Mind prey ld-7

by John Sandford

  " ^ "

  "We have to be very fast," Andi said. "If we don't kill him, if we don't blind him, I'll try to hold his legs while you run. Run out and hide in the com field. He won't find you there. Just run out by the road and hide until you see cars. Wait until you see more than one, in case he's in one, then run out."

  Andi rambled along, hoping that she was making sense. Sometimes, now, she wasn't sure. She'd see Grace looking at her oddly, and she'd say, "What?" and Grace would say, "You're calling me Gen," or "You were talking to Dad just now."

  For a very long time, the sound of Andi scraping the nail had been the only noise in the cell, and then Grace sighed and said, "I think I could get the sole off my shoe. You know, with a piece of the bed-spring."

  Andi stopped scraping. "What for?"

  "We could put the nail through it. We could use it like a push-handle."

  When they were trying to work with the mattress springs, they'd found that the small pieces of metal were impossible to grip. Mail had given Andi some Band-Aids to patch a cut on her forehead, and Andi tried wrapping the wire with a bit of rag and the sticky-tape parts of the Band-Aids, but without much success.

  Andi said, "Grace, that's a great idea. Let's see…"

  Grace slipped her shoe off and handed it to her mother. The heel was capped by a thin slice of hard plastic. "We could break the plastic in half and make a hole in one half and put the nail through, and then put the other half over the nail head and tape it all together," Grace said. "When you stick him, you could have the nail coming out between your fingers with the heel in your hand."

  Andi stared at her daughter: Grace had been thinking about this, how to kill him. Had visualized it, right down to the fatal punch. And it should work.

  "Do it," she said. "I've got to keep scraping."

  Another two hours, and they were done. The broken heel-cap and tape made a knob at the end of the nail, and held in her closed fist, with the nail protruding between her ring and middle finger, Andi could strike-and strike hard. The nail was five inches long. Nearly four were exposed beyond her fingers, and the last inch glittered with raw steel, like the tip of a new hypodermic needle.

  "Now," Andi said, hefting the nail. "Let's go over it. When he comes, you're in the corner, playing with the computer. I'm lying on the mattress. I start to cry, but I don't get up. He comes to get me, just like he did the last couple of times. When he pulls me up, I put my left arm around his neck and pull up close, and my right hand hits him right below the breast bone, pointing up toward his heart. I do it a whole bunch of times, and try to turn him toward the wall…"

  "And I come up from behind him and hit him in the eye with the spring," Grace said. She held up one of the thin needles she'd used to free the nail.

  "So we should have room."

  They danced it out, in the small cubicle: Grace was Mail, and bent over her mother, pulling her up. Andy struck at her mid-section, pulled back, did it again.

  Then Andi was Mail, her back turned, standing on the Porta-Potti, and Grace came from behind, striking a roundhouse blow at the left eye with the wire. The wire wasn't stiff enough to penetrate muscle, but it would blind him.

  When they'd gone through it a half-dozen times, they sat down, and Grace said, "He's been gone a long time. What if something happened? What if he doesn't come?"

  "He'll come," Andi said. She looked around the hole and touched her temples. "I can feel him out there, thinking about us."

  CHAPTER 32

  " ^ "

  Del looked LIKE he'd been stuffed in a gunny sack and beaten with a pool cue. A patch of his blue jacket was discolored and stiff with something-ketchup? beer? His face was cut with stress lines, his hair was spiked from a pillow.

  Franklin was not much better. He was a large black man, who wore a partial plate where his front teeth had been knocked out in a fight. He had the habit of dislodging the plate and rolling it with his tongue when he was thinking. Worse, a wandering eye gave him the appearance of a medieval insanity. He'd put on a suit, but he wore white gym shoes and a discolored t-shirt that said "Logan Septic Service: Satisfaction Guaranteed or Double Your Shit Back."

  Loring was the prize. He was very large-fat-with a head the size and shape of a pumpkin, and eyes set so deep they were almost invisible. He hadn't shaved, and his beard was as thick and dangerous as a blackberry bramble. Sitting on top of the fat of his face, the beard shook like a bowl of cactus jelly. With his pale lavender suit and piss-yellow shirt, he looked crazier than Franklin.

  Sloan simply looked worn out.

  And all four were worried.

  "You're talking about our ass," Franklin said. They were all standing, jammed into Lucas's office, the desk dwarfed by the bulk of the five large bodies.

  "I can cover it," Lucas insisted. "You're just taking orders and there's no time to argue about it. You argue about it, those two are gonna be dead."

  Del nodded. "I'll do it."

  Franklin growled, "Yeah, you're Lucas's pal. But shit…" He looked at Loring. "What do you think?"

  Loring shrugged, then sighed. "Fuck, what can they do to us?"

  "Fire us, take our pensions away, put us in jail, and these chicks could sue us for every dime we got."

  After a moment of silence, Loring said, "What else?"

  Franklin and Del started laughing, and Lucas knew he had them.

  Lester stuck his head in the office. "I just saw a gang of your buddies running across the street. What's going on?"

  Shit. "What're you doing here, Frank?" Lucas asked.

  Lester straightened, frowned. "What do you mean?"

  "Frank, you don't want to be here. Not for an hour or so."

  "Why not?"

  "You just don't."

  Lester stepped inside, pushed the door shut with his foot. "Cut the bullshit, Lucas. Tell me what's happening."

  "On your head," Lucas said.

  "I'm willing to lie about it," Lester said. "I was never here."

  Lucas said, "Somebody is feeding information to Mail. I'm sure of it."

  "Who?"

  "I don't know-but I'm fairly sure it's either Nancy Wolfe or Helen Manette. None of the other people were around for both the sessions that Mail got information from."

  "But which?"

  "I don't know," Lucas said. "There just isn't any way to tell. They've both got motives-money, emotional problems, or both. In fact, it could have been Tower Manette or Dunn, but they didn't feel right, and when I talked to Mail, he said it was a she. So now I think it's got to be either Manette or Wolfe."

  "So what're you going to do?"

  "I'm arresting both of them," Lucas said. "I'm gonna have them dragged down here, searched, I'm gonna give them jail smocks and have them stuck in separate rooms, and I'm gonna have Franklin and Loring and Del and Sloan yell at them, until one of them cracks."

  "Jesus Christ." Lester stared at him. "What about the innocent one?"

  "I'm gonna apologize," Lucas said.

  "You're fuckin' crazy," Lester said.

  "Mail's on his way to kill those people. You heard the tapes. But he was a long way out, up north, and we've got ears tangling up traffic all over the south side of the Metro area. It'll take him awhile to get there-but he will get there, and when he does, he's gonna kill them. That's how much time we've got."

  "Does Roux know about this?" Lester asked.

  "She's outa touch…"

  "So am I," Lester said. He pulled open the door. "I never talked to you."

  And he was gone. Lucas felt peculiarly alone, standing in his empty office. Nothing to do now except wait for the women to arrive. Then he heard footsteps outside, and Lester was back.

  "How are you gonna cover it?" Lester demanded. "You got anything?"

  Lucas shook his head. "Moral appeals. We were doing the only thing we could to save Manette's life, and the kid, if she's still alive."

  Lester turned in a circle and said, "Christ, twenty-four years on the force." He ran a
hand through his hair and said, "I gotta go do some paperwork."

  Lucas said, "Frank: could you get us a helicopter in here? Across the street on the government center plaza?"

  Lester thought for a second, then gave a quick nod. "Yeah, I can do that." And he was gone again.

  Nancy Wolfe came in screaming. Helen Manette came in weeping.

  Helen Manette arrived first, wrapped in a nightgown, with Tower Manette six feet behind her. They were moving fast, a tight clutch of cops, the fat Franklin and the frightening Loring and the middle-aged suspect, Tower Manette trotting a few feet behind, his white hair standing up in peaks. He spotted Lucas and ran at him, his thin face white with anger, his thin-man's wattles shaking with rage.

  "What in the hell is going on?" He turned to point at the cops with his wife. "I'm told you're behind this… this fucking travesty of justice."

  "Your wife has been arrested in the course of our investigation," Lucas said coldly. "I'd suggest you shut up."

  "We've got a lawyer coming," Manette shouted. The cops were almost out of sight and Manette turned to run after them, shaking his finger at Lucas. "It's all over for you, you…"

  "He sounded pleased," Lester said, stepping into the hallway.

  Lucas couldn't suppress a cop-smile, an unhappy rictus that appeared when the world had turned to shit and there was no way out. "Yeah… how about the helicopter?"

  "It's coming; it'll be across the street on the plaza."

  "Excellent."

  Nancy Wolfe, dressed in pajamas, a housecoat, and slippers, was frightened and angry, a towering rage that expressed itself in tears and nearly incoherent screaming: "I will sue, goddamn you, goddamn you all."

  She saw Lucas and wrenched away from Del. "You will never again," she said, but couldn't finish. Del had cuffed her and when he tried to lead her past Lucas, she jerked her arm away and Lucas thought she was going to come after him with her teeth. "You are, you are…" she said. Again, she failed to find the word, but a thin line of saliva dribbled out the left side of her mouth.

  "Take her down," Lucas said to Del. "Send the pajamas to the lab."

  "My pajamas," she said. "My pajamas…"

  Lucas waited until they were down the stairs, and out of sight, then hurried after them. Del, Sloan, Franklin, and Loring were gathered outside the processing room. Helen Manette had already been searched, photographed, and isolated, and her clothes had been packaged for a lab inspection. She'd been given a jail smock to replace them.

  Wolfe was being photographed, and would be searched and her clothes taken away.

  And Franklin said, "Ah, man, this scares the shit outa me. This scares the shit outa me, man. Christ, I think we oughta let up."

  "Too late," Lucas said. "We're already in it. If we break one of them, we're out the other side. Now, when you get in there with them, I want them scared. We need all the pressure you can put on them: nobody gets hit, but you get your face right down in theirs, you…"

  Loring said, "Behind you…"

  Lucas turned around. Tower Manette was coming through the glass doors, an attorney in tow.

  "I want to see my wife."

  "When we're finished with the processing," Lucas said.

  "We want to see her right fucking now," Manette shouted, jostling past Sloan toward Lucas.

  "Touch another fuckin' cop and we'll put your ass in jail," Lucas snapped.

  The attorney pulled Manette's sleeve, said, "Tower, cool off." And to Lucas: "We want to see Mrs. Manette, and we want to see her immediately. We have reason to believe that her civil rights have been grossly violated."

  "Get a court order," Lucas said.

  "We will," the attorney said. "We'll have one here in fifteen minutes." To Manette, he said, "C'mon, Tower: this is the way to do it."

  "You motherfucker," Manette said to Lucas. "I met you in my house, I treated you like… like… quality, and you do this, you fuckin'…"

  "What?" Lucas asked, genuinely curious. "Fuckin' what?"

  "Trash," Manette said. And he was gone.

  Franklin, who had been turning the partial plate in his mouth so his large front teeth rotated through his lips, clicked the plate back in place with his tongue, chuckled, and said, "You WASPs, he didn't know what to call you. Wanted to call you a nigger or a spic, but you're as white as he is."

  "He's gonna be black and blue if something don't happen," Loring said, looking back at the processing rooms. "You think they'll get that court order?"

  "Yes, I do," Lucas said. "That's why you get to be like Tower Manette. So you can wake up a judge and get a pal out of jail. Now: when you get in those rooms…"

  Wolfe sat in the bare interview room, small with the bodies around her, her hair wild, her eyes large and frightened. The three men pressed in around her, Loring smoking, the smoke gathering around her head; she tried to stand up, once, but Del pushed her back into the chair. Lucas had never seen anything quite like it, an interrogation from a bad movie.

  "How did you talk to him?" Loring asked. "That's all we want to know. How did you get in touch with him? Was he a patient? Were you treating him?"

  "I don't know him, I don't…"

  "Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit, we know he was a patient. Were you fucking him? Was that it? Is that why you're protecting him?"

  "I'm not protecting anybody," she wailed.

  "Aw, c'mon, for christ sakes, he's gonna go out there and kill your partner, and I'll tell you what, honey, you're gonna go into the women's prison and the dykes out there are gonna make a meal outa you. You don't wanna spent the rest of your life snuffin' up strange pussy, you better start talking right now."

  Del, standing behind her, put his hands over his eyes: Loring was over the edge. Del waved him off, and, playing the soft guy, said, "Listen, darling, I know what it's like to be attached to somebody. I mean, you get involved with a guy like Mail…"

  "I wasn't involved," she shrieked, her head twisting. "I didn't do anything, Christ, I want a lawyer, I want a lawyer now, you can't do this."

  "You'll get a lawyer when we fuckin' well say you can," Loring said, his voice a slap in the face. "Now, what I want to know is how we can reach him. All we want is a phone number, or somebody who can tell us where we can get a phone number."

  Del's voice, softer: "We can get you a deal. You'll do five years. Now, we know one of the girls is dead, and that's thirty years inside. No parole. You'd be an old… what's the word?"

  "Crone," Lucas said.

  "… crone when you get out," Del said, his voice still soft, still reasonable.

  "I want my husband, I want him in here," Helen Manette wailed. She spent much of the time weeping uncontrollably, and questions were difficult to press.

  Franklin finally got down on his knees, thrust his face to within an inch of hers, and said, "Listen, bitch, if you don't shut up, I'm gonna slap the shit out of you. You got that? You shut the fuck up, or I'm gonna stomp a mudhole in your white ass, and I'll fuckin' enjoy doing it. Your pal is gonna slice Miz Manette and her daughter into fuckin' dog food, and I want to know how to stop him, and you're gonna tell me."

  "I want my husband…"

  "Your husband doesn't give a shit about you," Franklin shouted. "He wants his daughter. He wants his granddaughters. But he's not gonna get his granddaughters, he's not gonna get both of them anyway, 'cause you and your pal killed one of them, didn't you?"

  "Hey, c'mon, take it easy, take it easy," Sloan said, gently shoving Franklin out of the way. "You're gonna have a heart attack, man. Let me talk to her."

  Sloan was sweating, though the room was cool. "Now listen, Miz Manette, we know there are all kinds of stresses in a person's life, and sometimes we do things we regret. Now we know that your husband is sleeping with Nancy Wolfe, and we know that you know. And we know that if Tower Manette left you, there just wouldn't be that much to share, would there? Now…"

  Franklin looked at Lucas and shook his head, and Lucas made a keep rolling sign with his hands.


  Franklin nodded and pushed and said to Sloan, "Hey, cut the psychological bullshit, Sloan; you know the bitch did it. Give me two minutes alone with her, and I'll get it out." He squatted, his face close to Helen Manette's, and he turned the partial plate with his tongue. "Two minutes would do it," he said.

  He chuckled, a long gravelly roll, and Lucas winced.

  Wolfe looked at Lucas and pleaded: "Get me out of here, just get me out of here. Please, get me out."

  "I could help you, but you've got to help us," Lucas said. "We could use anything. A phone number would be great. An address. How did you get to know him? A little history…"

  "I don't know him," she said hoarsely.

  "Let me explain," Loring said, circling her. Del stood behind her, very close, so she could feel his pants leg near the back of her head. "We know that you're fucking Tower Manette. We know that Tower Manette's money is going to his daughter. Now, if you shoot Tower's old lady out of the saddle, and you were getting close, and if there was no daughter around, you'd get a bundle, right?"

  "That's crazy," she blurted.

  "And even if you don't get Tower, you'd get the key-man insurance from the shrink business, right? That's a bundle all by itself. You could buy a fleet of Porsches with that money alone."

  "That…" she started, but Loring stuck a warning finger in her face.

  "Shut the fuck up. I'm not done," he said. "Now we know that you were going out with George Dunn before Andi Manette took him away, and we've been having this argument: could that have triggered this off? Is it all because of George Dunn? Are you fucking Andi Manette's father to get back at Andi Manette because you can't fuck her husband? There's a pretty big kettle of psychological stew right there, huh? What'd old Desmond Freud have to say about that, huh?"

  She went cool: "I want a lawyer. I promise you, if you don't get me a lawyer, none of you will ever again work as police officers. I'm willing to overlook…"

  The door opened behind them, and Sloan stuck his head in: "Lucas. You better come in here." And to Loring and Del, he said, "Go easy."

  Helen Manette was slumped in the plastic chair; she'd stopped weeping and was chewing on a fingernail. She had snapped: she had a foxy look on her face, a dealer's look.