Broken Prey

with the AT&T operator, he got the place. The woman who answered the phone, in Spanish, switched smoothly to English, then forwarded him to another office. The man who answered the phone there, in Spanish, changed to English.
    Lucas said, “I need some information about a former employee of yours named Leopold Grant . . .”
    “You already have some incorrect information,” the man said, pleasantly enough. “Here, you might as well get it from the horse’s mouth . . .”
    Before Lucas could reply, the man half covered the mouthpiece of the receiver, and Lucas could hear him call out something, but not what he said.
    A second later, another phone receiver rattled, and an American man’s voice said, “This is Leo Grant. Can I help you?”

23
    FOR A MOMENT , Lucas experienced the kind of disorientation he might have felt in a falling elevator.
    Then he said, “I beg your pardon? Who is this?”
    The Cancun guy said, “Leo Grant. Who are you?”
    “Uh . . . Lucas Davenport—I’m an agent with the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension. We have had a series of murders here . . . one of the people we’re investigating is a Leopold Grant, a psychologist who works at the St. John’s Security Hospital. He shows references from the West Bend Hospital in Boulder, Colorado.”
    There followed a moment of silence, then a crunching sound, as if the man on the other end of the line had bitten off a piece of celery. Then, “How do I know this isn’t a stupid pet trick?”
    “Do you have a line to the States?” Lucas asked.
    “Well, sure.”
    “Call directory assistance for Minnesota, ask for the number for the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension. Under the listings for the state of Minnesota. Call that number, then ask for me: My name is Lucas Davenport, L-u-c-a-s D-a-v-e-n-p-o-r-t . . . This is critical: do it right away.”
    “I’ll call you right back.” There was a final chewing crunch, and then the line went dead.
     
    LUCAS, HIS HEART suddenly booming, stuck his head out the office door. “Carol: run down to the co-op center, tell them we need every speck of information we can get on Leo Grant, the psychologist at St. John’s.”
    “Leo Grant . . .”
    “Run.”
     
    LUCAS TOOK A COUPLE of turns around his office, thinking about Grant. He was well spoken, soft faced . . . but he’d also hung out with Sam O’Donnell, would have known about O’Donnell’s Christmas voice, had worked with Charlie Pope and the Big Three. Could have passed word of Peterson’s murder . . .
    And going way back, he was the one who said that Charlie was smarter than he looked, that Charlie might go for college girls, that there might be a second man or woman. Jesus. He’d been steering them from the start.
    “Ah, man.” He looked at the phone: “Call, motherfucker.”
     
    A MINUTE LATER , the phone rang. “This is Leo Grant from Cancun.”
    “Yeah, Dr. Grant. This is Davenport. Are you satisfied?”
    “Yes, I guess so,” Grant said. “What’s going on? Murders?”
    “We’ve got a guy who had access to all the major players in a series of murders. He says he’s a psychologist, and that his name is Leopold Grant . . .”
    “That seems unlikely . . .”
    “. . . who did his school at Colorado and then worked at West Bend. He has a set of references from West Bend. Wait, he has a transcript from Colorado that was sent to a 2319 Eleanor Street . . .”
    “You’ve got a fraud on your hands, then,” Grant said. “That was my address when I was a graduate student. I’ve never met or heard of another Leopold Grant. If there was another doc in the field with the same name, I would have heard—if he were legit, anyway. If he contributed to the literature.”
    “Do you have any idea how this Leopold Grant could have gotten his hands on your files?” Lucas asked. He thumbed through the “Leo Grant” file from St. John’s. “There are references here . . . Is Douglas Carmichael a real guy? He’s shown here as . . .”
    “. . . director of psychiatric medicine at West Bend. He’s real. It’s on letterhead paper, I assume.”
    “Yes, it is.”
    “If you’ve got a transcript and all that other stuff, then I’d say that somebody probably got to the personnel files at West Bend,” Grant said. “Have you seen this Leo Grant? What does he look like?”
    “He’s a pretty good-looking guy,” Lucas said. “Six feet tall, dark hair, dark eyes. He’s