Mind Prey

Manette was a package, all right: he’d known that when he’d first laid eyes on her ten years earlier. She was everything he’d expected: nice body, and she fought him. He enjoyed the fight, and enjoyed smothering it. Every time he rode her, he finished with a sense of victory.
    And now here he was, on television, dominating the news. Everybody was looking for him—and they might find him, he thought, given a few weeks, or months. He’d have to do something about that, eventually.
    He pushed the thought away and went back to his favorite: Davenport. Davenport was in hiding. Nothing was said about him. Nothing.
    Mail ran through the Internet news groups as he watched TV, sorting the messages by subject. He was tempted to post something about Manette and what he was doing with her. He might do that, if he could get to a machine at the university. Some people on the alt.sex groups who would appreciate what he had to say…
    Maybe just a quick note now, just a hint? No. There was always a path they could get back on, a way to trace him—his Internet link had his real phone number.
    Though not his real name.
    On the Internet, he was Tab Post and Pete Rate, names he got off his computer keyboard. Down at the store, and with the store van, he was Larry F. Roses. The real Larry F. Roses was down south somewhere, Florida, Louisiana. He’d sold the van and its papers for cash, to avoid having to split the money with his ex-wife. To the mortgage company, he was Martin LaDoux. He had Marty’s papers—driver’s license, with his own photo on it now, a Social Security card, even a passport. He paid Marty’s income taxes.
    He wasn’t John Mail anywhere. John Mail was dead…
    Mail sat up and pushed away the TV tray with the aluminum foil chicken-pot-pie tin. Chicken-pot-pie and a Coke; just about his favorite. And he thought about Grace. Got up, went to the kitchen, got another can of Coke, and thought about her some more.
    Grace might be good. Fresh. Her body was just starting to turn, and she’d fight, all right. He dropped on the couch and closed his eyes. Still, when he looked at her, he didn’t feel the hunger he felt for the mother. That still surprised him. The first time he’d taken Andi Manette to the mattress, he’d almost blacked out with the joy of it. Maybe, Grace. Sometime. As an experiment. Bet she’d freak out when she saw it coming…
    He’d just finished the Coke when the phone rang on the corner table behind his head. He groped for it, found it. “Hello?”
    “Yes, Mr. LaDoux.” Mail sat up: this voice he paid attention to.
    “They are looking for your boat. The police know you were watching her from the lake.” Click. Mail stared at the phone. Shit. He wished he knew who it was: a face-to-face talk would be interesting.
    But the boat. He frowned. When he’d rented the boat, he’d had to show an ID, the LaDoux driver’s license, his home name. The old guy at the rental place had stamped it on the back of a duplicate form. Where he put the form, Mail didn’t know. Hadn’t paid attention. Damnit. That’s how Davenport would get him: when he didn’t pay attention.
    Mail stood up, got a jacket and a flashlight, and went outside. Chilly. But the clouds had vanished with the sun, and overhead, the Milky Way stretched across the sky like God’s own Rolex. Drive up? Nah. Good night for a stroll. Maybe some pussy at the end of it, although his testicles were beginning to ache.
    With the flashlight picking out the bumps and holes, Mail took the driveway down to the gravel frontage road, checked the rural mailbox out of habit. Nothing; the mailman always came before ten o’clock, and Mail had picked up the day’s delivery when he’d got up. He shut the mailbox and went down the gravel road.
    To the north, the lights of the Cities were visible as a thin orange glow above the roadside trees. But when he turned south, up the track to the shack where he kept the women, it was as dark as the inside of a bone; and it all smelled of corn leaves.
    Mail lived on what once had been a small farm. A neighbor had bought it when the farm could no longer support itself, had shorn a hundred and fifty acres of crop land from the original plot, and had sold the remaining ten acres containing the original farmhouse and a few crumbling outbuildings. The new owner, an alcoholic slaughterhouse worker, had allowed the house to fall apart before he killed himself. The next owner built a small house closer to the