John Sandford - Mind prey

A red car was throwing up a cloud of gravel dust as they closed on the road. "One-two-three-four-five, Jesus, I think he's heading in there, he's slowing down, he's turning," Lucas said.

"Wrong drive, wrong drive. The fifth house is over there, down further," the pilot said, pointing.

"I don't know," Lucas said. "Look, he's in a hurry, he's moving."

The pilot groped at her feet and handed Lucas a pair of battered 8 x 50 marine binoculars. "You call it: whatever you want to do."

They were coming in fast, but they were still a half-mile out; Lucas put the heavy binoculars on the house, picked out the mailbox and the brilliant orange paperbox on the post below it. To the right, the red car had topped a hill, and as Lucas watched, a man got out of the car, turned his pale face toward them; black hair, tall; the white face, at the distance, a featureless wedge. But a wedge that felt right.

The man darted into the ramshackle house in the cornfield; he carried something-a shotgun? He was too far away to be certain. "That's him," Lucas said, half-shouting. "Put us on him, put us on him."

"What are we doing?" Sherrill shouted from the back. She had a revolver out, and a speed loader in her other hand. Below them to the front and right, three Dakota County sheriffs cars were pounding up Pilot Knob Road from the south. Lucas waved Sherrill off and got on the radio: "Tell the sheriff's guys it's the first road west of the house. Not the house, it's a track, goes across a ditch just west of the house… tell them to look for the chopper, where we're going in. We've got him in the house, we see him in the house."

"What're we doing?" Sherrill yelled again. "Are we going in? Are we going in?"

"Gotta try," Lucas said over his shoulder. "He's goofier than shit, and he might have some land of long gun with him. Didn't he take a shotgun off White?"

"Shotgun," Del said.

"Yeah, so take it easy. But Christ, if he kills them now, we're thirty seconds late; and he's goofier'n shit, man, goofier'n shit."

The pilot said, "Hold on," and then, smiling beneath the black visor, dropped them out of the sky.

Mail drove north, cut I-694, the outer beltline around the Cities, took it east and then south, across I-94, where the highway changed numbers and became I-494. He was driving the old woman's car on remote control, his head thumping with the call to Davenport, the treachery of the cops, the humiliation of the duck shit, the nose-ring blonde at Davenport's computer company.

Had Davenport used the blonde to suck him in? Had he figured him that well? He relived the attack on the cop, the satisfying whack of the spade; the hit on the old lady, last seen crumpled on her kitchen floor, one leg under a chair, a broken plate on the floor by her head, a piece of buttered toast in the middle of her back; Gloria floated through his mind, her neck crooked with the nylon rope around her, her feet swinging like a pendulum overhead as he laid the river rocks into the booby trap.

And the parts of Andi Manette: tits, legs, face, ass, back. The way she talked, the way she curled away from him, fearing him.

He almost ran into the truck ahead. He cut left and saw the traffic jam. Cars, trucks, backed up a half-mile away from the river bridge. Blue cop-lights flashing along the road.

He sat in the traffic jam for five minutes, steaming, the bright movies in his brain now reduced to shadows. Up ahead, a Jeep cut onto the shoulder of the road. Mail edged over to watch: the Jeep rolled slowly along the shoulder, then cut across to an exit heading north on Highway 61. Mail followed. He didn't want to go back north, but he could make a U-turn, head back south. Must be a hell of an accident; there were cops all over the place.

He slid off the exit, running north; made an illegal U, and started south again. Everything around the bridge was blocked, but there was another bridge, little used, down in Newport.

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.