Mind Prey

by John Sandford

  The window shattered with the sound of a load of dishes dropped in a diner: but nobody yelled, nobody came running. He tossed the lighter after the gas, and the building went up with a hollow whoom. By the time he was out of the parking lot, the fire was all over the inside of the building.

  Damn. Wished he could stay.

  He watched the building in the rearview mirror, until it disappeared behind a curve. When he was a kid, he'd torched a house in North St. Paul and had come back to sit on an elementary school embankment to watch the action. He liked the flames. Even more, he'd liked the excitement and companionship of the crowd, gathered to watch the fire. He felt like an entertainer, a movie star: he'd done this.

  And listening, back then, he realized that everybody could find a little joy in watching one of their neighbors get burned out.

  On the way back home, under the night sky, he thought about Andi Manette. Maybe this break was for the better. He'd been fucking her a lot, he could use the rest.

  Tomorrow, though, he'd need her—need one of them, anyway.

  He could feel that already.

  CHAPTER 11

  « ^ »

  Lucas got up a few minutes after Weather, struggling with the early hour, the morning light pale in the east windows. Weather put breakfast together while Lucas cleaned up. When he was dressed, Lucas got the ring from his sock drawer, fiddled with it, then dropped it in his pants pocket as he had almost every day for a month.

  In the kitchen, Weather was standing at the sink, humming to herself as she sliced the orange heart out of a cantaloupe. Lucas still felt like he'd been hit in the forehead with a gavel.

  "Anything good today?" he asked. His morning voice sounded like a rusty gate, but she was used to it.

  "Not especially interesting," she said. "The first one is a woman with facial scarring from an electrical shock." She touched her cheek in front of her ear, to indicate where the scarring was. "I'm going to take out as much of the scar as I can—all of it, I hope."

  "Sounds like she needs a plastic surgeon," Lucas said. He pushed two slices of bread into the toaster and started looking for the cinnamon.

  "Sometimes I am a plastic surgeon," Weather said. "We do have that child coming up; that will be interesting. Six operations, probably. We're going to have to rotate her skull backwards…"

  He liked watching her talk, her enthusiasm for the work, even when he had no idea of what she was talking about. He'd seen a half-dozen operations now, gowning up and learning where to stand, how to stay out of the way. The precision of it astonished him as did her easy way of command, and he found himself thinking that he could have done the work and been happy with it.

  Although there was an odd, steely ego that went with surgeons, Weather had it—she ran the operating room like a sergeant major might—and so did George Howell, Weather's mentor. Howell was a fiftyish reconstructive surgeon who often stopped by when Weather was working, and Lucas usually felt a small, controllable urge to stuff the guy in a sewer somewhere, though Howell was a good enough.

  "Are you listening?" Weather asked.

  "Sure," Lucas said, peering down into the toaster. "It's just that I'm near death."

  "There's something wrong with your metabolism," she said. "How can you be doing six things at three o'clock in the morning, but you can't add two and two at six o'clock in the morning? You should have a physical. How long has it been?"

  Lucas rolled his eyes. "Having some guy shine his flashlight up my asshole isn't gonna improve my addition," he said. He looked glumly out the kitchen window. A robin hopped in the yard, peering this way and that for worms. "Christ, where's my .45 when I need it?"

  Weather, up from the table, stopped to look outside, saw the robin and said, "I'd turn you in to Friends of Animals. You'd have bird lovers over here at five in the morning, making dove calls on the front porch."

  "More fodder for the .45," he said. They ate together, talking about the daily routine, then Lucas kissed her good-bye, patted her on the ass, and went to lie facedown on the couch.

  Sherrill and Black were finishing at Manette's office. Lucas stopped by at eight o'clock, still feeling that he was out of his time zone. Black was the same way, grumping at his partner, shaking his head at Lucas. "Six guys. No women. Anderson has the rundown on all of them. They'll all be in today's book. We're looking at all of them, and the FBI's going through its records. Now we're going back and looking at the second choices… the not-so-looney tunes."

  "How about the six?"

  "Severe goofs," Black said.

  "Severe," Sherrill repeated. Like Weather, she was fairly chipper; in fact, seemed to soak up chipperness from Lucas and her partner. "I'd still like to know what we're doing about the sex cases."

  "We'll get to them," Lucas promised. "We just don't want the media up in smoke. Not any more than they already are."

  "I think Channel Three set new records in stupidity last night," Sherrill said. "The stuff they were saying was so stupid it made my teeth hurt."

  "I don't understand what those guys are about," Black said. "I really don't."

  "Making money," Lucas said. "That's all they're about."

  As Lucas was leaving Manette's office, the receptionist, who'd been so flustered the first day, held up a hand, then looked both ways into the inner offices, a furtive look that Lucas recognized instantly. He continued out into the hall, looked back, caught her eye, and turned left. At the end of the hall was an alcove with Coke, coffee, and candy machines. A second later, she found him there, sipping a Diet Coke.

  "I feel not so good, talking to you," the woman said. She wore a name tag that said "Marcella," and her voice was tentative, as though she hadn't made up her mind.

  "Anything might help," Lucas said. "Anything. There are two kids out there."

  She nodded. "It's just that with all the arguments and lawyers, it makes me feel… disloyal. Nancy doesn't have to know?"

  Lucas shook his head. "Nobody will know."

  The woman glanced nervously back at her office again. "Well: Andi's files are complete, but only for here."

  Lucas frowned, gestured with the cup of Coke. "Only for here? I was told that this is the only place that she worked."

  "On her own. But when she was doing her post-doc work, at the U, she did lots of people in the Hennepin County jail. You know, court-ordered evaluations. Most of them were juveniles, but that was so long ago that lots of them would be adults by now."

  "Did she ever mention anyone in particular?"

  "No, she really couldn't, because, you know… confidentiality. But they scared her—she'd talk about that sometimes—about how a guy'd get her up against a door, or he'd hiss at her like a cat, and she could feel them getting ready to come at her. The sex ones scared her, especially. She said you could feel the hunger coming across the room. She said some of them would have attacked her right there, in the jail interview rooms, if they hadn't been restrained. I think the people she saw there… those are the worst ones."

  "Well, Jesus, why didn't somebody say something?" Lucas asked.

  The woman looked down at the floor. "You know why, Mr. Davenport. Everybody hates you getting these records. I'm not even sure you should. You might be undoing a lot of work. But then there's Andi, and I keep thinking about the girls."

  "Okay. You've been a help, Marcella," Lucas said. "I'm serious. This is all between you and me, but if something comes out of it, and you approve, I'll let Miz Manette know you helped."

  Lucas let her get back into the office while he finished the Diet Coke, then returned himself.

  "What?" Sherrill asked, when she saw him coming back.

  "I think we've been euchred—there's a whole other set of records. Criminal stuff. C'mon, we're way behind."

  The university might have objected on grounds of patient privacy, but the chief called the governor, the governor called three of the Regents, and the Regents called down to the university president, who issued a statement that said, "Given t
he circumstances—that we may have a monster preying on innocent women and girls, and helping oppress all genders and races by making the streets unsafe—we have agreed to provide the City of Minneapolis limited access to limited numbers of psychological records."

  "How limited?" Lucas asked the records section supervisor at the university. He'd gone with Black and Sherrill because his title added weight.

  "Limited to what you ask for," the supervisor said wryly.

  "These guys will do the asking," Lucas said, tipping his head at Black and Sherrill. "We really appreciate anything you can do."

  Lucas learned about the fire at Irv's Boat Works while he ate a late breakfast at his desk. The fire was reported in a routine, four-inch filler in the Star-Tribune: fire strikes minnetonka boat rental. The article quoted a fire marshal: "It was arson, but there was no attempt to hide it, and we don't have a motive as yet. We're asking the public…"

  Lucas called the marshal, whom he'd known vaguely from the neighborhood.

  "It was a bomb, essentially, a Molotov cocktail, gas and motor oil," the fire marshall said. "Not a pro job, but a pro couldn't have done it any better. Burned that thing right down to the foundation. Old Irv didn't have but six thousand dollars in insurance, so he didn't do it. Not unless I'm missing something."

  At the university, Sherrill sat gloomily at a microfilm reader, operating the antiquated equipment by hand, eyes red from staring at the scratchy images of ten-year-old records. "Jesus Christ."

  "What?" Black was on the next chair, three empty root beer cans next to his foot. He was wearing tan socks with blue clocks.

  "This guy went around fucking exhaust pipes," Sherrill said.

  Black looked at her: "You mean on cars?"

  "Honest to God." She missed the double entendre and giggled, her finger trailing down the screen, over the projected image. "You know how they caught him?"

  "He got stuck," Black suggested.

  "No."

  Black thought for a second. "His lawnmower sued for sexual harassment?"

  "He tried to fuck a hot one," Sherrill said. "He had to go to the hospital with third-degree burns."

  "Aw, man," Black groaned. He reached into his crotch and rearranged himself, then scribbled a note on the pad next to his hand.

  "Anything good?" Sherrill asked as he made the note.

  "Kid who was into sex and fire," Black said. "I think he scared her bad." He rolled through to the next page. "She says he shows signs of 'substantial sexual maladjustment manifested in improper, aggressive sexual behavior and identification with fire.' "

  "Guys are so fucked up," Sherrill said as Black pushed the printout button. "You never see women doing this stuff."

  "Have you heard the 'best friend' joke's been going around?"

  "Oh, no. Don't tell me." She shook her head unconvincingly.

  "See, there was this guy goes to work, gets there late, and the boss jumps him…"

  "C'mon, don't tell me," Sherrill said.

  "All right. If you really don't want to hear it," he said. "Let me get this printout."

  He came back a minute later with the printout and she said, "All right, let's hear it. The joke."

  Black dropped the printout next to the microfilm reader and went on, "… so the boss says, 'Get the fuck out of here. You're fired. I don't want to see your ass again.' So the guy drags out the door, really upset, gets in his car, and halfway home he's t-boned at an intersection by a teenager. Trashes his car, and the kid's got no insurance. Jesus. This is turning into the worst day of his life. So his car is towed, and the guy has to take the bus home—and when he gets there, eleven o'clock in the morning, he hears sounds coming from the bedroom. Like sex. Moaning, groaning, sheets being scratched. And he sneaks back there, and there's his wife, having sex with his best friend."

  "No shit," said Sherrill.

  "And the guy freaks out," Black said. "He yells at his wife, 'Get out of here, you slut. Get your clothes, get dressed, and get out. Don't ever come back or I'll beat your ass into the floor.' And he turns to his best friend and says, 'As for you—Bad dog! Bad dog!' "

  "That's really fuckin' funny," Sherrill said; she turned away to smile.

  "So don't laugh," Black said, knowing she liked it. And on the top of the printout he wrote "John Mail."

  Irv was a broad-shouldered old man with a crown of fine white hair, with a pink spot in the middle of it. His nose was pitted and red, as though he might like his whiskey too much. He wore a faded flannel shirt and canvas trousers, and sat on a park bench next to his dock. A cash box sat on the bench beside him. "What can I do you for?" he asked when Lucas rolled up.

  "Are you Irv?" Off to the left, there was a scorched stone foundation with raw dirt inside, and nothing else.

  "Yeah." Irv squinted up at him. "You a cop?"

  "Yeah, Minneapolis," Lucas said. "What do you think? Will you get it back together?"

  "I suppose." Irv rubbed his large nose with the back of one hand. "Don't have much else to do, and the insurance'll probably get me halfway there."

  Lucas walked over to the foundation. There wasn't much evidence of fire, except for soot on the stones. "Got it cleaned up in a hurry."

  The old man shrugged. "Wasn't anything in it but wood and glass, and a few minnie tanks. It burned like a torch. What didn't burn, they took out with a front-end loader. The whole kit and caboodle was out of here in five minutes." He took off his glasses and cleaned the lenses on his flannel shirt. "Goddamnit."

  Lucas turned away, inspected the foundation some more, and, when Irv got his glasses straight, walked back and handed him the flier. "Did you see this guy in here last week?"

  Irv tipped his head back so he could look at the flier with his bifocals. Then he looked up and said, "Is this the sonofabitch that burned me out?"

  "Was he in here?"

  Irv nodded. "I believe he was. He doesn't look quite like this—the mouth is wrong—but he looks something like it, and I wondered what he was doing when he came in here. He wasn't any fisherman; he didn't know how to start the kicker. And it was cold that day."

  "When was this?" Lucas asked.

  "Two days ago—the day the rain came in. He came back in the rain."

  "You remember his name?"

  Irv scratched his chin. "No, no, I don't. I'd have his name off his driver's license, in my receipt box. If I had a receipt box anymore." He looked up at Lucas, the sun glittering off his glasses. "This is the one that took the Manette girl and her daughters, isn't it?"

  "Could be," Lucas said. And he thought: Yes, it is.

  John Mail called Lucas at one o'clock in the afternoon. "Here I am, figuring the cops are coming down on me at any minute. I mean, I'm buying my food a day at a time, so I don't waste any. Where are you guys?"

  "We're coming," Lucas growled. The voice was beginning to get to him: he was looking at his watch as he talked, counting the seconds. "We're taking bets on how long you last. Nobody's out as far as a week. We can't give that bet away."

  "That's interesting," Mail said cheerfully. "I mean, that's very interesting. I best do as much fuckin' as I can, then, because I might not get any more for a while. Have to do with those hairy old assholes out at Stillwater."

  "Be your asshole," Lucas snarled.

  Mail's voice went cold: "Oh, I don't think so. I don't think so, Lucas."

  "What?" Lucas asked. "You got a magic spell?"

  "Nothing like that," Mail said. "But after people get to know me, they don't fuck with me; and that's the truth. But hey, gotta go."

  "Wait a minute," Lucas said. "Are you taking care of those people? You've got them for now, and that puts some responsibility on you."

  Mail hesitated, then said, "I don't have time to talk. But yeah, I'm taking care of them. Sometimes she makes me angry, but I don't know: subconsciously, she likes me. She always did, but she repressed it. She has a guilt complex about our doctor-patient relationship, but she used to sit there…"

  He paused a
gain, then said, "I've got to go."

  Given a different context, he might have sounded almost human, Lucas thought, as the phone went click. As it was, he simply sounded insane.

  "Fire," Lucas said to Black and Sherrill. "Sex. Probably he's been institutionalized—he talks about Stillwater like… I don't know. He doesn't really know about it, but he's heard a lot about it."

  Lester came in. "He called from out in Woodbury somewhere."

  "Woodbury. That's 494," Lucas said. "The guy's riding up and down the 494 strip, so he's someplace south."

  "Yeah. We've whittled it down to one-point-two million people."

  "The fire and sex thing," Sherrill said. "We got one just like that."

  "Yeah." Black thumbed through a stack of paper. "This guy. John Mail. Let me see, he was fourteen when she saw him… Huh. He'd be about twenty-five right now."

  Lucas looked at Lester. "That'd be pretty good. That'd be about prime time for a psycho."

  Lester tapped the file. "Let's isolate that one and get on it."

  Lucas looked at his watch; almost two o'clock. Nearly forty-eight hours since the kidnapping. He locked the door to his office, closed the blinds, pulled the curtains, put his feet back on his desk, and thought about it. And the more he thought about it, the more the telephone link seemed the best immediate possibility.

  He closed his eyes and visualized a map of the metro area. All right: if they coordinated cops from all over the metro area—if they set everything up in advance—how far down could they push the reaction time? A minute? Forty-five seconds? Even less than that, if they got lucky. And if they caught him in a shopping center, some place with restricted access, only a couple of exits—if they did that, they should be able to seal the place before he could get the car out. They could process every plate in the lot, check every ID…

  Lucas was putting the idea together when another thought occurred: what had Dunn said? That he talked to Andi in her car? So Andi Manette had a cellular phone? What kind? A purse phone, or a dedicated car phone?