Broken Prey

cab or something. Sloan and I gotta talk. Here.” He dug into his pocket, took out two twenties and a ten, handed them to West. “Catch a cab, take a bus, I don’t care, that makes your nut for the day. We gotta go.”
     
    LUCAS HEADED OFF , hurrying, Sloan jogging after him to catch up. They’d left Lucas’s truck at the mission. Sloan caught up with him and said, “Wait, wait, wait—you think a staff member?”
    “I think it’s possible,” Lucas said. “It’s one thing we haven’t looked at. Goddamnit. When we were talking to O’Donnell and Hart, they made a big deal out of how nothing goes into the cells and nothing comes out. Those guys are supposed to be super-isolated. Total information blackout.”
    “Yeah. So?”
    “So Biggie yelled something about arresting the killer for not having a hunting license. Taylor knew it, too, that there’d been a hunter-oriented killing. And they didn’t try to get any details out of us. You know why? Because they had the details. And the staff was specifically forbidden to talk to them about any of the crimes, right?”
    “Yeah, but . . .” Sloan frowned.
    “And down in the isolation wing, nobody goes in but staff.”
    Sloan thought about it, then said, “You know lockups, Lucas. People tip other people off, even when they don’t mean to. Supper comes, Taylor asks the guy if the hunter has killed a woman yet. The guy looks away, and Taylor knows  . . .”
    “That’s a possibility,” Lucas admitted. “But the way they were behaving . . . C’mon, Sloan. Think about it. They knew all about it. This wasn’t a tip.”
    Sloan rubbed his head, looked back toward the disappearing figures of Del and West. “Jesus. I hate to think . . . they’re doctors.”
    “Maybe a guard. Maybe a food guy. But we’ve hit a blank wall trying to find another candidate among the inmates . . .”
    “Yeah . . .”
    “We gotta go back there. We’ve got to look at tapes for the last two days.”
    “Goddamn,” Sloan said, more to himself than to Lucas. “Is this possible? ”

18
    DR. CALE WAS WAITING in his office. Their escort dropped them, and Cale shut the door. “All right: What’s going on?”
    “We need to see the tapes for the isolation cells for the past two days,” Sloan said.
    Cale rocked on his feet, his hands in his jacket pocket: “Why?”
    “We want to see who’s been talking to the Big Three,” Lucas said.
    Cale drifted down his wall of books and papers, looked at a plaque, then said, sadly, “Nobody talks to them but staff.”
    Lucas said, “That’s why we need to see them.”
    Cale continued drifting along the books, turned the corner at his desk, sat in his swivel chair, and turned until his back was toward them, and he was looking out the window at the Minnesota woods and the river valley beyond. “You think a member of the staff might be passing them information?”
    “Something like that,” Lucas said, his voice cool, neutral.
    Cale hadn’t become head of the hospital by being stupid: he swiveled to face them, took off his glasses, rubbed one eye with the heel of a hand, and said, “Oh, boy. Who are you looking at? Grant?”
    “Why do you say Grant?” Lucas asked.
    “He’s the new guy. Been here less than a year. The other guys have been here longer.”
    “Grant would be interesting,” Lucas said. “Any reason to think . . . ?”
    “He sometimes seems a little naïve . . . uncertain of what he’s doing. He seems to struggle,” Cale said. “But that’s often the sign of a good therapist—a guy who doesn’t fall into routine and cliché.”
    “Is he good?”
    “He is good,” Cale said. “He has a fine touch with patients, especially the lost souls. You know, the quiet ones, the helpless ones—well, like Mike West. And I have to say, he came highly recommended.”
    “Doesn’t have to be a therapist,” Lucas said. “Could be anybody who’s had intimate contact with the Big Three.”
    “That’s a lot of people. Until they went into isolation, at least. Dozens of people, including staff members, in here,” Cale said. “Then there are outsiders. We contract for some medical services, for example, and Biggie, in particular, has been having problems. He’s a borderline diabetic, he’s got circulatory problems, and his PSAs are out of sight. He’s gonna lose his prostate in the next few years.”
    “We need a list of the outside docs,” Lucas said. “We still want to see the