Broken Prey

by John Sandford

  “We need a list of the outside docs,” Lucas said. “We still want to see the tapes.”

  “Okay. Let me call Security. They can put you in the monitoring room and run them right there.”

  “We could use a little privacy,” Lucas said. “But we’d also like somebody who can identify the people going in and out.”

  “I’ll get you Leon Jansen. He’s one of our security people, knows everybody, and he can keep his mouth shut.”

  “And he doesn’t have access to Biggie.”

  “No. Not since they went into isolation, anyway.”

  CALE CALLED JANSEN on a voice pager; he showed up a couple of minutes later, a tall black man with a hard face and close-cropped hair. He wore a small green crescent moon on a chain around his neck, which Lucas recognized as some kind of Muslim symbol. Cale introduced Lucas and Sloan and explained the problem. Jansen said, “Most unusual. Well. Come this way.”

  “Wish I could wish you good luck,” Cale said as they went out the door.

  Lucas and Sloan followed Jansen back out through the hospital, toward the security wall. “Are you conversant with our security structure?” Jansen asked. His language was formal, almost academic.

  “We’ve been through the wall a few times . . .”

  “The cage is essentially a booth with armored glass on all sides. From the outside, you have to go through the barred door to get to the security booth. The door closes, and then you go through the scanner process . . .”

  “We did all that,” Sloan began.

  Jansen ignored him and continued. “When you’re cleared through the scanner, the person manning the booth opens the interior barred door, and you can proceed. The point here is, you can’t open both doors at once. There’s an electronic interlock that won’t allow it. The people in the booth are completely isolated from the outside. While they’re in there, it would take military munitions to get them out. Gas won’t work, guns won’t work.”

  “And that’s where you monitor the cells from,” Lucas said.

  “Yes.”

  “Could the guys inside the booth talk to the inmates through the intercom system?”

  “Of course. And they do,” Jansen said. “They’re on the tape.”

  “Could somebody turn off the tape?”

  “Could . . . but it’d be apparent in the time code, and the recorder notes when the tape is taken down. Also, the cage is about the size of two bedrooms, and there are always at least three people in there. You couldn’t have a conversation that’s not overheard.” He put a finger along the side of his nose, like Santa Claus, thinking, then said, “But you know, given human nature . . . the monitoring room is at the far end, and there’s a door that closes between the monitoring area and the main booth. You might find some excuse to close the door, and then talk to an inmate . . . but I would find that odd.”

  “Huh.”

  THE EXTERIOR DOOR slid open as they came up to it. They stepped through it, into the middle space where the cage was, and the door closed behind them. Cale had called ahead, and when both the interior and exterior barred doors were closed and locked, one of the people inside the cage popped a door and Jansen led them inside.

  “We need to look at some tapes, people,” Jansen said to the three people in the booth, two women and a man. “Dr. Cale has probably talked to you, so you know that we’re required to view them privately.”

  “What’re you looking for?” the male guard asked.

  “Don’t know,” Sloan said genially. “We’re looking at the Big Three, and anything would help.”

  “This way,” Jansen said. He took them into a second small room, where one wall held three dozen small monitoring screens and a couple of larger ones. Only half of them were turned on.

  “We monitor the isolation rooms constantly, and tape them. We also monitor what we call ‘watch rooms,’ where we put people who might be at some risk of attempting suicide, and also the high-risk individuals, like the Big Three,” Jansen said. “The rest of the cameras are scanners and are meant to pick up disturbances in the hallways and recreational areas and so on.”

  “We’re interested in the Big Three, going back three days,” Lucas said.

  BY FAST-FORWARDING, they got through the tapes for the Big Three in two hours. The three had no privacy at all: they used the toilet, masturbated, exercised, slept, screamed, ate before the unblinking camera eye. At first, it carried a voyeuristic fascination; two days in, they just wanted it to end. The boredom was grinding, and Lucas began to empathize with Chase’s wish to die. Lucas looked for seams in the tape, where it might have shut down; but it was seamless. Nobody, as far as they could tell, had said anything about the Peterson killing.

  “Could it be a code word, telling them that the killing was done?” Sloan asked. Jansen glanced sideways at him, an idiot glance, and Sloan said, defensively, “All right, it’s not a code word.”

  “There’s gotta be something,” Lucas said. He’d written down a list of names of the people who’d gone through the security area; there were thirty of them.

  “Every single person you’ve seen in there—half the staff, I didn’t know that many people went in and out, to tell you the truth—but every single person knows he’s on tape,” Jansen said.

  “You can’t see them very well, unless they’re right up against the viewing panel,” Lucas said. “Is there another angle?”

  “Yeah, we have one of the scanning cameras at the end of the hall.”

  “Let’s see that.”

  They spent ten minutes fast-forwarding through three days of the staff coming and going. “I keep thinking, the food,” Sloan said. “It’s the only thing that consistently goes into the cells.”

  They thought about that for a moment, and then Jansen said, “Suppose one of the guys delivering the food wrote down what happened, like a little strip of paper, and put it in the mashed potatoes . . .”

  “Let’s look at the guys bring in the food.”

  Seven different staff members delivered food over the three days. The food went into the cell on a kind of metallic lazy Susan device. “Wouldn’t even have to put it in the food—you could just drop it on the tray when you put the food in the slot,” Sloan said. “The cameras aren’t so good that you could pick that up.”

  They watched the three men eating, saw nothing out of the ordinary, except that Biggie had bad manners, eating with his hands as much as with his spoon.

  “Okay,” Lucas said, when they were done. He was discouraged. “Maybe this isn’t it. Goddamnit, I thought I was on to something.”

  “Want me to go down and drop Peterson’s name on Biggie? Or on all three of them?” Jansen asked. “I could mention ‘a Peterson thing’ in passing, see if we get any reaction.”

  “It’s an idea,” Lucas said, considering him. “You’re not going to get anything from Chase, though. He was hypermanic this morning.”

  “He’s gone over the top and is on the way back down,” Jansen said. “If I go now, I might catch him before he crashes. You could watch from here, in real time.”

  Lucas nodded. “Let’s do it.”

  CHASE GAVE IT AWAY. Jansen rolled the observation window back and said, “How’re you doing? Sleepy?”

  “Man, I’m dying,” Chase whimpered. “I’m going out. I’m like a light, I’m going out.” He put his hands on both sides of his head and squeezed: “Why am I like this, Mr. Jansen?”

  “We don’t know, man.” There was a note of sympathy in Jansen’s voice, and it resonated.

  Chase said, still holding his face, “If I could just, if I could just . . . If I could get out of here just for a couple of hours . . .” He sounded desperate, like a man who needed water.

  “That’s gonna be tough, since the Peterson thing. The director is adamant about keeping the three of you under wraps. That might not seem fair . . .”

  Lucas liked the way he did it: in passing, as part of another idea, the raisin in the rice pudding. Chase’s hands came
down; his face was brighter, and his thin lips turned up in a joker’s smile. “You know about that? How he got her . . .”

  “I’ve heard the usual stories,” Jansen said, noncommittally. He looked over his shoulder, as though he shouldn’t be talking about it.

  “So cool. He fucked her all night. He had her tied up, he had this rope around her neck like a fuckin’ bridle, he fucked her all night. Six, seven, eight times. The bitch could hardly walk in the morning. He took her up there, rolled her out of the car, naked as the day. Then he says, ‘You got a hundred yards and then I’m coming.’ ”

  “She ran, but there was no place to go, so she ran into the woods.” Chase was leaning on the viewing glass now, face only inches from Jansen’s.

  “She was screaming: but there was nobody out there. He caught her by this big tree, and she tried to run around it, keep the tree between them. Then he caught her and there was a creek and she fell into it, and that’s when he got her; right on her shoulder blades. She had this long black hair and he pulled it up and zip with the razor. Then you know what he did? He did like this victory scream, he screamed . . .”

  And Chase screamed, his head thrown back, his mouth open, his eyes glazed . . . and then he staggered backwards onto his bed, as though he’d been struck by lightning, his tongue out now, his body vibrating, words bubbling out, all nonsense.

  Jansen disappeared from the camera view, and they could hear his voice from down the hall. Calling for help?

  Sloan said, “That’s not something you see every day.”

  THEY WERE BACK in Cale’s office: “They got the message somehow. In detail. There’s nothing on the tape, so it wasn’t oral. It must have been written and delivered with the food,” Lucas said. “We’ve got a list of the people who were around when food was delivered. Seven orderlies, three therapists. There were also two doctors and two more therapists in and out of the hallway, who looked or spoke to the Big Three at one time or another.”

  “Goddamnit. I can hear them building the crucifix, up at the Capitol,” Cale said. He spun his chair, looking out his window. “And it’s so hard to believe. I’ve known Dr. Hart for ten years, and he’s a fine man. So is O’Donnell, despite all the hair and the hip bullshit. Dr. Sennet has been controversial sometimes, but he’s a good therapist.”

  “I’m most interested in O’Donnell, Sennet, and Halburton,” Lucas said. “They were both nearby when the food deliveries were made. I mean, right there.”

  Cale spun back to face them and shook his head. “I can make one suggestion: we could hope that whatever went into the cell stayed there. They could have flushed it, or eaten it, but sometimes . . . people like this will hold on to something as an artifact. A trophy. If we lock them down and shake down the cells, we might come up with one of the notes. That might give us something.”

  “Do that,” Lucas said. “There’s nothing we can do to help you—but I want the personnel files on those fourteen people. I’ll need to copy them and take them back to St. Paul; and I’d like to get copies of the tapes, if I could. I don’t know—maybe we missed something, because we were going through them too fast.”

  “I’ll get it started,” Cale said. He pushed himself heavily out of his chair and said, “God Almighty.”

  LUCAS CALLED THE Blue Earth County sheriff’s office and gave them the information about the murder having been done in a creek, in a place remote enough that Peterson could scream and not be heard; but because of the search for a white car, Lucas couldn’t believe that the killer would drive far with the body.

  So: a creek close to the point where the body was found.

  That done, he joined Sloan in Xeroxing the fourteen personnel files, while Cale organized the shakedown. They were halfway through with the paper when Cale came back to say that they were doing all three cells simultaneously, and included body-cavity searches.

  “We’re taking out every piece of cloth in there, including the mattresses, all the books, the clothing, everything. We’ll shred all of it.”

  “How long?”

  “Another hour. We’ve got six people working on it. Biggie was very unhappy. Taylor acted like he didn’t care, and Chase is gone. I’m thinking of moving him to the medical ward.”

  THEY WAITED THE HOUR, browsing through the personnel files. Cale came back shaking his head. “Not a thing.”

  “You couldn’t have missed it.”

  “No. You don’t even want to know where we looked.”

  Lucas exhaled, slapped his knees, and stood up. “Dr. Cale, thank you. You’ve been a big help. We’ve made serious progress here. We’re gonna tear up these files and maybe call you back tomorrow with some questions.”

  “You’re gonna get the guy?” Cale asked.

  “Yeah. Soon, now. A few days, at most.”

  Cale looked down the hall, where a woman was pushing another woman in a wheelchair, both of them laughing. “I wish we heard more of that around here. Not enough of that.”

  THEY DROVE BACK NORTH through one of the long, beautiful summer twilights, a few stars poking out like theater lamps, a moon coming up in the east, lopsided but nearly full. They didn’t talk much; they were both running through the tapes in their heads. Sloan would occasionally turn on the reading light and look at one of the Xeroxed files.

  After a while, Sloan said, “Besides Hart, O’Donnell, and Sennet, I think we should take a close look at Grant and Beloit. For reasons that are a little stupid.”

  “How stupid?”

  “They both get great ratings from the patients. I figure, that’s maybe because they identify with them.”

  “Ah, Beloit’s out. The guy I talked to the other night—that was a guy. Regardless of the voice, he talked like a guy would. Like a shitkicker, like you’d expect from Charlie Pope. And didn’t Taylor, when he was yelling at us about the license, say him, or he?”

  Sloan thought for a moment. “I think it was, ‘Our boy.’ ”

  “ ’That’s right,” Lucas said. “ ‘Our boy.’ You think that might have been put on to steer us away from a woman?”

  “It’s possible, but . . . not likely.”

  “If he was, he was giving away the license thing at the same time. I don’t think that was deliberate,” Lucas said.

  “Right. I knew that. So we scratch Beloit.”

  “About ninety percent,” Lucas said.

  A BIT LATER, Sloan said, “Cale was right about building a crucifix. He’d be a prime candidate for it.”

  “Or us, depending on where we are when the music stops,” Lucas said.

  LUCAS DROPPED SLOAN with a Minneapolis cop car on the south end of the city, went on to St. Paul, and picked up a tape machine that would work with his home television; took a long walk to a Baker’s Square restaurant on Ford Parkway and ate dinner; stuck his head in a Half-Priced Books; window-shopped a jewelry store, thinking about a welcome-home gift for Weather; and ambled back home, hands in his pockets, a tattered, pirate copy of Ernest Hemingway’s poems under his arm. Mulling, all the way, the assemblage of information.

  They were like squirrels who kept coming up with nuts they couldn’t crack, he decided.

  They had a guy who’d deliberately faked DNA, knowing that it would point the finger in the wrong direction. Who’d know about that? When he thought about it, he decided that . . . just about everybody would know.

  A medical doctor, for sure—and Beloit was a medical doctor, though, unfortunately, she was also female, and the voice wasn’t female. And almost any of the professionals at St. John’s would know, because the state DNA bank made a big deal out of getting samples from all convicted sex criminals. Besides, after the rash of crime-scene investigator shows on TV, half the TV watchers in the country knew about DNA. Hell, even George Bush would probably know about it.

  So that went nowhere.

  The killer used, or tried to use, Ruffe Ignace to point them in the wrong direction. Serial killers occasionally talked to the press or the cops, so that was nothing n
ew, but usually they were looking for glory or turning themselves in. This guy pretended to be looking for glory, but he was actually trying to use Ignace in a manipulative way; or maybe he was doing both, but the manipulation was certainly there.

  Lucas thought about the meth lab. Could the killer have met Charlie Pope there? It was one nexus of criminals . . . but he didn’t really need that. He had a nexus of criminals in the security hospital, all that he required. The hospital was part of it . . .

  And then the real nut of the thing.

  How had the Big Three learned of Peterson?

  If he could crack that . . .

  But then, how’d they known of Rice and Larson?

  BACK AT THE HOUSE, he read the personnel files with the tapes running behind them, at about four times actual. The staff members came and left in a herky-jerky speeded-up way reminiscent of old silent films; every once in a while, he would slow the tapes down to watch the action.

  The only people to actually go into a cell were Beloit and another doctor named Rosen, and they were always escorted by two orderlies, and they never went into the cells of the Big Three, only into the cell of the fourth man, who was being disciplined for attacking another patient. They went in, gave him an insulin shot, and left. Routine.

  O’Donnell and Sennet actually helped deliver food, keying back the security panels, chatting with the Big Three as their meals were delivered. Chase went from slow to manic to crazed to cooler to slow and finally to catatonic as he watched. O’Donnell moved in a way that blocked the hall camera from the food tray. Lucas picked it up on the second delivery. He made a note.

  Sennet did nothing but chat, and sometimes not even that, standing beside the meal-delivery man as the food went into the cell. He would occasionally make a note on a clipboard.