme by his old title.

“Go ahead.”

“We’ve had two people confirm that your man lives at the DMV address,” the man said. “What are you thinking of in terms of prioritizing our approaches, sir?”

Brass, Rhyme sighed. He dispensed with any caustic responses to the bureaucrat-talk and settled for a slightly bemused, “Let’s go nail his ass.”

Chapter Thirty

A dozen Emergency Services Unit tactical officers were moving into position behind Thompson Boyd’s six-story apartment building on Fourteenth Street in Astoria, Queens.

Sachs, Sellitto and Bo Hauma

“We’re here, Rhyme,” Sachs whispered into the stalk mike.

“But is he there?” the criminalist asked impatiently.

“We’ve got S and S in position… Hold on. Somebody’s reporting.”

A Search and Surveillance Unit officer came up to them.

“Get a look inside?” asked Hauma

“Negative, sir. He’s masked the front windows.”

The S and S man in Team One explained he’d gotten as close to the apartment’s front windows as he dared; the second team was around back. The officer now added, “I could hear sounds, voices, water ru

“Kids, hell,” Hauma

“Might’ve been TV or radio. I just can’t tell.”

Hauma

“S and S Two. Little crack beside the shade – not much, though. Nobody in the back bedroom I can see. But it’s a narrow angle. Lights on in the front. Hear voices, I think. Music, K.”

“See kids’ toys, anything?”

“Negative. But I’ve only got a ten-degree view of the bedroom. That’s all I can see, K.”

“Movement?”

“Negative, K.”

“Roger. Infrared?” Infrared detectors can locate the position of animals, humans or other sources of heat inside a building.

A third S and S technician was playing a monitor over the apartment. “I’m getting heat indications, but they’re too weak to pinpoint the source, K.”

“Sounds, K?”

“Creaks and moans. Could be the structure settling, utilities, HVAC. Or could be him walking around or shifting in a chair. Assume he’s there but I can’t tell you where. He’s really got the place blacked out, K.”

“Okay, S and S, keep monitoring. Out.”

Sachs said into her mike, “Rhyme, you get any of that?”

“And how could I get it?” came his irritated voice.

“They think there’s activity in his apartment.”

“Last thing we need is a firefight,” he muttered. A tactical confrontation was one of the most effective ways to destroy trace and other clues at a crime scene. “We’ve got to secure as much evidence as we can – it could be our only chance to find out who hired him and who his partner is.”

Hauma

Hauma

Sachs heard a hiss of breath next to her and turned. Decked out in body armor and absently touching the grip of his service pistol, snug in its holster, Lon Sellitto was examining the apartment. He too looked troubled. But Sachs knew immediately that it wasn’t the difficulty of a residential takedown that was bothering him. She could see how torn he was. As a senior investigating detective, there was no reason for him to be on an entry team – in fact, given his paunchy physique and rudimentary weapons skills, there was every reason for him not to do a kick-in.

But logic had nothing to do with the real reason for his being here. Seeing his hand rise once more compulsively to his cheek and worry the phantom bloodstain, and knowing that he was reliving the accidental discharge of his weapon yesterday, and Dr. Barry’s being shot to death right in front of him, Sachs understood: This was Lon Sellitto’s knuckle time.

The expression had come from her father, who’d done plenty of courageous things on the force but had probably been the bravest during his last fight, against the cancer that ended his life, though hardly defeated him. His girl was a cop by then and he’d taken to giving her advice about the job. Once, he’d told her that sometimes she’d find herself in situations where there was nothing to do but stand up to a risk or challenge all by yourself. “I call it ‘knuckle time,’ Amie. Something you’ve got to muscle your way through. The fight might be against a perp, it might be against a partner. It might even be against the whole NYPD.”