by Dean Koontz
"Oh? Why?"
"Because," she said, "he's not the sort who'll ever spend a night in jail."
By three o'clock in the morning, an hour and fifteen minutes after Kluger had led the police into Oceanview Plaza, all the search parties had reported back to the lieutenant's command post by the fountain in the mall lounge. They had not found a single trace of the thieves.
Officer Peterson and two other men had poked about in all the stores that faced out on the east corridor. They had peered into every nook in Surf and Subsurface and into every cranny in Shen Yang's Orient. At the Rolls dealership they had looked in and under the five gleaming automobiles on display, had pulled up the trunk lids with all the trepidation of men expecting to be shot in the face, and had even lifted the hoods to make sure no one was curled around the engine blocks. In the Toolbox Lounge-a very expensive bar that based its name on the campy decor of giant-sized hammers, screwdrivers, and wrenches that hung on the walls-they pushed flashlights under all the tables and booths, searched behind the bar and in the whiskey storage closet and even in the two large beer coolers. Next door to the bar, in Young Maiden, they thoughtlessly violated the sanctity of a pink-and-buff ladies' powder room and slid back the curtains on all the changing rooms. They went from one end of the mall warehouse to the other, checking the aisles and the side aisles and the cul-de-sacs; indeed, they had actually broken apart a few of the larger crates with the notion that the thieves might have boxed themselves up in order to pass themselves off as merchandise.
While Peterson's group was worriedly, frantically darting around in the east end, Officer Haggard and two other men explored the stores along the north corridor. Their greatest challenge was Markwood and Jame, one of the mall's two largest stores, for it was filled with counters and design partitions that provided thousands of possible hiding places; in fact, Haggard's men became so paranoid midway through the search of Markwood and Jame that they all had the feeling that the thieves were slipping around behind them, crawling from one counter to the next and moving always at the periphery of vision. However, they found no one in the store. It was a simple matter, by comparison, to check the changing rooms in Archer's Tailor Shoppe and declare that place clean. Likewise, Gallery Gallery-the mall's rather expensive art gallery-was easily looked into and found empty. Tie and Kerchief offered few places for concealment, and all these were unused. Freskin's Interior Decoration was wildly partitioned into sample rooms, but all of these were quiet and unlived-in.
"I feel like a kid playing hide-and-seek," one of Haggard's men said, disgusted with the whole affair.
"There's a difference," Haggard said. "When you were a kid playing hide-and-seek, there wasn't any chance at all that you could get your brains blown out."
Rookies Hawbaker and Muni were working under Officer Shrout over in the west corridor toward the front of the mall. They did not have to prowl through the Plaza's business office, because that was crawling with homicide detectives and technicians from the police laboratory downtown. But they had to check out everything else. They stayed close together and kept their revolvers drawn; Shrout was only seven months away from retirement and did not intend to get killed and be cheated out of his pension, while Patrolmen Hawbaker and Muni were too young to be anything but scared witless. Cautiously they moved through the flower shop and then through Craftwell Gifts, went down to the fancy shoe store and then across to The New Place, a hip clothing store where the prices were decidedly unhip. In the House of Books, where some of the rows of shelves were eight feet high, they had a bad moment when Hawbaker and Muni collided coming out of different aisles and almost shot each other in terror. Henry's Gaslight Restaurant, with its individually partitioned booths and its large kitchen lined with.food-storage closets, was the most harrowing part of the stalk, but it, too, proved to be deserted.
In the south wing additional lab technicians were at work in the jewelry store and in Countryside Savings and Loan. If anyone were hiding in those two places, one of the policemen would have tripped over him by this time. Therefore, Officer Brandywine and his two men concentrated their search on Sasbury's, the mall's other large clothing-department store. Like Haggard's group in Markwood and Jame, these men became so jumpy that they were looking over their shoulders more than they were watching where they were going. But they did not find anyone. Tramping on the broken glass that littered most of the corridor, a bit unnerved by the sound of it crunching under their shoes, they went next to Harold Leonardo Furriers and poked around in the cold-storage vaults full of animal pelts. All that was hiding in Harold's was a herd of dead mink.
When Officer Peterson, the last search party leader to bring in a negative report, told Lieutenant Kluger that his men had not found a trace of the thieves, the lieutenant thrust out his jaw and began to shout at them. He slammed his fist on the top of the card table that he was using for a desk, and his voice rose until it seemed to drown out the steady susurration of the fountain behind him. "They have to be here! There is no way they could have gotten out! No way!"
Peterson, Haggard, Shrout, Brandywine, and the other men just stared at him, unable to say anything that would please him.
"They have to be hiding in here," Kluger said through gritted teeth. "Somewhere in this mall, you've overlooked a hiding space big enough to contain three men." He glared at them, waiting for one of them to dare to disagree. When they remained mute, he said, "Change off. Take different corridors this time. Peterson, you search the north hall. Haggard, go over the ground Shrout covered on the west end; see if you can spot something he missed. Shrout, take the south corridor. Brandywine, you take the east stores and the warehouse."
Haggard started to say something to Peterson.
"Officer Haggard!" Kluger snapped. "I'd prefer that you did not tell Peterson where you've already searched. Let him start fresh, without preconceptions."
Haggard frowned, nodded grudgingly.
"Now move," Kluger said.
As they were leaving, Evelyn Ledderson arrived. Though it was past three o'clock in the morning, and though she had been through quite an ordeal in the course of the night, she appeared to have showered and applied makeup and started her day only a couple of hours ago. Her short green skirt and ruffled white blouse were wrinkled and smudged, but she was crisp and alert and extremely attractive. "They said you wanted to question me."
Kluger smiled. "That's right." He pointed to the folding chair that was set up on the other side of the card table. "Just sit down there and help me tie up a few loose ends. I'm sure we can let you go home shortly."
She sat down. "Why do I have to be questioned twice?"
Kluger settled into the other chair and folded his hands on the table. "Those other detectives are with homicide. I'm a burglary-and-theft man. So there are sort of two investigations going on at the same time." He felt slightly tongue-tied in her presence.
"Go ahead then," she said.
"You worked for Mr. Rudolph Keski?"
"Yes."
"He was the owner of this mall?"
"He owned most of it."
"What were you-his secretary?"
She smiled coldly. "Yes."
"Did you often work evenings?"
"Only on Wednesday nights," she said, recrossing her slim legs. "Every Wednesday Mr. Keski and his business associates ate an early dinner at Henry's Gaslight." She pointed to the restaurant that faced out on the lounge. "Then they came over to the office and discussed the week's finances until closing time. Mr. Keski and I always stayed another hour or so, attending to the details that had come up during the meeting."
"Was that one of his associates in there with him when he was killed?" Kluger asked.
"No. That was his bodyguard."
"I see." He thought about that for a while, staring unabashedly at her face, slender shoulders, and full breasts. Then he said, "Tell me what happened. How was Keski killed?"
She told him, quickly, succinctly.
"That was smart work, usi
ng that alarm pedal."
"It wasn't so smart," she said. "I was terrified."
He smiled at her, wondering how he could go about asking for a date. "Then they tied you up in the warehouse?"
"Yes." Unconsciously she rubbed her wrists where the wire had encircled them.
"I've already talked to the night watchmen," Kluger explained. "I won't waste a lot of time going over old ground."
"I am awfully tired," she said.
"I appreciate that, Miss Ledderson," he said, smiling and nodding to show her how sympathetic he was. "Or May I call you Evelyn?"
She leaned forward seductively, then winked at him and said, "Why don't you just keep on calling me Miss Ledderson?" Her dark eyes bored straight through him and saw much more than he wanted her to know.
He colored, looked at his hands, glanced at the spritzing fountain, and felt like a schoolboy caught doing something filthy. "I understand This must have been difficult for you. I was only trying to be friendly."
"I know what you were trying to be," she said.
At that moment, when he realized that she was not the sort of woman who could be easily fooled, Kluger lost all interest in her. Women who could hold their own, women who were sharp and perceptive and not afraid to speak their minds never had appealed to him. They offended his sense of tradition, of male-female lightness. He liked the soft and helpless type, the ones who needed support and guidance from sun up to sunset. He didn't want to have to compete with a woman in the bedroom. It never occurred to him, at least not on a conscious level, that he was afraid of losing that competition.
His voice had a nasty twist to it now. "You must have known that Rudolph Keski hasn't always been a legitimate businessman."
"Oh?" She seemed amused.
"He used to be in the rackets."
She smiled. "He was in jail, then?"
"Nothing was ever proved," Kluger admitted.
"Well, then, it's nothing more than hearsay." She sat back in her chair again. She was obviously pleased with Lieutenant Kluger's discomfort.
"Did you know about this 'hearsay' reputation of his?" the lieutenant persisted.
"If I did know," she said, "what possible difference could it make? It couldn't have anything to do with what happened here tonight." Her voice got hard. There was no longer any amusement in it. "You're angry because I saw through you, and you're just trying to irritate and frighten me. I won't sit here and be harassed much longer."
"You'll sit there until I tell you to leave," Kluger said, an ugly edge to his voice.
"I'm afraid not."
"You will-"
"Do you have any serious questions? Or are you completely stumped? If you have anything serious to ask, you'd better ask it right now," she said, pushing back her chair and getting to her feet.
Kluger looked down at his hands. They were curled into tight fists. He made an effort to relax. "The manhole cover was off the drain entrance in the warehouse. Do you think they escaped that way?"
"I wouldn't know."
"First they tied you up and left you on the north side of the warehouse. Then one of them used an electric cart to move you to the south side of the room. Why?"
"I guess they were going to be doing something on the north side of the room. Something they didn't want us to see."
"Could it be that they were going to leave by the drain and didn't want you to know?"
She shrugged. Her full dark hair bounced on her shoulders. "Why would it matter if we knew? We were all tied up. We couldn't do anything about it."
Kluger got to his feet because he didn't like to have her staring down at him. "I may want to talk to you again. What's your home phone number and address?"
"I gave it to the homicide detective," she said, tilting her head impishly to one side.
"I'll need it, too."
"You can ask them for it."
"I'm asking you for it."
"You can reach me here any weekday afternoon," she said, ignoring the implied command. "I'm an employee of the company and not just of Mr. Keski. Even if the new management hires another woman, I'll have to stay on a few weeks to help her get adjusted. I'm convinced you'll have this all wrapped up by then, Lieutenant." She turned and walked off across the lounge, entered the east corridor, and disappeared around the corner.
At 3:25, Kluger unfolded the blueprints on the card table and studied them more assiduously than he had before. He found no hidden rooms. No secret passageways. No air ducts. large enough to hold a man. Nothing.
At 3:40, a three-man search party that he had sent into the storm-drain system returned without having found anything worthwhile. So far as they were able to ascertain, the original blueprints were accurate in every detail. The entrances to the storm drain from the parking lot were all much too small to pass a man. There was only one way out: the one that Kluger's men, out in that patch of scrub land, had been covering from almost the start.
At 4:00, a representative of the largest local television station came in to bargain for filming permission. He was a short, blocky man who dressed too loud for Kluger's taste and talked too rapidly.
"I told you," the lieutenant said irritably, "that I'm not going to allow anyone in here."
"The media has a right-"
"As far as I'm concerned," Kluger said, "those bastards haven't left the mall."
The television man looked around, perplexed. "They're still here, you mean?"
"I know they are," Kluger said, like a religious man earnestly repeating the supreme tenet of his faith. "And I'm not letting you people interfere with a case when it's still a hot-pursuit item."
"Hot pursuit?" the man said. "Where?"
At 4:10 the lab technicians and the homicide detectives called it a night. They put up barriers in front of the bank and jewelry store, closed and sealed the room in which Keski and his bodyguard had been murdered. The chief detective on the case-a sallow, quiet little man named Bretters-came over to the card table by the fountain to see how things were with Kluger.
"You can't be leaving now," Kluger said. "They must be here just waiting for us to leave."
"They can't be here," Bretters said softly.
"But they can't have gotten out."
"It's a real mystery how they slipped past you," Bretters admitted. "But we'll figure it out in a day or two."
"They didn't slip past me!"
"Then where are they?"
"Here!"
"Haven't your men looked everywhere?" Bretters asked.
"Everywhere."
"We'll figure it out in a couple of days," Bretters said. Then he went out after the others.
At 4:20, Kluger learned that headquarters had begun to take his men away from him, dispatching them to other trouble spots all over the city. By 4:30, he was the only one left besides Hawbaker and Haggard. They went out to their patrol car to wait for him.
The newspaper reporters and the radio and television people had given up at last and gone away. The owner of the jewelry store, his very nervous insurance agent, and the manager of Countryside Savings and Loan had all gone back to their homes to lie sleepless for the remainder of the night. The four corridors and the nineteen stores were deserted, silent.
Lieutenant Kluger walked over to the pool and sat on the edge of the fake rocks. The fountain rose in front of him, two hundred jets of water that shot twenty feet into the air and rained back into the artificial pond. The surface of the pool was like a sheet of opaque white glass through which and in which one could see nothing at all except milky angles, whirlpools of foam, silvered bubbles. It was a restful thing to watch while he went over the night in his mind to see if he had overlooked something, anything.
The two night watchmen came up to the lounge to see if there was anything he needed or wanted.
"Take the chairs and table away," he said, reaching out to pluck the blueprints from the table top.
As the two men folded the furniture, the big man said, "How in the hell did they do it, Lieut
enant?"
"Do what?" Kluger asked, looking up from the pool.
"Get away."
"They didn't."
"What do you mean?"
"They're here."
The guard looked around at the mall. "I don't think so," he said, glancing pityingly at Kluger.
The other watchman, the quiet one, said, "We were told not to touch anything after we were untied. Does that still go? Or can we finish closing up for the night?"
The lieutenant hesitated, then sighed. "Go ahead."
"Will you be leaving soon?" the first guard asked.
"Soon," Kluger muttered dismally.
They picked up the folded chairs and the collapsed table and carried them out of the lounge, down the east corridor to the warehouse. The carpet soaked up their footsteps. In a moment all was quiet again.
How? Kluger wondered.
Through the north exit? No, that had been guarded.
Through the west? No.
Out of the south doors or the east? No.
Up onto the roof? Impossible and pointless.
Out the storm drains?
He got to his feet and folded up the blueprints. Still thinking about it, searching for the hole they'd used, he walked slowly across the public lounge.
Behind, the fountain suddenly died.
He whirled, then realized the guards had turned it off from the control panel in the warehouse.
Out one of the bay doors in the east wall?
Impossible.
He walked slowly along the east corridor and was passing under the breached steel-bar gate when two of the three strips of fluorescent lights in the ceiling behind him fluttered out.
"Good night, Lieutenant," Artie said as he came out of the warehouse behind Kluger. "Tough luck."
"Yeah," Kluger said.
"You'll get them sooner or later."
"Yeah."
In the parking lot he stood alone, the wind from the Pacific Ocean slicing past and over him. It carried the odor of salt and seaweed. In the last few hours the cloud cover had grown more dense, and the smell of rain now lay on the air, a portent.
Hawbaker and Haggard were not waiting for him as he had thought they would be. Apparently they had gotten dispatched to the scene of another crime.
