“What was that?”

He nodded and closed his eyes, drummed the fingertips of his cuffed hands on the table. When he spoke, his voice seemed to come from the corners of the room and the ceiling, and the bars themselves—anywhere but from his mouth:

“I said, ‘Eviscerate them, Patrick. Kill them all.’”

He pursed his lips, and we stood there waiting, but it was useless. A minute passed in complete silence, as he remained that way without so much as a tremor coursing his tight, pallid skin.

As the doors opened and we walked out into the corridor of C Block past the two guards posted as sentries outside the cell, Alec Hardiman sang the words, “Eviscerate them, Patrick. Kill them all,” in a voice so light but rich and strong that we could have been hearing an aria.

“Eviscerate them, Patrick.”

The words flowed like birdsong down the cellblock corridor.

“Kill them all.”

23

Lief led us through a maze of maintenance corridors, the sounds of the prison muffled by the thick walls. The corridors smelled of antiseptic and industrial solvent and the floors had the yellowish shine of the floors in all state institutions.

“He has a fan club, you know.”

“Who?”

“Hardiman,” Lief said. “Criminology students, law students, lonely middle-aged women, a couple of social workers, some church-group types. Pen pals who he’s convinced of his innocence.”

“You’re shitting me.”

Lief smiled and shook his head. “Oh, no. Alec has this favorite thing he does—he invites them to visit, to see his eminence in the flesh or some such. And some of these people, they’re poor. They spend a life’s savings just to get here. And then guess what ol’ Alec does?”

“Laughs at them?”

“He refuses to see them,” Dolquist said. “Always.”

“Yup,” Lief said. He punched numbers into a keypad by the door in front of us and it opened with a soft click. “He sits in his cell and looks out the window as they walk back down the long road to their cars, confused and humiliated and alone, and he jerks off into his hand.”

“That’s Alec,” Dolquist said as we came out into the light by the main gate.

“What was that crack about your father?” Lief said as we left the prison and headed toward Bolton’s RV sitting halfway down the gravel walkway.

I shrugged. “I don’t know. As far as I know, he didn’t know my father.”

Dolquist said, “Sounds like he wants you to think he did.”

“And that cowlick shit,” Lief said. “Either he did know you, Mr. Kenzie, or he made a hell of a guess.”

Gravel crunched under our feet as we crossed toward the RV and I said, “I’ve never met the guy before.”

“Well,” Lief said, “Alec’s good at fucking with people’s heads. I heard you were coming, I dug this up.” He handed me a piece of paper. “We intercepted this when Alec tried to send it by one of his couriers to a nineteen-year-old boy he’d raped after he knew he was HIV positive.”