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little incident,” I said. “How can we help?”
    “For starters, let me give you a little insight into theft prevention,” he said. “If this was a supermarket, and people were stealing frozen peas, I’d set up a video cam in the frozen pea section. But at Mercy, if I want to keep a watch on the expensive hardware in my dialysis unit, I can’t put my cameras in there. HIPAA says no surveillance in any room where there are
identifiable patients.
It’s like running a museum and telling the guards not to watch the people who are looking at the paintings. How long do you think it will be before the Picassos start walking out the door?”
    “But you’ve got cameras in the public areas,” Kylie said. “If someone tries to walk off with a piece of equipment, you’ll see it in the hallway.”
    “You think?” He turned to a bank of CCTV monitors on the wall. “It looks like a lot of coverage, but I’ve only got eyes on 20 percent of the complex. Even then, the hospital doesn’t want to come off like Big Brother, so instead of putting cameras out in the open to act as deterrents, we have to hide them in air vents, or behind exit signs and smoke detectors.”
    He pointed at a monitor. “You see that technician? He’s rolling an X-ray unit from Radiology to Recovery. And here’s a guy with an EKG machine waiting for the elevator. And see this food cart? Who’s to say if someone slipped an ultrasound unit in with the salmon croquettes? Everything is on wheels. I can watch it move through the public space, but I can’t tell if it winds up back in the treatment rooms or it gets smuggled out the door.”
    “Tell us about the most recent theft,” I said.
    “We bought six state-of-the-art dialysis machines and locked them up till the manufacturer could run our techs through some training. All six disappeared. Whoever took them knew the keypad code to the room and how to get them out of the hospital without being tagged by a single camera.”
    “So they had someone on the inside,” Kylie said.
    “We have thousands of doctors, nurses, patients, visitors, and delivery people going through here every day,” he said. “But I might have gotten lucky.”
    He opened a drawer, took out a file, and spread it out on his desk. “Her name is Lynn Lyon,” he said, pointing at a picture of a woman in her thirties. “She’s a volunteer in our gift shop, but a guard caught her taking pictures in the room with the dialysis machines.”
    “How’d she get in?”
    “She told him the door was open, but I don’t buy it.”
    “Did you change the code on the keypad?” Kylie asked.
    “I would have, but the guard didn’t think it was important, so he didn’t mention it until after the horse was out the barn door.”
    Kylie’s cell rang.
    Our boss liked to micromanage, so I figured she was checking up on us. “Cates?” I asked.
    Kylie shook her head and stepped out to take the call in private.
    I skimmed Lynn Lyon’s personnel folder. “Have you talked to her since the robbery?” I asked.
    “She’s not on the schedule this week,” Hutchings said, “and I can’t just bring her in for questioning. I have no jurisdiction.”
    “But we do,” I said.
    “Look, I know this is below your pay grade, and you’re only here because Howard Sykes drafted you. But I’m glad he did. I need all the help I can get.”
    Kylie stepped back into the office. “I’m sorry, Gregg, but Zach and I have to go,” she said.
    “We’ll take a run over and talk to Ms. Lyon,” I said, grabbing the folder.
    “Thanks,” Hutchings said. “These dialysis machines will go for top dollar on the black market outside the U.S. See if you can get something out of her before they make their way to Turkmenistan.”
    I followed Kylie out the door. “Who was on the phone?” I said.
    “Shelley Trager. He’s waiting for us at Silvercup Studios.”
    Trager was Kylie’s husband’s boss. “Is this about Spence?” I asked.
    “Oh yeah.”
    “Did