by Harper Lin
“Everything Serengeti.com and its associated companies do is innovative and cutting-edge,” I said before she could.
“That’s right,” Florence Nightingale and Bob the security guard said, their heads nodding in unison.
I got right above my cart. There were several scrapes on the railing for a patch of about five or six feet. They did, indeed, look quite fresh. I moved along the catwalk for a time. Bob was right, there were scrapes all along the railing. Some fresh, some not. But that cluster of fresh scrapes right above the body made me wonder.
I peered down again and noticed something.
“What’s that?” I asked, pointing. A white bit of paper was stuck to one of the metal struts holding up the bottom of the catwalk right beneath my feet.
Four
“I don’t see anything,” Grimal said, leaning out and trying to look where I was pointing.
“That’s because your belly keeps you from leaning out far enough,” I said.
“Hey, that’s fat shaming,” the police chief objected.
“Do be quiet.”
Florence Nightingale leaned out, her thin frame bending over the railing.
“Oh, that’s a label,” the manager said.
She lay down on the catwalk and reached down. She had to stretch to reach, with Grimal hovering in the background with his arms out, worried she might slip over the edge but too shy to actually grab hold of her. Considering how high-strung she was, that was probably wise.
She peeled it off, stood, and held it out to Grimal. It was a small label about the size of two postage stamps set side to side with a bar code on it. The back was sticky. Sticky enough, in fact, that she had some trouble getting it off her finger. Before I could say anything, she had mangled the thing, smearing her fingers all over it and obscuring any fingerprints that had been on it previously.
Grimal put it in a plastic evidence bag, but I doubted he’d learn anything from it now.
“It probably just fell off a package,” she said.
“Yeah, probably,” Grimal agreed, “but we have to look at all angles.”
We looked around and found nothing more of note, except for a few drones floating around with small boxes clutched in their set of four little mechanical pincers on the bottom of their bodies.
Bob then showed us a freight elevator that led to the loading dock. It was turned off at the moment, the main switch secured behind a locked electrical panel. Only management had the key. The loading dock was also locked and empty.
“Let’s go back to the office and scan that bar code,” I suggested. “Then we can watch the security video.”
“All right,” Florence Nightingale huffed. “But let’s make it quick. We need to reopen.”
“We need to check the crime scene for any significant details and then take the victim out before that can happen,” Grimal said.
“Indeed,” I agreed. Grimal looked askance at me.
At the back room we’d passed through previously, Bob grabbed a scanner and checked the bar code. It was for a ten-pack of gold bracelets, because doesn’t everybody want to buy their gold bracelets in quantities of ten? The retail price was $199.99, so I had to wonder how much gold was actually in these gold bracelets.
That was neither here nor there. It wasn’t a very expensive item compared to some of the other bulk jewelry boxes I’d seen in that aisle, so it wasn’t something that was likely to have been stolen. Perhaps it really had fallen off a box.
We checked in the aisle. Out of the twenty boxes of gold bracelets, all of them had their bar-code stickers.
“Must have been stolen by one of the night shifts,” Grimal said.
“They get searched on their way out,” Bob said.
“Searched?” I asked.
The manager nodded. “Oh yes. We have male and female security guards on staff during every shift. That way we can strip-search everyone.”
My jaw dropped. “I’ve never heard of someone having to get strip-searched while working a retail job.”
Florence Nightingale gave me a haughty look.
“The employees like it. If they get strip-searched, there’s no suspicion of theft. That way the employees can go about their duties with a clean conscience, knowing they won’t get falsely accused, like what happens at so many other retail outlets.”
I glanced at Bob to see what he thought of this ridiculous statement, but he was staring into space, as if imagining himself somewhere far, far away.
“How about we go look at the security camera footage?” Grimal said.
We tromped over to the security office, which was clear on the other side of the store. As we passed the cash registers, Florence Nightingale frowned at the cashiers standing huddled, wide-eyed under the watchful gaze of one of Cheerville’s finest.
“Why aren’t you working?” she demanded.
They looked at each other and back at her.
Florence Nightingale tapped her foot, hands balled into fists on her hips. “Well?”
“There are no customers,” one ventured.
The manager waved her arm dramatically at the shelves. “Then work on stock! Clean up the shelving. Make sure the boxes are straight. What is the motto?”
“There’s always something to do at SerMart,” they intoned. “Idle hands pull down profits.”
I exchanged glances with Grimal. He looked equally appalled.
The police chief cleared his throat. “Just avoid aisle six. That’s where the body is. And no one goes upstairs to the catwalks. You”—he pointed to a police officer—“stand guard at the murder scene.”
“Yes, sir,” the policeman said, moving away. The employees moved away too. There wasn’t a straight back in the entire crowd.
The security office was a high-tech affair, what the employees of Serengeti.com would call “innovative and cutting-edge.” A large bank of computer screens showed various points in the store. Unlike most security cameras, these were high quality, with crystal-clear images. I’ve never understood why people feel safe with bargain-basement cameras that give such grainy images you can’t recognize anyone on them. I’ve actually seen defendants go free because even though they were caught on camera, the picture quality was so poor that their lawyers were able to make convincing cases that it wasn’t them.
Not so with these cameras. As they tracked the employees going about their tasks, I could recognize every feature. I could practically read the lips of the ones speaking to each other.
As Bob fiddled with the computer files to find the moment when the body made its unwelcomed entry into my shopping cart, I looked around the rest of the office. There was a male and a female “changing room”—a pleasant euphemism for being forced to take your clothes off in front of a coworker—a line of walkie-talkies on a shelf, and a state-of-the-art burglary alarm. I noted the make and model.
“Here we go,” Bob said. I turned… and was treated to an image of myself talking to a drone.
“You two seem to be getting along,” Grimal said with a chuckle. “Is there sound on this thing?”
“The state wouldn’t let us rig the store with mics. Something about the right to privacy,” Florence Nightingale said. She almost sounded disappointed.
Just at that moment, the body of Sir Edmund Montalbion plunged into the cart.
Seeing myself from a remove, I could tell I did not react well. I jumped back, hands waving in the air, my mouth forming an O as I let out a silent scream. I spun around, screaming in all directions, my hands still waving in the air. I hadn’t remembered that part.
Grimal snickered. “Now that’s what I call an innovative and cutting-edge shopping experience.” I shot him a nasty look. He pointed to the knife through the victim’s head. “Get it? Cutting-edge?”
Bob and Florence Nightingale stared at him.
“Can I see some identification?” Bob asked.
Grimal’s brow furrowed. “What for?”
“To make sure you’re really chief of police.”<
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“Oh, he is,” I said as Grimal sputtered. “And this is actually him on a good day.”
“How about we review the tape and find the suspect?” the police chief grumbled.
We rewound the tape, following me backwards through my long and fruitless search for my grandson’s birthday gift. We could not see anyone tailing me or taking any interest in me. We then shifted to other customers, tracing them as they went through the store. We saw nothing suspicious.
“Okay, let’s switch to the catwalk,” Grimal said.
“We don’t have cameras up there,” Florence Nightingale said.
“Why not?” I asked.
“To save money, mostly. These cameras are expensive, and it costs a lot of employee hours to keep track of them all. There are no customers up there to monitor, and with all the employees being strip-searched at the ends of their shifts, there really is no need.”
“Wonderful,” Grimal moaned. “You have cameras watching every spot except the murder scene?”
Florence Nightingale shrugged. “Sorry.”
“Wait,” I said, pointing to a camera on the ceiling. “The security office is filmed too? Why don’t I see that on the monitors?”
“The security office is monitored from the manager’s office,” Bob said, his voice flat.
“Is there a security camera in the manager’s office?” Grimal asked.
“Yes. That’s monitored from the Regional Manager’s office.”
I need to get out of here, I thought.
“Fine,” Grimal said with a sigh. “Switch to the camera covering the doorway leading upstairs and rewind over the past several hours. The victim died in the early hours of this morning, so he must have been killed here or moved here around that time.”
Bob did as he was asked. We watched in fast reverse as the doorway stood unused through the morning until an hour before opening time, when we suddenly started to see employees going in and out. We watched them closely, looking for anyone who wasn’t in an employee uniform or anyone who was carrying a bag or box big enough to contain the late Sir Edmund Montalbion.
Nothing.
Stumped, we reviewed the previous day and night, spending more than two hours staring at people moving jerkily backwards at high speed. It was wearing on the eyes, I can tell you. Still nothing.
We then went back to the night when the victim was murdered and went through more slowly, freeze-framing on every face, hoping to spot someone who was wearing an employee uniform but wasn’t actually employed at SerMart. Bob and Florence Nightingale were able to identify every one of them.
“Is there any way to get into the upstairs gallery from the roof?” Grimal asked. I raised an eyebrow. He was being unusually thorough today.
“There is an emergency exit up there, but the alarm sounds if it’s opened. There’s no record of an alarm. Besides, it’s locked from the outside. You can go out but not in.”
“Do you have cameras covering the outside?”
“Yes, but not the roof. We’d be able to see anyone climbing up, though.”
We ran through the past forty-eight hours. Nothing.
“We’re getting nowhere,” Grimal grumbled.
“Surely you must be used to that by now,” I said with my sweetest sweet-little-old-lady smile.
Before he could say anything, a red warning light flashed on one of the camera feeds and a little buzzer sounded.
“What’s that?” we both asked.
Bob pointed. One of the employees, an older man with a potbelly that put Grimal’s to shame, was leaning against a shelf, mopping his brow.
“He looks worn out, the poor dear,” I said. “Is that some sort of medical alarm?”
Florence Nightingale shook her head. “The cameras are programmed to spot any lack of movement among the employees. We then sight check them to see what they’re doing. If they’re not working at the assigned pace, they lose Productivity Points. A low Productivity Point score can keep them from being promoted or getting a raise. And, oh dear…”
She was watching a computer spreadsheet Bob had opened up. He had run down a list of employees to a name, Preston La Salle. I could see the name on the sick employee’s name tag. Bob went through several columns of data to one marked Productivity Points. He lowered the points from eighty-five to eighty.
“I knew he’d fail,” Florence Nightingale said. “Wonderful. Another awkward conversation for this shift.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“The Productivity Points are scaled to maximize productivity. If they fall below a certain point, the employee is terminated and we hire someone else. We have a lot of applicants, so that’s not a problem.”
I made an angry gesture at the man still trying to catch his breath. “But he looks ill!”
“All the more reason to let him go. Health insurance payments will cut into our profit margin, and I will lose some of my own Productivity Points.”
I treated her to a level gaze. She took a step back, shocked. I can have a nasty glare when I want to.
“If you tell me that practice is innovative and cutting-edge,” I said in a low voice, “there are going to be two murders in your shop today.”
“Okay, okay!” Grimal cried, raising his hands while the two SerMart employees went pale. “It’s been a stressful day for all of us. How about we all calm down, shall we?”
“I’m quite calm,” I said, keeping my voice soft and even. I’ve found that people are far more intimidated by someone who doesn’t lose their cool than someone who does. It helped when I had an M-16 in my hands, but in our overly litigious society, you don’t need one.
Grimal turned to the manager. “Have you fired anyone recently?”
“We’ve only been open two weeks,” Florence Nightingale said.
“You didn’t answer my question.”
“We’ve only fired five people so far.”
“Only?” Grimal and I said in unison. We glanced at each other. We kept replying in an identical manner. We really needed to stop doing that.
The manager shrugged. “If they dip beneath the minimum acceptable Productivity Point level, it’s out of my hands.”
“Have any of these former employees made threats against the company or tried to come back onto the premises?”
“No.”
Grimal sighed and scratched his balding head. “Well, give me a list of them anyway. I’ll also need a list of everyone who has access to the building’s keys and security codes.”
“I’ll get those for you,” Florence Nightingale said. She looked at the camera, where several men and women in white forensic crime-scene-examiner suits were studying the dead body in my shopping cart. “Oh! Your CSI team is here. Could they please get this done as soon as possible?”
“Yes, you wouldn’t want a human tragedy to affect sales,” I quipped. “that might lower your Productivity Point level.”
The manager failed to take the bait. Instead she looked worried.
“It would,” she whispered. “Oh yes, it would.”
I spent another dreary two hours in the store making a statement and looking over the shoulder of the CSI team before I could go. The fluorescent lights and canned music had given me a piercing headache.
As I made my retreat toward the parking lot, Florence Nightingale stopped me at the door. She held out a gift-wrapped package with an envelope on top.
“A peace offering,” she said with a forced smile. “We got off on the wrong foot, and I don’t want you to think ill of me. I’m not a bad person. I’m only doing my job.”
How many times have I heard that one? I thought.
“What is this?” I said, taking the package.
“A FriendZip Bracelet Fun Pak to give your grandson. I hope he has a great birthday. The envelope has that gift certificate I mentioned.”
I was about to say something cutting until manners took over. She was required to give the gift certificate, and was kind enough to give the FriendZip Bracele
t Fun Pak too. This woman must have realized how ridiculous the rules at her place of employment were, but she was just a cog in the wheel.
A wheel that must breed a lot of resentment. I wondered if that resentment had led to murder.
But why the murder of someone who wasn’t even associated with the business?
I had a lot of questions to answer about this case and far too few leads.
In the meantime, however, I had a greater challenge to face.
I had to be cool around an almost fourteen-year-old.
Five
After the retail purgatory of SerMart, the chaos and noise of my grandson’s bedroom was a positive relief.
I found him lying out on his bed, texting his friends. The radio was tuned to KRAP, the local hip-hop station. The loud boasts about “slinging ice” and “capping homies” made for weird background music in a room that still showed evidence of a little boy in residence.
Martin had not entirely given up his teddy bears, for example. Granted, they were tucked in one corner of a shelf, but the mere fact that they were in a tidy row on the shelf when most of his belongings were lost in the landfill on the floor spoke volumes. My daughter-in-law, Alicia, had told me that sometimes she’d peek in on him at night to make sure he was all right and find those bears in bed with him. That happened especially when there was a thunderstorm outside or if she and my son, Frederick, had one of their rare fights.
It’s what I found so charming about boys and girls Martin’s age, that mixture of bravado and vulnerability. Their pose of independence and their sneaking ways of looking for support and reassurance.
“Grandma!” he shouted, vaulting off his bed by pumping his legs up in the air, slamming them down on the mattress, and thus propelling himself into a standing position. I wistfully remembered a time when I was that limber. “You finished the book yet?”