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That was how he now looked at reading.

Most of the books here were pretty bad. Somebody – a school, he guessed – had donated a lot of textbooks. Sociology and psychology and statistics and economics. Boring as dry toast. If that was what people learned in college no wonder nobody seemed to have any smarts.

And some of the novels were a bit much. The older ones – and the library here seemed to have mostly 1920s and '30s books – were pretty dense. Man, he couldn't make heads or tails out of them. He had to slug his way through, just like the way he'd clean a floor: scrape, then sweep, then mop, then rinse. Inch by inch. Then he found some newer ones. Catch-22, which he thought was really okay. He grinned for five minutes straight after finishing that one. Then somebody mentioned Kurt Vonnegut and although there were none of his books in the prison library a guard he'd become friendly with gave him a copy ofCat's Cradle and a couple others as well. Whenever he saw the guard, he'd wink and say, "So it goes." Boggs loved Paul Theroux's travel writing. He also tried John Cheever. He didn't like the short stories but the novel about prison really struck home. Sure, it was about prison but it was about somethingmore than prison. That seemed to be the sign of a good book. To be about something but about something more too, even if you didn't know exactly what.

The book that girl reporter had given him wasn't so good, he'd decided. The writing was old-fashioned and he had to read some sentences three, four times in order to figure out what was going on. But he kept at it and would pull it out occasionally and read some more. He wanted to finish it but the reason was so he could talk about it with Rune.

That got him thinking about that girl again and he wondered why her program hadn't run on Tuesday. Rune hadn't called to say anything about it. But then he wasn't sure what day she'd said. Maybe she'd meant a week from Tuesday. She'd probably said "next" Tuesday, instead of "this" Tuesday; Boggs always got confused with "next" and "this."

Damn, that girl was something else. Here, he'd spent months and months trying to figure out how to get out of prison, thinking of escaping, thinking of getting sick, thinking of appealing, and then here she comes and does it for him and it doesn't cost him anything in grief or money.

He-

And that was when he heard the noise and felt the first hum of fear.

The prison itself was old but the library was a newer addition, away from the cell blocks. It looked and smelled like a suburban school. There was only one door in and out. He looked around. The library was completely deserted. And he understood that the Word had gone around. No other prisoners, no guards. No clerk behind the desk. He'd been reading away and hadn't noticed everybody else leaving.

Oh, hell… Boggs heard the slow footsteps of several men coming up the corridor toward that one door.

He knew Severn Washington was outside and he knew too that the big black man was as loyal as a friend could be in prison.

But that was a big qualifier. In prison.

Inside, anybody can be bought.

And, when it comes right down to it, anybody can be killed.

Boggs still had no idea why Ascipio wanted to move on him. But it was clear he was marked. No doubt in his mind. And right now, hearing footsteps come closer to the door, he knew – not a premonition or anything like; heknew – something was going down.

He stood up instinctively. The possibilities for weapons were: a book or a chair.

Well, now, neither of them's much help at all.

Oh, he didn't want the knife again. That terrible feeling of the glass blade. Terrible…

He looked at the chair. He couldn't pull it apart. And when he tried to lift it, a searing pain from the first knifing swept through his back and side.

He tried again and managed to get the chair off the ground, holding it in both hands.

Then part of his mind said, Why bother?

They'd burst in, they'd circle around him, they'd take him. He'd die. What could he do? Swing a chair at them? Knock one of them off balance while the others easily stepped behind him?

So Randall Boggs, failed son of a failed father, simply sat down in the chair, in front of a fiberboard table in a shoddy prison library, and began thinking for some reason, suddenly and obsessively, about Atlanta and the Sunday dinner menu of his childhood.

From his pocket he took out the book the reporter girl had given him and put his hands on it as if it were a Bible, then he thought that was funny because probably to the old-time people, the old Greeks or Romans, or whatever, this myth book probablywas a bible.

Prometheus got freed.

But it didn't seem like this was going to be a replay of that story. Not here, not now.

The footsteps stopped and he heard mumbled voices.

Randy Boggs swallowed and tried to remember a prayer. He couldn't so he just swallowed again and tried not to think about the pain.

The door swung open.

"Hey, Boggs."

He blinked, staring.

"Boggs, come on. Haul ass."

He stood up and walked toward the guard. He opened his mouth to say something but nothing came out, which was just as well because he didn't know what to say anyway.

"Let's move it along, Boggs."

"What's up?"

The guard had drowsy eyes and a voice to match. "The warden wants to see you. Hustle it."

"You got yourself a pretty little girl," Fred Megler said to Randy Boggs.

The lawyer was trooping around the office. He couldn't sit still and was on some kind of energy trip.

Randy Boggs was sitting forward in a chair in Megler's office, his hands pressed tightly together as if they'd been manacled. He wore blue jeans and a blue denim work shirt, clothing he'd worn when he'd entered the prison three years before. Rune, sitting nearby, smelled mothballs.

"Little girl, yessir." Boggs was nodding a lot, agreeing with what everybody said. But at the little girl part, he looked questioningly at Rune, who launched Courtney toward him. Boggs's hands reached out and she gave him a shy hug.

"Daddy," she said and looked at Rune to see if she'd gotten the line right. Rune nodded at her, smiling, then said to Boggs, "Mr Megler didn't know that you had a little girl. That was one of the reasons he was so nice to help you even though the program hasn't run yet."

"Yeah," Boggs said, squinting to see if that helped him understand things any better. It didn't seem to. "Sure appreciate it."

Megler paced. His polyester tie with the Bic repair job flopped up and down on the baggy shirt where his belly would have been if he weighed forty pounds more. His hair jutted out behind his thin skull as if he were facing into a gale. He said, "So, here's the deaclass="underline" The young lady here had some pretty good evidence that would've gotten you out but seems some asshole…" He looked at Courtney but she was playing with daddy's shoelaces and missed the word. "… someperson got into the studio and stole it. That was strike one. Then-"

"Oh, you should've seen it!" Rune interrupted. "It was a really great story, Randy. It would've gotten you out in a minute. I did the fades just perfect. The sound was mixed like a symphony. And I had a really, really super shot of your mother-"

"Mom? You did?" He grinned. "What kind of stuff'd she say?"

"Didn't make a lot of sense, I have to tell you. But she looked real motherish."

"Yeah, that's one thing she does good."

Megler said, "You guys mind?" Courtney pointed her tiny index finger at him like a pistol and fired. It was a game she'd decided they should play. He smiled grudgingly at her and shot back. She clutched her chest and fell to the floor. Seemed to hope she'd play dead for a long time.

Rune preempted the lawyer. "You know who did it? You know who the killer was?"