Broken Prey

Lincoln’s apartment. The halls were full of frightened people, and Lucas heard a woman talking about the man hauled away by the ambulance. He went to the lobby windows, finished with the co-op guys, and called Rose Marie Roux.
    “We know who he is, but we don’t have him yet. He’s running.”
    “But we’ll get him,” she said.
    “One way or another. He could stick a gun in his ear . . . But yeah. It’s over.”
    “When are you coming back?”
    “Tonight, an hour or two. There are a couple of loose ends down here.”
    “Call me . . .”
    Lucas rang off and saw the sheriff’s car pull into the lot, and Nordwall got out. Lucas looked at the crowd of cops around Millie Lincoln’s apartment, decided they had enough help, and walked down the stairs and out into the parking lot.
    Nordwall, no athlete, was chugging across the parking lot, a young deputy trailing him. “What happened?”
    “We’re looking for a Leo Grant. He’s a psychologist up at the security hospital. Before he ran out of here, he tried to attack a woman up on the second floor . . .” He told Nordwall about the sequence that led to Grant.
    When he was done, Nordwall grunted, scratched his nose, then awkwardly patted Lucas on the shoulder and said, “I knew I was calling the right guy.”
    “I’m gonna dream about Peterson,” Lucas said.
    “Yeah, but you know what? I read all those true-crime books,” Nordwall said. “Like on the Green River guy. I was afraid we might lose ten people, or fifteen. When we were looking for Pope, it seemed like he was invisible.”
    “There’s that.” Lucas’s phone rang. He answered, expecting somebody from the co-op center. Instead, he got a voice that sounded like an angry squirrel, high-pitched, chattering, incoherent, frightened.
    “Wait, wait, calm down,” he said. “Who is this, what happened?”
    “This is Cale,” the voice shouted. “Up at the hospital. Leo Grant just shot three people, and he’s loose in the hospital. He’s got guns. We don’t have any lights, all the doors are open, we’ve got a fire in the cage. We’ve got the ambulances coming, we’re calling the sheriff. Jesus, are you coming? Where are you? Where are you?”

26
    GRANT WAS HURT : the pain narrowed his focus. Maybe everybody at the hospital knew about him, but it was home. He was wanted there. Needed. He could reach the glory . . .
    And the cops had only been asking for information. Maybe they hadn’t made a move yet. If they had, it was all over anyway; yet if he was ready, he could still reach the glory, there in the administrative wing, even if he couldn’t make it to the Gods.
    He screamed out of the apartment parking lot, down through the quiet streets, past a couple of girls on Rollerblades, out to the highway. He turned north and saw, on the other side of the highway, an SUV and a sedan coming south, fast, the sedan with a flasher on the roof.
    Was the sedan chasing the SUV? He slowed, automatically thinking, Cop , and watched as the two vehicles went past. In the first, in the driver’s seat, he recognized Davenport.
    They were coming after him. Going to the apartment . . .
    “Go,” he shouted to himself. “Go, go, go, go . . .”
    The odds of getting to the Gods Down the Hall suddenly seemed slimmer. Yet . . . there was no choice, really. Go for the hospital, go for glory, or die on some highway like a dog.
    He gripped the steering wheel, focused, saw the Gods waiting for him, as though in a vision, and chanted, “Go, go, go, go, go . . .”
     
    UP THE HILL. Past the reception building: empty parking lot. Flags limp on the flagpole, blue sky behind it, Postcard of a Nuthouse  . . . Guy mowing yard to the right, lifting a hand . . .
    He jammed the car into the handicapped space nearest the door. He had the smallest pistol, a 9mm, in his pocket, two more in his briefcase. He hurried toward the steps . . .
    And bumped into Dick Hart coming out. Hart held up a hand: “Hey, Leo, did you see that in-bound file on Mark North? Somebody stuck it somewhere.”
    Grant shook his head, sidled past. “Haven’t seen it. I had to run out . . . Anything going on?”
    Hart shrugged. “The usual. Cary decided to pee down the halls again, God only knows what we did.”
    “Somebody ought to wire that guy shut,” Grant said. He turned and started back up the steps.
    Hart called, “You coming Saturday?”
    “I kind of doubt it,” Grant called back. “I’ve got a