“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 full-blown AIDS. He’s dying, Mr. Kenzie.”