Cruel and Unusual - Cornwell Patricia - Страница 39

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“In word processing, a subdirectory.”

“Same password to access those documents?”

“Yes.”

“And in word processing you would store autopsy reports and other documents pertaining to cases?”

“I would. But at the time my directory was broken into there wasn't anything sensitive on file that I can think of.”

“But whoever broke in didn't necessarily know that.”

“Obviously not,” I said.

“What about Ronnie Waddell's autopsy report, Kay? When your directory was broken into, was his report in the computer?”

“It would have been. He was executed Monday, December thirteenth. The break-in occurred late on the afternoon of Thursday, December sixteenth, while I was doing Eddie Heath's post and Susan was upstairs in my office, supposedly resting on the couch after the formalin spill.”

“Perplexing.”

He frowned. “Assuming Susan is the one who went into your directory, why would she be interested in Waddell's autopsy report - if that's what this is all about? She was present during his autopsy. What could she have read in your report that she wouldn't have already known?”

“Nothing I can think of.”

“Well, let me rephrase that. What pertaining to his autopsy would she not have learned from being present the night his body was brought to the morgue? Or maybe I'd better say the night a body was brought to the morgue, since we're no longer so sure this individual was Waddell,” he added grimly.

“She wouldn't have had access to lab reports,” I said. “But the lab work wouldn't have been completed by the time my directory was broken into. Tox and HIV screens, for example, take weeks.”

“And Susan would have known that.”

“Certainly.”

“So would your administrator.”

“Absolutely.”

“There must be something else,” he said.

There was, but as it came to mind I could not imagine the significance.

“Waddell - or whoever the inmate was - had an envelope in the back pocket of his jeans that he wanted buried with him. Fielding wouldn't have opened this envelope until he had gone upstairs with his paperwork after the post.”

“So Susan couldn't have known what was inside the envelope while she was in the morgue that night?”

Wesley asked with interest.

“That's right. She couldn't have.”

“And was there anything of significance inside this envelope?”

“There was nothing inside but several receipts for food and tolls.”

Wesley frowned. “Receipts,” he repeated. “What in God's name would he have been doing with those? Do you have them here?”

“They're in his file.”

I got out the photocopies. “The dates are all the same, November thirtieth.”

“Which should have been about the time Waddell was transported from Mecklenburg to Richmond.”

“That's right. He was transported fifteen days before his execution,” I said.

“We need to run down the codes on these receipts, see what locations we get. This may be important. Very important, in light of what we're contemplating.”

“That Waddell is alive?”

“Yes. That somehow a switch was made and he was released. Maybe the man who went to the chair wanted these receipts in his pocket when he died because he was trying to tell us something.”

“Where would he have gotten them?”

“Perhaps during the transport from Mecklenburg to Richmond, which would have been an ideal time to pull something,” Wesley replied. “Maybe two men were transported, Waddell and someone else.”

“You're suggesting they stopped for food?”

“Guards aren't supposed to stop for anything while transporting a death row inmate. But if some conspiracy were involved, anything could have happened. Maybe they stopped and got take-out food, and it was during this interval that Waddell was freed. Then the other inmate was taken onto Richmond and put in Waddell's cell. Think about it. How would any of the guards or anybody else at Spring Street have any way of knowing the inmate brought in wasn't Waddell?”

“He might say he wasn't, but that doesn't mean that anyone would have listened.”

“I suspect they wouldn't have listened.”

“What about Waddell's mother?”

I asked. “Supposedly, she had a contact visit with him hours before the execution. Certainly, she would know B the inmate she saw was not her son.”

“We need to verify that the contact visit occurred.But whether it did or didn't, it would have been to Mrs. Waddell's benefit to go along with any scheme. I don't imagine she wanted her son to die.”

“Then you're convinced that the wrong man was executed, “I said reluctantly, for there were few theories, at the moment, that I more wanted to disprove.

His answer was to open the envelope containing Robyn Naismith's photographs and slide out a thick stack of color prints that would continue to shock me no matter how many times I looked at them. He slowly shuffled through the pictorial history of her terrible death.

Then he said, “When we consider the three homicides tha thave just occurred, Waddell doesn't profile right.”

“What are you saying, Benton? That after ten years in prison his personality changed?”

“All I can say to you is that I've heard of organized killers decompensating, flying apart. They begin to make mistakes. Bundy, for example. Toward the end he became frenzied. But what you generally don't see is a disorganized individual swinging the other way, the psychotic person becoming methodical, rational becoming organized.”

When Wesley alluded to the Bundys and Son of Sams in the world, he did so theoretically, impersonally, as if his analyses and theories were formulated from secondary sources. He did not brag. He did not name-drop or assume the role of one who knew these criminal personally. His demeanor, therefore, was deliberately misleading.

He had, in fact, spent long, intimate hours with the likes of Theodore Bundy, David Berkowitz, Sirhan Sfrhan, Richard Speck, and Charles Manson, in addition to the lesser-known black holes who had sucked light from the planet Earth. I remembered Marino telling me once that when Wesley returned from some of these pilgrimages into maximum-security penitentiaries, he would look pale and drained. It almost made him physically ill to absorb the poison of these men and endure the attachments they inevitably formed to him. Some of the worst sadists in recent history regularly wrote letters to him, sent Christmas cards, and inquired after his family. It was no small wonder that Wesley seemed like a man with a heavy burden and so often was silent. In exchange for information, he did the one thing that not one of us wants to do. He allowed the monster to connect with him.

“Was it determined that Waddell was psychotic?” I asked.

“It was determined that he was sane when he Murdered Robyn Naismith.”

Wesley pulled out a photograph and slid it across the table to me. “But frankly, I don't think he was.”

The photograph was the one I remembered most vividly, and as I studied it I could not imagine an unsuspecting soul walking in on such a scene.

Robyn Naismith's living room did not have much fur niture, just several barrel chairs with dark green cushions and a chocolate-brown leather couch. A small Bakhara rug was in the middle of the parquet floor, the calls wide planks stained to look like cherry or mahogany. A console television was against the wall directly across from the front door, affording whoever sintered a full frontal view of Ronnie Joe Waddell's horrible artistry.

What Robyn's friend had seen the instant she unlocked the door and pushed it open as she called out Robyn's name was a nude body sitting on the floor, back propped against the TV, skin so streaked and smeared ` with dried blood that the exact nature of the injuries could not be determined until later at the morgue. In the photograph, coagulating blood pooled around Robyn's buttocks looked like red tinted tar, and tossed nearby were several bloody towels. The weapon was never found, though police did determine that a German made stainless steel steak knife was missing from a set hanging in the kitchen, and the characteristics of the blade were consistent with her wounds.

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