Broken Prey

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.