Mind Prey

by John Sandford

  More cops. He turned out east of the oil refinery, continued on Highway 61. The radio…

  WCCO was full-time on the story, the announcer wearing his Tornado Alert Voice: "… the entire south end of the Metro area is tangled up as the police search for John Mail, identified as the kidnapper of Mrs. Andi Manette and her daughters Grace and Genevieve. There are checks at many of the major intersections in Dakota County, and all bridges across the Mississippi. All we can do is ask for patience as police check cars as quickly as possible, but delays are now running up to an hour on outbound lanes of I-35E and I-35W, all outbound bridges in downtown St. Paul. That would include the High Bridge, the Wabasha and Robert Street Bridges, and Highway 3, plus the Mendota Bridge, both I-694 bridges."

  Christ, he couldn't get back home.

  He was heading down to Hastings, straight into a checkpoint. The announcer hadn't said anything about Prescott, the St. Croix Bridge into Wisconsin.

  If they were stopping cars on all those bridges, they hadn't found the house, hadn't found the women, still didn't have the LaDoux name.

  He left Highway 61 just north of Hastings, crossed the St. Croix into Wisconsin, struck out in a wide southern swing through Wisconsin, and crossed the Mississippi back into Minnesota on the unguarded bridge at Red Wing. From Red Wing, he took Highway 61 north, and finally turned cross-country to Farmington.

  There were no cops on the highway, none in town. None. It was almost eerie. Even the highway north seemed thinly traveled. At Native Americans Trail, he turned east, taking it slow, looking for lights, for cars, for movement. For anything.

  There was nothing.

  He shoved the gas pedal to the floor, moving now, breathing again, heart pounding, everything coming to a close. He flashed on Andi Manette, all those parts—and turned left off the road.

  He stopped. He felt a beat, but couldn't identify it, listened for a second, then reached in the backseat, got the shotgun, and climbed out of the car.

  The chopper was just coming in. He looked up, to the north, and saw the machine dropping out of the sky, screaming in on him.

  He ran to Andi…

  They heard him running across the floor, pounding down the stairs. He'd never run before. Andi sat up, looked at her daughter. "Something's happening."

  "Should we… ?" Grace was terrified.

  "We've got to," Andi said.

  Grace nodded, dropped to her knees, lifted the edge of the mattress. She took the needle and handed the nail to her mother.

  Andi fitted it to her hand, kissed her daughter on the forehead. "Don't feel anything. Don't think, just do it," she said. "Just like we practiced; you get back there…"

  The first day Mail had put them in the cell, she remembered the smell of old potatoes. She hadn't noticed the odor since—it had simply become part of the background—but she smelled it now. Potatoes, dust, urine, body sweat… The hole.

  "Kill him," Grace rasped at her. Grace's eyes were too large, sunken. Her skin was like paper, her lips dry. "Kill him. Kill him."

  Mail was rattling at the door, fumbling at it. When he opened it, he was carrying a shotgun, and for just an instant, Andi thought he was going to kill them without a word, open fire before they had a chance.

  "Out," he screamed. "Both of you, out." His young-old face was dead white; he had a white bead of spittle at the corner of his mouth. He gestured with the gun, not pointing it at them, a sweep of his arm. "Get out here, both of you."

  Andi had the nail by her side, and went first; she felt Grace reach out and grab the top of her tattered skirt, and pulled along behind.

  "What?" Andi started.

  "Get," Mail snarled, looking up the stairs. He grabbed her by the skin of her throat and pulled her, stepping back, still looking over his shoulder, expecting someone to burst in, the shotgun barrel straight up.

  And she stepped straight into him and struck.

  She rammed the nail into the space below his breastbone, trying to angle it into his heart, looking at his eyes as she struck.

  And she screamed, "Grace, Grace…"

  The shack's outside door was half-open; Lucas kicked it the rest of the way, Del flattened against the outer wall, sweeping the fallen-down mudroom just inside.

  Sherrill was on the other side of the house, watching the back. Lucas went through first, through the mudroom, following the sights of the .45, his thumb-knuckle white in the lower rim of his circle of vision.

  The shack smelled of wood rot, and dim light shifted in through dirty windows. A broken-legged table crouched in the kitchen beyond the mudroom, and tracks were etched in the dirt of the floor, heading into the interior. There was an open door to the left, hung with cobwebs; another on the other side, showing a down-slanting wall: and from there, a light, and a man's voice shouting.

  Del, just behind, slapping him on the shoulder: "Go."

  Lucas went straight ahead, scrabbling along in a half-crouch, while Del covered the doorway. Lucas did a peek at the door, looking down the stairs, and a woman screamed, "Grace, Grace…"

  When Andi Manette struck with the nail, Mail's eyes widened and his mouth opened in surprise and pain, and he jerked forward, turning away. Grace struck at his right eye and missed as he turned his head, the point of the needle skidding across the bridge of his nose, burying itself an inch deep in his left eye.

  He screamed, pulled back, and Andi shouted, "Grace, run." Grace ran, and Mail flailed at her and the girl was batted off her feet, lurching into the pile of tumble-down shelving on the back wall of the tiny cellar. She scrambled to her feet and tried for the stairs, and Andi saw the shotgun coming around and she pulled the nail out and struck again, felt it skid along his ribs. The shotgun stopped in its track and Mail hit her in the face with an elbow and she fell, and saw her daughter's legs flying up the stairs. Mail fired the shotgun, a flash and a blast like thunder, straight up, into the ceiling, either by accident or simply to startle, to slow down whoever was up the stairs. He turned, and Andi saw his good eye fix on her—the other eye was a blotch of blood and she felt a thrill of satisfaction—and the barrel of the gun came around and opened at her face. They stood just for a second that way, Mail's face contorting. She could see his hand working on the trigger, but nothing was happening, and she rolled out of the line of fire.

  Lucas started down the stairs in a crouch, heard the man scream and a girl, a scarecrow, hair on end, blood on her face, ran to the stairs and started up, stopped when she saw Lucas. A shotgun went off, the blast like a physical blow; plaster sprayed around them, and Lucas fell sideways, tried to catch himself.

  There wasn't much pain when Andi Manette stuck him, but Mail knew he'd been hurt. He pulled back, tried to get some space, but Manette clung to him and then the girl was there. He saw the hand coming up, the thin, steel glitter between her fingers, and turned his head. The needle slashed at him, hurt more than Manette's knife, or whatever it was. There was a black flash—was that possible?—in his left eye, and he wrenched away, spasmodically pulling at the trigger. The shotgun went off, the barrel not more than a foot from his ear, deafening him.

  As dust and plaster rained on them from the ceiling, Manette struck again; she was screaming and he saw the girl running for the stairs. He swung at her; he felt no impact, but saw the girl go down. Everything was moving at a berserker's speed, like a movie cut too often, clips of this and that too fast for his brain to process… but he looked for Manette, his betrayer, found her at his feet.

  Her mouth was open, she was screaming, and he pointed the barrel at her mouth and pulled the trigger. The trigger pulled back slackly, without tension. Nothing happened. He pulled it again, and again, saw the girl screaming on the stairs, Davenport falling, a gun in his hand.

  Mail ran.

  He ran behind the furnace, into the old rat's nest coal bin, up the coal chute to the rotten wooden door at the top. He knocked the door open with the stock of the gun and a shaft of light hit him full in the face.

  Del w
as at the top of the stairs, frozen by the blast, his gun pointing down past Lucas. Lucas twisted, falling, struck the scarecrow girl, knocking her sideways, and staggering, caught himself on the post at the bottom of the stairs, his gun sweeping the room, looking for the face, the target.

  "Grace," Andi screamed, and screaming again, "Run, Grace…"

  Then a man was there with a gun, a large man in a suit, shouting at her, then another man, a man who looked like a tramp, with another gun, maneuvering toward the cell. She shrank away, but heard, through the pain and fear, the single word, "Where?"

  She pointed toward the furnace; and as she pointed, a shaft of sunlight broke into the room, from behind the furnace. Del was at another door, looking down, then back at him, and Lucas took three leaping steps across the room, past the furnace into a small wooden-sided room. Light poured through a hatchlike door in the foundation.

  Andi heard the gunshots, the quick bite of a pistol, the deeper boom of the twelve-gauge…

  On the grass, outside, on his knees, Mail looked left and brought the gun up. This time, he pumped the slide, saw an empty shell flip out to the right. That's why it hadn't fired. In the chaos in the basement, he'd forgotten to pump it.

  But there were more cops here: he heard a man's voice, screaming, and more shouting in the basement. A chopper roar picked up, and the chopper slipped from behind the house, six feet off the ground, hovering,

  Sherrill ran around the side of the house.

  They saw each other at the same instant. Sherrill's pistol was up and a single shot plucked at Mail's coat. Mail returned the shot, firing once, and Sherrill went down, her legs knocked from beneath her. The helicopter came in like a giant locust, and he pointed the shotgun at the black-visored pilot behind the glass, pulled the trigger; again, nothing happened. Cursing, he pumped the gun, and as the chopper pilot roared two feet over head, he ran beneath the machine, past Sherrill, to the corner of the house.

  Cops coming up the track. Three cars at least.

  He turned and sprinted thirty yards across the yard toward the corn field, vaulted the fence, and submerged in the deep green leaves.

  Sherrill was on the ground, screaming, the chopper thirty yards away, the pilot gesturing frantically, when Lucas crawled up the coal chute. Lucas turned and saw Mail vault a barbed-wire fence into the corn field; he vanished in an instant.

  A sheriffs car slewed sideways in the yard as Lucas ran to Sherrill, put his hand on her back: "Hit?"

  "My legs, man, my legs, it hurts so fuckin' bad, it just fuckin' burns…"

  Del was out now, and Lucas waved at the pilot, pulling her down, then ran to the uniformed deputy, who stood by the fender of his car, a shotgun on his hip.

  "He's in the cornfield—he's right in there," Lucas shouted over the blast of the chopper blades. Grass and bits of weed whipped past them as the chopper settled. "Get a couple guys on the road, and get in those hayfields. Cut him off, cut him off…"

  The deputy nodded and ran back to the other cars. Lucas went back to Sherrill. Del was kneeling over her, had ripped open her pants leg. Sherrill had taken a solid hit on the inside of her left leg between her knee and her hip; bright red arterial blood was pulsing into the wound.

  "Bleeding bad," Del said; his voice was cool, distant. He pulled off his jacket, ripped off a sleeve, and pressed it into the wound.

  "Hold it there," Lucas said to Del. "I'll carry her."

  "How bad? How bad is it?" Sherrill asked, her face a waxy white. "I hurt…"

  "Just your leg, you'll be okay," Del said, and he grinned at Sherrill with his green teeth.

  Lucas picked her up, cradling her, and carried her groaning with pain to the chopper, where the pilot had shoved open the passenger-side door. "Bleeding bad, hit an artery," Lucas shouted over the prop blast. "Got to get her to Ramsey."

  The pilot nodded, gave him a thumbs-up. Lucas shouted at Del, "You go—keep the hole packed up."

  "You're gonna need help…"

  "Gonna have a lot of help in one minute," Lucas shouted back. "This is just gonna be a dog hunt now."

  Del nodded, and they fitted Sherrill into the passenger seat with Del straddling her; and the chopper lifted off.

  Lucas turned and saw Andi Manette at the door of the old farm house. She had her daughter under one arm, and with her hand, tried to hold together the pieces of what once had been a suit.

  "You're Davenport," she said. She looked bad: she looked like she was dying.

  "Yes," Lucas nodded. "Please sit down, both of you. You're okay…"

  "He's afraid of you," Andi said. "John's afraid of you."

  Lucas looked from Andi Manette and Grace toward the cornfield. "He should be," he said.

  The Dakota deputies had pursued people into cornfields before; they knew how to isolate a runner. The field itself covered a half-section, a mile long by a half-mile wide. The road ran along one edge, and recently cut alfalfa fields along two more. A bean field, still standing, stretched along the fourth side. Cop cars were stationed at three of the corners of the field, and cops climbed on top, with binoculars, so they had clear views down the road and the surrounding alfalfa and soybean fields.

  Mail might try to crawl out through the beans, but that was on the far side of the corn, a long run; and within a couple of minutes, a cop car bumped down into the beans and quickly ripped a three-car-wide path along the edge of the corn, then retired to the highest point along the path. A deputy with a semiautomatic rifle set up behind the car.

  For now, that would hold; in five minutes, there would be twenty cops around the field. In ten minutes, there would be fifty.

  Lucas stood with Andi Manette, on the handset. "I've got Mrs. Manette and Grace. We need to lift them out of here, we need a medevac now."

  "Lucas, the chief is here."

  Roux came on. "They say you got them."

  "Yeah, but we need to get them out, we need to get a chopper down here."

  "Are they hurt bad?"

  "Not critical," Lucas said, looking at the two women, "But they're pretty beat up. And Sherrill's hurt bad."

  "I was listening to Capslock on the radio. They'll be at Ramsey in three or four minutes. We've got another chopper on the way. Dunn's being notified."

  Andi Manette, now with both arms wrapped around her sobbing daughter, said, "Genevieve. Do you have Genevieve?"

  Lucas shook his head, and her face contorted and she choked out, "Do you know… ?"

  "We hoped she was with you," Lucas said.

  "He said he would drop her off in a mall. I gave her a quarter to call with."

  "I'm sorry…"

  A caravan of police cars, now including city cars, barrelled up the track: two more jammed into the driveway at Mail's house, and all around them, cops with rifles and shotguns were posting around the cornfield. The ranking sheriff's deputy hurried toward them.

  "Davenport?"

  "Yeah. Who're you?"

  "Dale Peterson. Are you sure he's in the corn?"

  "Ninety-five percent. We saw him go in and there wasn't any place to get out."

  "He's hurt bad," Andi Manette said. Peterson reached a hand out to her, but she edged away and Lucas backed him off with a quick shake of the head. "I stabbed him," she said. "Just before he ran."

  She lifted her hand; she still held the spike, and her fingers were smeared with blood. Grace turned her head in her mother's arms and said, "I did, too. I stabbed him in the eye." And she showed them the bedspring needle.

  "He was going to kill us," Andi said numbly.

  Lucas said, "You did right." And he laughed, and said, "Goddamn, I'm proud of you." And he lifted his hand to pat her shoulder, and remembered, and turned instead toward Peterson. "You gonna handle this?"

  The deputy nodded: "We can."

  "Do it, then," Lucas said. "I'd like to help out. He just shot a friend of mine."

  Peterson nodded. "We heard. But, you know… take care." He meant, Don't murder him.

  "I'm fi
ne," Lucas said, and Peterson nodded. To Andi: "Miz Manette, if you guys would like to ride down to the road, a helicopter will be picking you up."

  "Got media coming," a deputy called from the last car down.

  "Keep them out," Lucas said.

  "Block them out at the corner," Peterson called. "And get Hank to call the FAA, keep the TV choppers out of here."

  "Thank you," Andi Manette said to Peterson. And to her daughter, "Come on, Grace."

  Grace said, "Genevieve?"

  "We'll look for her," Andi promised.

  Lucas walked with them toward the last of the sheriff's cars. "I'm sorry it took so long," he said. "He isn't stupid."

  "No, he isn't," Andi said. A deputy opened the back door of his car. Andi helped Grace into the backseat, then turned to say something else to Lucas. Her eyes reached up toward his face, then stopped, looking past his shoulder. Lucas turned to see what she was looking at, his band dropped toward his pistol. Had she seen Mail? Then she brushed past him, took three quick steps, and suddenly was running toward the house.

  Lucas looked at the deputy, said, "Watch the kid," and started after her, walking quickly, and then, when he saw where she was going, broke into a run, shouting, "Mrs, Manette, wait, please wait, wait…"

  Peterson was on the radio, but he dropped the microphone when he saw Andi Manette running toward the house, and he hurried after her.

  She was running toward a six-foot square of weathered wood set on a six-inch-high concrete platform. Lucas, forty feet behind her, shouted, one last time, "Don't, wait," but she was already there. She stooped, caught the edges of the old cistern cover, and heaved.

  Lucas had to stop her, because he'd realized what Andi Manette knew by instinct: this was where Genevieve was. The doll in the oil barrel was the girl in the cistern; a watery grave.

  When Lucas had still been in uniform, he'd worked a kidnapping case where the child had been shot and thrown in a creek. The body had washed up on the bank, and he'd been with the group of searchers that had found it. He'd seen so much death in his years on the force that it no longer affected him, much. But that child, early in his career, with the white, pudding flesh, the absent eyes… he still saw them sometimes, in nightmares.