The Samoan stepped to the closest door, popped the hatch, looked inside, unlocked the blue panel, and held it open six inches. Sticking his head in, he opened the door fully and said, "This is Mr. Liverwright."
The room high and constricted, same dimensions as Peake's. Same bolted restraints. A muscular young black man sat naked on the bed. The sheets had been torn off a thin, striped mattress. Torn into shreds. Royal blue pajamas lay rumpled on the floor next to a pair of blue paper slippers. One of the slippers was nothing but confetti.
I stepped closer and was hit by a terrible stench. A mound of feces sat in a drying clot near the prisoner's feet. Several pools of urine glistened. The walls behind the bed were stained brown.
He saw us, grinned, cackled.
"Clean this up," said Swig.
"We do," said the Samoan calmly. "Twice a day. He keeps trying to prove himself."
He flashed Liverwright a victory V and laughed. "Keep it up, bro."
Liverwright cackled again and rubbed himself.
"Shake it but don't break it off, bro," said the Samoan.
"Close the door," said Swig. "Clean him up now."
The Samoan closed the door, shrugging. To us: "These guys think they know what crazy is, but they overdo it. Too many movies." He turned to leave.
Milo asked him, "When's the last time you saw George Orson?"
"Him?" said the Samoan. "I dunno, not in a while."
"Not tonight?"
"Nope. Why would I? He hasn't worked here in months."
"Who are we talking about?" said Swig.
"Has he visited since he quit?" Milo asked the Samoan.
"Hmm," said the Samoan. "Don't think so."
"What kind of guy was he?" said Milo.
"Just a guy." The Samoan favored Swig with a smile. "Love to chat, but got to clean up some shit." He lumbered off.
"Who's George Orson?" said Swig.
"One of your former employees," said Milo. Watching Swig's face.
"I can't know everyone. Why're you asking about him?"
"He knew Mr. Peake," said Milo. "Back in the good old days."
Swig had plenty of questions, but Milo held him off. We rode the fifth-floor elevator down to the basement, took a tense, deliberate tour of the kitchen, pantry, laundry, and storage rooms. Everything smelled of slightly rotted produce. Techs and guards were everywhere. Helping them search were orange-jumpsuited janitors.
White-garbed cooks in the kitchen stared as we passed through. Racks of knives were in full view. I thought of Peake passing through, deciding to sample. The good old days.
Milo found four out-of-the-way closet doors and checked each of them. Key-locked.
"Who gets keys besides clinical staff?" he asked Swig.
"No one."
"Not these guys?" Indicating a pair of janitors.
"Not them or anyone else not engaged in patient care. And to answer your next question, nonclinical staff enter through the front like anyone else. I.D.'s are checked."
"Even familiar faces are checked?" said Milo.
"That's our system."
"Do clinical staffers take their keys home?"
Swig didn't answer.
"Do they?" said Milo.
"Yes, they take them home. Checking in scores of keys a day would be cumbersome. As
I said, we change the locks. Even in the absence of a specific problem, we remaster every year."
"Every year," said Milo. I knew what he was thinking: George Orson had left five months ago. "What date did that fall on?"
"I'll have to check," said Swig. "What exactly are you getting at?"
Milo walked ahead of him. "Let's see the loading dock."
Sixty-foot-wide empty cement space doored with six panels of corrugated metal.
Milo asked a janitor, "How do you get them open?"
The janitor pointed to a circuit box at the rear.
"Is there an outside switch, too?"
"Yup."
Milo loped to the box and punched a button. The second door from the left swung
upward and we walked to the edge of the dock. Six or seven feet above ground. Space for three or four large trucks to unload simultaneously. Milo climbed down. Five steps took him into darkness and he disappeared, but I heard him walking around. A moment later, he hoisted himself up.
"The delivery road," he asked Swig, "where does it go?"
"Subsidiary access. Same place the jail bus enters."
"I thought only the jail buses came in that way."
"I was referring to people," said Swig. "Only jail bus trans-portees come in that way."
"So there's plenty of traffic in and out."
"Everything's scheduled and preapproved. Every driver is preapproved and required to show I.D. upon demand. The road is sectioned every fifty feet with gates. Card keys are changed every thirty days."
"Card keys," said Milo. "So if they show I.D., they can open the gates on their own."
"That's a big if," said Swig. "Look, we're not here to critique our system, we want to find Peake. I suggest you pay more attention to-"
"What about techs?" said Milo. "Can they use the access road?"
"Absolutely not. Why are you harping on this? And what does this Orson character have to do with it?"
Shouts from the west turned our heads. Several fireflies enlarged.
Searchers approaching. Milo hopped down off the deck again and I did the same. Swig contemplated a jump but remained in place. By the time I was at Milo's side, I could make out figures behind the flashlights. Two men, running.
One of them was Bart Quan, the other a uniformed guard.
Suddenly, Swig was with us, breathing audibly. "What, Bart?"
"We found a breach," said Quan. "Western perimeter. The fence has been cut."
Half-mile walk to the spot. The flap was man-sized, snipped neatly and put back in place, wires twisted with precision. It had taken a careful eye to spot it in the darkness. Milo said, "Who found it?"
The uniform with Quan raised his hand. Young, thin, swarthy.
Milo peered at his badge. "What led you to it, Officer Dalfen?"
"I was scoping the western perimeter."
"Find anything else?"
"Not so far."
Milo borrowed Dalfen's flashlight and ran it over the fence. "What's on the other side?"
"Dirt road," said Swig. "Not much of one."
"Where does it lead?"
"Into the foothills."
Milo untwisted the wires, pulled down the flap, crouched, and passed through. "Tire tracks," he said. "Any gates or guards on this side?"
"It's not hospital territory," said Swig. "There has to be a border, somewhere."
"What's in the foothills?"
"Nothing. That's the point. There's no place to go for a good three, four miles. The county clears trees and brush every year to make sure there's no cover. Anyone up there would be visible by helicopter."
"Speaking of which," said Milo.
By the time the choppers had begun circling, nine sheriff's cars and the crime-scene vans had arrived. Khaki uniforms on the deputies; I saw Swig tense up further, but he said nothing, had started to isolate himself in a corner, muttering from time to time into his walkie-talkie.
Two plainclothes detectives arrived last. The coroner had just finished examining
Dollard, searching his pockets. Empty. Milo conferred with the doctor. The paper scrap in the staff elevator had been retrieved and bagged. As a criminalist carried it past, Swig said, "Looks like a piece of slipper."
"What kind of slipper?" said one of the detectives, a fair-haired man in his thirties named Ron Banks. Milo told him.
Banks's partner said, "So all we have to do is find Cinderella." He was a stout man named Hector De la Torre, older than Banks, with flaring mustaches. Banks was serious, but De la Torre grinned Unintimidated by the setting, he'd greeted Milo with a reminder that they'd met. "Party over at Musso and Frank's-after the Lisa
Ramsey case got closed. My buddy here is good pals with the D who closed it."
"Petra Connor?" said Milo.
"She's the one."
Banks looked embarrassed. "I'm sure he cares, Hector." To Milo: "So maybe he rode down in that elevator."
"No inmates allowed," said Milo. "So there's no good reason for there to be a slipper in there. And Dollard's key ring is missing, meaning Peake lifted it. The rest of the techs were in a meeting, so Peake could've easily ridden down to the basement, found a door out, and hightailed it. On the other hand, maybe it's just a scrap that got stuck on the bottom of someone's shoe."
"No blood in the elevator?" said Banks.
"Not a drop; the only blood's what you just saw in the room."
"Clean, for a throat cut."
"Coroner says it wasn't much of a cut. Peake nicked the carotid rather than cut it, more trickle than spurt. Came close to not being fatal; if Dollard had been able to seek help right away, he might've survived. Looks like he went into shock, collapsed, lay there bleeding out. No spatter-most of the blood pooled under him."
"Low-pressure bleedout," said Banks.
"A nick," said De la Torre. "Talk about bad luck."
"Peake didn't have much muscle on him," said Milo.
"Enough to do the trick," said De la Torre. "So who cut the fence? Where'd Peake get tools for that?"
"Good question," said Milo. "Maybe Dollard carried the blade he was cut with. Maybe one of those Swiss Army deals with tools. Though there'd be no way for Peake to know that, unless Dollard had gotten really sloppy and let him see it. The alternative's obvious. A partner."
Banks said, "This is some big-time premeditated deal? I thought the guy was a lunatic."
"Even lunatics can have pals," said Milo.
"You got that right," said De la Torre. "Check out the next city council meeting."
Banks said, "Any ideas about who the buddy might be?"
Milo eyed Swig. "Please go down to your office and wait there, sir."
"Forget it," said Swig. "As director of this facility, I have jurisdiction and I need to know what's going on."
"You will," said Milo. "Soon as we know something, you'll be the first to find out, but in the meantime-"
"In the meantime, I need to be-" Swig's protest was cut short by a beeper. He and all three detectives reached for their belts.
Banks said, "Mine," and scanned the readout. A cell phone materialized and Banks identified himself, listened, said, "When? Where?," wiggled his fingers at De la
Torre, and was handed a notepad. Tucking the phone under his chin, he wrote.
The rest of us watched him nod. Emotionless. Clicking off the phone, he said, "When we got your call I told our desk to keep an eye out for any psycho crimes in the vicinity. This isn't exactly in the vicinity, but it's pretty psycho: woman found on the Five near Valencia." He examined his notes. "White female, approximately twenty-five to thirty-five, multiple stab wounds to torso and face, really messy.
Coroner says within the last two hours, which could fit if your boy has wheels. Tire tracks nearby said someone did. She wasn't just dumped there-lots of blood: it's almost certain that's where she got done."
"What kind of facial wounds?" said Milo.
"Lips, nose, eyes-the guy at the scene said it was really brutal. That fits, right?"
"Eyes," said Milo.
"My God," said Swig.
"Was she found on the northbound Five?" I said.
"Yes," said Banks.
Everyone stared at me.
"The road to Treadway," I said. "He's going home."
34.
THE LAST BIT of news deflated Swig. He looked small, crushed, a kid with a man's
job.
Milo paid him no attention, spent his time on the phone. Talking to the Highway
Patrol, informing the sheriffs of the towns neighboring Treadway, warning Bunker
Protection. The private firm must have given him problems, because when he got off, he snapped the phone shut so hard I thought he'd break it.
"Okay, let's see what shakes up," he told Banks and De la Torre. To Swig: "Get me
