Mind Prey

by John Sandford

  And in the distance, she heard Genevieve scream, and she tried to push up. A hand pulled at her coat, lifting her, and she flew through the air, to crash against a sheet of metal. She rolled again, facedown, tried to get her knees beneath her, and heard a car door slam.

  Half-sensible, Andi rolled, eyes wild, saw Genevieve in a heap, and bloody from head to toe. She reach out to her daughter, who sat up, eyes bright. Andi tried to stop her, then realized that it wasn't blood that stained her red, it was something else: and Genevieve, inches away, screamed, "Momma, you're bleeding…"

  Van, she thought.

  They were in the van. She figured that out, pulled herself to her knees, and was thrown back down as the van screeched out of the parking place.

  Grace will see us, she thought.

  She struggled up again, and again was knocked down, this time as the van swung left and braked. The driver's door opened and light flooded in, and she heard a shout, and the doors opened on the side of the truck, and Grace came headlong through the opening, landing on Genevieve, her white dress stained the same rusty red as the truck.

  The doors slammed again; and the van roared out of the parking lot.

  Andi got to her knees, arms flailing, trying to make sense of it: Grace screaming, Genevieve wailing, the red stuff all over them.

  And she knew from the smell and taste of it that she was bleeding. She turned and saw the bulk of the man in the driver's seat behind a chain-link mesh. She shouted at him, "Stop, stop it. Stop it," but the driver paid no attention, took a corner, took another.

  "Momma, I'm hurt," Genevieve said. Andi turned back to her daughters, who were on their hands and knees. Grace had a sad, hound-dog look on her face; she'd known this man would come for her someday.

  Andi looked at the van doors, for a way out, but metal plates had been screwed over the spot where the handles must've been. She rolled back and kicked at the door with all her strength, but the door wouldn't budge. She kicked again, and again, her long legs lashing out. Then Grace kicked and Genevieve kicked and nothing moved, and Genevieve began screeching, screeching. Andi kicked until she felt faint from the effort, and she said to Grace, panting, three or four times, "We've got to get out, we've got to get out, get out, get out…"

  And the man in the front seat began to laugh, a loud, carnival-ride laughter that rolled over Genevieve's screams; the laughter eventually silenced them and they saw his eyes in the rearview mirror and he said, "You won't get out, I made sure of that. I know all about doors without handles."

  That was the first time they'd heard his voice, and the girls shrank back from it. Andi swayed to her feet, crouched under the low roof, realized that she'd lost her shoes—and her purse. Her purse was there on the passenger seat, in front. How had it gotten there? She tried to steady herself by clinging to the mesh screen, and kicked at the side window. Her heel connected and the glass cracked.

  The van swerved to the side, braking, and the man in front turned, violent anger in his voice, and held up a black .45 and said, "You break my fuckin' window and I'll kill the fuckin' kids."

  She could only see the side of his face, but suddenly thought: I know him. But he looks different. From where? Where? Andi sank back to the floor of the van and the man in front turned back to the wheel and then pulled away from the curb, muttering, "Break my fuckin' window? Break my fuckin' window?"

  "Who are you?" Andi asked.

  That seemed to make him even angrier. Who was he? "John," he said harshly.

  "John who? What do you want?"

  John Who? John the Fuck Who? "You know John the Fuck Who."

  Grace was bleeding from her nose, her eyes wild; Genevieve was huddled in the corner, and Audi said again, helplessly, "John who?"

  He looked over his shoulder, a spark of hate in his eyes, reached up and pulled a blond wig off his head.

  Andi, a half-second later, said, "Oh, no. No. Not John Mail."

  CHAPTER 2

  « ^ »

  The rain was cold, but more of an irritant than a hazard. If it had come two months later, it would've been a killer blizzard, and they'd be wading shin-deep in snow and ice. Marcy Sherrill had done that often enough and didn't like it: you got weird, ugly phenomena like blood-bergs, or worse. Rain, no matter how cold, tended to clean things up. Sherrill looked up at the night sky and thought, small blessings.

  Sherrill stood in the headlights of the crime-scene truck, her hands in her raincoat pockets, looking at the feet of the man on the ground. The feet were sticking out from under the rear door of a creme-colored Lexus with real leather seats. Every few seconds, the feet gave a convulsive jerk.

  "What're you doing, Hendrix?" she asked.

  The man under the car said something unintelligible.

  Sherrill's partner bent over so the man under the car could hear him. "I think he said, 'Chokin' the chicken.' " The rain dribbled off his hat, just past the tip of a perfectly dry cigarette. He waited for a reaction from the guy on the ground—a born-again Christian—but got none. "Fuckin' dweeb," he muttered, straightening up.

  "I wish this shit'd stop," Sherrill said. She looked up at the sky again. The National Enquirer would like it, she thought. This was a sky that might produce an image of Satan. The ragged storm clouds churned through the lights from the loop, picking up the ugly scarlet flicker from the cop cars.

  Down the street, past the line of cop cars, TV trucks squatted patiently in the rain, and reporters stood in the street around them, looking down at Sherrill and the cops by the Lexus. Those would be the cameramen and the pencil press. The talent would be sitting in the trucks, keeping their makeup straight.

  Sherrill shivered and turned her head down and wiped the water from her eyebrows. She'd had a rain cap, once, but she'd lost it at some other crime scene with drizzle or sleet or snow or hail or… Everything dripped on her sooner or later.

  "Shoulda brought a hat," her partner said. His name was Tom Black, and he was not quite openly gay. "Or an umbrella."

  They'd once had an umbrella, too, but they'd lost it. Or, more likely, it had been stolen by another cop who knew a nice umbrella when he saw it. So now Sherrill had the icy rain dripping down her neck, and she was pissed because it was six-thirty and she was still working while her goddamn husband was down at Applebee's entertaining the barmaid with his rapierlike wit.

  And more pissed because Black was dry and snug, and she was wet, and he hadn't offered her the hat, even though she was a woman.

  And even more pissed knowing that if he had offered, she'd have had to turn it down, because she was one of only two women in the Homicide Unit and she still felt like she had to prove that she could handle herself, even though she'd been handling herself for a dozen years now, in uniform and plainclothes, doing decoy work, undercover drugs, sex, and now Homicide.

  "Hendrix," she said, "I wanna get out of this fuckin' rain, man…"

  From the street, a car decelerated with a deepening groan, and Sherrill looked over Black's shoulder and said, "Uh-oh." A black Porsche 911 paused at the curb, where the uniforms had set up their line. Two of the TV cameras lit up to film the car, and one of the cops pointed at the crime van. The Porsche snapped down the drive toward the parking lot, quick, like a weasel or a rubber band.

  "Davenport," Black said, turning to look. Black was short, slightly round, and carried a bulbous nose over a brush mustache. He was exceedingly calm at all times, except when he was talking about the President of the United States, whom he referred to as that socialist shithead, or, occasionally, that fascist motherfucker, depending on his mood.

  "Bad news," Sherrill said. A little stream of water ran off her hair and unerringly down her spine. She straightened and shivered. She was a tall, slender woman with a long nose, kinky black hair, soft breasts, and a secret, satisfying knowledge of her high desirability rating around the department.

  "Mmmm," Black said. Then, "You ever get in his shorts? Davenport's?"

  "Of course not," Sherrill said. B
lack had an exaggerated idea of her sexual history. "I never tried."

  "If you're gonna try, you better do it," Black said laconically. "He's getting married."

  "Yeah?"

  The Porsche parked sideways on some clearly painted parking-space lines and the door popped open as its lights died.

  "That's what I heard," Black said. He flicked the butt of his cigarette into the grass bank just off the parking lot.

  "He'd be nine miles of bad road," Sherrill said.

  "Mike's a fuckin' freeway, huh?" Mike was Sherrill's husband.

  "I can handle Mike," Sherrill said. "I wonder what Davenport…"

  There was a sudden brilliant flash of light, and the feet sticking out from under the car convulsed. Hendrix said, "Goldarnit."

  Sherrill looked down. "What? Hendrix?"

  "I almost electrocuted myself," said the man under the car. "This rain is a… pain in the behind."

  "Yeah, well, watch your language," Black said. "There's a lady present."

  "I'm sorry." The voice was sincere, in a muffled way.

  "Get out of there, and give us the fuckin' shoe," Sherrill said. She kicked a foot.

  "Darn it. Don't do that. I'm trying to get a picture."

  Sherrill looked back across the parking lot. Davenport was walking down toward them, long smooth strides, like a professional jock, his hands in his coat pockets, the coat flapping around his legs. He looked like a big broad-shouldered mobster, a Mafia guy with an expensive mohair suit and bullet scars, she thought, like in a New York movie.

  Or maybe he was an Indian or a Spaniard. Then you saw those pale blue eyes and the mean smile. She shivered again. "He does give off a certain"—Sherrill groped for a word—"pulse."

  "You got that," Black said calmly.

  Sherrill had a sudden image of Black and Davenport in bed together, lots of shoulder hair and rude parts. She smiled, just a crinkle. Black, who could read her mind, said, "Fuck you, honey."

  Deputy Chief Lucas Davenport's trench coat had a roll-out hood like a parka, and he'd rolled it out, and as he crossed the lot, he pulled it over his head like a monk; he was as dry and snug as Black. Sherrill was about to say something when he handed her a khaki tennis hat. "Put this on," he said gruffly. "What're we doing?"

  "There's a shoe under the car," Sherrill said as she pulled the cap on. With the rain out of her face, she instantly felt better. "There was another one in the lot. She must've got hit pretty hard to get knocked out of her shoes."

  "Real hard," Black agreed.

  Lucas was a tall man with heavy shoulders and a boxer's hands, large, square, and battered. His face reflected his hands: a fighter's face, with those startling blue eyes. A white scar, thin like a razor rip, slashed down his forehead and across his right eye socket, showing up against his dark complexion. Another scar, round, puckered, hung on his throat like a flattened wad of bubble gum—a bullet hole and jack-knife tracheotomy scar, just now going white. He crouched next to the feet under the car and said, "Get out of there, Hendrix."

  "Yes, yes, another minute. You can't have the shoe, though. There's blood on it."

  "Well, hurry it up," Lucas said. He stood up.

  "You talk to Girdler?" Sherrill asked.

  "Who's that?"

  "A witness," she said. She was wearing the good perfume, the Obsession, and suddenly thought of it with a tinkle of pleasure.

  Lucas shook his head. "I was out in Stillwater. At dinner. People called me every five minutes on the way in, to tell me about the politics. That's all I know—I don't know anything about what you guys got."

  Black said, "The woman…"

  "… Manette," said Lucas.

  "Yeah, Manette and her daughters, Grace and Genevieve, were leaving the school after a parent-teacher conference. The mother and one kid were picked up in a red van. We don't know exactly how—if they were tear-gassed, or strong-armed, or shot. We just don't know. However it was done, it must have been a few seconds before the second daughter was taken off the porch over there." Black pointed back toward the school. "We think what happened was, the mother and Genevieve ran out to the car in the rain, were grabbed. The older daughter was waiting to get picked up, and then she was snatched."

  "Why didn't she run?" Lucas asked.

  "We don't know," Sherrill said. "Maybe it was somebody she knew."

  "Where were the witnesses?"

  "Inside the school. One of them is an adult, a shrink of some kind, one was a kid. A student. They only saw the last part of it, when Grace Manette was grabbed. But they say the mother was still alive, on her hands and knees in the van, but she had blood on her face. The younger daughter was facedown on the floor of the van, and there was apparently a lot of blood on her, too. Nobody heard any gun shots. Nobody saw a gun. Only one guy was seen, but there might have been another one in the van. We don't see how one guy could have roped all three of them in, by himself. Unless he really messed them up."

  "Huh. What else?"

  "White guy," Sherrill said. "Van had a nose on it—it was an engine front, not a cab-over. We think it was probably an Econoline or a Chevy G10 or Dodge B150, like that. Nobody saw a tag."

  "How long before we heard?" Lucas asked.

  "There was a 911 call," Sherrill said. "There was some confusion, and it was probably three or four minutes after the snatch, before the call was made. Then the car took three or four more minutes to get here. The call was sort of unsure, like maybe nothing happened. Then it was maybe five more minutes before we put the truck on the air."

  "So the guy was ten miles away before anybody started looking," Lucas said.

  "That's about it. Broad daylight and he's gone," Black said. They all stood around, thinking about that for a moment, listening to the hiss of rain on their hats, then Sherrill said, "What're you doing here, anyway?"

  Lucas's right hand came out of his pocket, and he made an odd gesture with it. Sherrill realized he was twisting something between his fingers. "This could be… difficult," Lucas said. He looked at the school. "Where're the witnesses?"

  "The shrink is over there, in the cafeteria," Sherrill said. "I don't know where the kid is. Greave is talking to them. Why is it difficult?"

  "Because everybody's rich," Lucas said, looking at her. "The Manette woman is Tower Manette's daughter."

  "I'd heard that," Sherrill said. She looked up at Lucas, her forehead wrinkled. "Black and I are gonna lead on this one, and we really don't need the attention. We've still got that assisted-suicide bullshit going on…"

  "You might as well give up on that," Lucas said. "You're never gonna get him."

  "Pisses me off," Sherrill said. "He never thought his old lady needed to kill herself until he ran into his little tootsie. I know he fuckin' talked her into it…"

  "Tootsie?" Lucas asked. He grinned and looked at Black.

  "She's a wordsmith," Black said.

  "Pisses me off," Sherrill said. Then: "So what's Tower Manette doing? Pulling all the political switches?"

  "Exactly," Lucas said. "And Manette's husband and the kids' father, it turns out, is George Dunn. I didn't know that. North Light Development. The Republican Party. Lotsa bucks."

  "And Manette's the Democrats," Black said gloomily. "Jesus Christ, they got us surrounded."

  "I bet the chief is peeing her political underwear," Sherrill said.

  Lucas nodded. "Yeah, exactly," he said. "Can this shrink give us a picture of the guy?"

  Sherrill shook her head doubtfully. "Greave told me the guy didn't see much. Just the end of it. I didn't talk to him much, but he seems a little… hinky."

  "Great. And Greave's doing the interview?"

  "Yeah." There was a moment of silence. Nobody said it, but Greave's interrogations weren't the best. They weren't even very good. Lucas took a step toward the school, and Sherrill said to his back, "Dunn did it."

  Ninety percent of the time, she'd be right. But Lucas stopped, turned, shook his head at her. "Don't say that, Marcy—'cause ma
ybe he did." His fingers were still playing with whatever-it-was, turning it, twisting it. "I don't want people thinking we went after him without some evidence."

  "Do we have any?" Black asked.

  Lucas said, "Nobody's said anything about it, but Dunn and Andi Manette just separated. There's another woman, I guess. Still…"

  Sherrill said, "Be polite."

  "Yeah. With everybody. Stay on their asses, but be nice about it," Lucas said. "And… I don't know. If it's Dunn, he'd have to have somebody working with him."

  Sherrill nodded. "Somebody to take care of them, while he was talking to the cops."

  "Unless he just took them out and wasted them," Black suggested.

  Nobody wanted to think about that. They all looked up at the same moment and got their faces rained on. Then Hendrix slid out from under the Lexus, with a ratcheting of metal wheels, and they all looked down at him. Hendrix was riding a lowboy, wore a white mechanic's jumpsuit and spectacles with lenses the size of nickels: he looked like an albino mole.

  "There's a bloodstain on the shoe—I think it's blood. Don't disturb it," he said to Sherrill, passing her a transparent plastic bag.

  Sherrill looked at the black high-heeled shoe, said, "She's got good taste."

  Lucas flipped whatever-it-was between his middle and ring fingers, fumbled it, and then unconsciously slipped it over the end of his index finger. "Maybe the blood's from the asshole."

  "Fat chance," Black said.

  He pulled the mole to his feet and Lucas frowned and said, "What's that shit?"

  He pointed at the leg of the mole's jumpsuit. In the headlights of the crime-scene truck, one of his pant legs was stained pink, as though he were bleeding from a calf wound.

  "Jesus," Black said. He pulled on the seams of his own legs, lifting the cuffs above the shoes. "It's blood."

  The mole dropped to his knees, pulled a paper napkin from a pocket, and laid it flat on the wet blacktop. When it was wet, he picked it up and held it in the truck lights. The handkerchief showed a pinkish tinge.

  "They must've emptied her out," Sherrill said.