Broken Prey

John’s.
     
    ON THE MORNING of the second day, Sloan went with Elle to St. John’s to interview staff members and the parents. When Sloan got back, he pushed into Lucas’s office, and said, “You fucker, you’ve driven with her before. That’s why you didn’t go with us.”
    “Come on, man—if the three of us had gone, I would have driven.” But Lucas half laughed, because he knew what Sloan was talking about.
    “Sometimes, she’d get out of control and penetrate the forty-five-mile-an-hour barrier,” Sloan said. “I thought I was gonna start screaming before we got there. Now I know how Chase feels, down in isolation.”
    “Maybe you should have offered to drive,” Lucas suggested.
    “I did. Several times. She said she needed the practice. Going down was a nightmare. Coming back was . . .” Words failed, and he flapped his arms.
    “Where is she, anyway?” Lucas asked.
    “She stopped in the ladies’ room. If she pees the way she drives, we could be waiting for a while.”
     
    ELLE SAID THIS : “I talked to his parents, I talked to his friends. There’s a very interesting thing that goes on with serial killers. When they have longtime friends, or parents, those people usually aren’t surprised by the accusations when they’re caught. They know that there’s something wrong with them. There’s often a history of strange violence during their youth—against animals and insects, against other children; and they’re usually victims of some kind of violence, usually physical, but sometimes purely emotional. There’s often an interest in fire and in general images of destruction. I’m not talking about the interest that you find in game players, but about a kind of fascination with the most grotesque elements of death and dismemberment. Also, there are commonly instances of head injuries . . .”
    “And . . .”
    “There’s none of that in his history. Lucas, I’m coming to the conclusion that he is not our man.”
    “Then he’s dead,” Lucas said.
    “That may be so.”
    “Don’t tell me that,” Lucas said. He was groping: “How about a tumor, or something. Remember the Texas Tower, Whitman?”
    “Yes . . .”
    “There was a song about him, how he had a tumor in his brain,” Lucas said. “Something like that.”
    “Yes. There was a song, I believe by a person named Richard Friedman. And Whitman did have a tumor, although they don’t know if it was responsible for his behavior.”
    “What if O’Donnell had a tumor?”
    “That’s a possibility—when you’re dealing with the brain, almost anything is possible. However, when there’s a tumor involved, there are physical symptoms as well as psychological upsets, and none of his family and friends saw anything like that.”
    “How do you explain the fact that he took all the money out of his bank account the day he disappeared?”
    She smiled and shook her head: “I don’t explain it. I leave that up to you.”
     
    SLOAN , who had been watching the interchange, said, “Nordwall had a couple of deputies trying to find out where O’Donnell was the night Peterson disappeared. They can’t find him. They can’t find him on the nights that Larson or the Rices were killed, either—but that might not mean much. He lived out in the woods, and the Rices and Larson are far enough back that nobody really can put their finger on whether they saw him or not.”
    “Mention the shift problem,” Elle said.
    “Yeah, the shift,” Sloan said. “He worked a seven-to-three shift, but he always came in early, around six o’clock, to get the handoff from the overnight. That means he had to get up around five o’clock, and if he wanted to get eight hours of sleep, he was in bed by nine. So. People wouldn’t expect to see him late on the nights of the killings, but it would be absolutely normal for him to be in bed. Legitimately.”
    “God . . . bless me,” Lucas said.
     
    “HERE’S A QUESTION,” Sloan said. “He didn’t come into work—so presumably he was (a) on his way to Chicago or was already there, or (b) he was dead. Assuming he went to Chicago after work on the day he decided to run, sometime around seven o’clock, he would have been there by, say, nine o’clock. He didn’t call Ignace for more than twenty-four hours. What was he doing?”
    “Making . . . arrangements,” Lucas said. Elle wasn’t there at the moment, so he added, “How the fuck would I know?”
    “Maybe we ought to call