Mind Prey

ballpoint. He pulled open another, and found stick-on labels, an indelible pen missing its cap, a dusty yellow legal pad. The middle drawer had another pencil and three X-Men comics in plastic sleeves.
    “Tear it apart,” Lucas said to the Minneapolis cops crowding up behind them. “Any piece of paper—anything that might point at the guy. Checks, receipts, credit card numbers, bills, anything.”
    The Eagan chief lit a cigarette, looked around, and said, “This is him, huh?”
    “Yeah. This is him.”
    “I wonder where they are?”
    “So do I,” Lucas said.
    He stepped outside and tipped his head back, and the Eagan chief thought for a moment that he was sniffing the wind. “I bet they’re close—I bet this is the closest self-storage to his house. Goddamnit. Goddamnit, we’re close.”
    The guard had come along out of curiosity, but when not much happened, started tottering back to the gatehouse. Lucas walked after him. “Hey, wait a minute.”
    The guard turned. “Huh?”
    “You see this guy come and go? You ever see him spend any time here?”
    The guard looked slowly left and right, as if checking for eavesdroppers. “He runs a store here on weekends. All kinds of long-haired kids running around.”
    “A store?”
    The Eagan chief had come up behind him. “It’s illegal, but you see it quite a bit, now,” he said. “Part-time shops, nobody talks to the IRS, no sales tax. They call them flea markets, or garage sales, but you know—they’re not.”
    “Does he have any employees? Any regulars?”
    The guard touched his lips with his middle and index fingers, thinking, scratched his ass with the other hand, and finally shook his head. “Not that one. The guy in the next, uh, spot, sells lawn mowers ’n’ hedge trimmers and stuff. He might know.”
    “Where’s he?”
    “I got a list.”
    Lucas followed him back to the gate shack, where the guard fumbled under a countertop and finally produced a list of names and telephone numbers.
    “What’s under Roses’ name? What number?”
    The old man ran a shaky index finger down the list, came to ROSE , and followed it across to a blank space. “Ain’t got one. Supposed to.”
    “Gimme the other guy’s name, the lawn mower guy.”
     
    T HE COP WASN’T going to leave.
    Mail lay behind a bush thirty feet away and watched him. The cop checked his shotgun, then checked it again—playing with it, flipping a shell out, catching it in mid-air, shoving it back in—hummed to himself, spoke into a radio a couple of times, paced back and forth, and once, looking quickly around first, moved up close to a maple tree and took a leak.
    But he wasn’t going anywhere. He idled back and forth, watching the cars come and go at the end of the block, turned the shotgun like a baton. Whistled a snatch of a Paul Simon song…
    The cop was at the thinnest spot along the line, a place where the street made an odd little curve before straightening again, as though it had been built around a stump. The curve had the effect of changing the angles, pushing out toward the next set of lawns.
    If he could just get across. He thought about using the .45, but if the cop tried to fight him for it, or went for his gun, and he had to shoot—that’d be the end. If he was going to take the cop out, he had to be quick and silent and sure.
    Mail pushed himself back, a foot at a time, until he reached the back edge of the house, where he got to his hands and knees. He couldn’t see much, but he could see the dark shape of some kind of yard shed. He scurried over to it, looked around quickly, pulled open the door, and slid inside.
    And felt instantly safe with the roof over his head. Nobody could see in, no light would catch him. The shed was full of yard tools and smelled of dead autumn leaves and old premix-gasoline. Groping in the dark, he found a couple of rakes, a hoe, a shovel. He could try the shovel, but it was awkward, and he groped along the floor for something else. He found a short piece of two-by-four, thought about it, decided he liked the shovel better. Moved on, found two snow shovels, a pair of hedge clippers; he touched a gas can, smelled the gas on his fingers; and then, in the corner, a spade handle.
    The handle had broken off just above where the blade had been. He hefted it, made a short chopping motion. Okay. This would work.
    He didn’t want to go back outside, but he had to. He slipped outside, scrambled back to the corner, and eased down the side