Mind Prey

by John Sandford

"Well…" A pinup appeared on the screen, one leg lifted coyly, but her almost impossibly perky breasts in full view.

  "Yeah?" Lucas waited. The woman was pretty but nothing special.

  Until her breasts took off and began flying around the screen on their own, like the flying toasters.

  "Flying hooters—Davenport Simulations' answer to the Flying Toasters," the kid said.

  "If Davenport Simulations' name appears anywhere on this product, I'll be forced to take out my gun and kill you all," Lucas said.

  "Some people might feel it's in poor taste," the kid in the chair conceded.

  "Does this mean you wouldn't be interested in the swimming pussys?" asked Sloan.

  "I'll pass," Lucas said.

  He started away and then turned. "What does Ice think about these things?"

  The programmer in the chair shuddered: "She doesn't know. If she knew, she'd hunt us down and kill us like vermin."

  "Which reminds me," said one of the others. "She called and asked if you were around. She said she'd try you at the police department."

  "When was this?"

  The other man shrugged. "Ten, fifteen minutes ago. She's at home—I got her number." He handed Lucas a slip of paper.

  "Okay." Lucas stuck the paper in his pocket and walked through the back to the stairs, took them to the second floor, then on up a shorter flight to the roof.

  Haywood was pacing the perimeter of the building when Lucas came through the roof door.

  "Anything?"

  "A bunch of juvie skaters coming and going, that's about it," the cop said. He was wearing a black, long-sleeved shirt and blue jeans, with a black-and-green Treebark camo face mask. He'd be invisible from the street. "There's a little coke getting served outside the Bottle Cap, down on the next block."

  "Nothing new there," Lucas said.

  The night was pleasant, cool, with the stars brighter away from the heavy lights of the loop. Lucas handed him a sandwich and they sat on the wall along the edge of the roof and unwrapped them. Haywood alternately chewed and scanned the streets with a pair of Night Mariner glasses, not saying much.

  Lucas finished his sub, then took the cellular phone and the note from Ice out of his pocket and punched the number in. She answered on the second ring.

  "Ms. Ice, this is Lucas Davenport."

  "Mr. Davenport, Lucas." She sounded a little out of breath. "I think somebody is here. Looking at me. At my house."

  CHAPTER 25

  « ^ »

  Ice lived in a brick two-story in St. Paul's Desnoyer Park, a few blocks from the Mississippi. Only the upper floor was lit: when Del touched the doorbell, he said, without looking back, "Nothing."

  Lucas was in the back of Del's van, invisible behind the tinted glass, a radio in one hand, a phone in the other. His .45 was on the floor; he could see almost nothing in the dark. Behind them was a hurricane fence, and on the other side, the Town and Country Club golf course. "The guy on the porch can't see anything," he said into the phone.

  "Should I go down?" Ice asked.

  "No, no, just wait. He'll be up, if the door's open."

  "It should be…"

  "Hang on," Lucas said to Ice. And to Del, on the radio, "Go on in. Straight ahead to the white door, through it, then a hard right up the stairs."

  "Jesus, I love this shit," Del said. He was wearing a Derby hat, a white shirt pulled out at the waist, pants that were too large and too short, and a cotton jacket. A guitar case was slung over his shoulder. In the dark, from a distance, he might pass for a musician in his twenties. "I'm going in."

  Del pushed through the front door, his right hand crooked awkwardly in front of his belly. He was holding a Ruger .357, trying to keep it out of sight from the street.

  When he disappeared into the house, Lucas crawled to the other side of the van and looked out, then quickly checked the street through the front and rear windows. There were only a few lights on. Nothing moved on the street. Lights went on, then off, in Ice's house. Then Del's voice burped from the radio. "I'm at the stairs. Not a sound. I'm on my way up."

  Lucas said into the phone, "He's coming up," and to himself, He's gone…

  Mail hadn't decided what to do about Ice. Actually, he thought, he'd like to date her. They'd go well together. But that didn't seem possible, not anymore. He was beginning to feel the pressure, to feel the sides of the bubble collapsing upon him. He was beginning to think beyond Andi Manette and her body.

  When he became aware of it—became aware of the barely conscious planning for "afterwards"—a kind of depression settled on him. He and Andi were working something out: a relationship.

  If he moved on, something would have to be done about her and the kid. He'd started working through it in his mind. The best way to do it, he thought, would be to take Andi out, and upstairs, and out in the yard, and shoot her. There'd be no evidence in the house, and he could throw the body in the cistern. Then the kid: just go down, open the door, and do it. And after a while, he could dump some junk into the cistern—there was an old disker he could drag over, and other metal junk that nobody would want to take out. Then, when somebody else rented the place, even if they looked in the cistern, there'd be no attempt to clean it out. Just fill it up with dirt and rebuild.

  Getting close to the time, he thought.

  But it depressed him. The last few days had been the most fulfilling he'd known. But then, he was young: he could fall in love again.

  With somebody like Ice.

  Mail was parked a block from Ice's house, in the driveway of a house with a For Sale sign in the front yard. He'd been driving by when a saleswoman pulled the drapes on the picture window so she could show the view to a young couple from Cedar Rapids. Mail looked in: there was no furniture in the place. Nobody living there. When the saleswoman left, he pulled into the driveway, all the way to the garage, and simply sat and watched the lights in Ice's house. He knew the layout of the neighborhood from fifteen minutes circling the golf course. If he wanted, he could probably get down the alley and come up from the back of the house, and maybe force the back door.

  But he wasn't sure he wanted that. He just wasn't sure what he was doing—but Ice's image was in his mind.

  He was still waiting when the guitar player arrived in a blue mini-van. And he was waiting when the guitar player left with Ice. An odd time to leave, he thought.

  He followed them, staying well back.

  Ice and Del came down the sidewalk together, Ice wearing a Korean War-era Army field jacket and tights, smoking a cigarette. She flicked the cigarette into the street, blew smoke, and climbed in the passenger side of the van.

  As they headed across the interstate back toward the company offices, she half-turned to talk to Lucas. And he thought how young she was: her unmarked face, the way she bounced in the front seat, out of excitement, engagement.

  She was emphatic. "Three people saw him, two of them out front, one of them around by the alley; he was going through in a van, and Mr. Turner, who's the guy behind me, saw his face up close. When I showed him the composites we made, he picked out the one where we aged Mail's face. He was sure. He said Mail was the guy in the alley."

  "He saw you on television," Lucas said. "I thought he'd go after the company. I didn't think he'd come after you in person."

  "Why me?"

  " 'Cause of the way you look," Del said bluntly, after a couple seconds of silence. "We've got an idea of the kind of kid he is. We thought he might go for you."

  "That's why the TV people were all over you," Lucas said. "You sorta stand out in a crowd of techies."

  She looked Lucas full in the face. "Is that why you were so happy to have me involved?"

  Lucas started to say no, but then nodded and said, "Yeah."

  "All right," she said, turning back to the front. He saw her eyes in the rearview mirror. "Is this a good time to ask for a raise?"

  Lucas grinned and said, "We can talk about it."

  "How come you didn't co
me in with Del?" Ice asked.

  "He knows who I am, that I write games," Lucas said. "And he probably knows me by sight. I think I actually ran into the sonofabitch the day after the kidnapping."

  "At least he's sniffing around," Del said.

  "Yeah," Lucas nodded, looking out the back windows. Another van was back there—and yet another was waiting at a cross street. "He's out there."

  "Good thing I had a gun," Ice said.

  Lucas turned back to her and said, "What?"

  Ice dug into her waistband and came up with a blued .380 automatic, turned it in the dome light, worked the safety.

  "Gimme that," Lucas said, irritated, patting his hand out.

  "Fuck you, pal," she said. She pushed it back in her waistband. "I'm keeping it."

  "You're asking for trouble," Lucas said. "Tell her, Del."

  Del shrugged: "I just bought one for my old lady. Not a piece of shit like that, though." He looked at Ice. "If you're gonna have one, get something bigger."

  Ice shook her head: "I like this one. It's cute."

  "You gotta shell in the chamber?"

  "Nope."

  "Good. You don't have to worry about blowing your nuts off, carrying it in your pants like that."

  Mail stayed a full two blocks back, following them up St. Anthony to Cretin, across the interstate to University. When they turned left, he let them go.

  Davenport's, he thought. She's going back to work.

  He wondered who the musician was—a full-time relationship, or just a ride?

  He'd like to take a look at Davenport's, but it simply smelled wrong. Of course, maybe he was simply being paranoid. Mail laughed at himself. He was paranoid; everybody said so. Still, if he had to look at Davenport's, it might be a good idea to make a test run. To send in a dummy.

  He thought, I wonder where Ricky Brennan is…

  CHAPTER 26

  « ^ »

  Haywood called from the roof. "We got somebody coming in." Lucas had been on the cot for an hour, half-wrapped in an unzipped sleeping bag, his mind moving too restlessly for sleep. He kicked the bag off, groped for the radio. "Coming in? What do you mean?"

  "I mean there's this asshole down there along the tracks, coming straight in, kind of dodging in and out like he's in fuckin' Vietnam. But he's coming here. I can see his face, he's looking at the building."

  "Stay on him," Lucas said. He stood up, flipped on the storeroom lights, and pulled on his pants. The radio burped again. Sloan asked, "We moving?"

  "Maybe." Lucas called Dispatch. "You're up on the flood plan?"

  "Yes." A little tension popped into the dispatcher's voice.

  "I might call it," Lucas said. "On my address. Put out a preliminary call right now, get people to their staging points, but don't bring anybody in yet."

  "Got it."

  They'd been sleeping in a conference room, Sloan on an air mattress under the conference table, Lucas next to the door. Sloan fumbled into his pants and shirt, in the dark. "What's going on?"

  Lucas had slept in his clothes, except for his jacket. He pulled on his pistol rig and said, "Got somebody coming in. Hay's watching him."

  Haywood called. "He's coming up to the back of the building, boys. He's like sneaking up on the place. I think he's heading for that old loading dock… that's padlocked, right?"

  "Yeah. He'll probably come around the dark side, going for the windows," Lucas said. "Stay on him, call him for us. We're going to plug in."

  "Hate these fuckin' things," Sloan grumbled, pushing the flesh-colored radio plug into his ear. Lucas had trouble with his, finally got it in as they started down the stairs. Lucas said, "You go around the building to the left, I'll go around to the right."

  "Take it easy," Sloan said. He had his piece out, pointing down his leg.

  "Yeah." Lucas jacked a round into the chamber of the .45, a harsh, ratcheting noise in the tiled hallway.

  "He's headed for the windows," Haywood said. His voice seemed to come from the middle of Lucas's skull. "This guy is something else. He's like tiptoeing. He looks like Sylvester the Cat sneaking up on Tweety Bird."

  Lucas shook his head: his mental picture of Mail was neither funny nor stupid. "We're out," he muttered into his microphone. "We'll take him."

  Sloan ran around to the left, while Lucas moved slowly to the right, the pistol up and ready. At the corner, he waited, listening. Too many cars, and a voice floating down from the doper bar: You see that? Did you see what she did? Do that again…

  "He's trying the windows. I'm right over his head." Haywood spoke softly into Lucas's ear. Sloan should be ready.

  Lucas stepped around the corner of the building. A man was just breaking out a corner of a window, just swinging a piece of rerod, when Lucas stepped around and shouted, "Freeze."

  Sloan, coming from the other side, shouted "Police," a second later, and they both moved out from the building a step, two steps, the guy pinned between them at the point of a widening triangle. The trapped man had blond, shoulder-length hair, and Lucas thought of the first descriptions of the kidnapper. He was muscular, too—but short. His head snapped first at Lucas, and then at Sloan, then back to Lucas.

  And then without a word he rushed at Sloan, lifting the rerod.

  "Stop, stop…" Sloan and Lucas were both screaming, but the man rushed in. Lucas brought up his weapon, but the man was closing on Sloan too quickly.

  Sloan shot him.

  There was a quick, flat muzzle flash and the man screamed, staggered, and went down, and Sloan said, "Ah, shit, ah, shit."

  Lucas said to Haywood, "Get Dispatch. Tell them we got a guy down. Tell them to get an ambulance over here."

  "Calling," Haywood said.

  "Got it, Lucas. Ambulance on the way."

  The man on the ground was rolling, holding his leg, and Lucas put his pistol away and walked over, knelt on the man's back, cuffed him, patted him, found a cheap chrome .38 and handed it to Sloan, who put it in his pocket. Then Lucas rolled the wounded man: he groaned, swore. He had a fat, round face and pale blue eyes. This was not John Mail. "Can you talk?"

  "Fuckin' leg, man." The wounded man's eyes glittered with tears. "My leg's broken. I can feel the fuckin' bone."

  "Ah, Jesus," Sloan said. "What a fuckin' day."

  Lucas checked in the bad light and saw the spreading wet patch on the man's right thigh. "Where're the Manettes?" he asked.

  "Who?" The man was frightened and seemed genuinely confused.

  "Who are you? What's your name?" Lucas asked.

  "Ricky Brennan."

  "Why'd you come here, Ricky? Why'd you pick this place?"

  "Well, man…" Ricky's eyes slid away from Lucas, and Lucas thought he might lose him.

  "Come on, asshole," Lucas said.

  "Well, this dude said I could pick up a little toot from the computer freaks. Said they had a bag of toot in the back room, like a couple ounces to keep them going all night. My fuckin' leg, man, my fuckin' leg is killing me."

  "Shit," Sloan said, and he looked like he was going into shock.

  Lucas got on the radio: "Janet? Flood it. I'm calling the flood."

  "You got it."

  Sloan sat down beside the wounded man. "Got an ambulance coming," he said.

  "I'm really hurting, man."

  Haywood ran up and Lucas said, "You got a flash?"

  "Yeah."

  Lucas pulled a folded pad of paper from his pocket, unfolded it, sorted through the composites, and found the one of Mail with dark hair.

  "Is this the dude?" Lucas turned the flashlight on the paper.

  Ricky was slipping away again, but the light brought him back and he focused on the paper. "Yeah. That's the dude."

  "Where is he?"

  "He was gonna wait in the parking ramp." He flopped an arm out. The ramp was out of sight, on the far side of the building. Lucas got back on the radio. "Janet, goddamnit, this is the real thing, he's here, somewhere. Keep them coming."

  "They
oughta be there, Lucas. They're already out on the perimeter with the dogs."

  And then Lucas heard the sirens: fifteen or twenty of them, coming from every direction. More would be arriving later. The patrol people had decided to use the sirens in an effort to pin Mail down, to frighten him. "Tell them to look in the information packets they got tonight, and look at composite C as in Cat. That's our guy."

  "C as in Cat."

  Lucas bent over Ricky again. "The guy's name is John Mail, right?"

  "Oh, man, my fuckin' leg."

  "John Mail?"

  "Yeah, man. John. I see him around. You know. I see him around and I say, 'Hey, John.' And he says 'Hey, Ricky.' And that's all. Said there was some toot over here. He seen it. My fuckin' leg, man, you got something? You got any, like, Percodan?"

  "You know where he lives?"

  "Oh, man, I don't even know the dude, you know, I used to see him when we were inside, he'd just be, 'Hi, Ricky.' That's all." Ricky groaned. "How about the Percodan, man?"

  "Sent in a decoy, to see what we'd do," Lucas said to Sloan. Then: "You stay here. They're gonna want a statement and your gun."

  To Haywood: "C'mon. You got those glasses?"

  "Yeah."

  And to Sloan, "You okay?"

  Sloan swallowed and nodded. "First time," he said. "I don't think I like it."

  "Just get him in the ambulance and don't worry about it." Lucas grinned at him and slapped him on the back. "I can't believe you shot low, you dumb shit," he said. "If you'd missed him, he'd of sunk that rerod about six inches into your skull."

  "Yeah, yeah." Sloan swallowed. "Actually, I was aiming at the middle of his chest."

  Lucas grinned and said, "I know how that goes. C'mon, Hay."

  Lucas and Haywood ran around to the front of the building, Lucas glancing back once. Sloan was standing over Ricky, and Lucas thought he might be apologizing. He'd have to watch his friend: Sloan seemed unbalanced by the shooting. And that was in character, Lucas thought. Sloan liked the relationships that came out with cop work, the tussle. He even enjoyed an occasional fight. But he never really wanted to hurt anybody.