Mind prey

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 darkness, 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?"

"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.

Mail got to his feet and ran, fell down, got up and ran, head down. The cop search light from the bridge flicked over and past him and he kept going, the helicopter light tracking more or less toward him, but sliding back and forth across the tracks as it came. A small shack loomed dead ahead, and he dove into the grass beside it and rolled hard against it as the searchlight burned overhead.

Even with his face turned down, the powerful light cut through the grass, dazzling him. And the light passed on.

He looked up, saw the zigzagging chopper chattering slowly toward the overpass. He got to his feet and began running again.

A cop car, lights flickering, ran through the neighborhood on the other side of the tracks, but a street or two west of him. He was running toward some kind of commercial building with trees around it. He swerved toward it; he could hide in the brush. The cops on the bridge swept him with the searchlight and he went down. A second later, the light came back, swept overhead, picking away at him. When it drifted back toward the tracks, he made it the last few feet to the trees.

And found his way blocked by water.

"No-no," he said, out loud. He couldn't catch a break.

He was in a small neighborhood park, with a pond in the middle of it. The light came back, and he dropped to his hands and knees and crawled toward the water. His hands slipped on the grass and a stench reached up to him. What? Whatever he was crawling through was slick; then a small thing moved to his right, and he realized it was a duck. He was crawling through duck shit. The light came back and he dropped into the stuff, then slithered down the bank into the chill water. And heard the shouting behind him.

The night glasses were useless. They were fine in steady, low light, but the sweeping searchlights were screwing up the sensors, and Haywood put them away.

"That way," Lucas said. "Up in those containers."

They ran along the track and were quickly pinned and dazzled by the searchlights from the overpass. Lucas got on the radio, waved the lights off.

"Can't see a fuckin' thing," Haywood said. "I never been on the other end of those lights."

Lucas stepped into a hole in the line of containers, found a second row of containers with a track between them, all dark as pitch.

"If he's down there and he's got a gun, it'd be suicide to go in," Haywood said.

"Yeah." Lucas got on the radio, got the chopper. "Can you come back toward the elevator? There's a double line of containers; we want the light right down the middle."

The pilot took a minute to get lined up, then hung above them, the downwash from the rotors battering down at them as they walked up the line. A hundred feet from the end, Lucas caught an edge of chrome in a hole in the wall. He shouted "Whoa" into the radio and caught Haywood's arm, shouted, "There's the van, there's the van."

Haywood went right while Lucas went left, and the chopper moved up, found the hole, and dropped the light on it.

The cops were walking through the neighborhood, and lights were coming on. Mail could hear their voices, far away, but distinct enough: a woman yelling to a neighbor, "Is it the gas? Is it the gas?"

And the answer, "They're looking for a crazy guy."

Mail dog-paddled across the pond to a muddy point, where a weeping willow tree hung over the water. A half-dozen ducks woke and started inquisitively quacking. "Get the fuck…" he hissed and started out of the water. The ducks took off in a rush of wings, quacking.

Christ, if anybody heard that…

He crawled up on the bank, shivering-very cold now-and had started through the trees when he heard the cops coming, marked by a line of bobbins flashlights. He looked around, then back at the water, and reluctantly slipped in, his head below the cutbank under the willow.

The chill water was only about three feet deep but wanted to float him. Groping along the bank, his hand caught a willow root, and he used it to push himself down and stabilize. He turned his face to the bank and pulled the dark jacket over his head.

"Probably breathing through a straw," a cop said, the voice young and far away.

"Yeah, like you're talking through your ass," said another, equally young. "Jesus, there's goose shit all over the place."

"Duck shit," the first voice said. Farm boy. "Goose shit's bigger; looks like stogies."

A third voice: "Hey, we got a shit expert."

"Somebody ought to lack through those bushes…"

"I'll get it…?"

Mail bowed his head as the footsteps got closer. Then the cop began kicking through the brush overhead. The cop came all the way down to the willow tree: Mail could have reached out of the water and grabbed his leg. But the cop just shined his light out over the water and then headed back for the others, calling, "Nothing here."

Mail was on the same side of the pond as the cops. When they'd moved on, he dog-paddled across the pond and crawled out, picking up more duck shit. Now he began shivering uncontrollably. Cold; he'd never been this cold. He crawled straight ahead, toward the corner of the commercial building, the rubble on the ground cutting into his hands. He pushed into a clump of brush, where he stopped, and pulled his legs beneath him, trying to control the shivering. His hair hung across his forehead, and he pushed it back with one hand; he smelled like duck shit.

Across the tracks, the helicopter was hovering in one spot, and three cop cars were bumping along the line of containers.

"Found it," he said out loud. They'd already found the goddamn van. The barking started again: were they tracking him with dogs? Jesus.

More dogs were barking through the neighborhood, aroused by all the cops walking through, He had to move. Had to get out of here. He crawled back through the bushes, finally stood up and looked around. The cops seemed to have set up a perimeter, with more cops sweeping the area inside of it. He'd have to cross it, sooner or later.

He thought: Sewer.

And dismissed it. He didn't know anything about sewers. If he crawled down a sewer, he'd probably die down there. And the idea of the sewer walls closing in…

He'd always been claustrophobic, one reason he'd never go back to the hospital. The hospital didn't fuck around with beatings; they knew how to really punish you. His claustrophobia had come out early in his stay, and they'd introduced him to the Quiet Room…

Half-crouching, Mail crossed a driveway and climbed a short fence into the first yard. He crossed the yard, ran behind a house with several lights on, and down a line of bridal-wreath bushes, where he crawled over a wire fence, crossed the next yard, and climbed the fence again. He crossed the next yard, came to another fence, and heard the dog. Large dog, woofing along in the night at the other end of the yard. Take a chance? The dog smelled him at the same time he heard it, turned, and rushed the fence where he was hiding, snarling, slavering for him. Big black-and-tan body, white teeth like a tiger's. No way.

Mail went back, crawled over a fence, and turned left, looking for another way.

A cop car flashed past, light rack spinning; dogs were barking everywhere, now, a mad chorus of mutts.

This could take a while…

Lucas called in the plate number on the van, and the VIN.

Thirty seconds later, on the radio: "Lucas: we've got an address down in Eagan."