Eyes of Prey

diaphragm. When it did, she would smother . . . in another two or three weeks . . . .
    In the meantime, there was nothing wrong with her brain and she could still move her eyes. The CNN commentator was babbling about a DEA raid on a drug laboratory at UCLA.
    Bekker stepped inside her room and Sybil’s eyes shifted to him.
    “Sybil,” he said, his voice quiet but pleasant. “How are you?”
    He had visited her three times before, interested in the disease that incapacitated the body but left the brain alive. With each visit he’d seen further deterioration. The last time she had barely been able to respond with the word processor. A nurse had told him several days before that now even that was gone.
    “Can we talk?” Bekker asked in the stillness. “Can you shift to your processor?”
    He looked at the television in the corner of the room, but the screen stayed with CNN.
    “Can you change it?” Bekker stepped closer to her bed, saw her eyes tracking him. He moved closer, peering into them. “If you can change it, make your eyes go up and down, like you’re nodding. If you can’t, make them go back and forth, like you’re shaking your head.”
    Her eyes moved slowly back and forth.
    “You’re telling me you can’t change it?”
    Her eyes moved up and down.
    “Excellent. We’re communicating. Now . . . just a moment.” Bekker stepped away from Sybil’s bed and looked down the corridor. He could see just the corner of the nurses’ station, a hundred feet away, and the cap on the head of a nurse, bowed over the desk, busy. Nobody else. He went back to the bed, pulled a chair up and sat where Sybil could see him. “I would like to explain my studies to you,” he said. “I’m studying death, and you’re going to be a wonderful participant.”
    Sybil’s eyes were fixed on him as he began to talk.
    And when he left, fifteen minutes later, she looked up at the CNN commentator and began to strain. If only . . . if only. It took twenty minutes, exhausting her, but suddenly there was a click and the word processor was up. Now. She needed a B.
    When the nurse came by a half-hour later, Sybil was staring at the word processor. On the screen was a single B.
    “Oh, what happened?” the nurse asked.
    They all knew Sybil Hart could no longer operate the equipment. They’d left the switch attached because her husband had insisted. For morale. “You must’ve had a little twitch, there,” the nurse said, patting Sybil’s unfeeling leg. “Let me get the TV back for you.”
    Sybil watched in despair as the B disappeared, replaced by the tanned face and stupid shining teeth of the CNN commentator.
    Four floors below, Bekker wandered through the pathology lab, whistling tunelessly, lost in not-quite-thought. The lab was cool, familiar. He thought of Sybil, dying. If only he could have a patient just a little early, just five minutes. If he could take a dying patient apart, watch the mechanism . . .
    Bekker popped two MDMAs. Beauty broke into his jig.

CHAPTER
7
    Light.
    Lucas moved his head and cracked an eye. Sunlight sliced between the slats in the blinds and cut across the bed. Daylight? He sat up, yawning, and looked at the clock. Two o’clock. Telephone ringing.
    “Jesus . . .” He’d been in bed for nine hours: he hadn’t slept that long for months. He’d unplugged the bedroom phone, not wanting it to ring if he did manage to sleep. Now he rolled out, yawned and stretched as he walked into the kitchen and picked up the telephone.
    “Yeah. Davenport.” He’d left the kitchen blinds up the night before and saw, up the block, a woman walking with an Irish setter on a leash.
    “Lucas? Daniel . . .”
    “Yeah.”
    “I’ve been talking to people. We’re going with television.”
    “Terrific. What time’s the press conference?” The woman was closer now, and Lucas was suddenly aware that he was standing naked in front of a window that was barely knee-high.
    “Tomorrow.”
    “Tomorrow?” Lucas frowned at the phone. “You gotta do it today.”
    “Can’t. No time. We didn’t decide until a half-hour ago—Homicide still doesn’t like it.”
    “They think it makes them look bad . . . .” The woman was one lot away, and Lucas squatted, getting down out of sight.
    “Whatever. Anyway, it’ll take the rest of the day to get a package together. I’ve got to meet with the county attorney about the legal angles, figure out if we’re gonna try to pull full-time