Elsie didn’t need much convincing. She did want to be near her son, who designed pinball machines in Waukegan, and her daughter-in-law, who taught school in nearby Gurnee, and her two granddaughters, who, at eight and eleven, were just the right ages to appreciate having a loving and doting grandmother close by. Hers was the familiar story of a woman set adrift by sudden widowhood and finding comfort in those loving family members who also remained behind — comfort that was sometimes coupled with sheer, stultifying boredom.
That night on Eyewitness News, the weatherman would report that four inches had fallen on Waukegan, Illinois, that day — a record. Four inches of rain, which collected into myriad puddles and opportunistic ponds in the middle of traffic intersections — shallow lakes, really, so large that Elsie was given to wonder, as her car skidded and splashed and pontooned through them, if nearby Lake Michigan was expanding its shoreline one block of Waukegan at a time.
As Elsie pulled into the large parking lot that encircled the mall (except for one soggy empty field on the south side where, it was hoped, a Sears or Montgomery Ward would eventually go), she was disappointed to discover that thousands of others had also ventured out on this waterlogged Tuesday. In 1972, enclosed shopping malls were still things of relative novelty and innovation. To think that one could now go to a place protected from all the elements and shop for as long as one’s heart desired (or at least for as long as one’s legs held out) — whatever would these enterprising retailers think of next?
Elsie shook the rain from her umbrella and sought out an unoccupied bench where she could shrug off her raincoat and remove her galoshes to her big plastic carrying bag. Once properly prepared for her afternoon of shopping, she began her exploration of this bright, shiny, modern mall, dry and comfortable and in the perfect frame of mind.
Elsie wandered without purpose. She window-shopped and aisle-browsed. Betty’s of Winnetka was having a sale on beachwear, and Chas A. Stevens bragged in big, bold letters about its large inventory of summer sandals, and there were brand new futuristic microwave ovens in the appliance section of Wiebolts for only six hundred dollars. Elsie had a scoop of chocolate mint ice cream at Bresler’s, chocolate mint being one of the chain’s thirty-three advertised flavors. She tried on a pair of white crinkle-vinyl knee-high boots at Thom McAn and couldn’t keep herself from giggling when the salesman sang a couple of lines from “These Boots Are Made for Walking.” She even found the courage to steal into the clanging, pinging semi-dark interior of Aladdin’s Castle to see one of the pinball machines her son had designed. She identified “Haunted Cemetery” immediately.
Elsie eventually found herself in Carson Pirie Scott & Company, one of the mall’s three anchor department stores. She had once visited Carson’s flagship store on State Street in Chicago, and wondered if the suburban version would feel as elegant. She was struck by the large contemporary light display above the escalators — great concentric circles of exposed bulbs throwing off muted luminosity in all directions.
As Elsie moved through the store, her interest in the merchandise that surrounded her receded and she began to study the people instead: mothers with preschool children, girlfriends perhaps enjoying a companionable weekly shopping excursion, teenagers lolling away their summer vacation. There were only a few men in the department store, and they were mostly fastidious, nattily suited salesmen. One of the exceptions was a man who looked to be in his early forties. His trench coat was partially unbuttoned and still wet from the rain. The man was slightly overweight. His face was flushed and a little bloated, his hairline retreating. Elsie wondered if he was there on his lunch hour. Perhaps he was picking up an anniversary gift for his wife, since both Elsie and the man were situated in one of the store’s women’s departments. He did seem, after all, to be looking for something…or someone.
Nearby was a little girl. Perhaps she was four. Elsie looked about for the mother. Where was she? Behind that clothing rack? On the other side of that display? Elsie would never have allowed her son out of her sight in a public place at that age.
The man was near the girl. He was looking at her now. Now he was moving toward her. In a brief moment he was crouching down to say something to her. Was it her father? Or her grandfather? If so, why had he left her, even for a minute or two? How could people be so irresponsible?
The man was saying something and the little girl was nodding. The man pulled a bag from his coat. He offered the bag to the little girl.
What was in the bag? Elsie couldn’t tell.
She felt intrusive, staring at the man and little girl like this. Yet something didn’t seem right: the way he was looking around, as if attempting to detect if he was being watched. Had he stolen what was in the little bag? Was he a shoplifter? Elsie turned away. She didn’t want the man to see her looking at him. When she turned back around, the man and the little girl were gone.
She thought about what she had seen. She walked over to where the man had crouched down in front of the little girl. Just when she thought she had lost them, Elsie caught sight of the man’s head bobbing above a rack of sundresses. Elsie picked up her pace. As the man moved out into one of the wider aisles, she noticed the little girl walking next to him. He was holding her hand. The little girl was smiling, all of her attention on pulling something from the bag and putting it into her mouth. She was preoccupied with the act of eating the candy, or whatever it was, and did not seem to be concerned much with who was walking next to her and holding her hand.
Elsie thought she would approach the man to set her mind at ease. Yet what would she say? If he were her father or grandfather, he would not take kindly to her suspicions that he was someone else — someone who had no business taking the little girl by the hand and leading her away.
Elsie didn’t know what to do, except to follow — to keep her distance, but to trail the man and the little girl. This she did for a minute or so, until the man and girl left the store and moved out onto the mall concourse.
Now Elsie thought that perhaps the best thing to do to assuage her fears was to go back to the spot in the store where the little girl had been and see if there was someone in the vicinity who was looking for a lost girl.
Yet this was supposing the worst. It was supposing something Elsie could scarcely bring herself to think. And there was a problem with this course of action: if the child was — she would make herself think it because the gravity of the situation required her courage — if the child was, in fact, being abducted by the man in the wet trench coat, though it was all well and good that the mother should be informed, what a terrible risk she would be taking in allowing the man and the girl out of her sight. Would she be able to catch up with them? What if they disappeared into the crowd of rainy-day shoppers and couldn’t be found again?
Elsie decided that she must continue to follow. She would follow. She would watch to see where the man went. She would seek out someone who could help her. She wished she wasn’t new to this town. At the shopping center she frequented in Muncie she was always bumping into people she knew. Perhaps she would get lucky and chance upon a security guard. There had to be security guards in a mall like this.