Mind prey

CHAPTER 15

The voice was tense: "They're getting close to you. You've got to move on."

Mail, standing in the litter of two decapitated mini-tower systems-he was switching out hard drives-sneered at the phone, and the distant personality at the end of it. "Say what you mean. You don't mean, move on. You mean, kill them and dump them."

"I mean, get yourself out," the voice said. "I didn't think anything like this was going to happen…"

"Bullshit," Mail said. "You thought you were manipulating me. You were pushing my buttons."

He could hear the breathing on the other end-exasperation, desperation, anticipation? Mail would have enjoyed knowing. Someday, he thought, he'd figure the voice out. Then… "Besides, they're nowhere near as close as you think. You just want me to get rid of them."

"Did you know that Andi Manette sent a message with that tape recording you let her make? Her aunt is dead-she's been dead a long time. Her name was Lisa Farmer, and she lived on a farm. And they're looking in Dakota County, at farm houses, because that's where they put you with that little cellular phone trick. You don't have much time now."

Click.

Mail looked at the phone, then dropped it back on the hook and wandered around the living room, whistling, stepping over computer parts. The tune he whistled came from the bad old days at the hospital, when they piped Minnesota Public Radio into the cells. Simple Mozart: he'd probably heard it a hundred times. Mail had no time for Mozart. He wanted rhythm, not melody. He wanted sticks hammering out a blood-beat; he wanted drums, tambourines, maracas. He wanted timpani. He didn't want tinkly music.

But now he whistled it, a little Mozart two-finger melody, because he didn't want to think about Andi Manette tricking him, because he didn't want to kill her yet.

Had she done this? She had-he knew it in his heart. And it made him so angry. Because he'd trusted her. He'd given her an opportunity, and she'd betrayed him. This always happened. He should have known it was going to happen again. He put his hands to his temples, he could feel the blood beating through them, the pain that was going to come. Christ, this was the story of his life: when he tried to do something, somebody always spoiled it.

He took several laps around the living room and the kitchen, opened the refrigerator door, looked blindly inside, slammed it; the whistling began a humming noise deep in his throat, and the humming became a growl-still two-finger Mozart-and then he walked out the back door and cut across the lawn toward the pasture beyond, and the old house in the back.

He jumped the fallen-down fence, passed an antique iron disker half-buried in the bluestem and asters; halfway up the hill, he was running, his fists clenched, his eyes like frosted marbles.

They thought they were making progress, working on Mail: he hadn't become gentle, but Andi felt a relationship forming. If she didn't exactly have power, she had influence.

And they were still working on the nail. They couldn't move it, but a full inch of it was exposed. A few more hours, she thought, and they might pull it free.

Then Mail came.

They heard him running across the floor above them, pounding down the stairs. She and Grace looked at each other. Something was happening, and Grace, who'd been squatting in front of the game monitor, rocked uneasily.

Then the door opened, and Mail's face was a boiled-egg mask with the turned-in, frosted-marble eyes, his hair bushed like a frightened cat's. He said, "Get the fuck out here."

Grace could hear the beating.

She could feel it, even through the steel door. She stretched herself up the door and pounded on it and cried, "Mom, mama, mother. Mom…"

And after a while, she stopped and went back to the mattress and put her hands on her ears so she couldn't hear. A few minutes later, weeping, she closed her eyes and put her hands on her mouth like the speak-no-evil monkey and felt herself a traitor. She wanted the beating to stop, but she wouldn't cry out. She didn't want Mail to come for her.

An hour after he'd taken Andi, Mail brought her back. Always, in the past, her mother had been clothed when Mail put her back in the room: this time, she was nude, as was Mail himself.

Grace huddled back against the wall as he stood in the doorway, facing her, the hostile frontality frightening as nothing else ever had been. Finally, she bowed her head between her knees and closed her eyes and began to sing to herself, to close out the world. Mail listened to her for a moment, then a tiny, bitter smile crossed his face, and he shut the door with a clang.

Andi didn't move.

When the door closed, Grace was afraid to look up-afraid that Mail might be inside the room with her. But after a few seconds, when nothing moved, she peeked. He was gone.

Grace whispered, "Mother? Mom?"

Andi moaned and turned to look at her daughter, and blood ran out of her mouth.