'Gonna go,' Lucas said. He got his.45 out in front and stepped through, one step, two, three, ready to fire, Sloan right behind him, Sloan's gun tracking to the right while Lucas's gun tracked left. Two bedrooms, two baths. Open-plan kitchen, nobody in that. Cleared a bedroom used as an office, cluttered but not torn up, cleared the master bedroom, the bathrooms, the closets.
'He's a freak,' Jenkins said. He'd come in behind them, and he nodded at the bed. Lucas stepped over to look, saw the stethoscope trailing out of the wall. 'Listening to the chick,' Shrake said. 'They looked like they'd been fucking, the guy must've been over here, must've cracked.'
Lucas put his gun away. 'All right. I'll call the co-op center, put out a call on the car. It's a snake hunt now.'
THEY BACKED OUT of the apartment, not wanting to hack up any evidence: best to let the crime-scene crew deal with it. As they went, Jenkins said, 'He didn't take much, looks like his clothes are still here.'
They closed the door, got a city cop to come down to watch it until they could get it sealed. As Lucas talked to the co-op center, Jenkins, Shrake, and Sloan went down to Millie Lincoln's apartment. The halls were full of frightened people, and Lucas heard a woman talking about the man hauled away by the ambulance. He went to the lobby windows, finished with the co-op guys, and called Rose Marie Roux.
'We know who he is, but we don't have him yet. He's running.'
'But we'll get him,' she said.
'One way or another. He could stick a gun in his ear… But yeah. It's over.'
'When are you coming back?'
'Tonight, an hour or two. There are a couple of loose ends down here.'
'Call me…'
Lucas rang off and saw the sheriff's car pull into the lot, and Nord-wall got out. Lucas looked at the crowd of cops around Millie Lincoln's apartment, decided they had enough help, and walked down the stairs and out into the parking lot.
Nordwall, no athlete, was chugging across the parking lot, a young deputy trailing him. 'What happened?'
'We're looking for a Leo Grant. He's a psychologist up at the secu-rity hospital. Before he ran out of here, he tried to attack a woman up on the second floor…' He told Nordwall about the sequence that led to Grant.
When he was done, Nordwall grunted, scratched his nose, then awkwardly patted Lucas on the shoulder and said, 'I knew I was call-ing the right guy.'
'I'm gonna dream about Peterson,' Lucas said.
'Yeah, but you know what? I read all those true-crime books,' Nordwall said. 'Like on the Green River guy. I was afraid we might lose ten people, or fifteen. When we were looking for Pope, it seemed like he was invisible.'
'There's that.'Lucas's phone rang. He answered, expecting somebody from the co-op center. Instead, he got a voice that sounded like an angry squirrel, high-pitched, chattering, incoherent, frightened.
'Wait, wait, calm down,' he said. 'Who is this, what happened?'
'This is Cale,' the voice shouted. 'Up at the hospital. Leo Grant just shot three people, and he's loose in the hospital. He's got guns. We don't have any lights, all the doors are open, we've got a fire in the cage. We've got the ambulances coming, we're calling the sheriff. Jesus, are you coming? Where are you? Where are you?'
26
GRANT WAS HURT: the pain narrowed his focus. Maybe everybody at the hospital knew about him, but it was home. He was wanted there. Needed. He could reach the glory…
And the cops had only been asking for information. Maybe they hadn't made a move yet. If they had, it was all over anyway; yet if he was ready, he could still reach the glory, there in the administrative wing, even if he couldn't make it to the Gods.
He screamed out of the apartment parking lot, down through the quiet streets, past a couple of girls on Rollerblades, out to the highway. He turned north and saw, on the other side of the highway, an SUV and a sedan coming south, fast, the sedan with a flasher on the roof.
Was the sedan chasing the SUV? He slowed, automatically thinking, Cop, and watched as the two vehicles went past. In the first, in the driver's seat, he recognized Davenport.
They were coming after him. Going to the apartment…
'Go,' he shouted to himself. 'Go, go, go, go…'
The odds of getting to the Gods Down the Hall suddenly seemed slimmer. Yet… there was no choice, really. Go for the hospital, go for glory, or die on some highway like a dog.
He gripped the steering wheel, focused, saw the Gods waiting for him, as though in a vision, and chanted, 'Go, go, go, go, go…'
UP THE HILL. Past the reception building: empty parking lot. Flags limp on the flagpole, blue sky behind it, Postcard of aNuthouse… Guy mowing yard to the right, lifting a hand…
He jammed the car into the handicapped space nearest the door. He had the smallest pistol, a 9mm, in his pocket, two more in his briefcase. He hurried toward the steps…
And bumped into Dick Hart coming out. Hart held up a hand: 'Hey, Leo, did you see that in-bound file on Mark North? Somebody stuck it somewhere.'
Grant shook his head, sidled past. 'Haven't seen it. I had to run out… Anything going on?'
Hart shrugged. 'The usual. Gary decided to pee down thehalls again, God only knows what we did.' 'Somebody ought to wire that guy shut,' Grant said. He turned and started back up the steps. Hart called, 'You coming Saturday?'
'I kind of doubt it,' Grant called back. 'I've got a lot going on.'
HE PUSHED THROUGH the tall doors, and as he went through, the space of the hospital narrowed farther, a tunnel red around the edges, rough, and he was walking down to the mouth of it. One goal, now: the cage. The congenial exchange with Hart spurred him on. They didn't know. He couldn't believe it: they didn't know.
He was hurrying down the tunnel of his own vision, passing the various administrative offices, brushing past people, feeling the walls close down, suppressing the urge to jog. He had the coin in his pocket, the gun in his jacket. Right now, he could still turn and run.
But not really, he thought. Because… he felt so good. He'd been made for this. Yes. Everything would be resolved now. Everything. He would break out of the closed room of his life… He was free.
GRANT WALKED UP to the outer barred door, pushed the buzzer button, put his ID on the scanner box, and waved to Justus Smith inside the glassed-in cage. The stress was going to his head. He felt as though he were underwater and hadn't taken a breath in too long. He relaxed, took a breath, took another…
The outer door rolled open. Instead of walking straight ahead, through the security scanner, he turned right, toward the cage, took his hand out of his pocket, and held it up to Smith. The outer door rolled shut behind him.
Smith looked at the coin through the thick yellowish glass and said, 'Hey-where'd you get that?'
'Internet. Could you take a look?' Smith was a big coin investor. He said coins would be good for two or three years, would probably double in price. And he reveled in his specialist knowledge, never lost a chance to show off.
'Yeah. Just a sec…' Against policy-but it was done occasionally, the strict safeguards breaking down, especially when the guy outside the cage was a trusted staffer, a professional, a doctor in a white coat…
Smith stepped over to the cage's security door, as Grant and the Gods knew he would, and popped it open. Grant had his hand on the 9mm, Safety off, finger on the trigger. Last chance to turn around…
Smith popped open the door, an expectant eye-raised smile on his face. 'Which Web site did you…'
