"Okay. Let me call Security. They can put you in the monitoring room and run them right there."
"We could use a little privacy," Lucas said. "But we'd also like somebody who can identify the people going in and out."
"I'll get you Leon Jansen. He's one of our security people, knows everybody, and he can keep his mouth shut."
"And he doesn't have access to Biggie."
"No. Not since they went into isolation, anyway."
CALE CALLED JANSEN on a voice pager; he showed up a couple of minutes later, a tall black man with a hard face and close-cropped hair. He wore a small green crescent moon on a chain around his neck, which Lucas recognized as some kind of Muslim symbol. Cale introduced Lucas and Sloan and explained the problem. Jansen said, "Most unusual. Well. Come this way."
"Wish I could wish you good luck," Cale said as they went out the door.
Lucas and Sloan followed Jansen back out through the hospital, toward the security wall. "Are you conversant with our security structure?" Jansen asked. His language was formal, almost academic.
"We've been through the wall a few times…"
"The cage is essentially a booth with armored glass on all sides. From the outside, you have to go through the barred door to get to the security booth. The door closes, and then you go through the scanner process…"
"We did all that," Sloan began.
Jansen ignored him and continued. "When you're cleared through the scanner, the person manning the booth opens the interior barred door, and you can proceed. The point here is, you can't open both doors at once. There's an electronic interlock that won't allow it. The people in the booth are completely isolated from the outside. While they're in there, it would take military munitions to get them out. Gas won't work, guns won't work."
"And that's where you monitor the cells from," Lucas said.
"Yes."
"Could the guys inside the booth talk to the inmates through the intercom system?"
"Of course. And they do," Jansen said. "They're on the tape."
"Could somebody turn off the tape?"
"Could… but it'd be apparent in the time code, and the recorder notes when the tape is taken down. Also, the cage is about the size of two bedrooms, and there are always at least three people in there. You couldn't have a conversation that's not overheard." He put a finger along the side of his nose, like Santa Claus, thinking, then said, "But you know, given human nature… the monitoring room is at the far end, and there's a door that closes between the monitoring area and the main booth. You might find some excuse to close the door, and then talk to an inmate… but I would find that odd."
"Huh."
THE EXTERIOR DOOR slid open as they came up to it. They stepped through it, into the middle space where the cage was, and the door closed behind them. Cale had called ahead, and when both the interior and exterior barred doors were closed and locked, one of the people inside the cage popped a door and Jansen led them inside.
"We need to look at some tapes, people," Jansen said to the three people in the booth, two women and a man. "Dr. Cale has probably talked to you, so you know that we're required to view them privately."
"What're you looking for?" the male guard asked.
"Don't know," Sloan said genially. "We're looking at the Big Three, and anything would help."
"This way," Jansen said. He took them into a second small room, where one wall held three dozen small monitoring screens and a couple of larger ones. Only half of them were turned on.
"We monitor the isolation rooms constantly, and tape them. We also monitor what we call 'watch rooms,' where we put people who might be at some risk of attempting suicide, and also the high-risk individuals, like the Big Three," Jansen said. "The rest of the cameras are scanners and are meant to pick up disturbances in the hallways and recreational areas and so on."
"We're interested in the Big Three, back three days," Lucas said.
BY FAST-FORWARDING, they got through the tapes for the Big Three in two hours. The three had no privacy at alclass="underline" they used the toilet, masturbated, exercised, slept, screamed, ate before, the unblinking camera eye. At first, it carried a voyeuristic fascination; two days in, they just wanted it to end. The boredom was grinding, and Lucas began to empathize with Chase's wish to die. Lucas looked for seams in the tape, where it might have shut down; but it was seamless. Nobody, as far as they could tell, had said anything about the Peterson killing.
"Could it be a code word, telling them that the killing was done?" Sloan asked. Jansen glanced sideways at him, an idiot glance, and Sloan said, defensively, "All right, it's not a code word."
"There's gotta be something," Lucas said. He'd written down a list of names of the people who'd gone through the security area; there were thirty of them.
"Every single person you've seen in there-half the staff, I didn't know that many people went in and out, to tell you the truth-but every single person knows he's on tape," Jansen said.
"You can't see them very well, unless they're right up against the viewing panel," Lucas said. "Is there another angle?"
"Yeah, we have one of the scanning cameras at the end of the hall."
"Let's see that."
They spent ten minutes fast-forwarding through three days of the staff coming and going. "I keep thinking, the food," Sloan said. "It's the only thing that consistently goes into the cells."
They thought about that for a moment, and then Jansen said, "Suppose one of the guys delivering the food wrote down what happened, like a little strip of paper, and put it in the mashed potatoes…"
"Let's look at the guys bring in the food."
Seven different staff members delivered food over the three days. The food went into the cell on a kind of metallic lazy Susan device. "Wouldn't even have to put it in the food-you could just drop it on the tray when you put the food in the slot," Sloan said. "The cameras aren't so good that you could pick that up."
They watched the three men eating, saw nothing out of the ordinary, except that Biggie had bad manners, eating with his hands as much as with his spoon.
"Okay," Lucas said, when they were done. He was discouraged. "Maybe this isn't it. Goddamnit, I thought I was on to something."
"Want me to go down and drop Peterson's name on Biggie? Or on all three of them?" Jansen asked. "I could mention 'a Peterson thing' in passing, see if we get any reaction."
"It's an idea," Lucas said, considering him. "You're not going to get anything from Chase, though. He was hypermanic this morning."
"He's gone over the top and is on the way back down," Jansen said. "If I go now, I might catch him before he crashes. You could watch from here, in real time."
Lucas nodded. "Let's do it."
CHASE GAVE IT AWAY. Jansen rolled the observation window back and said, "How're you doing? Sleepy?"
"Man, I'm dying," Chase whimpered. "I'm going out. I'm like a light, I'm going out." He put his hands on both sides of his head and squeezed: "Why am I like this, Mr. Jansen?"
"We don't know, man." There was a note of sympathy in Jansen's voice, and it resonated.
Chase said, still holding his face, "If I could just, if I could just… If I could get out of here just for a couple of hours…" He sounded desperate, like a man who needed water.
"That's gonna be tough, since the Peterson thing. The director is adamant about keeping the three of you under wraps. That might not seem fair…"
Lucas liked the way he did it: in passing, as part of another idea, the raisin in the rice pudding. Chase's hands came down; his face was brighter, and his thin lips turned up in a joker's smile. "You know about that? How he got her…"
"I've heard the usual stories," Jansen said, noncommittally. He looked over his shoulder, as though he shouldn't be talking about it.
"So cool. He fucked her all night. He had her tied up, he had this rope around her neck like a fuckin' bridle, he fucked her all night. Six, seven, eight times. The bitch could hardly walk in the morning. He took her up there, rolled her out of the car, naked as the day. Then he says, 'You got a hundred yards and then I'm coming.'"