Broken Prey

, a camera looking at them through a recessed glass plate. Two floors below the entrance, they got out, into a tiled corridor that felt like a basement—sound was muffled, and though the air was cool, it felt damp. They passed a couple of staff members, who nodded and went on their way, and stopped at an electronically controlled door with another camera. Hart pushed another button, a woman’s voice said, “Hey, Dick,” and Hart said, “Hey, Pauline. It’s me, Sam and Davenport and Sloan. They should be on your list.”
    “Yes, they are. Opening up.”
    The electronic lock clicked, and O’Donnell pulled the door open. “What would they do if we were imposters and had a gun in your back?” Sloan wondered.
    “They’d know,” O’Donnell said, smiling. Dropping his voice, he said, “Her name ain’t Pauline.”
    The corridor was dim. They could see a dozen rectangles set into the walls, eight of them dark, four lit. All one-way glass. “The Big Three and a guy who tried to cut his buddy with a broken plastic spoon,” Hart said. “Where do you want to start?”
    “How does it work?” Sloan asked.
    “There’s a release button next to each window panel. You push it once and the one-way glass slides back and you’re looking through a glass security panel. That’s if you want him to see you. The talk goes through a microphone with a speaker. The guys in the other cells can’t hear what you’re talking about, unless you want them to. Then you can turn on their mikes.”
     
    THE ISOLATION CELLS were simple: a bed, a toilet, a sink to wash in. The walls were beige, the blanket on the bed was green, the fixtures were white, the uniforms were a washed-out French blue, like the medical scrubs that Weather sometimes wore around the house.
    Taylor was sitting on his bunk, staring at the one-way glass. “Can he see us?” Sloan asked.
    O’Donnell shook his head. “No, I’ve checked it a hundred times. But I think, sometimes, that things are so quiet down here that they pick up vibrations of people walking by. Half the time we come down here, they’re staring at the glass. When you look at them on the video, they’re hardly ever looking at the glass. There’s nothing to see.”
    “Open it,” Lucas said.
    Hart pushed a button, and the glass slid slowly back. As soon as it started moving, Taylor stood up and walked toward it. “You guys,” he said, when he saw Lucas and Sloan.
    “Yeah, we need to talk to you,” Lucas said. “We need to get a name from you. The name of the guy you sent out there.”
    Taylor wagged his head and showed a short, yellow-toothed smile. “I don’t think you got enough for that.” His voice, coming from a lowest-bid speaker, sounded like a robot’s.
    “Let me tell you what we got,” Lucas said. Taylor crossed his arms and leaned against the windowsill. “The federal district attorney has decided that your victims . . . the victims of the guy you sent out . . . were kidnapped. That’s a federal offense, and the victims were killed. They’re going for the death penalty. If we put you with the killer . . . well, you won’t have to worry about being penned up anymore.”
    “Don’t have the death penalty in Minnesota.”
    “The state doesn’t—but we’re talking about the feds. They definitely do.”
    Taylor’s gaze seemed to turn inward for a moment, and then he shrugged. “Gotta go sometime. Tell me—did our boy get another one? Did he hunt her down?”
    “Hey, you’re not gonna shock us,” Sloan said. “We’ve been dealing with dildoes like you for our whole lives. Let us tell you the rest of it.”
    “So?”
    “So we’re making this offer to all three of you. Whoever gives us the name, that guy gets a pass,” Sloan said. “The other two get transferred over to Illinois, where they get the shot. One of you will think it over and talk. He’ll get to wave good-bye to the other two.”
    “You’re really fuckin’ me up,” Taylor said, his voice flat, and with no change of expression. He ostentatiously looked at his fingernails, “I can hardly stand it.”
    “All right,” Lucas said. He reached for the button that opened and closed the panel. “Enjoy the next few months, or however long it turns out to be . . .”
    Now an expression flicked over Taylor’s face. “What’s that supposed to mean?” he snapped. “Rules say we can’t be kept here for more than two weeks without relief.”
    Hart shook his head. “That’s not