Читать книгу Death Goes Shopping - Jessica Burton - Страница 7

I heard the noise first. Pealing out like a summons. Demanding attention.

Please God, not the kids. Don't let it be the kids, I prayed as I got off the escalator on the ground floor and ran towards the Food Court, a sunken area in the middle of the ground floor which backs onto the west wall. It boasts the usual mixture of fast food outlets and a common eating area furnished with little square pedestal tables, each with four stools.

Rounding the corner by the Juice Nook, I plowed into a sea of bodies, some running towards me, others, like me, heading on the run to the Food Court, shouting at the top of their lungs, despair and pleading evident in every voice.

“Cindy…Mommy's coming, Cindy.”

“Paul, where are you Paul? Can you hear me?”

“Dear God, I can't see him. Jim, why can't I see him?”

“Billy…”

“Katy…I can't find Katy.”

The terrible litany came from all sides. Flashing lights from emergency vehicles outside added an eerie backdrop to the voices, pulsating, keeping time. I could see a group of police officers and firemen trying to clear a path for four, maybe five paramedics pulling stretchers, and, up above the whole thing, hung the fifty-foot banner I'd had made up for the promotion. The eighteen inch letters spelled out “Happy Halloween”, and they too were lit intermittently by red and yellow flashes.

Peter, one of Helen's uniformed security people, was just up ahead where the main aisle of the mall opened onto the seating area. He was desperately trying to halt the rush. Parents were grabbing at him, clawing at his arms and shouting kids' names.

“Please, people, stay back. You must stay back now. Keep this space clear.”

He saw me and motioned me over.

“God, Peter, what's happened?” Heart pounding, I clutched his sleeve. Panic spread through me. I felt like I was underwater and couldn't push my way to the surface.

“Jenny, there's been a shooting. Three people. Two dead and one nearly. Helen needs you to sort out the kids. She's over by the pizza place,” He handed me a walkie-talkie. “Said to give you this. Keep it on and keep it close.”

There was another surge forward as more people came around the corner. Over his shoulder, I could see stores on the other side of the mall closing and locking their doors.

“Peter, you'll never stop these people.” I took a couple of deep breaths, trying to stop shaking and regain some self-control. “They need to get to their kids. We'll have a better chance of helping from inside the food area.” Though, God knows, it was the last place I wanted to be.

“Please, sir, ma'am, please.” He gave it one last try, peeling a woman's fingers off his sleeve. She held a baby tightly to her breast with the other hand, and her face was ashen, lined with streaks of mascara. “This area has to be cleared. Stay back now. Everything's under control.”

Knowing it wasn't, they ignored him and kept pushing forward, scattering into the Food Court, heading for the back wall and their children.

“I think you're right, Jenny. I'm useless here.” He put his arm around me and gave me a quick, steadying squeeze. “Let's go.”

We pushed our way through the crowd across the courtyard to Paul's Pizza.

It was a bizarre scene, like the final act in an avant garde play. The food outlet's counter was hidden by a phalanx of cops, a solid wall of blue. In front of them, Helen stood facing a semi-circle of people. She was flanked by three of her Security staff and a huge white rabbit. Their arms were joined to form a solid line, trying to keep some distance between themselves and the couple of dozen people straining to see what lay behind the cops.

Off to the right, two or three small groups of people were hemmed in by more police who had their notebooks out, and a couple of officers were unreeling yellow tape, one end of which was tied to a sign stand, advertising pizza by the slice. Still more were herding people to the back of the Food Court, trying to control a panicky crowd of frightened kids and distraught parents.

Helen looked over the heads of the onlookers and spotted us. She freed one of her hands and gestured in the air with her radio. I put mine to my ear.

“Jenny, do you have something I can cordon off this area with?”

“Send the rabbit over.” My fingers were trembling so hard I couldn't get the transmit button to work. I didn't want to go over there, to get any closer. I tried the button again. “Send Joe over.”

“Who the hell is Joe?” Her voice was strained. “I don't have a Joe.”

“The rabbit, Helen. Send me the fucking rabbit.”

I watched as she dropped Joe's paw, raised herself up on her toes and spoke into the mouth of the costume, pointing towards me. A bubble rose in my throat, but I managed to swallow it back down.

“Joe, don't speak.” I held up a hand as he came near. “Just lose the outfit right here and get over to the storage at the back of the taco place. Bring the screens we use for the Blood Donor Clinic. All of them. Peter, you'd better go and help. They're pretty awkward to carry.”

Joe took off the rabbit head. He was refrigerator white. Poor kid hadn't reckoned on this for his first after-school job.

“But I've just got underwear on.”

“Joe, I don't care if you're starkers. This is an emergency. There's no time to shuffle around in that suit and besides, nobody'll pay any attention. Listen, there's an old sweatsuit of mine hanging behind the door in the storage. Put that on. Now move it.”

They were back in five minutes, five minutes that seemed to take an hour to tick past. I stood and waited, anchored to the spot by the awful keening sound from the back area. It was mixed with kids' voices now, scared and crying, needing the comfort of the familiar.

I looked at my watch and was amazed to see it was just after twelve. Only about half an hour since Dick Simmons had been in my office. Surely to God, this couldn't be his doing. I shook my head. Not over a pair of shoes. It was too absurd.

“Move aside, please,” Peter called. “Move aside.”

He held the front of the screens, with Joe bringing up the rear. They carried them like a battering ram and waded into the crowd around Helen. She started directing her staff to put them up and hide what she was guarding. A man at the edge of the crowd stepped backwards into me, and I dropped the radio. I bent over to pick it up and he bumped me again, sending me to my knees.

Just then, the crowd parted, and I saw the carnage.

In a heartbeat, I was centred in silence. I heard no sound, saw no movement. My brain, bereft of logic or thought, saw death and could register only the horror.

Two bodies were slumped across a table.

They lay, one with its head tucked tightly into the other's neck, almost as if they had fallen asleep in a lovers' embrace. The face turned towards me had a couple of red circles on the cheek and above one eye. It was lying on a paper plate holding the remains of a pizza. A second plate poked out from the shoulders of the other body. It, too, had bits of food spilling onto the table.

An arm from each drooped down towards feet that splayed away from the wooden pedestal of the little table and rested, lifeless, on their sides.

It was a macabre mirror image.

Two large soft drink cups lay beside the feet, straws bent. I could see drops of blood from the edge of the table hitting the side of one cup and slowly, so slowly, falling to the floor. They left little splatter marks like a child's spin painting, and the red matched, exactly, the red in the pattern of the sweater on one of the arms.

Just off to the left, I saw another figure lying on its side on the floor. The legs in blue jeans and feet in sneakers weren't moving either, as if their owner had fallen asleep.

Finally, mercifully, my eyes closed.

“C'mon, Jenny,” Helen said, her voice calm but tight. “Take a few deep breaths. Come on now, get beyond it.”

She knelt beside me, one hand on my shoulder, giving my face sharp little taps with the other.

“In through your nose and out through your mouth,” she coached me, “just keep breathing. That's right. You can do this, Jenny. I need you to do this. Come on now.”

We got me to my feet after a couple of minutes.

“I'll…”

“…be okay,” she finished. Her voice softened a bit. “I know you will, hon. Just keep focussed.”

“Helen, that mans got slices of pepperoni on his face. Can't somebody just take them off? He looks so sad with bits of sausage stuck to his face.”

“It's not pepperoni, Jenny. They're bullet holes. He's dead. They're both dead.”

“But they can't be dead, Helen, there isn't enough blood. Shouldn't there be more blood?”

“Jenny, don't think about that now. You've got a job to do. I need you to concentrate on the kids over there.”

“But who is it, Helen? Who are they? I mean, I know who one of them is. I think I do, anyway.”

I knew I was babbling, but my mouth just wouldn't stop. “I recognized a sweater, Helen. On an arm. It was hanging down, and I recognized it. Please don't say it's Cathy from the wool store. If it's Cathy from the wool store, Helen, I'm not going to like it. Can she be the one who's just wounded, Helen? Please?”

“Hang it up, Jenny, I don't have time for this.” Her tone sharpened. “Here's what I need you to do.”

She turned me to face the far end of the Food Court, where the colouring contest had been going on.

“Take your kid, Joe or whatever, and get some semblance of order going over there,” she said. “The mall's been closed down. The police are controlling all the exits, and the parking lot's barricaded off. Nobody leaves until they give the okay, and that could easily be five or six hours from now, if not longer.”

She gave me a little push.

“If you can get that area organized and settled down a bit, it'll help. Besides,” she gave a little grin, “you got them in here, so I guess they're yours. Look at it as your next project.”

That was dirty pool, and she knew it. Any time I heard somebody say they were bored or fed up, I'd snap back: “You need a project. You can't be bored if you have a project. I'm never bored, because I always have a project.”

She was right, of course. In a bad situation, and this surely was a bad situation, I'm better at doing than talking. I was starting to pace back and forth, nodding my head. It's a habit of mine when I need to regroup and get organized. Helen says I look like an ostrich, but it works for me.

“But Cathy…” I looked at Helen's face and saw it. “It is her, isn't it?”

“Yes, Jenny.”

“But…”

“Not now. I've got work to do, and so have you, so let's get to it. I'm going to be tied up with the police, so keep your radio handy. We'll talk that way. Two of my people have gone to the pumpkin carving area to stop the contest. I told them to tell your other three kids to change and come here on the double to help. Talk to you later.”

And she was gone.

Poor Joe. I'd forgotten about him. Looking around, I spotted him next to Peter, dressed in a salmon-pink sweatsuit. I went over, grabbed his arm and we pushed-pulled our way through the throng, me issuing instructions as we went.

I cleared off one of the tables, scattering paper and crayons to the floor, and Joe climbed up just as Joshua, Vijay and Roger arrived with the disc jockey in tow.

Joe hooked two fingers in his mouth and let out a loud, piercing whistle. It took a couple of tries, but finally the crowd around us quietened down enough for me to be heard.

“Can I have your attention please? I'm Jenny Turnbull from the mall management office, and these boys are on my staff.”

Keep it short, I thought. No need to feed the frenzy.

“The police officers have closed the mall, and it could be a few hours before we can reopen, so our first priority now is to get you together with your children as quickly and calmly as possible.”

A man in front of the group stepped forward. There was a woman, his wife probably, hanging on to the bottom of his sweatshirt. “And just exactly how do you plan to do that?”

“The kids'll do it. They know their own parents, so if you just line up along the back wall, the boys'll bring the children to you one at a time.”

He took another step forward, chin thrust out. “I'm not lining up anywhere. I'm gonna look for my kid, lady, and I'm gonna look for him now.”

After the morning I'd had already, this guy was enough to put the tin lid on my public relations skills. I planted myself in his path.

“Look, buster, we're all having a bad time right now, but I'm not having these children upset any more than they are already. So get back with the other parents or I'll get an officer over here, and he'll put you back.”

We stood nose to nose for a few seconds. I kept quiet then, because I knew the next one to speak would lose. Finally, with bad grace and a lot of muttering, back he went and the boys began the pairing process.

I sat down at one of the tables in a spot where I could watch the kids join their mothers and fathers, praying that there would be no leftover parents or little ones, thanking my luck that I had hired those boys. If they never want to wear costumes again, that's okay, I thought.

It took less than fifteen minutes for the families to join up and, wonder of wonders, nobody was left unmatched.

I waved the boys and the DJ over and handed Joshua my keys. “Take Roger and go upstairs to my office. There's four cartons marked 'Seniors Day' in the cupboard at the back. Bring them down.

“Joe, you and Vijay gather all these tables and push them together into three or four long rows with stools on both sides. The cartons the boys are getting are filled with decks of cards, board games like checkers and backgammon and that sort of thing. Spread them on the tables and try to get people started amusing themselves.”

“What can I do, Jenny?” asked the DJ. Poor guy looked shaken. He wasn't much older than my boys.

“Maybe you could start a storytelling corner for the little kids, Jim. They're going to be the hardest to contain for any length of time.”

On any normal day in a shopping centre, people are like water—they spread out and find their own level. Today, of course, wasn't normal. They weren't allowed to spread out, and their level was getting pretty high, although I could certainly understand why. I can't stand to have my choices taken away either. I saw a small crowd talking to the officer over beside the entrance doors. He was shaking his head and motioning them away.

Feeling like a cat that's just been dragged through a hedge backwards, I crossed my arms on the table and put my head down. I wanted nothing more than a wonderful, deep, lung-sucking drag on a cigarette. If only I hadn't let Helen help me stop smoking. I know it's not healthy. I know it can kill you. I know it makes your clothes stink. In fact, I know all the sensible answers, but by God, it's a wonderful pastime. I looked over at a guy sitting in the smoking area. He'd probably let me have a puff if I asked him. Smokers understand these things.

I straightened up just as the boys came over and dragged a stool each to the table. The rally caps were back on. Joe's looked a little odd with the pink sweatsuit.

“What's next?” asked Vijay. “What'dya want us to do now, Jenny?”

Thank the Good Lord for teenagers. They've got a wonderful way of seeing things in black and white, no grays. Especially these teenagers. In one morning they'd been involved in two murders with a possible third, lugged a couple of hundred pumpkins around, been made to dress as rabbits and been locked in the building, but that was okay, that was history. This was now, so let's get to it.

“Lunch is next,” I said. “We can't do much more here and, anyway, I'm hungry.”

I've never understood people who say they're too upset to eat. To me, upset needs comfort, and comfort equals food.

I looked around. We were inside a ring of yellow tape and police officers. The only people coming and going through the doors were in uniforms of one kind or another.

“Well, the Food Court's sealed off with us inside, and pizza's definitely out, so I guess it's burgers, souvlaki or Chinese, they're the only ones open.” I handed Joe and Roger some money. “Get some of everything.”

While the boys lined up for our food, I used the radio to call the Information Booth. We needed the upper management in here for damage control, and we needed them fast. Never mind that the Mayor and his group, complete with the press, would be here any time now, the first giant headache was going to be the reaction from the tenants.

Retailers have their own logic. If sales are good, it's because they're doing something right, but if the numbers are down, it's because mall management is doing something wrong, and somebody gunning down their livelihood sure fit that bill nicely.

I spotted Michael Leung, president of the Merchants Association, standing on the far side of the tape, looking at the scene. The managers of the mall's two department stores were on his left, one of them talking to an officer. None of them were smiling. I slid around to another stool so my back was towards them.

The radio came to life.

“Yes, Jenny?”

“Mary, get on the phone and call Mr. Graham and Keith Armstrong at home. We're going to need them as soon as they can get here.” Bob Graham was our mall manager, and Keith was his assistant.

“Helen's already done that, Jenny. They're on their way, and the Mayor and the others have been taken to the empty space round the corner from where you are. The one that used to be the video arcade. The police are using it for interviews and witnesses and stuff. They've taken the chairs and tables from your pumpkin carving to use.”

“Thanks, Mary.”

Well, as I saw things, that was it for now. The parents and the kids were occupied, Security was dealing with the police, the police were dealing with the Mayor, and Leung and his buddies couldn't get at me. Boy, I love it when things are under control. All I had to do now was eat.