Mind Prey

by John Sandford

  Like he had the song on his mind, Mail thought.

  The cop turned, looking away from Mail, drifted toward the maple tree where he'd taken the leak. Mail tensed, and when the cop's head was behind the tree, stood up and padded toward the tree, slowly at first, but more quickly as the cop came out from behind it, his back still turned.

  The cop heard him coming, though.

  When Mail was ten feet away, he flinched and turned his head, his mouth open. But even a slow man can cross ten feet in a small fraction of a second, and Mail hit him with the spade handle, the steel grip burying itself in the cop's forehead with a wet crunch.

  The cop dropped, his shotgun flying out to the side and clattering down the sidewalk. Mail dropped the spade handle, caught the cop under the armpits, and dragged him back between the houses. In a few seconds, he'd pulled off the cop's jacket, hat, and gunbelt. His own dark jeans would do well enough for uniform pants. The gunbelt was heavy and awkward, and he struggled to get it on.

  The cop said a word, and Mail looked down at him, prodded him with a foot. The cop's head rolled to the other side, limp, loose.

  "Die, motherfucker," Mail said. And he walked away, out to the sidewalk, pulling on the hat. It was too small, and perched on top of his head. But it would do. He picked up the shotgun, crossed the street, walked between a dark house and a lit one, and started running again.

  A man in the dark house, standing in the kitchen drinking coffee, saw him pass. Watched him go across the fence; couldn't see the police uniform, only the movement of the running man. He walked quickly back through his house, to tell the cop out front. But the cop out front was missing.

  Huh. The man, cold in his undershirt, went out on his stoop, picked up the newspaper. In the very thin predawn light, he could see what looked like a shotgun lying on the sidewalk… and something else, further down the walk. Where was the cop?

  The man looked around, then hurried across the street. What he thought was a shotgun turned out to be a spade handle. He turned, shaking his head, to go back to his house. Then he noticed the other object again. He stepped toward it, picked it up. A police radio.

  And the cop on the grass groaned, and the man in the t-shirt said, "What? Who is that?"

  They'd found a thick wad of computer printout, and Lucas and Haywood were taking it apart a page at a time, looking for anything. They heard the running footsteps before they saw anyone coming and looked up. The Eagan chief spun in the door, grabbing the edge of the doorframe to stop himself.

  "Lucas, you better call in. They got a big problem up there."

  Lucas said, "Keep reading," to Haywood and started back toward the car. "What happened?"

  "I think your guy killed a cop. And he might have gotten through your perimeter."

  "Sonofabitch."

  As they hurried back to the car, Lucas said, "Have your guys talked to MacElroy yet?" MacElroy ran the lawnmower shop.

  "Talking to him now."

  Lucas got the radio, called in. The dispatcher said the cop was still alive. "It's Larry White, Bob White's kid. He's really messed up, the guy hit him with a pipe or something. They're taking him to Ramsey."

  "Jesus. What about Mail? Is he gone?"

  "Maybe not. A guy who lives down there called us on 911 within a couple of minutes of White getting hit. They backed the perimeter off, making the house the middle of it. He should still be inside."

  "All right. I'm coming back up there. Call Roux and Lester, tell them we need to talk."

  "They're headed over to Ramsey. Both of them, along with Clemmons." Clemmons ran the Uniform Division.

  "Are they on the air?"

  "Yeah."

  "Tell them to wait for me."

  Mail made it through the new perimeter, but not by much. Once outside the original lines, he stayed out of sight for two blocks, then simply ran down a long dark alley, stumbling now and then as he raced over the uneven ground. He'd been running for a minute or perhaps a minute and a half, when he heard the sirens screaming behind him. Christ, they'd found the cop. He ran faster.

  Another minute, and a cop car flashed down a cross street in front of him but continued past the alley. Mail slowed just a bit. He was breathing hard now, still carrying the shotgun, the hat perched on his head.

  At the end of the alley, he edged cautiously out toward the street. The cop car was a block away, dropping off two foot patrolmen. They were crouched over the car window, intent on what the man inside was saying, or the radio. Mail took a breath, took two quick steps across that put him behind a car, then another behind a maple tree. The cops were still talking. Mail took another breath and walked quickly across the street to a maple on the other side.

  And waited—but the cops had missed him.

  Watching them, trying to keep the tree between himself and the mouth of the alley, he walked backwards until he was into the alley, then turned and broke into a run. A dog barked at him, and Mail ran faster, and the dog barked a few more times. But there were still dogs barking everywhere. Nobody came after him.

  Mail stayed in the alley until it ended, then walked down a block to another alley, and ran down that. The sirens were getting fainter, and he could no longer see lights. But he could see houses against the sky. Dawn was getting close—and the traffic would be picking up.

  He would be more visible, now, and there'd be more people around.

  He needed wheels.

  CHAPTER 30

  « ^ »

  A surgeon in a scrub suit was wandering aimlessly outside the emergency room exit, a mask hanging down on his chest, paper operating hat askew. He was smoking a cigarette, head down, shoulders humped against the cool air.

  "Did you do the White kid?" Lucas asked as he hustled up the drive to the door.

  The surgeon shook his head. "They're still working on him." Inside the door, Lester was talking to two Minneapolis cops, while Roux was facing Bob White, the cop's father, and his mother, whose name Lucas couldn't remember. But he remembered that she liked hats, although this morning she was bareheaded, and holding on to a white handkerchief like it was a lifeline. Lucas walked up, nodded, said, "Bob, Mrs. White… how is he?"

  "His head is real bad," White said. "But he's a fighter," Lucas didn't know the son, but had the impression that he was somewhat dull; not a bad kid, though. "Yeah, he is. And this is the best trauma place in the country. He's gonna do good."

  Mrs. White pushed the handkerchief into her face and started to shake and her husband turned toward her. Lucas looked at Roux and tilted his head toward the door. She gave him an almost imperceptible nod and lifted a hand at a priest who was talking with a St. Paul cop. The priest broke away and Roux stepped toward him and whispered, "I think Mrs. White could use a hand…"

  Lester joined them, and Roux lit up as soon as they were outside. The surgeon was starting a new cigarette and stamped his feet and said, "Cold."

  Roux and Lester and Lucas walked to the end of the driveway as Roux puffed on the cigarette and Lucas filled them in on Mail's computer shop. When he finished, he said, "We couldn't put his picture out before, because it might touch him off. Now he knows we're close, and that'll do it—he's gonna kill them. We've got to get that picture on the air, everywhere."

  "How do you know he'll kill them?" Roux asked.

  "I know. He's had them a long time. The pressure must be terrific. With this chase, he'll have cracked like a big fuckin' egg. And he's smart. He'll know we've got the van, and he'll know that we'll get the computer store, that we'll get his prints, that well identify him as John Mail. He'll figure all that out—or he already has." Lucas nodded toward the hospital. "A cop has a shotgun, and Mail took him on with a club. He's freaking out."

  Roux nodded. "All right. We can have the photo out in twenty minutes. He'll make all the morning news shows."

  "Ask the TV guys to show the pictures at the beginning of the broadcasts, and to tell everybody to get their friends and come and watch, and show them again a couple of mi
nutes later. As many times as they can. Flatter 'em: tell 'em if TV can't find the guy, Andi Manette's gonna die, and the kids, too. That'll keep them pushing the picture out there."

  "How long have we got?"

  "No time," Lucas said. "No time at all. If we don't find Manette in the next couple of hours, they're gone."

  "Unless he's still in the perimeter," Lester said. "They think he might be, the guys up there."

  "Yeah. We've gotta keep the perimeter tight. I'm gonna go over there, see if I can figure the odds that he's inside."

  "Is there anything else?" Roux asked. "Any goddamn thing?"

  Lucas hesitated, then said, "Two things. The first one is, I'd be willing to bet that wherever he's got them, it's within a few miles of that computer shop. That's where the phone calls were coming from, when we were trying to pinpoint the cellular phone. I think we oughta get everybody with a gun—highway patrol, local cops, everybody—and send them down there. We oughta filter every goddamn road. We don't have to stop everybody, but we ought to slow everything down, look in every backseat, see if we can spot somebody trying to elude the blockade."

  "We can do that," Roux said.

  Lucas looked at Lester, grinned slightly, and said, "Frank, could you call in? Could you get the picture thing going?"

  Lester looked from Lucas to Roux and back, and then said, "What? I don't want to hear this?"

  Lucas said, "You really don't."

  Lester nodded. "All right," he said. "Back in a minute," and he went inside.

  "What?" Roux asked when Lester was gone.

  "I might call you later in the morning and suggest that you… I don't know, what?" He looked around, and then said, "… that you come over here and visit White. Spontaneously, without telling anybody exactly where you're going. You won't have to be out of touch long. Maybe half an hour."

  She narrowed her eyes. "What're you going to do?"

  "Are you willing to perjure yourself and say you didn't know?" Lucas asked. "Because you might want to say that."

  Roux's vision seemed to turn inward, although she was gazing at Lucas's face. Then she said, "If it's that way…"

  "It's that way, if you want to get them back—and keep your job."

  "I'd do any fucking thing to get them back," she said. "But I hope you don't call."

  "So do I," Lucas said. "If I do call, it'll mean that everything's gone in the toilet."

  Mail picked out a house with lights on in the back. From the alley, he could see an older woman working in what must be the kitchen. He crossed a chain-link fence into the yard, wary of dogs, saw nothing. As he passed the garage, he stopped to look in the window. There was a car inside, a Chevy, he thought, not new, but not too old, either. That would work.

  He went on to the house, to the back door, leaned the shotgun against the stoop, took out the pistol, looked around for other eyes, other windows, and knocked on the door.

  The woman, curious, came to look. She was sixty or so, he thought, her gray hair pulled back in a bun, her thin face just touched with makeup. She was wearing a jacket over a silky shirt. A saleswoman, maybe, or a secretary. She saw the police hat and the uniform jacket and opened the inner door, pushed out the storm door, and said, "Yes?"

  Mail grabbed the handle on the storm door, jerked it open, and before she could make another sound, shoved her as hard as he could, his open hand hitting her in the middle of the chest. She went down, and he was inside, and she said, "What?" She tried to crawl away, slowly, and he straddled her and gripped the back of her neck and asked, "Where are your car keys?"

  "Don't hurt me," she whimpered. Mail could hear a television working in the other room and turned his head to look at it. Was somebody else out there?

  "Where're the fuckin' car keys?" he asked, keeping his voice down.

  "My purse, my purse." She tried to crawl out from under him, her thin hands working on the vinyl floor, and he tightened his grip on her neck.

  "Where's your purse?"

  "There. On the kitchen table."

  He turned his head, saw the purse. "Good."

  He stood up to get a better swing, and hammered her on the side of the head with the butt of the shotgun. She went down, hard, groaned, kicked a couple of times, and was still. Mail looked at her for a moment, then made a quick check of the small house, A weatherman with what looked like false teeth was pointing at a satellite loop of the Twin Cities area: "… a lake advisory with these winds, which could kick up into the thirty-mile-per-hour category by this afternoon…"

  The bedroom had only one bed, a double, already made up.

  A black-and-white photograph of a man in a Korean War Army uniform sat on the nightstand, under a crucifix. Nobody else to worry about.

  He started back to the kitchen, and was stopped by his own image peering out of the television.

  A woman was saying, "… John Mail, a former inmate at the state hospital. If you know this man, if you have seen him, contact the Minneapolis police at the number on your screen."

  Mail was stunned. They knew him. Everything was gone. Everything. But they didn't know where he was. And they didn't say anything about the LaDoux name, they didn't say anything about finding Andi and the kid. And the TV would have that. So he was okay, for a while, anyway. But he had to get out, and get out now.

  That fuckin' Davenport. Davenport was the one who'd done this. And it made him angry. That fuckin' Davenport, he wasn't fair. He had too much help.

  The woman hadn't moved, and he dumped her purse on the kitchen table: car keys and a billfold. He opened the billfold, found twelve dollars.

  "Shit."

  He went back to the door, pausing to kick the woman in the side: twelve fuckin' dollars. You can't do anything with twelve fuckin' dollars. Her body moved sideways under the blow, leaving a trail of blood on the vinyl; she was bleeding from her ear.

  Mail went on, through the door, picked up the shotgun at the stoop, and walked back to the garage. The side door was locked, and none of the keys fit it. He walked around to the alley side, tried the overhead door. That wouldn't budge, either. He walked back to the side door, used an elbow to put pressure on a window pane in the door, and pushed it in. Then he reached through, unlocked the door, and went inside.

  A doorbell button was fixed to a block of wood beside the door. Mail pushed it, and the overhead door started up. He climbed in the car, started it, checked the gas. Damnit. Empty, or close enough. He'd have to risk a stop, or find another car. But there was enough to get him out of the neighborhood, anyway.

  After Mail had gone, a neighbor woman looked out the back of her house and said, "That's odd."

  "What?" Her husband was eating toast while he read the Wizard of Id in the comics.

  "Mary left her garage door up."

  "Getting old," her husband said. "I'll get it on the way to work."

  "Don't forget," the woman said.

  "How can I?" he asked, irritated. "I'm right across the alley."

  "You could forget," his wife said. "That's why you've been shaving with soap for what, four days now?"

  "Yeah, yeah, well, I'm not supposed to do the shopping for this family."

  They argued. They always argued. In the heat of the argument, the woman's odd feeling evaporated—when her husband left, she went to get dressed herself, without waiting to see if he closed Mary's garage door.

  The man who found White's body showed Lucas the window. "I saw the guy running, and I went right out front."

  "So let's walk through it," Lucas said. He looked at his watch. "You're back here, you walk to the door."

  They walked through it, out the front, down to the walk, all the way to the point where the man found White's body.

  "Did you hear the cop cars moving out before or after the ambulance got here?" Lucas asked.

  "Uh, about the same time. There was sirens everywhere. I remember hearing all the sirens, and then the ambulance got here. There was already four cops here, and they sent everybody running a
round after the guy."

  Sloan walked up as Lucas looked at his watch again. "So it was probably five minutes."

  The man said, "It didn't seem like it was that long. The cops, they was here in a couple seconds, it seemed like."

  "Listen, thanks a lot," Lucas said. He slapped the man on the shoulder.

  "That's fine, I hope I helped."

  As they walked away from him, Sloan said, "I go on administrative duty starting with the next shift, until the shooting's okayed."

  "Yeah."

  "Makes me nervous," Sloan said.

  "Don't worry about it," Lucas said. "You got witnesses up to your eyeballs."

  "Yeah." Sloan was still unhappy. "What's happening here?"

  "I'm not sure," Lucas said. "They probably didn't have the new perimeter up for six or seven minutes. The new perimeter is a half-mile out there. He could have run through it—we haven't found any sign of him, If it was me, I would have run through it."

  "Sonofabitch could be in somebody's home," Sloan said, looking at the rows of neat, anonymous little houses. "Laying up."

  "Yeah. Or he could be out."

  Mail found a cut-rate gas station with no customers and no visible television. He pulled in—the shotgun, the hat and cop jacket in the backseat—and pumped ten dollars' worth of gas into the car. A bored kid sat behind the counter eating a packet of beer nuts, and Mail passed him the old woman's ten-dollar bill. Another customer pulled in as he paid for the gas. Mail walked back out, head averted, got in the car, and left. The other customer filled his tank, walked inside, and said, "That guy who just left—he looked like the guy they've got on TV."

  "Don't got no TV. Asshole owner won't let me," the kid said dully. He did the credit card, and the other man said, "Sure looked like him, though," and went off to work, where he talked about it most of the morning.

  Mail went on down the block, stopped for a red light, turned on the radio. They were talking about him. "… apparently a long-time mental patient who faked his own death. Police have not yet identified the body found in the river."