Ethan. Taylor.
Her last moments with them when she’d dropped them off at Rita’s before driving upstate: Taylor in her pink T-shirt with the kittens and the tiny mustard stain; Ethan, serious and angling for a new computer game.
She’d hugged them so hard.
“You’re hurting me, Mom.”
“I love you two so much.”
“Love you, too, Mom.”
Watching them shrink in her rearview mirror, leaving them behind.
Is this the last time? No! You can’t do this to them! Oh, Jesus, I need to be with them!
Lisa raised her head, turning so it scraped against the gun. Turning until she looked into the black shield, searching the monstrous darkness, piercing its semitransparency, she found the killer’s eyes, two black points of fury, boring into her through the blood splatter.
With every ounce of her strength, Lisa summoned Bobby, Ethan and Taylor, feeling their brilliant faces shining down on her. She seized them, wrapped herself around them. Lisa could feel them now, smelling their skin, their hair, their essence. Her entire life blazed before her like a falling star as she begged heaven not to take her from her children, prayed with such intensity she voiced the words.
“Please, don’t. I’ve got kids. I’m just a cashier. Please, I’m begging you.”
All of it had happened in a heartbeat as Lisa waited for the gunman to end her life.
But no shot came.
Another second passed. A shadow crossed over them.
“Did you hear me?” a second gunman shouted at the first. “Let’s go!”
The second man gripped a bulging canvas bag and jerked the killer’s arm. “Why did you shoot him?”
“Fucking cop went for his gun.”
“Okay, forget her! We’re done! We’re over three minutes! People outside could be making calls—let’s go now!”
The pressure of the gun on Lisa’s head was gone, along with the four suspects. In their wake, Lisa’s ears rang with the shrieking of the victims. They consoled each other. Some huddled over the corpses. Lisa didn’t know how much time had passed before the chaos blended with approaching sirens.
The first police officers rushed into the center through every door with handguns and pump-action shotguns drawn and trained in every direction, ordering everyone to kneel and keep their hands up, palms out.
“They’re gone! Help us, please! We need ambulances!” a perspiring, overweight man pleaded.
More police arrived, along with paramedics who tried to aid the men who’d been shot, but it was futile.
“Miss, please. Are you in any pain?”
Someone was talking to Lisa.
“Miss, you have to let us help, you have got to let go.”
I’m never letting go. I’m alive…
“Miss, please.”
Lisa couldn’t answer. She blinked several times before realizing she was holding the hand of the dead cop beside her.
“Take care of him,” Lisa said. “You have to take care of him. They just shot him.”
It’s my fault. I dropped the gun. It’s my fault.
She was trembling as a paramedic examined her, checking her vital signs, talking to her.
“You’re going to be all right. Help is here.”
The sirens wouldn’t stop. More police cars and ambulances arrived, emergency lights splashing from the lot over the scene.
Everything was hazy in the aftermath.
All four men were dead.
Sheets were draped over their bodies and the area was cleared, protected; officers moved the survivors to the far end of the center. As they began interviewing each of them, some nodded toward Lisa.
Her heart was racing.
Officer Anita Rowan of the Ramapo Police Department had taken Lisa aside. Rowan had short hair; tiny earrings pierced her lobes. Lisa noticed her polished nails as she wrote in her notebook.
“Now, Lisa, I want you to take a deep breath and tell me what happened.”
Lisa recounted everything that she saw. Rowan had a nice tan and a white-toothed smile and touched Lisa’s shoulder when she repeated parts of Lisa’s account for accuracy. Her utility belt gave little leathery squeaks when she left Lisa to talk to a group of grim-faced men in plainclothes. From where Lisa was, she could see them in the killing zone. They produced their own clipboards and notebooks, writing down what other uniformed officers reported.
A couple of the plainclothesmen eyed Lisa.
Then the investigators tugged on rubber gloves and slipped on shoe covers and visited the dead as if each were an exhibit on a macabre tour. They raised each sheet, examined each body, took notes and pictures, made sketches and checked identification.
The investigators consulted other investigators and two of them approached Lisa. The first was a few inches over six feet, about forty-five, with thinning hair. A dark mustache accentuated his poker face.
“Lisa Palmer?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Detective Percy Quinn, Ramapo P.D.” Quinn’s face creased with concern as he took stock of the blood flecks on Lisa’s temple, nose, cheeks and chin.
“You want someone to wipe that off her?” Rowan asked.
“That’s evidence,” Quinn said. “I want a picture first.”
Quinn summoned a crime scene tech who took several frames, then got a paramedic to use a medical wipe and swab. The tech preserved the material as evidence. Quinn and the others signed the information.
“Are you okay, Miss Palmer?” Quinn said afterward.
“I don’t know.”
“You witnessed the shootings?” Quinn asked.
“Yes.”
“Lisa, we’re going to need your help, but given what’s happened, this crime goes beyond our jurisdiction.”
She didn’t understand.
“I just want to go home.”
“We appreciate that,” Quinn said. “But we won’t be done for some time yet. We’re preserving the scene. What we’d like to do is move you into a separate office area here while we wait for the primary investigators.”
“I just want to go home to my children.”
“We understand, but we really need you to cooperate with us. It’s important that you help us. Will you do that for us, Lisa?”
She thought of the man on the floor beside her, how he’d died trying to help.
She nodded and they led her down a hall in the administrative part of the complex to an office. The sign on the wall said, Mac Foyt, Manager. The room was large with blue deep-pile carpet. Photos of cars, trucks and pretty scenes of seasons along the Hudson covered most of the walls. The desk had framed pictures of a boy in a baseball uniform, a man and woman smiling at Niagara Falls.
Mac and Mrs. Foyt?
Rowan’s utility belt squeaked as she set a sweating bottle of water on the desk before Lisa. Sirens continued wailing outside.
“Is there anything else I can get you, Lisa?”
“Can I call home?”
Rowan was sympathetic. “I’m afraid not,” she said. “The situation is too serious. I can contact anyone on your behalf.”
Lisa’s stomach lurched and her head throbbed.
“Lisa?”
As Lisa cupped her hands to her face, she felt the coolness of the medical wipe that removed his blood and brain matter. That’s when she realized some of it was still on the backs of her hands.
“I just stopped to go to the bathroom and buy a snack.”
Lisa released a long anguished sob.
Rowan held her to keep her from coming apart.
3
New York City
Frank Morrow picked up his line at his desk at the FBI’s New York headquarters at 26 Federal Plaza in Lower Manhattan.