HERE CAME O'DONNELL…Here was the food. He says something to Lighter, and the food goes in. Didn't touch anything that time. He talks to Chase. Food goes in…
He couldn't see it. Maybe O'Donnell put the messages in the food in the hallway? Might he have some power over one of the orderlies who delivered the trays?
He ran back and forth through the tapes, watching people come and go, staffers talking to prisoners, interacting with other staffers. Here's Beloit, here's Grant, here's Hart, here's O'Donnell, here goes Sennet…
"WHAT'S HE DOING?" Lucas asked himself.
He was watching Leo Grant. Hard to pick up, if you weren't run-ning the tapes at high speed.
Okay: Grant walks down the corridor, dressed in slacks and a sport coat, hands in his pockets. He's with Sennet. Sennet pushes a button, and they talk to Lighter. While they talk, Grant takes off his sport coat, folds it over his arm.
Lucas couldn't make out what the conversation was about, but watched as Grant turned his back to the window where Lighter was standing. Grant was facing both the camera and Sennet. They talked some more, and then Sennet punched the window release, and the window closed, shutting Lighter away again.
Sennet steps across the hallway. Grant, still with his coat off, steps sideways across the hall, never turning his back fully to the camera or to Sennet. Sennet opens Chases's window. They talk, Grant turns his back to Chase, as they talk. He's facing Sennet. Sennet closes Chase's window. Taylor's window is down the hall. Sennet heads that way, and Grant slips his jacket on, and follows Sennet, his back to the camera. They talk to Taylor, and Grant casually slips his jacket off again. He turns his back to Taylor, but never to Sennet or the camera…
Sennet punched Taylor's window when they were finished, and he and Grant walked back toward the camera, Grant a step behind so that Sennet had to turn slightly to talk to him. They disappeared under the camera and, presumably, out the door.
LUCAS RAN THE SEQUENCE several times. Maybe Grant just couldn't get the jacket right. Maybe the temperature was uncomfortable. But maybe…could he have had something written on the back of his shirt? Or a piece of paper or cloth tacked to his shirt?
Lucas dug out the anomalies list and found only one short entry for Grant: a Dr. Peter Baylor, from a clinic in Colorado, had mentioned that Grant had gone to a private psychiatric clinic in Cancun after leaving Colorado. The anomaly was that there were three references from Colorado in Grant's record, but none from Cancun.
Lucas looked up the telephone numbers for Colorado, called, asked for Peter Baylor, and was told that he wasn't working that day. "I'm trying to find the phone number for a former staff member of yours, Leo…" He flipped through the paper. It wasn't Leonard, it was… "Leopold Grant. He left your hospital and apparently went to Cancun."
After being routed around, he talked to a woman in the clinic's personnel department who didn't have a number, but had a name: The Coetrine Center. After a hassle with the ATT operator, he got the place. The woman who answered the phone, in Spanish, switched smoothly to English, then forwarded him to another office. The man who answered the phone there, in Spanish, changed to English.
Lucas said, "I need some information about a former employee of yours named Leopold Grant…"
"You already have some incorrect information," the man said, pleasantly enough. "Here, you might as well get it from the horse's mouth…"
Before Lucas could reply, the man half covered the mouthpiece of the receiver, and Lucas could hear him call out something, but not what he said.
A second later, another phone receiver rattled, and an American man's voice said, "This is Leo Grant. Can I help you?"
23
FOR A MOMENT, Lucas experienced the kind of disorientation he might have felt in a falling elevator.
Then he said, "I beg your pardon? Who is this?"
The Cancun guy said, "Leo Grant. Who are you?"
"Uh… Lucas Davenport-I'm an agent with the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension. We have had a series of murders here… one of the people we're investigating is a Leopold Grant, a psychologist who works at the St. John's Security Hospital. He shows references from the West Bend Hospital in Boulder, Colorado."
There followed a moment of silence, then a crunching sound, as if the man on the other end of the line had bitten off a piece of celery-Then, "How do I know this isn't a stupid pet trick?"
"Do you have a line to the States?" Lucas asked.
"Well, sure,"
"Call directory assistance for Minnesota, ask for the number for the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension. Under the listings for the state of Minnesota. Call that number, then ask for me: My name is Lucas Davenport, L-u-c-a-s D-a-v-e-n-p-o-r-t… This is criticaclass="underline" do it right away."
"I'll call you right back." There was a final chewing crunch, and then the line went dead.
LUCAS, HIS HEART suddenly booming, stuck his head out the office door. "Caroclass="underline" run down to the co-op center, tell them we need every speck of information we can get on Leo Grant, the psychologist at St. John's."
"Leo Grant…"
"Run."
LUCAS TOOK A COUPLE of turns around his office, thinking about Grant. He was well spoken, soft faced… but he'd also hung out with Sam O'Donnell, would have known about O'Donnell's Christmas voice, had worked with Charlie Pope and the Big Three. Could have passed word of Peterson's murder…
And going way back, he was the one who said that Charlie was smarter than he looked, that Charlie might go for college girls, that there might be a second man or woman. Jesus. He'd been steering them from the start.
"Ah, man." He looked at the phone: "Call, motherfucker."
A MINUTE LATER, the phone rang. "This is Leo Grant from Cancun."
"Yeah, Dr. Grant. This is Davenport. Are you satisfied?" "Yes, I guess so," Grant said. "What's going on? Murders?"
"We've got a guy who had access to all the major players in a series of murders. He says he's a psychologist, and that his name is Leopold Grant…"
"That seems unlikely…"
"… who did his school at Colorado and then worked at West Bend. He has a set of references from West Bend. Wait, he has a transcript from Colorado that was sent to a 2319 Eleanor Street…"
"You've got a fraud on your hands, then," Grant said. "That was my address when I was a graduate student. I've never met or heard of another Leopold Grant. If there was another doc in the field with the same name, I would have heard-if he were legit, anyway. If he contributed to the literature."
"Do you have any idea how this Leopold Grant could have gotten his hands on your files?" Lucas asked. He thumbed through the "Leo Grant" file from St. John's. "There are references here… Is Douglas Carmichael a real guy? He's shown here as…"
"… director of psychiatric medicine at West Bend. He's real. It's on letterhead paper, I assume."
"Yes, it is."
"If you've got a transcript and all that other stuff, then I'd say that somebody probably got to the personnel files at West Bend," Grant said. "Have you seen this Leo Grant? What does he look like?"
"He's a pretty good-looking guy," Lucas said. "Six feet tall, dark hair, dark eyes. He's thin-wiry-high cheekbones. He dresses well, he's well spoken. He seems pretty smart. He uses big words sometimes, I thought maybe he was showing off, but it seems pretty natural…"
"Oh, boy… does he have a tattoo on his upper arm? Like a barbed-wire thing?"