Mind Prey

the radio: “Janet? Flood it. I’m calling the flood.”
    “You got it.”
    Sloan sat down beside the wounded man. “Got an ambulance coming,” he said.
    “I’m really hurting, man.”
    Haywood ran up and Lucas said, “You got a flash?”
    “Yeah.”
    Lucas pulled a folded pad of paper from his pocket, unfolded it, sorted through the composites, and found the one of Mail with dark hair.
    “Is this the dude?” Lucas turned the flashlight on the paper.
    Ricky was slipping away again, but the light brought him back and he focused on the paper. “Yeah. That’s the dude.”
    “Where is he?”
    “He was gonna wait in the parking ramp.” He flopped an arm out. The ramp was out of sight, on the far side of the building. Lucas got back on the radio. “Janet, goddamnit, this is the real thing, he’s here, somewhere. Keep them coming.”
    “They oughta be there, Lucas. They’re already out on the perimeter with the dogs.”
    And then Lucas heard the sirens: fifteen or twenty of them, coming from every direction. More would be arriving later. The patrol people had decided to use the sirens in an effort to pin Mail down, to frighten him. “Tell them to look in the information packets they got tonight, and look at composite C as in Cat. That’s our guy.”
    “ C as in Cat.”
    Lucas bent over Ricky again. “The guy’s name is John Mail, right?”
    “Oh, man, my fuckin’ leg.”
    “John Mail?”
    “Yeah, man. John. I see him around. You know. I see him around and I say, ‘Hey, John.’ And he says ‘Hey, Ricky.’ And that’s all. Said there was some toot over here. He seen it. My fuckin’ leg, man, you got something? You got any, like, Percodan?”
    “You know where he lives?”
    “Oh, man, I don’t even know the dude, you know, I used to see him when we were inside, he’d just be, ‘Hi, Ricky.’ That’s all.” Ricky groaned. “How about the Percodan, man?”
    “Sent in a decoy, to see what we’d do,” Lucas said to Sloan. Then: “You stay here. They’re gonna want a statement and your gun.”
    To Haywood: “C’mon. You got those glasses?”
    “Yeah.”
    And to Sloan, “You okay?”
    Sloan swallowed and nodded. “First time,” he said. “I don’t think I like it.”
    “Just get him in the ambulance and don’t worry about it.” Lucas grinned at him and slapped him on the back. “I can’t believe you shot low, you dumb shit,” he said. “If you’d missed him, he’d of sunk that rerod about six inches into your skull.”
    “Yeah, yeah.” Sloan swallowed. “Actually, I was aiming at the middle of his chest.”
    Lucas grinned and said, “I know how that goes. C’mon, Hay.”
    Lucas and Haywood ran around to the front of the building, Lucas glancing back once. Sloan was standing over Ricky, and Lucas thought he might be apologizing. He’d have to watch his friend: Sloan seemed unbalanced by the shooting. And that was in character, Lucas thought. Sloan liked the relationships that came out with cop work, the tussle. He even enjoyed an occasional fight. But he never really wanted to hurt anybody.
    Then Lucas turned back toward the parking ramp and he and Haywood ran up the sidewalk together, weapons out. Far up University, they could see the roadblocks going in, and everywhere, in every direction, the red flashing lights.
    “Looks like a fuckin’ light-rack convention,” Haywood panted.
    Lucas heard him but had no time to answer: they’d rounded the office building on University and were coming up on the ramp. Lucas said, “Let’s go up. Ready?”
    “Outa fuckin’ shape,” Haywood said. “Let’s go.”
    Lucas took the first set of steps: there were a half-dozen cars parked in the first floor, and they checked them quickly. Then up the next set of steps, and Lucas, looking over the low, concrete deck wall, saw taillights flicker to the north, headed toward the railroad tracks.
    “Did you see that?”
    “What?”
    The lights flickered again. “There.”
    “Yeah. Somebody crawling along in the dark, no headlights,” Haywood said.
    “Sonofabitch, that’s him.” Lucas put the radio to his face: “I need a car at the…what the fuck is the name of this building? I need a car by the Hansen dairy place, first road west of the Hansen dairy trucks. We’ve got the suspect in sight, going down toward the elevators.”
    Haywood was already running across the slab and down the stairs, Lucas a few steps behind. The blacked-out vehicle was almost two blocks away,