Mind Prey

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    This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

    MIND PREY

    A Berkley Book / published by arrangement with the author

    Copyright © 1995 by John Sandford.

    All rights reserved.
    No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.
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    375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

    ISBN: 1-101-14749-0

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1
    T HE STORM BLEW up late in the afternoon, tight, gray clouds hustling over the lake like dirty, balled-up sweat socks spilling from a basket. A chilly wind knocked leaves from the elms, oaks, and maples at the water’s edge. The white phlox and black-eyed Susans bowed their heads before it.
    The end of summer; too soon.
    John Mail walked down the floating dock at Irv’s Boat Works, through the scents of premix gasoline, dead, drying minnows and moss, the old man trailing behind with his hands in the pockets of his worn gabardines. John Mail didn’t know about old-style machinery—chokes, priming bulbs, carburetors, all that. He knew diodes and resistors, the strengths of one chip and the weaknesses of another. But in Minnesota, boat lore is considered part of the genetic pattern: he had no trouble renting a fourteen-foot Lund with a 9.9 Johnson outboard. A driver’s license and a twenty-dollar deposit were all he needed at Irv’s.
    Mail stepped down into the boat, and with an open hand wiped a film of water from the bench seat and sat down. Irv squatted beside the boat and showed him how to start the motor and kill it, how to steer it and accelerate. The lesson took thirty seconds. Then John Mail, with his cheap Zebco rod and reel and empty, red-plastic tackle box, put out on Lake Minnetonka.
    “Back before dark,” Irv hollered after him. The white-haired man stood on the dock and watched John Mail putter away.
    When Mail left Irv’s dock, the sky was clear, the air limpid and summery, if a little nervous in the west. Something was coming, he thought. Something was hiding below the treeline. But no matter. This was just a look, just a taste.
    He followed the shoreline east and north for three miles. Big houses were elbow to elbow, millions of dollars’ worth of stone and brick with manicured lawns running down to the water. Professionally tended flower beds were stuck on the lawns like postage stamps, with faux-cobblestone walks snaking between them. Stone swans and plaster ducks paddled across the grass.
    Everything looked different from the water side. Mail thought he’d gone too far, but he still hadn’t picked out the house. He stopped and went back, then circled. Finally, much farther north than