Eyes of Prey

behind him as they went down a flight of stairs.
    “I went down to find her this morning and stopped to askat the nursing station,” Merriam said over his shoulder. He pushed through a door at the bottom of the stairs. “The duty nurse had worked overnight, and was working an extra half-shift because somebody was sick. Anyway, I mentioned that I was there to see Sybil and asked if Dr. Bekker had been around. The nurse said—you’ll have to take this with a grain of salt—she said she didn’t see him but she’d felt him. Late last night. She said it occurred to her that dirty old Dr. Death was around, because she shivered, and she always shivers when she sees him.”
    “She calls him ‘Dr. Death’?”
    “ ‘Dirty old Dr. Death,’ ” Merriam said. “Not very flattering, is it? So then I went down to talk to Sybil. She’s going by inches, but the nurses say she’s got an inch or two left . . . .”
    Merriam led him past the nurses’ station and down the hall, past an exit door and three or four more rooms, then glanced inside a room and turned. Sybil lay flat on her back, unmoving except for her eyes. They went to Merriam, then to Lucas, and stayed with him. They were dark liquid pools, pleading.
    “Sybil can’t talk, but she can communicate,” Merriam said simply. “Sybil, this is Lieutenant Davenport of the Minneapolis Police Department. If you understand, say yes.”
    Her eyes moved up and down, a nod, and stayed with Merriam.
    “And a no,” Merriam prompted.
    They moved from side to side.
    “Has Dr. Bekker been coming here?” Merriam asked.
    Yes.
    “Are you afraid of him?”
    Yes.
    “Are you afraid for your life?”
    Yes.
    “Have you tried to communicate with your eye switch?”
    Yes.
    “Did Dr. Bekker interfere?”
    Yes.
    “Is Dr. Bekker trying to kill you?” Lucas asked.
    Her eyes shifted to him and said, Yes. Stopped, and then again, Yes, frantically.
    “Jesus Christ,” said Lucas. He glanced at Merriam. “Has he been interested in your eyes? Said anything about . . .”
    Her eyes were flashing up and down again. Yes.
    “Jesus,” he said again. He leaned across the bed toward the woman. “You hang on. We’ll bring in a camera and an expert interrogator, and we’re going to get you on videotape. We’re going to slam this asshole in prison for so long he’ll forget what the sun looks like. Okay?”
    Yes.
    “And excuse the ‘asshole,’ ” Lucas said. “My language sometimes gets away from me.”
    No, her eyes said, sliding from side to side.
    “No?”
    “I think she means, Don’t apologize, ’cause he is an asshole,” Merriam said from beside the bed. “That right, Sybil?”
    She was like a piece of modeling clay, unmoving, still, except for the liquid eyes:
    Yes, she said. Yes.
     
    “I’ll have somebody here in a half-hour,” Lucas said, when they were outside her door.
    “You’ll have to talk to her husband, just to make sure the legalities are right,” Merriam said. “I’ll see the director about this.”
    “Tell him the chief is going to call. And I’ll have one of our lawyers talk to her husband. Can they get all the information from here at your desk?”
    “Sure. Anything you need.”
    Lucas started away, then stopped and turned.
    “The kids you think he killed. Did he go after their eyes? I mean, was there anything unusual about their eyes?”
    “No, no. I was there for the postmortems, their eyes weren’t involved.”
    “Hmph.” Lucas started away again, stopped again.
    “Don’t let anyone close to her.”
    “Don’t worry. Nobody gets in there,” Merriam said.
     
    Lucas called Daniel from a pay phone and explained.
    “Sonofabitch,” Daniel crowed. “Then we got him.”
    “I don’t know,” Lucas said. “But we got something. The lawyers will have to figure out if it’ll hold up in court. And it doesn’t tie him to these other things.”
    “But we’re moving,” Daniel insisted. “I’ll send a tape unit over there right now, and Sloan to talk to her.”
    “Can we put a guy on her door?”
    “No problem. Around the clock. You think we should stick a surveillance team on him again?”
    Lucas considered, then said, “No. He’ll be hyperaware of anything like that. We’ve got Druze going . . . . Let’s see what happens.”
    “All right. What are you doing?”
    “I got a couple more ideas . . . .”
     
    A male duck cruised a female across the college pond, as Elle Kruger and Lucas climbed the