Mind Prey

by John Sandford

  The radio: Two miles out of Bayport, slow and steady.

  "We gotta do something about this guy," Sloan said as they took the long sweeping curve toward the St. Croix River. They'd cut the corner off Dunn's route and were approaching Highway 95 ahead of him. "Dunn's not five miles away. Going through Bayport'll slow him down, but this asshole…" He looked in the mirror, and the truck was coming after them.

  "All right," Lucas said. "There's a marina up ahead. Pull in there. He'll come in behind us and I'll take him in the parking lot." Lucas pulled his .45 out of the shoulder rig, popped the magazine, jacked the shell out of the chamber, slapped the magazine back in the butt, and dropped the extra shell in his coat pocket. "What a pain in the ass."

  "Ready?" Sloan asked.

  "Yeah. You got cuffs? If we need them?"

  "Glove compartment."

  Sloan kept the speed up until he was on top of the marina entrance, then stood on the brakes and took them off the highway. The trucker almost rammed them, swerved out at the last minute, then cranked the truck down the road behind them. Sloan kept moving until they hit the parking lot, then pulled around in a circle. The trucker cut inside them, and they stopped, nearly nose-to-nose.

  Lucas popped the door and climbed out, the pistol back in its holster. The trucker was already on the ground, running around the back of his truck, reaching into the open truck bed for something. Lucas ran toward him and the trucker pulled out a length of two-by-four and Lucas screamed, "Police," showed his badge in his left hand, and pulled the pistol in his right. "On the ground. On the ground, asshole."

  The trucker looked at the two-by-four, his eyes puzzled, as though it had gotten into his hand by mistake, then chunked it back into the truck. "You cut me off," he said.

  "Get on the fuckin' ground," Lucas shouted.

  The woman started out of the passenger side, but when she saw the gun, she got back in and punched down the door locks. Sloan got out and held up a badge where she could see it.

  The trucker was flat on the blacktop, looking up, and Lucas said, "We're on an emergency run, we're in a big goddamn hurry or I'd kick your ass into fuckin' strawberry jam. As it is, I'm gonna take your truck license number. I want you to sit here, out of the way, for a half-hour. You can sit in the truck, but you sit for a half-hour, and then you can leave. If you leave before then, I'll be all over your ass. I'll put your ass in jail on fifteen fuckin' traffic counts and a couple of felonies, like interfering with officers. You understand that?"

  "I understand, sir." The trucker had grown calm.

  "All right. Get in the truck and sit. Half an hour."

  Lucas hurried back to the car and Sloan pulled it around in a circle and they were halfway out of the parking lot before they started laughing.

  "Funny, but Christ, I wished that hadn't happened just then," Lucas said as he reloaded the .45. "They say anything more on the radio?"

  "Yeah, they said…" Before Sloan could get it out, the radio said, He's into Bayport, still proceeding north. We got him.

  "We've got five minutes," Sloan said.

  "Main Street's only about ten blocks long. Let's run down it and see what we can see," Lucas said.

  Stillwater was an old lumber mill town, with most of the turn-of-the-century mercantile buildings still in place, crowding Main Street. The buildings had been renovated with tourists in mind, and were now filed with bricks-and-copper-pot restaurants, fern bars, and butter-churn antique stores; the long row of brick store fronts was inflected by the white plastic of a Fina station.

  Lucas slumped in his seat, Sloan's baseball cap on his head, only his eyes above the window sill. He hoped he looked like a child but wouldn't have bet on it. "Two million vans," he said. "Everywhere you look, there's a van, if the sonofabitch is dumb enough to still be driving that van around."

  The chopper: Subject proceeding through Bayport.

  Sloan idled the length of the town, and they saw nothing of interest: storefronts full of tourists, teenagers idling along the walks, one lad who might've been Mail but wasn't. In the light of a pizza place, his face was five years too young.

  At the north end of town, Lucas said, "We've got three or four minutes to set up. Let's go back to the other end and find a spot where we can watch the street. If he turns off right away, we should be able to see him. If he goes on past, we can fall in behind."

  "Piss off the feds," Sloan said.

  "Fuck 'em. Something's happening."

  Sloan made a U-turn in the parking lot of a run-down building with a line of dancing cowboy boots painted on the bare, corrugated metal in flaking house paint. They waited for a break in traffic and then drove back to the south end of town, pulled into a parking lot, and found an empty handicapped parking space facing the street. A line of pine trees separated the lot from the street. "Probably get a ticket," Sloan said as he pulled into the handicapped space.

  "I don't know," Lucas said. "I've always thought of you as handicapped."

  Radio: The subject has exited Bayport and is proceeding north.

  "Why's he talking like that?" Sloan asked.

  "He's got that camera with him. He'll say perpetrator in a minute."

  From their vantage in the parking lot, they could look through the line of trees and see the cars coming into town on Highway 95. Dunn drove a silver Mercedes 500 S, and as the chopper radio said Subject is entering Stillwater, Lucas picked it out in the traffic stream.

  "See him?"

  "I've got him."

  "Let him get past."

  Sloan backed the car out of the handicapped slot. "I wonder where the feds are?"

  "Probably not real close."

  They waited behind the trees until the Mercedes went past, and then Sloan pulled out of the lot and back onto Main Street. There were two cars between them and Dunn. Lucas, slumped in his seat, couldn't see him.

  "What's he doing?" he asked, when they all stopped for a red light.

  Sloan had edged a bit to the left, and said, "Nothing. Looking straight ahead."

  "What do you think? Is Dunn legit?"

  Sloan looked at him. "If he's not, they had to set it up ahead of time."

  "Well, he's a smart guy."

  "I don't know," Sloan said. The traffic started moving again. "That'd be awful tricky."

  "Yeah."

  After a moment, Sloan said, "It looks like he's going all the way through town. Unless he's going to that old train station. Or one of the antique places."

  "Shit: I hope he doesn't take a boat somewhere. Did the feds think of a boat? Boy, if the sonofabitch goes out on the water…"

  "We could grab a boat from somebody," Sloan said.

  "I'd give ten bucks to see that note he got from the picnic table."

  "With your money, you could do better," Sloan said. "Hey. He's slowing down. Goddamn, he's turning around right where we did."

  "Go on past," Lucas said. He sat up a bit and saw the silver Benz turning in the gravel parking lot outside the building painted with the cowboy boots. Sloan pulled into the next parking lot, a marina, and found a space with two cars between them and Dunn.

  "Goddamnit," Lucas said. He put his hand to his forehead.

  Subject has stopped. Subject has stopped. Five, are you on him?

  We see him, we're proceeding into parking lot down the street.

  "The whole fuckin' lot's gonna be full of cops," Sloan said. "That must be them." A dark Ford bumped into the lot, and Lucas could see that it was full of adult-sized heads.

  "Can you see the name of that place?" Lucas asked. "Where he's at?"

  "No light," Sloan said. Across the street, Dunn was getting out of his car. He looked up at the boot store and started toward it, ponderously. He carried a briefcase and slumped with it, as though it weighed a hundred pounds.

  Lucas picked up the federal radio. "This is Davenport. We're in the same parking lot with your guys. If he tries to go into that building, I'm going to stop him. We need you to spread your people out o
n the street, set up a net and look at faces, see if you can spot Mail. He's around here."

  Dumbo was sputtering. "Davenport, you stay the heck out of here. You stay out of here, we've got it under control."

  Sloan was looking at him curiously, and said, "Lucas, I don't think…"

  "Fuck me, fuck me," Lucas said. He pushed open the door.

  "Lucas!" Sloan was whispering, though Dunn was a long way away.

  A concrete loading dock ran along the front of the cowboy building, and Dunn was climbing heavily up the steps at one end. The building was dark, with no sign of movement. Dunn went to the door, and Lucas climbed out of the car, radio in his hand.

  Sloan said, "Lucas…"

  And Lucas put the radio to his mouth and said, "I gotta stop him. Get your men out." He tossed the radio back into the car and started running, yelling at Dunn: "Dunn, Dunn! Wait. George Dunn…"

  Dunn stopped, his hand on the door of the store. Lucas waved, and, glancing back, saw Sloan coming after him. "Take the back of the building," Lucas shouted. Sloan yelled something and broke off, and Lucas ran toward Dunn, who simply stood.

  "Get down off of there," Lucas shouted as he came up.

  "You sonofabitch," Dunn shouted back. "You've killed my kids…"

  "Get out of there," Lucas yelled. He ran up the steps—saw in the dark window the barely discernible words, "Bit & Bridle"—and reached for his gun.

  "What the fuck are you doing here?" Dunn asked. His face was stretched with tension and anger.

  "There's something wrong," Lucas said. "This whole thing is a setup."

  "Set-up," Dunn shouted. "Set-up? You just fuckin'…" And before Lucas could stop him, Dunn turned the door knob and shoved the door open. Lucas flinched. Nothing happened. "… fuckin' killed my kids…"

  Lucas pulled his .45 and stepped past Dunn into the building, groped for a light switch, found it, flicked the switch up. To his surprise, the lights came on. The store was empty, and apparently had been for some time. He was facing a long bare counter top, with vacant shelves behind it. All of it was covered with a patina of dust.

  A fed ran up the steps. "What the hell are you doing?" he shouted at Lucas. Lucas waved him away, then said, "You oughta get out on the street and watch for Mail. He's watching this from somewhere."

  "Watching what?"

  "Whatever he's got going here," Lucas said. "This used to be a place called the Bit and Bridle. One of those Bible verses said something about a bit and bridle. It was all too fuckin' easy."

  The fed looked around the empty room, then reached back under his jacket and pulled out a Smith & Wesson automatic. "You want to try that door? Or you think we should wait for the bomb squad?"

  "Let's take a look," Lucas suggested. To Dunn, he said, "You wait outside."

  "Yeah, bullshit."

  "Wait the fuck outside," Lucas said.

  Dunn dropped the briefcase and said, "You wanna find out right now if you can take me?"

  "Ah, Jesus," Lucas said. He turned away from Dunn and went to a doorway that led into the back of the building. The doorway was open just an inch, and Lucas, standing well off to the back side of it, pushed it open another inch. Nothing happened. The fed moved in from the opening side, reached around the corner, groped for a minute, found the light switch, and turned it on.

  The place was deadly silent until Dunn said, "There's nothing here. He's gone."

  Lucas looked through the two-inch opening, saw nothing, then pushed the door open a foot, then all the way. The door opened into what looked like a storage room. A stack of shelves, covered with dust, sat against one wall. A handful of blank receipt forms was scattered over the wooden floor. A 1991 Snap-On Tool calendar still hung on a wall.

  "Somebody's been here," the fed said. He pointed his Smith at the floor, at a tangled line of footprints in the dust. The prints came through another door further back. The door was open several inches. Lucas stood next to it and called out, "Mail? John Mail?"

  "Who's that?" Dunn asked. "Is that the guy?"

  "Yeah."

  "There's a light switch," the fed said. "I'm gonna get it, watch it."

  He hit the switch, and three light bulbs, scattered around the central shaft of the building, popped on. The building had been remodelled since it had last been used to store grain, and the grain storage shaft had been partitioned into storage rooms and a receiving dock. The rooms had no ceilings, but looked straight to the top of the shaft. The light inside the shaft was weak—the volume was too big for the three operable bulbs.

  But in the gloom above them, something moved. They all saw it at once, and Lucas and the fed pressed back against the walls, their guns up.

  "What is it?"

  "Aw, Jesus," Dunn shouted, turning in his own footprints, head craned up. "It's Andi, Jesus…"

  Then Lucas could see it, the body in black, the feet below it, twisting from a yellow rope at the top of the shaft. The door they had not yet tried went into the receiving dock and the main part of the shaft itself. Dunn broke toward it, hands out to stiff-arm the door…

  "Wait, wait," Lucas screamed. He launched himself cross the room in a body block, caught Dunn just behind the knees, and cut him down. The fed stood frozen as they thrashed on the floor for a moment, and Lucas, gun still in one hand, trying to control it, sputtered at the fed, "Hold him, for christ sakes."

  "That's Andi," Dunn groaned as the fed put away his pistol and grabbed Dunn's coat. "Let me up."

  "That's not your wife," Lucas said. "That's a woman named Crosby."

  "Crosby? Who's Crosby?"

  "A friend of Mail's," Lucas said shortly. "We've been trying to track her, but he got to her first."

  Lucas, back on his feet, holstered his pistol and went to the partially open door to the shaft. There was a slight draft through the doorway, but nothing else. Lucas reached through, found another light switch, hesitated, then flipped it on. Again, the lights worked. He looked through the crack in the door, saw nothing. No wires, nothing that might be a bomb. He gave the door a push and was ready to step through.

  But the door seemed to resist for a split second, just a hair-trigger hold, and then a break, almost imperceptible, but enough that Lucas jumped back.

  "What?" The FBI man was grinning at him.

  "I thought I felt…" Lucas started. He put his hand out toward the door and took a step.

  And was nearly knocked off his feet as the door seemed to explode a foot from his face.

  Can see, he thought, his hands up in front of his face. Nothing hurts…

  "What?" the fed was shouting, his gun out again, pointing at the shattered wooden door. "What? What? What was that?"

  Dust filtered down on them and rolled out of the back room like smoke. Lucas could taste dirt in his mouth, feel the grit in his eyes. Dunn had reflexively turned away, but now turned back, his hair and shoulders covered with grime.

  "What was that?"

  Lucas stepped back to the door, pushed it, pushed it again, pushed hard. It opened a foot and he looked through. On the other side, the floor was littered with river rocks, granite cobblestones the size of pumpkins, fifteen or twenty of them.

  "Trap," Lucas said. He pushed the door again and a rock rolled away from it. Lucas stepped through and saw the rope from the top of the door leading up into the darkness. "They fell a long way. If one of them hit you, it'd be like getting hit by a cannonball."

  "But that's not Andi?" Dunn said, following him through, looking up at the body. In the stronger light, they could now see the soles of the woman's feet, like dancing footprints above their heads.

  "No. That's just bait," Lucas said. "That was to get us to run through the door without thinking about it."

  "Asshole," said the fed. He was dusting himself off. "Somebody could have got hurt."

  CHAPTER 23

  « ^ »

  Mail's trap had snapped, but it had come up empty. Still, it had excited him: figuring it out, setting it up. He hadn't planned to put G
loria's body in the loft section, but it had worked so well in his mind—the cheese to pull them, unthinking, into the trap.

  And it must've been close, because they'd tripped it. He could tell by the way they were acting.

  "We knew there'd be a booby trap, that there'd be something," Davenport said. He seemed to find the situation almost funny, in a grim way. He stood with his back to the Bit & Bridle, his hard face made even harder by the television lights; his suit seemed unwrinkled, his tie went with his cool blue eyes. "We were hoping that by flooding the area with unmarked cars, we'd spot him. We're still processing license numbers."

  "You're lying, asshole," Mail shouted at the television screen. Then he laughed, pointed at the screen with a beer bottle. "You got lucky, motherfucker."

  Davenport looked out at him, unblinking. Behind Davenport, cops swarmed over the Bit & Bridle storefront. He missed some of what Davenport had said, and picked up on, "… we'll have to wait for the Medical Examiner's report on Gloria Crosby. She may have been up there for quite a while. We don't think he'd risk confronting us."

  "You're fuckin' lying," Mail shouted. He jumped out of the chair and punched the TV off, sat down, bounced twice, picked up the remote, and punched it back on.

  This was not right: he'd pulled them into Stillwater with the phony verses—he'd known that they'd look at Stillwater, but they wouldn't have gone into the city when Dunn was just outside it. They would've stayed with Dunn. Mail had been in Stillwater in the early morning hours, just after his first call to Dunn, and there'd been no cops anywhere. Unmarked cars, bullshit. He would have noticed.

  But he worried about his plates; were they on a list somewhere?

  The talking head had moved on: Davenport was gone, and the news program had gone to a room full of computer cubicles, and a group of young people gathered around a monitor. There was an air of urgency among them, like a war room.

  The reporter was saying, "… is also the owner of a company that makes police and security-oriented computer training software. He has placed those resources at the command of the department, for the duration of the hunt for Andi Manette and her children. A working group of gaming and software experts anticipated the kidnapper's moves, including the possibility of a booby trap…"