‘Anyway, I’m glad this is over,’ Carol said. ‘No more Dr. Perfect. We can go back to living our lives. Just you, me, and Annie. It’s about time, right? I’m ready for things to be exactly the way they were.’
Howard didn’t answer, because that was his worst fear. He didn’t want to go back to his old life. He didn’t want to be normal again. He hated the idea of things being exactly the way they were.
‘Wow,’ Carol said.
‘What?’
She lowered the window. ‘Don’t you hear it? Listen to all those sirens. Something big’s going on.’
*
From her hiding place inside a leather goods store, Cindy could see bodies in the corridor of the mall, dead where they’d fallen. The tiled floor and columns bore wild streaks of blood. Smears. Handprints. She smelled the discharge that comes with death, mixing like spoiled roses with the sugary aroma of the food court and the leather jackets dangling in front of her. Just as incongruously, the overhead music continued to play happy pop songs. Britney Spears. ‘Oops! . . . I Did It Again’. The crowd noise that typically drowned out the music had emptied into a muffled chorus of people crying and praying.
Shopping bags spilled their contents onto the floor where they’d been dropped. Swimsuits. Strappy heels. Bottles of lotion. Stuffed animals. She saw cell phones, too, abandoned in the melee. One by one, they began to ring, forlornly, before going to voice mail. Word had spread instantaneously around the city.
Those who could reach exterior exits had escaped, but there were dozens more, like her, trapped in stores. At least ten people huddled near her, hiding behind clothes racks, their arms wrapped tightly around their knees, their faces buried in the crook of their legs. It was as if, by not looking up, they could make themselves invisible. As if the shark eyes of the gunman would pass over them. Or maybe they just couldn’t bear to see the end when it came.
She didn’t think five minutes had passed, but their imprisonment felt like hours.
He hunted them methodically from store to store. She couldn’t see him, but he wasn’t far. He fired and moved, fired and moved, fired and moved, like a soldier occupying a beachhead. Seconds of silence stretched out between assaults, giving her faint hope, but then a new hailstorm rained down not fifty feet away – gunfire, store windows shattering, victims screaming, individual bullets that could only be kill shots directed at those who had nowhere to run. And then his boots making new footfalls. Tap knock tap knock.
He worked his way toward them. They didn’t have much time. Each assault was a little closer, a little louder.
Cindy saw a fifty-something woman pressed against the wall of the leather store, like a prisoner lined up for a firing squad. The woman’s sanity had flecked away, scattering into confetti. Her jaw was slack. Cindy tried to catch the woman’s eye and give her a smile of encouragement, but there was nothing but faraway panic in the woman’s face. She was a rabbit facing the open jaws of a fox.
And then she began to talk to herself. The noise was jarring.
‘Nicky, come in from the rain,’ the woman murmured. ‘Are you cold, Nicky? Come in from the rain.’
What she said made no sense. Her words came out as a whisper, but then she spoke more, and each time, her volume got louder. ‘Hide in the barn, Nicky . . . don’t be afraid of the spiders . . . hide in the barn.’
Her voice sounded like a child, far younger than she was.
‘I smell apples. Isn’t that funny? Apples!’
Cindy gestured urgently with her hands to make the woman stop. Others in the store hissed for silence. The woman didn’t hear them; she simply stood at the wall, shaking uncontrollably, retreating into some long-ago memory.
‘Climb up here with me, Nicky. Be careful! Don’t fall!’
Another voice murmured from a hiding place: ‘Oh my God, oh my God.’
And then another whisper, in rage and fear: ‘Shut up, you stupid bitch, shut up, shut up, shut up, shut up.’
But the woman was nearly shouting now. Turning them into targets.
‘Crows. I hear crows, Nicky. LISTEN TO ALL THE CROWS.’
Cindy felt around her pockets, but she knew she’d dropped her phone. Even so, she had to do something; she couldn’t wait. She spotted a lost phone just outside the doorway of the store, maybe three feet into the mall corridor. She leaned beyond the rack of coats where she was hiding, far enough to see through the store window. The gunman, wherever he was, wasn’t in view. She broke cover, crawling for the doorway, and stopped in its shelter.
‘NICKY, COME IN FROM THE RAIN.’
The phone was just out of Cindy’s reach. She listened for the warning alarm of the killer’s boots but heard nothing to give away his location. Maybe he’d fled. Maybe he’d gone down another corridor of the mall, hunting for new victims.
Or maybe he was waiting for her outside the store.
Cindy took a breath and dove. She scooped up the phone and rolled back into the protection of the doorway. It took no more than two seconds. Her body tensed, waiting for gunfire, waiting for the window to shatter into popcorn above her. Nothing happened, but the silence almost felt more ominous than the noise of bullets. Her chest hammered as if she’d just done her morning run.
She punched the numbers for Jonny’s cell phone. It rang, but he didn’t answer, and she realized he wouldn’t recognize the caller ID on the phone. When the call went to voice mail, she left a hushed one-sentence message – ‘It’s me, answer the next call’ – and then she tried again, hoping he’d pick up.
Finally, on the fourth try, he did. His words tumbled in a rush.
‘This is Jonathan Stride, who is this?’
‘It’s me,’ Cindy whispered, keeping the phone close to her mouth and her eyes on the store window. The mall filled her senses. She could hear water gurgling somewhere – a fountain. Britney was done singing; now it was Bono and U2. ‘With Or Without You’. She felt cold tile under her knees, and her arms were sticky with someone else’s blood she’d dragged into the store. She smelled leather and death.
‘Cindy! Where are you? What’s going on?’
‘I’m hiding at Wilson’s. You need to get in here right now. He’s killing everybody he comes across.’
‘Can you see him? Do you know where he is?’
‘No, but he’s close. He was firing inside one of the stores near us just a couple minutes ago. People are dying, Jonny.’
‘HIDE IN THE BARN, NICKY.’
‘What the hell is that?’ he asked.
‘There’s a woman freaking out in here. You need to hurry.’
‘Get in the back of the store and hide. We’re moving on all of the entrances right now. We’ll be there in less than sixty seconds.’
‘NICKY, LISTEN TO THE CROWS.’
Cindy waited desperately for the clatter of doors and guns as the police stormed the mall, but instead, like the rattle of bones in a cemetery, she heard the solitary march of boots again. His boots, clapping the floor in a sing-song rhythm. Tap knock tap knock. He was heading for the leather store.
He was almost here.
‘We don’t have sixty seconds, Jonny,’ she said calmly.
‘Hide! We’re coming!’
She shut off the phone. There was no panic now for her and no terror. If he loomed over her, if he fired, she would be dead in seconds; she knew that. It didn’t matter. Calmness ruled. Calmness became her. Sixty seconds became fifty. She glanced at the store, draped in jackets and purses, and saw the frozen shapes of the others sheltered there. At the back, behind the sales counter, she could buy time for herself. A few seconds, but that was all she needed.
Jonny was coming.
Fifty seconds became forty.
She willed herself to move and save herself, but then everything changed for her. On the opposite side of the mall, she saw the doorway of a Victoria’s Se
cret store. Models of crazy perfection wore almost nothing in the window posters, but the spatter on the glass made them look as if they were covered in blood. In the doorway of the store, standing up, terrified, was a teenage girl.
It was the girl who had innocently sat in the food court, making out with her boyfriend. The sweet half-Asian girl reading about Harry Potter. The girl with her sister’s name. The girl with an entire amazing life ahead of her.
Laura.
That girl – Laura – stood paralyzed no more than twenty feet away. She stared at Cindy, and Cindy stared back at her. Laura wore a skirt that left her long legs bare, and her knees practically knocked against each other. She wore heels that weren’t meant for running, but she was going to run. Her pretty oval eyes darted back and forth, looking for escape. She was a deer by the highway with a truck coming, startled, ready to bolt.
The exit door wasn’t far away. Laura thought she could make it, but Cindy knew she couldn’t.
Tap knock tap knock.
Cindy spread her fingers wide on both hands and pushed the air, as if she could shove Laura back into the store, as if she could make the girl turn around and hide. She shook her head frantically, needing her to understand. She mouthed the word over and over: No! No! No! No!
Forty seconds became thirty-five. Time slowed down until she could almost see the world drift to a stop.
Don’t run! Don’t run!
Laura ran.
The teenager took six steps in her gangly heels before the bullet took her down. She wailed, her head flung back. Red bloomed on perfect peach skin, and her leg caved under her. She toppled, her shoulder struck the floor, and she squirmed on her back, clutching her thigh.
Tap knock tap knock.
There he was. He marched into view, a soldier all in camouflage, a warrior armed with an assault rifle and ammunition slung over his chest. He had a handgun outstretched at the end of his right arm. He came for Laura, the wounded animal, to deliver the killing shot. Laura wriggled away and cried and begged. He was ten feet from her.
Thirty seconds.
Every other thought in Cindy’s brain went away. Every thought of herself and Jonny vanished. Cindy knew only one thing: Teenagers weren’t supposed to die. Her sister wasn’t supposed to die.
The girl on the floor of the mall was not going to die.
Cindy charged. She took off like a sprinter and crossed the space between her and the gunman in one breath. He heard her coming, he felt her coming, and as he turned, bringing the gun with him, she launched herself into the air. She was small, but so was he, and they collided heavily, both crumpling to the tile. She was on top of him, but he hit her hard with the side of the gun, and the impact made her limp.
Twenty seconds.
Somewhere in her mind were the shouting and the thunder of the police. Somewhere close by was Jonny. But not close enough.
He pushed her off him as if she were nothing but a toy. He rolled onto her chest, crushing her, holding her down. She smelled the sourness of his breath and saw his tattoos glowing with sweat. She grabbed his forearm, but he was stronger, and so she bucked her head forward and sank her teeth into his wrist, tearing away skin. He howled. The gun fell. In rage, in pain, he clapped her forehead with the heel of his hand, and her skull shot back against the stone floor.
Circles of burning light burst like ripples in her head, and each ripple dizzied her. There was no more time, no more countdown of seconds, just a merry-go-round that wouldn’t stop. She was vaguely aware of him above her, aware of a velcro pocket ripped open, of another gun in his hand. His knees were on either side of her chest. She struck him, but her hand was like a mosquito, easily brushed away.
Footsteps pounded. Chaos. Noise. Voices.
The gun was in her face.
Bullets rang from the police, but no bullets touched him, as if he were shielded. She saw his lips bend into something like a smile. The end was near, but so much could happen at the finish. The barrel touched her cheek, like a kiss. His finger caressed the trigger. More bullets came, more guttural shouts, but the tumult was meaningless. There were only two people in the mall. Him and her.
He leaned down and whispered.
‘I am God,’ he told her.
Then in a single smooth motion, he shoved the barrel of the gun into his own mouth and blew off the back of his head.
34
Janine had never given much thought to walls. As a rule, she didn’t like them. She preferred to stare through windows. Her office had large windows, and so did her house, and there was something about the openness of the view that made her feel free. Which she wasn’t. Not anymore. She realized as she looked around the drab holding cell that walls were about to become a big part of her life, and she would need to make peace with them.
Clothes, too. The uniform of prisoners at the women’s correctional facility in Shakopee consisted of jeans, a denim shirt, and sneakers. She had no need of fashion anymore. She’d already decided to donate her wardrobe to charity for sale at an auction. The executive from the American Heart Association told her they’d make a lot of money that way. He looked sheepish about admitting that people would bid astronomical sums to own the clothes of a surgeon-turned-murderer. Janine wondered who those strange people were, and whether they would actually wear her clothes in public.
Archie waited for her to regain her focus. She found herself mostly unable to think since the verdict. Even knowing the likely outcome, she really hadn’t taken time to consider what it meant for her. And now, with all these changes in front of her, she found she could barely concentrate. She was being carried along by a river, and it would take her wherever it wanted.
‘The appeal process will continue,’ Archie said. He looked calm, but there was no jovial smile and no jokes today. He wore his pressed, tailored suit, which reminded her that he was part of a club – the outside world – of which she was no longer a member. She didn’t hold it against him.
‘On what grounds?’ she asked.
‘There are always grounds. We’ll analyze the transcript. Technicalities may seem like small things, but they can loom large on appeal.’
She allowed herself a smile. ‘And really, Archie, how often does this bear fruit?’
He rubbed his salt-and-pepper goatee. He didn’t bury the truth for her under false hope. ‘Not often.’
‘No. I didn’t think so.’
‘This Ross Klayman incident may change things, however,’ Archie said.
Janine thought about the mall, where she’d often walked and shopped. She thought about Cindy wrestling a gunman and saving a teenager’s life. A hero. From time to time, Cindy had talked about being jealous of Janine and about how physical therapists helped people but they didn’t really save people. Which was all wrong, in Janine’s view. She wondered if Cindy felt differently about herself today.
‘What a terrible thing,’ Janine said. ‘What makes a man do something like that?’
‘I don’t think there are any answers to that question. Even so, the fact that Jay saw this man with a gun – and that Klayman did this—’
‘Ross Klayman didn’t kill Jay. Let’s not kid ourselves.’
Archie studied her with his sharp blue eyes. ‘You don’t know that for sure, Janine. Do you?’
She got the message. It’s not about reality. It’s about the law. ‘I just don’t want to exploit this tragedy.’
‘It’s not exploitation. It’s a reasonable question given the facts and given Klayman’s behavior.’
‘I hear you, Archie,’ she said. ‘Now can we get back to the real world?’
The lawyer nodded. ‘Judge Edblad will probably announce a sentence at the hearing next month. The guidelines call for a sentence between twenty-two and thirty years, and given your history and the lack of aggravating factors, I think we can expect a sentence on the lower end. I’ll argue
for a downward departure from the guidelines but, candidly, I don’t expect it.’ Archie hesitated. ‘Here’s something for you to consider, Janine. A confession and statement of remorse might get sympathy from the court.’
She smiled sweetly. ‘Even if I didn’t shoot him, Archie?’
They stared at each other for a long time before her lawyer shook his head. It was one of the only times she’d been able to see inside his mind. He thought she was guilty. ‘No,’ Archie replied. ‘I can’t advise you to say something that isn’t true.’
‘Well then. What does all of that mean in terms of time in prison?’
‘You can typically expect to serve at least two-thirds of your sentence before being considered for supervised release. So if the sentence is twenty-five years, that would be almost seventeen years of time in Shakopee.’
Some of her coolness faltered. She hadn’t dwelt on the reality, but seventeen years was a lot of reality. The prime of life gone. She would no longer be young or beautiful at the end. She would be a felon in her mid-fifties with little money left and no profession. It was almost harder to imagine stepping back onto the street than spending the years behind the prison walls.
‘Seventeen years,’ she murmured.
Archie was silent. No doubt he’d seen this drama play out many times before.
‘What will it be like?’ she asked.
‘Prison life is mostly about routine and rules,’ he replied.
‘How exciting.’
‘You can have visitors.’
‘There’s no one to visit me,’ she said.
He had no answer for that one. She had no parents. No siblings. No friends who would travel to see her. And no husband, obviously.
‘Do I have to worry about my physical safety?’ she went on.
‘In general, no, but there are always risks. Most of the inmates are non-violent offenders, but Shakopee is the only women’s prison in the state. Women who commit violent crimes go there, too.’
‘Like me,’ Janine pointed out.
Archie heard the sarcasm in her voice. He leaned across the table and took her hands. He played the grandfather now. ‘Listen, Janine, I won’t pretend that this is anything but what it is. Hard. Long. Painful. That said, it is not the end of your life. As impossible at it may seem right now, you’ll have to find a way to embrace it.’
Goodbye to the Dead (Jonathan Stride Book 7) Page 21
