He looked at the high slimy walls and decided not to. A sound of metal hitting gravel made him jerk his head back toward the part of the mall he had just run from. Someone had just knocked the hatch clean off. People were starting to climb onto the roof and sprint toward him. They were covered in red. Fuck.
Mitchell grabbed the top of the ladder and climbed onto it. He scurried down the rusty rungs. When his feet touched air, he climbed down like monkey bars. The ground was farther away than he had hoped. It couldn’t have been more than five feet, but his mind told him it was fifty.
Legs already bent to prevent breaking them, he let go and hit the ground. He let his body keep moving and came to a stop at a full squat. Nothing felt broken or sprained. He stood up and looked around a corner. There was nobody on foot. That was a good sign, he thought.
In the distance he heard the sirens getting closer. Behind him he heard the rumble of hundreds of feet running across gravel. The sound of screaming was growing louder.
Out in the parking lot, he saw a blue sedan looking for a parking spot close to the mall. Mitchell wanted to get as far away from there as possible. Preferably on foot. Maybe he could flag them down.
He ran into the parking lot waving his hands in the air. He headed toward the car. The driver, an elderly woman, put on the brakes.
Mitchell ran to the driver’s side window. She rolled it down. Mitchell started to speak. The woman let out a scream. At first he thought it was at him, but she was looking past him. Hundreds of people were on the roof looking down at him. Some of them were falling as others tried to push themselves to the front. Oh god, thought Mitchell. The sound of bodies hitting pavement echoed from the loading dock.
The woman let out another scream. Mitchell felt something claw at his arm. The little old red-headed woman was trying to climb out her window to get at him, but her seat belt was holding her in. The car moved forward slowly as she took her foot off the brake pedal.
He needed her car. Mitchell reached down and opened her door. She tried to bite him but ended up hitting her chin on the metal door as he yanked it open. She was stunned for a moment.
Keeping pace with the rolling car, he reached over and undid her seat belt. She tried to bite him again but her head hit the horn instead. Her small hands tried to claw at his arm.
As gently as he could, he pulled the tiny woman from the car. He tried not to look behind him as he heard the horrible sound of bodies hitting the pavement. When he had the woman clear of the car, he ran back to the rolling vehicle before it crashed into a parked pickup truck.
He forced himself into the small space between the seat and the wheel. He shut the door and hit the lock as his foot hit the brake. The small woman ran to the window and pounded her fists against the glass. One of her rings clicked like a dagger on ice every time it hit. Mitchell found the button to move the seat back so his chest and knees could clear the steering wheel.
He stepped on the accelerator before the woman could break the window. The car was still pointed toward the mall. As he turned around a row of cars, he saw another body fall off the roof. He headed out of the parking lot and avoided every impulse to look in the rearview mirror.
In front of him he saw a fire truck race around the perimeter of the mall toward the first department store. Several police cars were behind it. Every impulse wanted to step on the accelerator and speed away as fast as possible. The sirens and flashing lights told him otherwise. He needed not to look like he was fleeing the scene of the crime. He fastened his seat belt and tried to focus on what he needed to do next, not on the fact that along with everything else that had happened that day, he’d just committed a carjacking.
12
When Detective Rios arrived on the scene, there were already two squad cars, three ambulances and a cluster of parking enforcement vehicles outside the yellow tape perimeter. He parked next to Detective Simmons’s SUV and got out.
On the other side of the street, just inside the perimeter, were four parking enforcement officers gathered in a huddle. They’d heard the call on their radio and came to check on their fellow officer. One of them was talking in an excited manner and jerked his thumb over at a parked car near another parking cart.
The front window was completely smashed in. Several bloody handprints were on the hood and dashboard. Pieces of broken glass reflected light like tiny green diamonds sprayed with blood. The passenger side window looked kicked-in as well.
Usually when he saw a smashed-in window and that much blood, it was on a crumpled car in the middle of the highway. It looked out of place parked in a quiet neighborhood between two other cars. Other than a dent in the driver’s side door, the body looked intact.
Rios looked over at the nearest ambulance and spotted his partner. She was talking to a young woman in a stretcher. Paramedics were cleaning up injuries and taping up her hands in preparation for the trip to the hospital. Underneath the bruises and gashes on her face, she looked like she was probably an attractive girl. Who could do a thing like that to a young girl? The answer, he unfortunately knew, was lots of people.
He walked over to his partner. Simmons was still dressed in the pants suit she’d worn to court earlier that day. Dark hair, athletic and in her early forties, she was in better shape than most of the men in the department, himself included. Rios still worked out but was beginning to get the cop gut that came from spending more time taking kids to soccer practice than keeping in shape.
Rios waited behind Simmons as she talked to the girl. He knew not to interrupt that part of the investigation. She was good at getting people to relax and talk.
“So what happened?” Simmons asked in her most matter-of-fact tone. She preferred to let people talk in their own terms before drilling down for the particulars. Some cops started off with a check box kind of interrogation, which was aimed more at filling out an incident report than figuring out what was going on.
Rachel looked up from her arm where a paramedic was cleaning blood out of wounds on her knuckles. She was still in shock and not reacting to the stinging sensation. “My boyfriend … I mean my ex … he showed up and I … I answered the door…” Rachel paused and stared into space for a moment.
“What happened after you opened the door, Rachel?” asked Simmons.
“He … I don’t know … it just happened, you know. I don’t even think I said hello. And then it was just … I was on the ground trying to kick … I think to keep him off me.” She looked at Simmons as if she could explain what took place.
“So you’re on the ground.” Simmons looked at the metal clipboard in her hands. “So you’re on the top of the stairs by your apartment. Then what?”
“We were running.”
Simmons looked at the notes. “Mitch? Mitch was chasing you?”
“Um, I think so.”
“So where was your current boyfriend at the time?”
“Rick? Where is Rick?” Rachel tried to sit up but the paramedic gently held her down.
“He’s being treated right now. He’s going to be fine.” Simmons noticed Rios behind her and handed him the clipboard behind her back. “Can you remember where Rick was when you opened the door?”
“Treated? He was taking a shower. Why is Rick being treated? Did Mitch hurt him, too?”
Simmons pursed her lips. Rios had noticed it was her tell for when she was trying to make sense of something. “He’s going to be fine. When was the last time you remember seeing Rick?”
“When he was in the bathroom. I think that was it.”
“Did Rick approach Mitch? Did the two argue?”