“Hurry the hell up!” He was speaking to Chastity even though she wasn’t there, but the inmate sitting next to him looked over.

“You talking to me?”

“What do you think?” Jasper gave him a withering mind your own business or I’ll tear your throat out glare, and his neighbor made the right decision by returning his attention to his own computer.

With a sigh, Jasper once again clicked away from his in-box and returned to the Internet. While waiting for some word from Chastity, he’d been searching for anything that might signify Bishop was on the loose—any news of the escape or release of the Zombie Maker, any report of someone claiming to have been attacked by a man wielding an ice pick, any indication that Beth Bishop, Lyman’s sister, had gone missing from her own institution.

All of those searches came up empty.

As the rest of his computer time wound down and there was still no word from Chastity, he nearly put his fist through the screen. Damn her! He’d told her to get back to him as soon as possible. What was she waiting for? She could check her e-mail and respond on her phone. Except she had no way of knowing he’d managed to trade a picture of her, as well as her address, for another inmate’s library privileges.

Racking his brain for some other way to discover if Lyman Bishop was no longer where he was supposed to be, he tried using the words “convicted cancer researcher,” “ice-pick murderer” and “ice-pick lobotomy” to bring up more information on him.

Those searches generated so many links he couldn’t get through them all in time, but he checked the dates. They were years or months old.

A prison guard, a CO by the name of M. Cadiz, signaled that it was time to return to his cell, but Jasper didn’t budge. He stayed where he was and typed in “Beacon Point Mental Hospital.” He hadn’t tried that because it seemed like such a long shot. He knew it would generate all kinds of information on the hospital itself, not necessarily its patients.

But just as Officer Cadiz started to walk over, he spotted a recent article titled: “Beacon Point Mental Hospital Janitor Dead in Swede Hollow.”

“Just a sec,” he told the CO, and clicked on it.

Terry Lovett, a janitor at Beacon Point Mental Hospital, was found dead in his car after driving off Seventh Street into Swede Hollow yesterday afternoon. Four teenage boys were in the park, not far from the scene of the crash. Fortunately, no one else was hurt.

“It was weird,” said one of the boys, age sixteen. “We were hanging out, talking after school, and suddenly this car comes plunging down the ravine. It crashed about twenty feet from us. We wanted to see if the driver was okay, but we didn’t dare go too close. We thought it might burst into flames.”

Lovett was found unresponsive behind the wheel and died before reaching the hospital. Initial reports indicate possible suicide. Not only had Lovett been fired from his job earlier in the day, he also was deeply in debt and, according to two different neighbors, he wasn’t getting along with his wife. But his parents and siblings insist he would never take his own life. At their prodding, police have ordered an autopsy to confirm the cause of death.