Mind Prey

by John Sandford

  Then Lucas turned back toward the parking ramp and he and Haywood ran up the sidewalk together, weapons out. Far up University, they could see the roadblocks going in, and everywhere, in every direction, the red flashing lights.

  "Looks like a fuckin' light-rack convention," Haywood panted,

  Lucas heard him but had no time to answer: they'd rounded the office building on University and were coming up on the ramp. Lucas said, "Let's go up. Ready?"

  "Outa fuckin' shape," Haywood said. "Let's go."

  Lucas took the first set of steps: there were a half-dozen cars parked in the first floor, and they checked them quickly. Then up the next set of steps, and Lucas, looking over the low, concrete deck wall, saw taillights flicker to the north, headed toward the railroad tracks.

  "Did you see that?"

  "What?"

  The lights flickered again. "There."

  "Yeah. Somebody crawling along in the dark, no headlights," Haywood said.

  "Sonofabitch, that's him." Lucas put the radio to his face: "I need a car at the… what the fuck is the name of this building? I need a car by the Hansen dairy place, first road west of the Hansen dairy trucks. We've got the suspect in sight, going down toward the elevators."

  Haywood was already running across the slab and down the stairs, Lucas a few steps behind. The blacked-out vehicle was almost two blocks away, and once they were on the ground, they could no longer see it. They were running awkwardly over the uneven ground toward the grain elevator when one set of headlights caught them in the back, then another. They turned and saw two squads coming down toward them; Lucas waved them on and kept running.

  When the cars caught up, Lucas pointed up ahead. "He was going under the elevator."

  The driver in the lead car was a sergeant. "No way out of there," he grunted, "That's all dead end back there."

  "Could he just bump it across the tracks?"

  The cop shrugged. "Maybe. But we'd see him. He might be able to snake his way out alongside of them." He picked up his radio and said, "We need a car on the 280 overpass across the tracks. Put some light down onto the tracks. Where's the chopper?"

  "Chopper's just leaving the airport, he'll be five minutes. We're confirming the car on the tracks."

  "Get some K9 down here," Lucas said.

  The sergeant said, "We called them; they're on the way." And the car pulled ahead of them, the second car close behind him. The sergeant spoke into the radio: "We need some guys north of the tracks."

  "Gonna be dark in there," Haywood grunted as they jogged up toward the elevators.

  "But once we got him, even if we only get his van, we get the VIN even if he's pulled the plates… then we get a name and an address."

  "You're counting your chickens," Haywood said.

  "First goddamn chicken we've had to count, and I'm counting the sonofabitch," Lucas said.

  CHAPTER 27

  « ^ »

  The cop slipped down the side of the building, his right hand cocked away from his body.

  Carrying a gun, Mail thought. The night air was thick, cool, and moist, and the night seemed particularly dark; he couldn't see that well, but the cop was too small to be Davenport.

  Still, it had been a trap, a rudimentary one. Mail smiled and turned to go, then slowed, turned back, lingered. Davenport's building was a block away and he felt remote from it, as though he were watching a movie. The movie was just getting good.

  He'd found Ricky on a Hennepin Avenue street corner, half-drunk, his face sullen, his hair stuck together like cotton candy. He'd whispered cocaine, and just a bunch of computer pussies in there, and Ricky'd started slavering. He couldn't wait to get started.

  Ricky needed drugs to function; without cocaine, speed, acid, grass, peyote, alcohol, even two or three of them at a time, the world was not right. He'd spent years on the inside and barely remembered a time where he didn't have a drug flowing through his veins—and what he remembered about that drugless state, he didn't like. He needed more dentists, he thought, people who'd say, "Here—I'll numb that up for you."

  Even inside, with very strange people around—people who spoke to God, and got personal letters back—Ricky had been considered mad as a hatter.

  But he could function in society, the shrinks said, so they had let him out and seemed proud of themselves when they did it. Now Ricky ate from trashcans and shit in doorways and carried a piece-of-crap revolver in his waistband. He gobbled up any pill he could beg, buy, or steal.

  Now Ricky was out of sight, trying the windows on the far side of the building. The cop was running along the back of the building, to the side where Ricky was; he looked like an inmate in a prison movie, caught in a spotlight as he ran along a wall. The cop stopped at the corner, did a quick peek, pulled his head back, peeked again, ran out from the building, pointing his gun, and the shouting began, the words indistinguishable in the distance.

  Again, Mail turned to go. Then he heard the gunshot, and turned back: "Sonofabitch."

  He smiled again, amused; he almost laughed. What a joke. They'd shot Ricky, or Ricky had shot one of them. The cop he could see had dropped his pistol to his side and moved forward. So it had been Ricky.

  Time to move.

  He ran across the parking ramp, down a short flight of stairs, to the street. The van was already pointed into University Avenue. He'd be a mile away in a minute and a half. He unlocked the door, hopped in—he'd leave the lights blacked out for a few hundred feet—pulled up to the corner, looked right, looked left. And heard the sirens, saw the lights.

  A cop car, far down the street to the left, coming in a hurry: but that was the way he wanted to go. If he turned right, he'd have to drive past Davenport's building. He didn't want to do that.

  He hesitated. The cop was probably on the way to the shooting. He could wait until he passed.

  Mail shifted into reverse and started to back up—but then the cop car, still six or eight blocks away, unexpectedly slewed sideways across the street. And then he saw more lights far down to his right, and then another car joining the squad blocking the street to his left.

  "Motherfuckers."

  He felt as though a hand had grabbed his heart and squeezed it. He'd underestimated Davenport. The building wasn't the trap. The whole goddamn area was the trap.

  Headlights still off, he did a quick U-turn and rolled down the street toward a grain elevator at the end. He hadn't been down there, didn't know what to expect, but once out of the immediate neighborhood, he could work his way through back streets until he was completely clear.

  A cold sweat broke on his face, and his hands held the steering wheel so tightly that they hurt. He had to break out of this.

  But he couldn't see much without the lights. Strange, odd shapes, wheelless tractor trailers, loomed off to the left. Here and there, a machine with claws, like mutated, earth-moving equipment. He drove between two elevator buildings, slowed. The van dropped into a pothole seven inches deep and half as long as the van itself, then climbed out the other side. Two trailers were parked against a loading dock. Another van was tucked in between them, facing out.

  Mail leaned toward the windshield, trying to see better, then rolled down the side window, trying to hear. The area smelled of milled grain, corn, maybe. He bumped along through the dark, then into a lighter patch, the light thrown from a naked bulb over an office door.

  No lights on in the office, though…

  The road ended at a gate, a gate closed and locked, with dark buildings behind it. A dead end? There'd been no dead-end sign. He backed up, found a gravel track that went east along the side of the grain elevator. Ahead, he could see the lights of a busy street, a little higher than he was, maybe up a hill? If he could work his way over there… But what was that?

  A cop car, lights flashing, stopped on the hill, and Mail realized it was not a hill at all but an overpass. No way up, no way to the street. The track he was on went from gravel to dirt. To the left, there was nothing but darkn
ess, like an unlit farm field. To the right, there was a line of the boxes that looked like the wheelless tractor trailers he'd seen back in the lot.

  He slowed, thought about going back, looked over his shoulders, and saw the cop lights at the elevator. Had they seen him? He had to go forward.

  Suddenly, a huge dark shape slid past to his left, almost soundlessly, and he jerked the van to the right.

  "What?" he shouted. Frightened now, gripping the wheel, peering out into the dark. The shape made no noise, but he could feel the rumble of it: the thing had materialized from the dark, like some creature from a Japanese horror flick, like Rodan… and he realized it was a string of freight cars, ghosting by in the night. There was no engine attached to them. They simply glided by.

  And he realized that off to his left, in the darkness that looked like a farm field, were multiple lines of railroad tracks. He could see some of them now, in the dim, ambient light, thin, steely reflections against the field of black. He couldn't see how many there were, but there were several.

  The cop car on the overpass suddenly lit up, and a searchlight swung across the tracks, left to right. If it had come the other way, right to left, it might have caught him, though he was still a half-mile away. As it was, he had time to drive into a hole in a wall of the boxes that lined the track.

  In between the boxes, he couldn't see at all—he had to risk the parking lights. The cop searchlight swept the field behind him, and he edged forward again, and found another row of boxes parallel to the boxes he was crossing through. Another dirt track ran between the rows of boxes, and he turned onto it. His parking lights caught a sign that said "Burlington Northern Container Yard—Trespassers Will Be Prosecuted."

  Containers. Huh. The track ended when the containers did: nothing ahead but dirt and grass and the certainty of being seen. A second cop car had joined the first on the overpass, and a second searchlight popped out and probed the tracks. He could see the cops, like tiny action figures, standing along the overpass railing.

  "Goddamn. Goddamn." He was caught, stuck. He reached under the seat, got his .45. The gun was not comforting: it was a big, cold lump in his hand. If he had to use it, he was dead.

  He put the gun between his thighs, backed the van up until he was out of sight of the overpass, turned it off, started to get out—but the overhead light flickered and he quickly pulled the door closed. Shit. How to do this? He finally reached back, scratched the dome off the overhead light, and twisted out the bulb. Then he got out, put the gun in his pocket, and slipped down to the end of the line of boxes.

  There were sirens everywhere, like nothing he'd ever heard before, not even when he was starting fires, all those years ago. The sirens didn't seem especially close, but they came from every possible direction.

  "Fucked," he said, half out loud. "I'm fucked." And he kicked one of the containers. "Fucked."

  He ran his hands through his hair. Had to get out. He ran back to the van, stopped for a second, then ran further down the line of containers. The container boxes were stacked two by two, end to end, in two long rows, with the track between them. In places, a container had been pulled. In a few, both containers had been pulled—like the hole he'd driven through.

  In those spots, he could see out, either across the tracks, or into the neighborhood on the other side of the elevators. He found one of the double breaks and walked carefully down it, trailing his hand along the edge of the container, feeling the clumped weeds underfoot. The neighborhood on the other side of the elevator was coming awake. Lights were on all up and down the street, and he heard a man shouting. The reflections of red flashing lights bounced off the side windows of the houses. Cops all over the place.

  Damnit, damnit.

  They had him, or they would have him. The van, anyway.

  He walked back toward it, and it occurred to him that if he backed it into one of the spaces left where a single container had been pulled, then nobody could see it unless they walked down the center track and looked into each space. If a cop simply looked down the track, the track would appear to be empty.

  That might give him some time.

  Mail hurried down to the truck, backed it up fifty feet, then maneuvered it into a single container space. He doubted that he'd see it again. He'd have to abandon the Roses name along with the van, and probably all his computers.

  What about fingerprints? If they found the Roses name, that would be fine—but if they found his fingerprints, he'd never have any peace.

  He stripped off his jacket, shirt, and t-shirt, put the shirt and jacket back on, and used the t-shirt to wipe everything he might have touched in the van. His mind was working furiously: get the char handles, the wheel, of course, the ash tray, the seats, the glove compartment, the dashboard… get rid of all the paper crap on the floor.

  But then he thought: the computers. Damn. Everything at the self-storage would have his prints. If they found the van, they'd find the storage place, and get his prints there.

  He continued wiping, working the problem in his mind. He finished inside, got out, pushed the door shut with his elbow, and started wiping outside. The goddamn computers.

  He did the outside handles, plates, took a swipe at the wipers. He never messed with the engine, had never lifted the hood in his life, so that wasn't a problem.

  And he thought: Fire.

  If he could get back to the store, there could be a fire. A fire would do it. Ten gallons of gas, a little oil, and the computers would burn like kindling.

  Even so, he couldn't take any chances. He might not get everything—they might find a print, or two. So he'd have to get lost for a while, and that meant he'd have to settle Andi Manette and the girl. He could dump them in the cistern; that'd only take a second. He felt a small, dark tug at the thought—but he'd known it was coming.

  Okay. Done. He took a last swipe at the door handles, stuffed the t-shirt in his jacket pocket, and walked through the dark shadows of the containers to an opening that looked across the tracks.

  With the dark jacket and the jeans, he was almost invisible in the rail yard. He started walking through the dark, one hand in front of him for balance, his feet picking the way over the rough ground. Behind him, back toward the elevator, a dog barked; then another.

  A patrol captain arrived as Lucas was punching the driver's side window out of the van. He used a piece of paving stone to break out the glass, then reached through the broken window and popped the lock. Haywood was beside him, trying to peer through the dirty windows.

  "Paper," Lucas grunted when they got the door open. A clipboard lay on the floor of the passenger side, and he picked it up. A pad of pink paper was clipped into it, with a letterhead that said "Carmody Foods."

  "Got him?" the captain asked, coming up.

  Lucas frowned, shook his head. "I think this belongs here… we oughta check it out, but we better look for another van. It's here, we saw it coming back here."

  The captain walked around to the front of the van, fished around for a moment, then said, "Engine's cold."

  "Then this ain't it," Lucas said. He tossed the clipboard back in the truck. "C'mon, Hay, let's go down the tracks."

  "How do you want to work this, chief?" the captain asked. "It's your call."

  "You run it," Lucas said. "You know how to do this shit better than I do. Just tell your people that Haywood and I'll be out there, wandering around."

  Captain nodded. "You got it." He jogged away, yelling for somebody, and they heard a K9 car arrive, and a moment later, the helicopter buzzed overhead on its first pass. The elevator yard had been dark, forbidding, when Lucas and Haywood first ran down into it. Now there were headlights everywhere, and the chopper lit up a searchlight. There were still dark areas, but there was less and less room to hide.

  "That was an elevator down in Stillwater, wasn't it? Where you' found the hanged girl?" Haywood asked, craning his neck to look at the elevator above them. "I wonder if there's a connection?"

&nb
sp; "That doesn't seem… reasonable. That's got to be a coincidence," Lucas said.

  "You don't believe in coincidences," Haywood said.

  "Except when they happen," Lucas said. They were walking behind a canine officer with a leashed German shepherd. When the cop and his dog went to examine the back of the elevator, Haywood said, "What do you think?"

  Lucas looked around: there were a number of buildings, ranging from small switch shacks to the huge elevators, on the near side of the tracks, and more on the far side. Another set of elevators loomed back to the west. "I doubt that he's hiding. Given the chance, he'd run. And there's no van, and all these little side tracks tend to go east. He probably picked one out and rode it as long as he could."

  "There were squads up on 280 before he could've gotten through there."

  "Yeah. So he's between here and there." They heard the beat and then the lights of the chopper coming in, and then a searchlight lit up the tracks beyond them and the chopper roared overhead. "Let's go down that way… follow the lights."

  Mail decided to cross the tracks: there was less activity on the other side, and in the growing illumination provided by the cop cars, he could see the rows of dark houses and small yards on the other side. Once in there, he could sneak away.

  He started across, nearly got caught by a searchlight: they came more quickly than he'd expected, and he had to drop to his face, his hands beneath himself, to hide the flesh.

  The light didn't pause but swept on, and he got to a crouch and started running again, and the light swept back and he went down again. He didn't bother to stand up the next time but simply scuttled on his hands and knees, over the rails, down the other side of the roadbed, then up the next, and across the rails. The rocks bit into his hands, but he felt more scuffed up than injured.

  He was halfway across the yard when the helicopter showed up: the light tracking beneath it was fifty feet across. He watched it coming and realized that if he were caught in the chopper's light, he'd be done.