‘Yeah, maybe I will.’ Cindy changed the subject and added: ‘I’m sure Archie’s just covering his ass about the jury pool.’
‘That’s sweet, but no.’ Janine looked behind her to make sure they were alone. ‘Your husband can put a gun in my hand now. That idiot, Jay, hiding his gun from me. It doesn’t matter that the police can’t find it. Jay had a gun, so the jury will assume I killed him with it.’
Cindy stared at her friend. ‘Don’t talk like that.’
‘It’s reality. The fact is, they don’t need much more than that to convict me. Archie already sat me down and told me the facts of life. Jay and I were alone in the house. We hated each other. My story of what happened is unlikely at best. That’s enough to get most jurors to a guilty verdict right there.’
‘If something else happened, Jonny will find out what,’ Cindy insisted.
Janine smiled. ‘If.’
Cindy flushed. ‘You know what I mean.’
‘I do.’ Janine opened her purse and closed it. She nodded at the toilet. ‘Well, I need to use the facilities, and you need to sit down and take a break.’
‘Okay.’
It was awkward between them.
Cindy left and heard Janine close and lock the bathroom door behind her. She threaded through the mall crowds to the food court, where she got in line and bought herself a grape Mister Misty at Dairy Queen. She found a table and hummed along with an Alan Jackson song playing as background noise. The skylight over her head let in gray afternoon light. She felt better. As she sipped her frozen drink, trying to avoid brain freeze, she people-watched. Old men and women drinking coffee. Children playing tag. Teens in packs, boys eyeing girls, girls eyeing boys. She saw the man who’d been watching Janine at the clinic, and his wife had joined him now. She talked at him, and it looked as if her words sailed through her husband’s head without stopping.
Cindy’s drink was nearly gone, and she was feeling the sugar buzz, when she spotted someone else. She wasn’t sure why her eyes were drawn to him, but once she saw him, she couldn’t look away.
He was a young man, maybe in his early twenties. Not tall. Not buff. A skinny kid. He wore a camouflage jacket and blue jeans, and his hands were shoved in his jacket pockets. He had a navy blue wool cap pulled low down his forehead, and he sported wraparound reflective sunglasses. He stood fifteen feet away, leaning against a column near Burger King. He studied everything in the mall without seeming to study anything at all. His head barely moved, but over the course of ten minutes, he shifted positions periodically so that he surveyed the entire food court. Every restaurant. Every table. Every entrance and exit.
She didn’t know him, but he looked familiar. She’d seen him before.
Where?
She wracked her brain but couldn’t place him, but then he withdrew a tatted hand from his jacket pocket and removed his sunglasses in order to rub his eyes with his sleeve. When he was done, she found herself staring dead-on into those eyes, and she realized who he was. She’d seen his face in photographs on her kitchen table. Photographs that were part of the evidence that Jonny had gathered while investigating the murder of Jay Ferris.
A young man in camouflage in the woods, carrying an assault weapon. A young man with gray, lifeless eyes that reminded her of a shark seeing only the black water.
It was him. This was the man that Jonny was looking for.
She realized she was still staring at him. So did he. The young man put his sunglasses on and stalked away, melting into the crowd of the mall. Acting on instinct, she leaped to her feet and followed him. She spotted his camouflaged back, marching like a soldier. Pushing past people, who parted to let him through. Bumping into others without apologizing. He kept his chin tilted down. Cameras wouldn’t catch him. He was small, but he walked quickly, and she had to hurry to keep him in sight.
He looked back. He saw her.
She pretended to be window-shopping, but she didn’t think he was fooled. He turned sharply right and yanked open a door labeled For Employees Only. The door shut, and he disappeared.
Cindy hurried to the same door and stopped with her fingers clenched around the metal handle. People came and went around her, oblivious to her anxiety. She looked for a mall security guard but saw no one to help her. In seconds, the man would be gone. She hesitated — what was she doing? — but then she opened the door herself, finding an empty, unfinished corridor ahead of her. She stepped inside and let the door close, shutting out most of the noise of the mall.
She was alone. She heard the buzz of machines. The walls on either side of the narrow space were plasterboard, and the floor was dirty. A single row of fluorescent bulbs stretched along the ceiling toward a doorway lit by a red Exit sign.
She listened for his footsteps but heard nothing. She jogged to the end of the hallway, stopped, and peered carefully around the corner. He was already gone. She felt a chill, as if outside air were blowing in from somewhere. She followed the new corridor, which was built of brick and led her to a small utility room. The mechanical throb was louder. Gas and water pipes made a maze on the wall. She saw a tall steel door that ran up and down on tracks; it was closed. Another exit door had a crash bar. It led outside.
Cindy shivered, then pushed through the door into the cold air. She was outside the mall now, near the parking lot. Wind and rain slapped her face. She didn’t see him. Her shoulders sagged, but then she heard a voice behind her.
‘What do you think you’re doing?’
She stifled a scream and spun around. He was there, behind a dumpster. Waiting for her. She saw no eyes, just sunglasses. Cap pulled way down. There was nothing to see, nothing to recognize, only the hard, bitter line of his mouth. Despite his small size, his body carried menace. She felt fear down to her toes.
‘Why are you following me?’ he demanded.
‘I’m not.’
‘Bullshit,’ he hissed.
‘You looked like someone I knew, but I guess not.’ She went to push past him and head back inside, but he grabbed her arm. She struggled and shouted. ‘Let me go!’
‘Who are you?’ he asked.
‘I’m the wife of a cop, that’s who I am, so you better let go of me right now!’
He dropped her arm. She rubbed it and knew there would be a bruise where his fingers had clamped over her skin. For a small man, he was strong.
‘People shouldn’t go sticking their noses into other people’s business,’ he warned her. He drew back the flap of his camouflage jacket, and she saw the butt of a gun poking out of a shoulder holster. ‘Bad things happen to those kinds of people. You hear what I’m saying?’
Her mouth was dry. She didn’t say a word.
He marched past her into the parking lot at a quick, nervous pace. Her eyes followed him, but she didn’t see him get into a vehicle. When she couldn’t see him anymore, she ran back into the utility room and then to the warmth, crowds, and sweet smells of the mall.
People stared at her, and she realized that tears were streaming down her face.
14
Stride walked onto the ice of a small lake off Tree Farm Road in Midway Township. Evergreens and birches made a wreath around the shore. The rain left puddles on the frozen surface, making it slippery under his boots. Spring was coming. The locals had already pulled most of their fishing shanties off the water, but a few diehards always waited until the ice was practically slush before giving up on winter. Sometimes they waited too long.
He saw an old pick-up a hundred yards away, parked beside a tin shanty that wasn’t much bigger than an outhouse. Even at that distance, he recognized Nathan Skinner carrying provisions from the icehouse to his truck. Nathan saw him, too, and he offered Stride a mock salute.