Mind prey

"Come on, goddamnit, we gotta move," Lucas said. "It's Stillwater."

Subject is in car proceeding west on I-94.

"Wrong way," Sloan grunted.

"He's got no choice from there," Lucas said. He slapped his own forehead. "And think about it, think about it: the guy makes the initial contact on Du

"I don't know." Sloan frowned as he thought about it. "Maybe.. no. If he doesn't trust the cellular now, why'd he trust it yesterday?"

"He didn't. Maybe he figured we'd be monitoring it," Lucas said. "Maybe he did it so we'd be close by, but he'd know where we were at. I'll bet that sonofabitch is in Stillwater right now. Goddamnit, what's he doing?"

Three minutes later the radio burped, Subject exiting at Highway 15… crossing Interstate, reentering Interstate…

"What's he doing?" Sloan asked. "Why didn't he go this way?"

"He's going down to 95 and he'll take 95 north to Stillwater," Lucas said. "It's simpler, if you don't have a map. How fast can we get there?"

"We'll be there in six or seven minutes. He'll be ten minutes behind us. If you're right."

"I'm right."

"Yeah, I know." Sloan had the Chevy up to ninety, sloughed past the Lake Elmo airport with its pole-barn hangars, and onto Highway 5 east toward Stillwater.

"Goddamnit, I wish we were set up with the Stillwater cops. Just a few guys to sit and watch. We could've shipped a picture of Mail out here."

They listened to the parade moving east on the interstate, then Lucas got on the radio to Dumbo. "We're headed to Stillwater, we think he's playing out the Bible verses he sent us. You probably ought to have your lead cars get off at Highway 95 and start north. And take it easy: we've got two more verses to go, but the last one talks about a trap."

"Got it covered, Mi

"Thanks for the technical advice," Sloan muttered.

As Du

"Asshole," Sloan said, gri

"Better hope he doesn't kill any kids," Lucas said.

"Yeah. The fuckin' paperwork alone. We gotta light coming up, you wa

"Unless you want to run the light."

"All right."

The truck loomed behind them as they slowed for the light, closed to eight inches from their bumper, and the kid was back on the horn.

Lucas turned to look over the backseat. The trucker had one hand on the wheel and the other on the horn; a young woman, next to him in the passenger seat, seemed to be yelling-he could see the points of her canine teeth-but Lucas couldn't tell whether she was yelling at the driver or at him. Then she gave him the finger and Lucas decided that he was definitely the target. The trucker dropped the transmission into park, popped his door, and started to climb out, and Sloan went through the red light.

"Goddamn, he's coming through the red," Sloan said, peering in the mirror.

The radio: Two miles out of Bayport, slow and steady.

"We gotta do something about this guy," Sloan said as they took the long sweeping curve toward the St. Croix River. They'd cut the corner off Du

"All right," Lucas said. "There's a marina up ahead. Pull in there. He'll come in behind us and I'll take him in the parking lot." Lucas pulled his.45 out of the shoulder rig, popped the magazine, jacked the shell out of the chamber, slapped the magazine back in the butt, and dropped the extra shell in his coat pocket. "What a pain in the ass."

"Ready?" Sloan asked.

"Yeah. You got cuffs? If we need them?"

"Glove compartment."

Sloan kept the speed up until he was on top of the marina entrance, then stood on the brakes and took them off the highway. The trucker almost rammed them, swerved out at the last minute, then cranked the truck down the road behind them. Sloan kept moving until they hit the parking lot, then pulled around in a circle. The trucker cut inside them, and they stopped, nearly nose-to-nose.

Lucas popped the door and climbed out, the pistol back in its holster. The trucker was already on the ground, ru

The trucker looked at the two-by-four, his eyes puzzled, as though it had gotten into his hand by mistake, then chunked it back into the truck. "You cut me off," he said.

"Get on the fuckin' ground," Lucas shouted.

The woman started out of the passenger side, but when she saw the gun, she got back in and punched down the door locks. Sloan got out and held up a badge where she could see it.

The trucker was flat on the blacktop, looking up, and Lucas said, "We're on an emergency run, we're in a big goddamn hurry or I'd kick your ass into fuckin' strawberry jam. As it is, I'm go

"I understand, sir." The trucker had grown calm.

"All right. Get in the truck and sit. Half an hour."

Lucas hurried back to the car and Sloan pulled it around in a circle and they were halfway out of the parking lot before they started laughing.

"Fu

"Yeah, they said…" Before Sloan could get it out, the radio said, He's into Bayport, still proceeding north. We got him.

"We've got five minutes," Sloan said.

"Main Street's only about ten blocks long. Let's run down it and see what we can see," Lucas said.

Stillwater was an old lumber mill town, with most of the turn-of-the-century mercantile buildings still in place, crowding Main Street. The buildings had been renovated with tourists in mind, and were now filed with bricks-and-copper-pot restaurants, fern bars, and butter-churn antique stores; the long row of brick store fronts was inflected by the white plastic of a Fina station.

Lucas slumped in his seat, Sloan's baseball cap on his head, only his eyes above the window sill. He hoped he looked like a child but wouldn't have bet on it. "Two million vans," he said. "Everywhere you look, there's a van, if the sonofabitch is dumb enough to still be driving that van around."

The chopper: Subject proceeding through Bayport.

Sloan idled the length of the town, and they saw nothing of interest: storefronts full of tourists, teenagers idling along the walks, one lad who might've been Mail but wasn't. In the light of a pizza place, his face was five years too young.

At the north end of town, Lucas said, "We've got three or four minutes to set up. Let's go back to the other end and find a spot where we can watch the street. If he turns off right away, we should be able to see him. If he goes on past, we can fall in behind."