On _20/20_ that night, there was a report on Newman King and his growing Store empire. There were token references to the rash of shootings that had been plaguing The Store for the past year, but the report was basically a fluff piece and King was portrayed not as a whacked-out loon but as a down-to-earth self made millionaire.
Or billionaire.
The exact numbers could not be substantiated.
King had not agreed to a sit-down interview, but he did allow _20/20's_
cameras to follow him around on a "typical workday," and the reporter went with the CEO to a series of meetings in the black tower, a surprise inspection of a Store in Bottlebrush, Texas, a tour of a factory that was making generic Store products, and a negotiating session with a textile manufacturer.
Finally, at the end of the day, King went home, but the camera was not allowed to follow him to his house, and the last shot of the report was of King getting into a chauffeur-driven limousine in front of the black tower.
He waved good-bye as he smiled folksily at the camera. "God bless America," he said.
TWENTY-ONE
1
Doreen Hastings closed her eyes as she held Merilee to her breast. The baby suckled happily, and Doreen thought how different this felt than when Clete did it. Of course, that was a sex thing and this wasn't, but the physical act was basically the same. Now, however, there was milk flowing through her nipple, feeding her child, and somehow that bond made the entire act more intimate, more satisfying, more fulfilling. Sex seemed juvenile compared to this, like child's play, and she understood that her relationship with Clete, as great as it was, could never be as important to her or as emotionally gratifying as her relationship with this baby.
She would never be as close to Clete as she was to Merilee.
She opened her eyes. It was late, after midnight, and the hospital room was dark. Even the corridor outside was dark, the fluorescent lights dimmed so as not to disturb sleeping patients. She heard no sound, but neither was there silence. Instead, there was white noise, the hum of the hospital's twenty-four hour activity: machines, nurses, patients, doctors.
She closed her eyes again, smiling as Merilee's little fingers pressed instinctively against the fatty flesh of her breast.
"Mrs. Hastings," a deep-voiced man said. "Room 120."
Doreen opened her eyes and looked toward the doorway.
Her heart lurched in her chest.
Outside, in the corridor, were five men dressed entirely in black, pale men who stared at her with blank, expressionless faces.
They were accompanied by Mr. Walker from The Store.
Mr. Walker smiled at her and strode into her room, flipping the light switch next to the door. The lights in the ceiling blinked on, but they did not appreciably illuminate the figures who followed the Customer Service manager toward her bed. Their garb was still blacker than black, their skin as pale as if they'd been dusted with flour. Mr. Walker himself continued to smile at her, but there was something in that smile that caused her to press the button on the side of her bed and call for the nurse.
She held Merilee tighter.
"Is that your new baby?" the Customer Service manager asked. He stopped next to her bed as the black-clad men kept circling around.
She continued to frantically press the call button with one hand while she clasped Merilee with the other.
Mr. Walker's fingers, strong and cold, pried hers away from the button.
"No one's coming," he said. "The hospital knows why we're here."
"Why?" She looked around the ring of faces surrounding her bed, saw only blank expressions on snow-colored skin.
"Several months ago, you and your husband bought a microwave from The Store using our very generous layaway plan. You took possession of the microwave, but you did not make the last two monthly payments."
Her voice was high, squeaky. "Clete lost his job! We were having the baby --"
"We are taking the baby."
Her heart was pounding as though it was about to burst. It suddenly seemed impossible to breathe.
"The baby is ours."
She was finally able to suck in air. "No," she got out.
"Yes," Mr. Walker said.
"No!" She screamed it, screamed again: "No!"
"It was part of your agreement. You signed it." He withdrew from behind his back a copy of the layaway plan and pointed to a paragraph of fine print buried in the middle of the page. " 'In the event that payment is not made on time,'" he read, " 'the signee's first-born child will be accepted by The Store as payment of the unpaid portion of -- ' "
"No!" She struggled, tried to sit up, but the men in black were suddenly holding her arms, pressing down on her legs, restraining her from their positions surrounding the bed.
Mr. Walker reached for Merilee, took her.
"Help!" Doreen screamed, struggling against the restraining hands.
"They're stealing my baby! They're kidnapping my baby! Nurse! Nurse!"
"It's a legally binding agreement," Mr. Walker said. "There's nothing any nurse can do about it." He passed the baby to one of the pale men.
"Clete!" she cried. Tears of anger and frustration were pooling in her eyes, overflowing onto her face, blurring her vision. "Don't let them take our baby!" She jerked her head toward the door as the men holding Merilee began walking away. Through her tears, she thought she saw white-robed doctors and nurses standing in the corridor, watching silently. "Take the microwave back!" she said. There was too much saliva in her mouth. She was spitting, her words slurring. "We don't want it! Take it back!"
"You should have made your payments."
"We'll send you the money! With interest! How much do you want?"
"We got what we want," Mr. Walker said. He nodded, motioned with his hand, and a doctor stepped in from the corridor. "She's hysterical," he told the doctor. "Sedate her."
"No!" Doreen cried, but she felt the sharp prick of a needle in her right upper arm, and her strength immediately began draining away.
The doctor stepped back, disappeared.
Her eyes were already closing, and she felt the pressure of the hands removed from her body. With her last bit of strength, she opened her eyes again, saw a blurry Mr. Walker follow the dark figures out of her room.
"Merilee!" she wanted to call, but she did not even have the strength to say her baby's name.
And then she was out.
2
Shannon walked up and down the aisles of the Garden department, intending to straighten the shelves before The Store opened. As always, many of the shelves were in disarray. She'd worked last night until closing and had straightened the mess before clocking out, but the cleaning people or someone must have come by afterward and moved things.
That really ticked her off.
She continued walking, then stopped. The cleaning people hadn't even done a decent job on the floors. There was a reddish brown splotch on the white tile next to the Italian flowerpots that hadn't been wiped up. It looked like . . .
Blood?
She frowned, bent down. The spot hadn't been there last night. She was positive of it. She'd been unwrapping a mint as she'd patrolled this aisle before closing, and the mint had slipped out of her fingers and fallen to the floor. She'd picked it up pretty close to where the spot was now, and she'd seen only clean white tile. It was possible, of course, that she hadn't seen the spot -- _the blood_ -- because she hadn't been looking for it, but it was pretty noticeable, and if she saw it now, she should've seen it then.
_It's built with blood_.
She stood and walked quickly down the row to the fertilizers at the end, then up the seed aisle back toward the register. Even in the daytime, even with the lights on, even with other people in The Store, she could still spook herself back here.