Mind Prey

pushed the panic back: he’d have to be careful now. He’d have to make himself move slowly, even with the impulse to dash into the cornfield. If he could get in undetected, he could do this. He’d never really thought there was a chance, but now…
    A heavy clump of something—dirt, sod—dropped into the circle of light at the end of the pipe, half-blocking it. Then another clump.
    Mail, shocked, froze.
    And a familiar voice said, “Is it wet down there, John?”
     
    T HE EMBANKMENT HAD been seeded with some kind of heavy, thick-bladed grass. The recent rain had softened it, and by grabbing clumps of the grass by the base, Lucas found he could pull up a foot-square clump of sod. He pulled out a half-dozen clumps, then sat down on the embankment above the pipe. When Mail was close enough, he dropped the first of the clumps into the mouth of the culvert.
    “Is it wet down there, John?”
    There was no answer for a moment, then Mail’s voice, low, desperate. “Let me out of here.”
    “Nah,” Lucas said. “We found the little girl in the cistern. She was alive, but not by much. How in the fuck could you do that, John? Throw the kid in the hole?” He dropped another clump of grass into the entrance of the culvert.
    “Let me out of here, I’m hurt,” Mail screamed.
    “Not for long,” Lucas said. “The water’s draining through from the other end. I’ll block this up, the pipe’ll fill up…it won’t take long. Nobody will know. They’ll think you got away. It’ll almost be like you won—except you’ll be dead. And I’ll have a good laugh.”
    Mail screamed, “Help…help me,” and Lucas could hear his hands and feet beating on the inside of the pipe. He was apparently trying to move backwards.
     
    M AIL PUSHED HIMSELF away from the sound of the voice, aware now that the water under him was moving with him. Must be downhill. Maybe the pipe would fill up…must get out. Must get out…
    He backed away, frantically, until his feet hit the muck he’d passed behind himself coming in: and he remembered. He kicked at it, couldn’t see it, couldn’t move. He was stuck. Ahead, there was only a small square of light at the mouth of the culvert. He crawled forward again, stopped, twisted around enough that he could free the pistol, and pushed it out ahead of him.
    “Let me out,” he screamed. He fired the pistol. The muzzle blast and flash stunned and deafened him. He inched forward like a mole, in the water, fired again.
    He couldn’t see much at all, just a thin rim of light. Davenport said something, but Mail couldn’t make it out. He simply lay in the deepening water, in the dark, with the pain in his stomach, the strange blindness in his eye, the world closing in on him. Davenport would bury him alive, he could feel the water rising. He thrashed and couldn’t move, couldn’t move; he had the gun, and without thinking, pushed it under his chin.
     
    L UCAS HEARD THE muffled shot, and waited.
    “John?”
    He listened, heard nothing. The frantic beating had stopped. He looked back up the road, where the cops were still standing on the tops of their cars, looking the wrong way, into the cornfield. The shots from inside the culvert had been almost inaudible on the outside. Lucas started pulling the clumps of muck out of the pipe.
    A little flow of water came out.
    And then some blood.
    And a clump of bloody, pulped flesh, floating like a child’s leaf-ship, on the thin stream of muddy water.
    Lucas stood up, and with the toe of one ruined shoe, pushed the clumps of grass out of the mouth of the culvert, and climbed to the road.
    “Hey.” He yelled at the cop on the closest car. When the cop turned, he pointed into the ditch and people began to run toward him.

36
    S LOAN DROVE DOWN to the farm, gunless, suspended, afraid he was missing the action. He found a dozen cops on their hands and knees next to a culvert, and Lucas sitting on the steps of the tumble-down farmhouse.
    “Need a ride, sweetheart?”
    “I need a cigarette,” Lucas said. “I don’t know why I ever quit.”
    Sloan told him about it as they headed back to town:
    “Wolfe wouldn’t have anything to do with me, so I went with Franklin and Helen Manette. I sort of bullshitted her, being nice, and Helen opened her mouth and everything came out.”
    “Won’t do much good,” Lucas said. “A court won’t take anything after the first time she asked for a lawyer, and we didn’t get one.”
    “I wasn’t thinking