Broken Prey

quite right. Two weeks if you’ve shown recognition and contrition. Every day that you don’t is a new offense. You won’t be out of here until your boy is caught.”
    “Or until you get transferred to the federal pen,” Lucas said. He pushed the button to close the glass panel, waited for an objection from Taylor, and got nothing but ten seconds of silence. Then, in a teasing baby voice, Taylor said, “I know you’re still standing there.”
    O’Donnell sighed and pushed the microphone button, turning it off. “Next?”
     
    THEY DID BIGGIE NEXT. Biggie was naked and masturbating. “Go away. I need my privacy to jerk off.” He twiddled his fingers at the surveillance camera.
    “I need to tell you about the special offer,” Lucas said. Biggie never stopped while Lucas recited the death-penalty threat.
    Biggie said, “Hey, you know what? Having you watch is gettin’ me harder. This is really good.”
    “I’ll come and watch you take the needle,” Lucas said, turning away. To Hart: “Shut the window.”
    “I’m gonna come. Don’t you wanna watch?” Biggie shouted as the window slid shut, “Maybe you can get our boy for not having a hunting license . . .”
    O’Donnell punched the microphone button and said, “Hard to threaten a guy when he’s in isolation. Maybe we should have moved them back to their regular cells. Might as well be dead as down here.”
    “Almost pointless to talk to Chase,” Hart said. “He’s going downhill fast. The catatonic and manic periods are getting longer, the transitions are getting shorter. He was down for almost thirty-six hours, ending last night, then he went through transition and now he’s going manic. When he’s manic, there’s nothing left but the instinct to kill.”
    “Let’s try him,” Lucas said. “Might as well, since we’re here.”
     
    THE GLASS SLID BACK , and Chase hurled himself at it, his fingers like claws, his mouth open, his eyes sparking with hate. Like Biggie, he was naked: he hit the glass like a bug hitting a windshield, bounced off, came back at it, scratching at the glass, prying at its corners, his fingernails breaking, blood slipping across the glass. He was wailing, like an injured big cat, like a jaguar. Hart was shouting, “Easy, easy, easy . . . You wanna get out, wanna get out . . .”
    Chase seemed not to hear him. He hurled himself at the glass again, hitting it with his face, beating it with his fists; behind him, the cell was torn up as much as it could be, as most of it was concrete. He hadn’t simply taken off his clothing, he’d taken it off and shredded it; he’d done the same thing to the blanket, and the mattress, which was covered with nylon and bolted to the bed, was streaked with blood, where Chase had been tearing at it.
    “Close it, close it,” Lucas shouted at O’Donnell, and the window slipped shut. The microphone was still on, and they could hear the continuing animal wail until Hart reached out and cut it off.
    “Goddamnit,” Sloan said. “Maybe you ought to do something. Like sedate him.”
    Hart nodded: “We try, but chemicals don’t have much effect on him anymore. If we give him enough to really calm him down, we might kill him.”
    “Well, that’d calm him down,” Lucas said. “He’s like a fuckin’ werewolf, or something.” Then, to Sloan: “We’re wasting our time.”
    “Listen, we can work on Taylor and Biggie for you, keep talking up the death-penalty thing,” O’Donnell said. “Is that for real?”
    “It will be,” Lucas said.
    “We sorta . . . oppose the death penalty around here,” O’Donnell said. “By and large.”
    “So do we,” Sloan said. “By and large.”
     
    THEY STOPPED FOR LUNCH on the way back, cheeseburgers at a McDonald’s.
    “I don’t care what anybody says about the shit McDonald’s feeds you,” Sloan said. “They do know how to make a French fry. You gonna eat those?”
    They were finishing the French fries when Del called: he was even more wired than he’d been in the morning.
    “Man, you gotta find a place to lie down,” Lucas said. “You’re yelling at me.”
    “We’re getting a little frazzled,” Del shouted. “Listen, where are you? How fast can you get up here?”
    “Forty-five minutes, depending on where you are. You find West?”
    “We know where he is. We talked to a chick who just saw him. He’s walking around with his bag along the riverbank. We’ve got some Minneapolis cops coming over to help.