Broken Prey

8

Ross talked to all three inmates personally, through the intercom system, told them what Lucas and Sloan wanted, recited their rights, and offered them privileges if they agreed to be interviewed. All three agreed to talk.

On the way to the security unit, Hart, who was escorting them, said, “The main thing to keep in mind, these guys are desperate for company. Except maybe Chase; we’re losing Chase. His personality is coming apart. Anyway, they’ll want to talk, if you handle it right.”

The unit was separated from the hospital by a locked security door; Hart pushed a call button, a monitor looked at them, and the door lock released. “They monitor us from the cage,” Hart grunted.

“How did Charlie get down here, with this door?” Sloan asked.

“Most of the inmates have duties. Charlie worked as a janitor,” Hart said. “He was suited for it. He could lean on a broom with the best of them.”

Twenty cells lined the hallway, ten on each side. The walls were steel, with a steel door to one side and a barred window inset in the wall. A flat fluorescent light shone from each window, like a line of exhibits in a museum. They could hear inmates talking back and forth as they went in, and could see silhouettes in most of the windows. Hart called, “Temporary shutdown,” and groans and shouts rang along the hall. Hart punched a code into a wall phone, another camera looked at them, and Hart waved at it. Heavy plastic panels slid down across the windows.

“They can’t talk with the windows down,” Hart said. With the windows shut, they could still hear a few of the inmates shouting.

“Didn’t seem to shut them down,” Sloan said.

“Yeah, they can still hear each other, but they have to yell. Can’t keep it up,” Hart said. “If you keep your voice down when you’re talking, the rest of them won’t be able to hear you.”

The cells were not large, but they were more spacious than typical prison cells. Each was equipped with a bed, a sink, a toilet, a chair, a desk, all bolted to the floor; fixed lights overhead, and a two-by-three-foot steel dining table that folded down from the wall. A television was built into a wall and covered with security glass; two glass-covered ports on opposite sides of the cell showed video camera lenses.

Of the twenty cells, fifteen or sixteen had men in them.

Carl Taylor was a tall man, thin, square shouldered, with high cheekbones, pale blue eyes, and closely cropped hair; he looked like a retired air force major. He was neatly dressed in jeans, a T-shirt, and plastic slip-on shoes. He sat at the desk, reading a Bible. He looked odd, Lucas thought, and it took him a moment to put his finger on the oddness. Then he had it: Taylor looked rugged, trim, outdoorsy-but his skin was bone white from a lack of sunlight.

He was waiting for them: Lucas could sense it. He was too studied in his disregard to be really engaged with the Book. Hart glanced inside the cell, then pushed a metal plate six feet away from the cell window. The outer glass window slid halfway back. “Carl. .,” Hart said.

Taylor turned, raised his eyebrows, as if he were a little surprised to see them.

“Dr. Hart.” His forehead wrinkled. “I’ve been thinking about it, since Dr. Ross called. I’m no longer convinced I should talk to these gentlemen.”

“It’s up to you,” Lucas said. “If you don’t want to chat, we’ll go away.”

Taylor stood and stretched. “I think we might negotiate some ground rules.”

“There aren’t any ground rules,” Lucas said. “We ask questions, you answer. If you don’t want to answer, we go away. It’s that easy.”

Taylor stood up and lounged over to the window. “Nothing’s that easy. I-”

“This is exactly that easy,” Lucas said.

Sloan held up a hand to Lucas, then looked at Taylor: “My friend is in a hurry, because we’ve got a real mess on our hands,” Sloan said. “We need your help with this, and we hope you can give it to us. But we’re not here for chitchat. We’re here on a mission.”

“I see,” Taylor said. He was gravely polite. He stood behind the glass, with no place to sit that was close enough to talk comfortably. He put his hands in his jeans pockets, shrugged, and said, “I’m happy to do what I can-I understand from Dr. Ross that I will receive some slight benefits.”

Hart said, “The dinner extras, the movies. That’s all he was willing to give.”

Taylor nodded: “What can I do for you, then?”

Sloan asked, “Have you heard about the killings of Angela Larson and Adam Rice and his son?”

“Yes.” And now, weirdly, he smiled, a thin smile. While he’d seemed neat and trim and military in his bearing, his teeth were yellowed and ratlike against his pale lips. Lucas felt a crawling sensation along his arms; not fear, just the creeps. “You’ve got a real bad boy there, as much as I could tell from the TV.”

“Do you think Charlie Pope could do that?” Lucas asked.

Taylor looked up at the ceiling, then back, and said, “You know, Dr. Grant asked the same thing. I’ve been thinking about it. To me, it sounds too. . artistic. . for Charlie. Charlie was a simple fool. He killed a couple of girls because he didn’t want to get caught for sexing them. He couldn’t figure out any other way to do it. To shut them up.”

“There’s been a suggestion that he might be taking after one of you guys, one of. .”

Sloan looked at Hart, who grunted, “The Big Three.”

Taylor’s eyebrows went up: “Is that the case? Well, well.” He cocked his head, showed his ratlike teeth again. “Tell me about this Larson girl. I understand he punished her.”

“He goddamn near beat her to death,” Sloan grated.

“But not with his fists,” Taylor said, looking concerned.

“With some kind of whip,” Lucas said.

“How’d he whip her?” More concern. “I mean, on her back, or her legs. .”

“All over,” Lucas said, incautiously.

Hart said, “Hey, huh. .,” and Taylor’s tongue touched his upper lip and his eyes glowed through the glass and he stepped closer to the window and asked, “How about on the titties? Did he get her titties?”

Lucas involuntarily took a step back, and Sloan said, “Fuck you.”

Taylor reached out with the flat of his hand and screamed, “BIGGIE. BIGGIE. OUR BOY WHIPPED HER ON THE TITTIES, HE GOT HER ON THE TITTIES. .”

“Jesus Christ,” Lucas said, and Hart slapped the plate that pushed the glass up; inmates were screaming up and down the hall, wanting to know what Taylor had said, or screaming disapproval. Taylor now pressed against the window, banging on it with the flat of his hand. “Did he eat that cock? Hey, did he eat that cock? Hey, he did, didn’t he? HEY, BIGGIE, HE ATE THE COCK. .”

And from down the hallway, more window slapping, and a high whinnying laugh. “That’d be Biggie,” Hart said. Hart’s eyes looked frightened.

Taylor had gone berserk, now pounding on the window with both hands. “BIGGIE. .”

“You want to talk to Biggie?”

“I want to look at him, but I don’t think there’d be much point in talking,” Lucas said. Sloan was white-faced. Lucas had to suppress an urge to run.

“They did it to him,” Sloan said to Lucas. “They wound him up like a fuckin’ toy and sent him out there to kill people.”

Biggie Lighter was standing at his window, a wanna-be fat man, skinny from years of hospital meals, pale as the moon, with round lazy eyes that sparked hatred out at them. His eyes flicked over Lucas and fixed on Sloan: “I know you!” he shouted through the raised glass. “I know you!”

“Want me to drop the glass?” Hart asked.

Lucas shook his head. “He can hear me. .” He looked at Lighter. “Did you send Charlie out to kill people?” Down the hall, Taylor was still slapping the glass, and two or three other inmates had started again.

“You’d like to know, but you can go fuck yourself,” Lighter said, not taking his eyes off Sloan. To Sloan: “You were the guy who came to my house and talked to my mother while I was gone.”

Sloan nodded. “How’s Mom?”

“The old bitch is dead,” Lighter said. “Good riddance. I thought maybe you were dead, too. If I knew you’d come here, I would have told Charlie to carve your name around this Rice guy’s asshole. A big Sloan right around his asshole while he was going in and out. That’d be pretty good, huh? One asshole for another asshole. .” And now he reached out and slapped the glass.

“Can you. .”

“I can’t fuckin’ anything,” Lighter said, eyes snapping over to Lucas. “Get the fuck away from me. I want a lawyer.” Back to Sloan: “I’d like an hour with you.”

Sloan stepped close to the glass: “I wish I could give it to you. I wish I could get one fuckin’ minute alone with you. I’d put a fuckin’ bullet right in your fuckin’ brain, and then I’d spit on your fuckin’ body.”

Lighter recoiled, looked at Hart: “He can’t talk to me like that. I want a fuckin’ lawyer. .”

“Ah, for Christ’s sake,” Hart said.

Lucas: “Let’s go. We’re done.”

As they got to the outer door, Hart slowed and looked back down the hall and said, “Goddamnit.”

“What?”

“They call them the Big Three. You didn’t even talk to Chase-but Charlie did.”

Lucas looked back down the hall: the glass slapping continued and Taylor was still screaming, but the screams had gone incoherent and his voice was beginning to break. They sounded, Lucas thought, not unlike what happens when a kid throws a rock in a monkey cage. “Two minutes,” Lucas said, stepping back down the hall. “Let’s give him two minutes.”

Lawrence W. Chase was so thin he might be anorexic. His cheek bones pushed through his skin, his hands trembled. “Don’t call me Larry, ’cause that’s not my name. My name is Lawrence.”

Sloan: “Okay, Lawrence.”

Chase said through the open glass, “You gotta get me out of here.”

“Can’t do that,” Sloan said.

And Chase started to weep as he stood in front of the window. “I can’t stay here. I ask them to put me at Stillwater, but they won’t do it. I ask them to let me work, but they won’t do that, either. I ask them to kill me, and they say they can’t. They won’t even let me kill myself. There are cameras in my room.”

Hart said, “We don’t want you to hurt yourself, Lawrence. Maybe you’ll get better.”

“There’s nothing wrong with me, except that I’m in here.”

“You killed nine people, Lawrence,” Hart said. “Nine that we know of. You hunted them down and shot them.”

“They were. . I was being. . Paleolithic. I was just. .”

“Lawrence. .”

“I don’t want to argue,” he whimpered. “I just want you to kill me clean.” To Lucas: “I haven’t seen the sky in two years.”

“Shouldn’t have killed those people.”

“I had to; don’t you see? You get out there, the Paleolithic rises up in you. Man is a hunter. I hunted. You must know that-you’re a cop. You hunt people.”

Lucas had to look away: “If you can help us, maybe you could look out the window.”

A sly look crossed over Chase’s face: “Biggie said he was going to get extra desserts all week. Could I look out the window and get extra desserts?”

Hart nodded. “But that’s all. We’ll take you down tomorrow where you can see out.”

Chase started to weep again. His eyes reddened as the tears leaked out, and against his pale skin they looked like the eyes on a white rabbit, all pink and shot through with blood. He finally wiped his eyes with the heels of his hands and said, “I don’t know what I can tell you, but I’ll help if I can.”

“Did you talk to Charlie Pope about kidnapping women? About keeping them?” Lucas asked.

And suddenly, everything about Chase seemed to tighten, and his face flooded with color. “I told him what they said I done. I didn’t ask him to do it.”

“What do you think about it. . what he’s doing?”

“Taylor says he’s doing the Lord’s work.”

“But Taylor’s full of shit,” Lucas snapped. “What we want to know is this: Did you talk to Pope specifically about what you did? Exactly what you did? The details? Or did you just talk. .”

“He pretty much knew all about it,” Chase said. “That kind of thing comes out. They say if you don’t get it out in the open, you can’t deal with it. That’s what they say. I don’t remember what they said I did. .” He scratched his head and then began leaking tears again. “I gotta get out of here.”

“Did you tell him how to hide out? Do you have any idea where he might go? What he was thinking about?”

“No. He wanted to get a job in meatpacking. He said there was good money in it. He said he almost got a job at Hormel, but they turned him down because some old bitch didn’t like him.” His lips picked up a little curl, not quite a smile, something with a sneer in it. “I bet she. .”

Then, just as quickly, the expression flicked away. “But where he went, I don’t know. He never seemed to think about it too much. He just wanted to get out. He was desperate. They used to let him look out the window, though. He could see the driveway and people coming and going.”

“Did he talk about razors? Did he talk about whipping women? Did he talk about hunting them?” Lucas asked.

“He didn’t talk about it so much.” Chase started squirming, wrapping his ankles together, like he had to pee, and again, Lucas had to look away. “But he listened to it. He liked to hear about it.”

“I think you might be projecting, Lawrence,” Hart said.

“I’m not projecting,” Chase said. “He used to listen real close.”

They talked for a few more minutes, but Chase had nothing more. Lucas finally shrugged and said to Hart, “Let’s go.”

They stepped away, and then Sloan stepped back to the window and asked, “Hey, Larry. . what’d Charlie Pope do to the woman from Hormel?”

Chase turned at the “Larry,” to protest-but when the question got to him, he tried to rearrange his face into an expression of puzzlement, like a child trying to come up with another reason why his hand was in the cookie jar.

“Why. . why. .”

“What was her name, Larry?” Sloan asked lazily. “I mean, we’re gonna find out. If you don’t tell us, they could give you another twenty years for being an accomplice after the fact. You’d never see the sun.”

“I didn’t have nothing to do with it, I don’t know. .”

“Larry, what the fuck was her name?” Sloan asked. A little steel now.

Chase looked into himself for a moment, and Sloan said, “Lawrence?” and tears came to Chase’s eyes again and he sobbed, then said, “I don’t know, but her first name might have been Louise.”

“When was this?”

Chase couldn’t look at them. “Maybe, maybe in ninety-five.”

“Sonofabitch,” Hart said, peering at Sloan. “Did he just tell you what I think he did? Did you just solve a murder?”

Hart walked them briskly back through the hospital to the administrator’s office and told Ross, “We had something come up with Chase.”

He explained in a few words, and Ross said to Sloan, “My assistant has all those numbers. Would you like her to call around down there? We could probably get you something before you’re back home.”

“Sure,” Lucas said. “And we need an address for this Mike West guy, the guy Pope used to hang with.”

They got the address, and on the way out, the administrator said to Sloan, “This thing you did with Chase. . You have a nice talent. Maybe you should have been a psychologist.”

Sloan almost blushed. “Ah, it might all be bullshit.”

It wasn’t.

Ross called back when they were halfway to Minneapolis. Sloan took the call on his cell phone, listened for a minute, and then said, “Let me take that down.” He took a pad and a mechanical pencil from his coat pocket, jotted down a name and number.

“Could you call him back? Tell him I’ll get in touch in an hour or so-when I’m back in the office. Okay.”

He punched off and said to Lucas, “A woman named Louise Samples, who worked in personnel at Hormel in the city of Albert Lea, was killed in her house in November of ninety-five. The cops say it looked like she walked in on a burglar. He hit her with a hammer and then raped her at least a couple of times, once anally. She was probably dead for most of it. They never got a break on the case.”

A car in front of them suddenly slowed for a left turn, and Lucas swung around it, a quick brake and a quicker acceleration. Then he looked at Sloan: “How the fuck can you talk about quitting when you pull off something like this?”

“For all the good it did Louise Samples or anybody else,” Sloan said.

“Man, you gotta take a couple of aspirin and lie down,” Lucas said. “I’m really startin’ to think you’re losing it.”

“That’s what I’ve been telling you, dickweed,” Sloan said. He looked out the window as they crossed the river: “When I get my bar, I’ll want your list of songs. I’ll put them on the jukebox.”

“No Beatles.”

“No Beatles. But how about a couple of Tom Joneses? ‘Green Green Grass’ or something.”

“Sloan-you gotta get help.”