Authors: Steven James
Just then my phone vibrated. I had another call coming in. I glanced at the number. It was Ralph. “Yeah. Listen, just give her a hug for me. All right?”
“All right,” he said, and then, “but I don’t think I’m the one she needs a hug from.”
I stared at the phone. Why did he have to go and say that? I punched a button, hung up on Ralph, and brought the phone back up to my ear. “All right. It worked. Can you go get her for me?”
“Of course.” There was a hint of satisfaction in his voice.
I waited until she was on the line.
“What?”
“Hey, Tessa, I’ve been thinking about you a lot today. I’m really sorry I missed your birthday. I really am.”
I paused; she didn’t respond.
I could just picture her with her jaw set in that teenage girl sort of way. “Couldn’t we at least pretend to get along once in a while?” I said.
“I thought you didn’t like it when people pretend?”
Anger on the prowl.
Keep it caged in.
“Listen, I was hoping maybe in the next couple weeks or so we could spend some extra time together.”
“Why? Aren’t there enough dead bodies out there for you to spend time with?”
I heard it growl.
Easy, Pat. Easy.
“Your mom’s death was hard on me too,” I said at last. But only after I’d said the words did I realize Tessa had already hung up the phone.
And that did it. I launched the phone against the wall, and it shattered in a spray of splintered technology.
Just then Ralph burst through the door.
“We might have something!” he blurted. “Why didn’t you answer—what happened to your phone?” He was staring at the mess on the floor.
“I dropped it,” I said. “What’s up?” Last I’d heard, he and Lien-hua were following up on some leads concerning the type of rope the killer used to bind and strangle Mindy.
“About an hour ago a girl left a mall in Charlotte.” He looked down at his notes. “Jolene Brittany Parker. Works at some clothing store in the mall. Never made it to her car. A guy says he saw someone with her. He might be able to give us a description.”
I was tired, frustrated from my conversation with Tessa, not really interested in a wild goose chase in another part of the state, and annoyed that my phone wasn’t wall proof. “What makes you think it’s related?”
Ralph paused. “Nothing. Except she wears contacts.”
“And?”
“And they match the prescription of the ones we found on Mindy.”
“What!”
Lien-hua appeared at the door. “Mindy doesn’t wear contact lenses. When we found out about the possible abduction, I decided to check out the prescription. On a whim.”
“That was some whim.” I jumped up from my seat. “What are we waiting for? Where’s this eyewitness?”
“Local cops have him at the mall,” said Ralph. “They’ve sealed off the area. He’s still there. Should we bring him in?”
“No. Let’s get over there. I want to talk to him on-site.”
“It’s a two-hour drive,” said Lien-hua.
I shook my head. “Too long. How long by chopper?”
“Let’s find out,” said Ralph.
Lien-hua and I were already on our way up the stairs to the landing pad on top of the building.
We landed at a hospital near the mall, and the Charlotte police met us there with a cruiser. A few minutes later we were pulling into the parking lot to Hanes Mall. The road had been cordoned off, but the officers at the entrance stepped aside to let us through.
I could tell which car was hers. A team of crime scene technicians was already hard at work on it, looking for fibers, dusting for prints. Near them, surrounded by a cluster of state troopers, stood a guy who looked about eighteen years old, dressed in high tops, faded blue jeans, and a Detroit Pistons Starter jacket. He was staring off into space like he was either in shock or slightly stoned.
“That’s him?” groaned Lien-hua.
“I guess so,” said Ralph. “Want me to go at him?”
“Let me,” I said.
We walked over to him, and I extended my hand. “I’m Patrick,” I said, leaving off my last name. College students tend to become suspicious of those who give both names. It seems like a power play. I didn’t want to distance myself from him right off the bat. “Are you Andy?”
He nodded and shook my hand.
“Good.” I looked around and then back at him. “You saw something here in the parking lot earlier tonight. Is that right?”
He avoided eye contact. He didn’t trust me yet. “I don’t know,” he mumbled. “I’m not really sure. Should I be talking to a lawyer or something?” He was stumbling all over his words.
“You don’t need to talk to a lawyer unless you have something to hide,” Ralph interjected, narrowing his eyes. “You don’t have anything to hide, do you?”
“No.” He answered a little too fast, which meant that he did.
“Well, then, there’s nothing to be nervous about,” I said. “We just want to know what you saw. That’s all. Then you can go meet up with your friends to finish watching the Pistons school the Hornets in tonight’s preseason game.”
He stared at me suspiciously. “How did you know that?”
I pointed to his jacket. “Detroit plays Charlotte tonight. You keep trying not to look at the four guys in the crowd behind me but doing it anyway, and you’ve checked your watch three times since I got out of the car. Look, I just want to know what you saw, the best you can remember.”
He still looked a little lost.
I looked at my watch. “Probably still in the second quarter.”
That seemed to help him focus. “Well, I came out of the mall, right, and um, I saw this girl who looked pretty cute and so—”
“You were following her,” interrupted Ralph.
I glared at him, and he backed off.
“No, I mean, why would you say that?” Then he turned to me. “Why would he accuse me of that?”
“Andy, you’re rubbing your fingers together. You’re shifting your weight back and forth from one leg to the other. You won’t look me in the eye. You’re nervous, maybe scared that if you admit you were following her, you’ll become a suspect. But you’re not in trouble with us. We have no reason to think you wanted to harm her; but someone might have hurt her, Andy. Her name is Jolene. The girl’s name is Jolene.”
He looked back and forth from me to Ralph, then sighed heavily. “OK. I was following her, but I wasn’t trying to do nothin’. I was just, you know, I thought she was cute and stuff.”
“Tell me about the guy you saw. The one who was standing over here”—I walked toward the fifteen-year-old sedan—“by her car.”
He looked confused. “Yeah, that’s where he was standing. How did you know?”
“Sightlines,” I said. “Here you’re not in the pool of light from the parking lot lights, but you can see both directions on the road, and you have easy access to Jolene’s car.” I glanced at Ralph. I knew he was thinking,
This is a waste of time, Pat. Get the kid to talk or
let me at him. I’ll make him talk.
I walked back over to Andy. “Now, please. Just tell me what you saw—”
“He killed her, didn’t he?” Andy started shaking.
At first I thought I should lie, tell him that everything was OK, that the girl was fine. But then I decided to play it straight and give him the God-honest truth. Every minute we wasted meant less chance of finding her alive. “He might have, Andy. Or he might want to. Help us find him. Please. Help us protect her.”
A look of horror swept over his face. “Oh, man. She’s dead. I can’t do this.”
Lien-hua put her hand on his shoulder. “My name is Lien-hua, Andy, and I know you think that you didn’t see anything important. But I want you to think back. How tall do you think the man was? Was he much taller than her or the same height? Was he Caucasian or black, or maybe Hispanic? Did you maybe see his face?”
He finally seemed to regain his composure. “He looked big. Tall, I mean. And I think he was white. He was wearing some kind of uniform.”
“A uniform?” I said. “Like a police officer?”
“Sort of.” Andy pointed toward one of the uniformed men nearby. “Like that.”
“Mall security,” I mumbled. “That’s it. That’s how he was able to get close to her.” I turned to the officers who had driven us here. “Get me a list of all the mall security personnel. And custodians too. Anyone who might have access to their uniforms.”
“Yes, sir.”
“That’s good, Andy,” said Lien-hua. “Is there anything else? Anything at all?”
He glanced at the crowd and then back at me. “I don’t know. She was looking through her purse, I think. That’s it. That’s all. She pointed at me, and I saw the guy turn his head toward me, but his face was all in the shadows. When I saw the uniform, I thought maybe I was in trouble or something, so I cut between some cars.”
I looked at her car. It was an old beat-up Toyota Camry, typical college student car, probably with more than two hundred thousand miles. I knelt down and shone the beam of my Mini Maglite under her car and then the one next to it. I caught the glint of something behind the tire. I pulled on a latex glove, reached into the shadows, and grabbed the object. Lipstick.
Ralph walked toward me. “Whatcha got?”
I showed it to him.
He turned to Andy. “You said she was looking through her purse?”
“Yeah.”
“Why would a girl be standing by her car looking through her purse?” I asked Ralph. “What would she be looking for?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know.”
Lien-hua spoke up. “Her keys. Maybe she was looking for her keys.”
Why? Why here? Why then?
“Her keys. She was looking for her keys,” I whispered, “but she couldn’t find them because they weren’t there.”
“So where were they?” Lien-hua.
I pointed to an empty parking spot about five meters away. “He had them. He had her keys. And he was ready for her at her car. Her car is older, probably doesn’t have keyless entry. People without keyless entry tend to take their keys out later, when they’re right next to their car. The lipstick tells me she was here when she tried to find them. Otherwise, if she had keyless entry, she would have pulled out her keys earlier, maybe halfway across this parking lot. Our guy knew that. Maybe he chose her just because of the age of her car. This guy is good.”
“But why would he take her keys?” asked Lien-hua. “If he knew which car was hers, why not just grab her when she was getting into it?”
I slipped the lipstick into an evidence bag and thought for a moment before answering. “Because he wanted to watch her look for them. He’s into it for the game. He likes to watch.” As I said the words, a shiver snaked down my back. “He likes to watch,” I whispered again.
“And?” she said. “So?”
I spun around. A crowd of people stood behind a police line about a hundred meters away. There were already half a dozen plainclothes men sweeping the crowd. So many murderers and arsonists return to the scene of the crime that it’s standard operating procedure to photograph the crowds. But our guy would know that. He wouldn’t be in the crowd.
Where else? A car, maybe? Was he in one of the cars in the parking lot? I stepped onto the hood of the car next to me and scanned the other side of the parking lot. An Applebee’s restaurant. A couple fast-food joints. A Jiffy Lube. “I want this entire area closed down. Do it quietly. I don’t want to spook him. He’s here.”
“In the crowd?” asked Ralph.
“No, not the crowd. Somewhere else.”
“How do you know?” said Lien-hua.
“Because if I were him, that’s where I’d be.” I pointed toward the row of restaurants. “I want a sweep of every one of those restaurants. And we need to make sure there isn’t anyone in any of these cars.”
That’s when I saw it. A walkway leading from the mall to a parking garage. It was perfect. You could look across the whole parking lot but then slide down and escape in either direction, to a car in the garage or back into the mall. Perfect exit route.
As I trained my eyes on the footbridge, a man in a leather jacket and a baseball cap turned suddenly and began to walk back toward the parking complex.
I pointed and jumped down from the car. “That’s him.”
The guy was hurrying now, almost out of sight.
“Where?” shouted Ralph, pulling out his weapon.
“The walkway. There. Cut him off!” Even as I said the words I was sprinting across the parking lot, barking out orders to the officers standing around us. “Seal off the parking garage. Don’t let anyone out!”
A few officers gawked at me for a moment and then joined me in pursuit. “Cut him off in the mall!” I hollered. The officers split off and raced to the mall entrance.
I burst through the door to the parking garage and scanned the area. Nothing. Then I heard footsteps in the stairwell. I leaned over, looked up, and glimpsed movement on the landing above me. “Stop! I’m a federal agent!”
He didn’t stop but stepped through the doorway and disappeared.
I exploded up the stairwell and pulled out my .357 SIG P229. I threw open the door and stared at the rows of cars. No one. He had to be behind a car somewhere. Or inside one.
“Step out with your hands in the air!” I swung the gun in front of me, leveling it with both hands, looking for a flicker of shadow, a trace of movement, anything. “I said, step out with your hands up!” My words echoed off the cement walls. No reply. My heart was hammering. He was here. He was close. I didn’t know if he was armed or not, but I had to assume he was.
A car door clicked open three cars down. “Drop your weapon and put your hands in the air,” I yelled. “Now!”
I could hear the whimpering voice of a young woman. And then the voice of a scared man. “Don’t shoot, mister!” A graying, overweight man in his underwear stepped out of a Ford Expedition with his hands in the air. “She told me she was twenty-one. I swear.”
“Get back in the car!” I shouted.
“But you just said—”
He never finished his sentence. Before he could say another word, his neck exploded in a spray of blood as the echo of a gunshot rang against the concrete walls of the parking garage.
Confusion swept over the man’s face as his hand involuntarily flew up to his neck. He wobbled for a moment, then careened face-first onto the concrete. A moment later the girl was standing next to the car screaming. The shot had come from somewhere beyond them. I had no visual on the shooter.