Mind Prey

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.”
     
    M AIL 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 searchlight 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