“I don’t know any such thing and neither do you. Just what the hell is your problem, Richards?” Summers demanded.
“I thought . . . that is . . . the kid . . . Ah, forget it. You couldn’t be that stupid.” Richards turned his back on the lot of them. Timberwoods was turning into a constant source of irritation. Seemed like every time he turned around there was a bomb threat or something else equally frightening, but to date they had never come across anything that remotely resembled a bomb. As far as he was concerned, Eric Summers had dug in too damn deep. It always happened that way—give a cop a little power and it went straight to his head. He knew—and so did his security team—that no bomb would be found. All those men he’d had to pull off other assignments! And what the hell was he going to do come Friday morning, what with the predicted heavy snow, when gung-ho Summers would be screaming for more cops? Son of a bitch, why did it always have to happen to him? “Who the hell needs it?” he muttered under his breath.
Summers turned to the bomb squad. “Plain clothes and a full crew tomorrow,” he said firmly. Their captain nodded and the squad wearily took their leave.
As soon as he had closed the door behind them, Richards spoke very softly. “One word about that Angela Steinhart and I’ll personally kill you, Summers. She can be tied to us—we hired her. This mall isn’t going to blow and you know it!”
“Put it in writing, Richards,” Eric snarled as he pushed back his chair. “Why don’t you go exercise your libido? I have other people’s lives to think about.”
“Do whatever you want, smart-ass. But you’ll see. Timberwoods will still be standing by New Year’s.”
Eric moved around his desk. “On second thought, maybe I should do some damage first,” he said menacingly. “Starting with your perfect teeth.”
Richards stepped back. He had no desire to have $6,200 worth of porcelain caps destroyed. “The mall stays open!” he spat as he quickly slammed the door behind him.
“Bastard,” Eric muttered, kicking the wastebasket across the room.
The two-way radio on his desk beeped. He pressed the button. “Summers.” He listened quietly, a frown on his face. “Are you sure?”
“Of course I’m sure,” the disembodied voice shouted. “They’re gathered in groups in the mall. A couple of the owners of smaller shops are on their way to see Baumgarten right now. The word is spreading and people are leaving in droves. I don’t know what the hell it is, but . . . Christ, here comes Skyer himself! Over and out.”
Eric stuffed the radio into his pocket and took off on the run for Baumgarten’s office. “Well, the shit’s hit the fan now,” he muttered as he narrowly avoided one of the assistants from the chief’s office.
Chapter 7
Charlie Roman hoisted a bulging sack over his shoulder and clutched a bunch of candy canes in his hand on his way to Saint Nick’s snowdecorated throne. Something was wrong. His round eyes darkened as he watched the groups of people muttering among themselves. Some of the store owners had gathered outside their shops and were talking and gesticulating angrily.
Charlie sidled up to a small group of young women, who ignored him, giving him the chance to listen to their conversation.
“I don’t see any police,” one of them complained. “They always have police if there’s a bomb threat. I’m not leaving—I have too much shopping to do! Do what you want. I’m staying!”
Charlie walked away, stunned. It appeared the whole complex was on red alert. She happened to be wrong—right now he could see several plainclothes officers aside from the usual security guards. He was sweating profusely by the time he rounded the corner to the stairway leading to the lower level. Bomb scare! He stumbled over to a bench and dropped heavily onto the hard wooden planks.
A little girl stopped to stare at him. “Are you sick?” she asked, but her mother grabbed the little girl’s arm and yanked her away.
“Don’t bother people, Marcey. He’s probably just tired from all this Christmas rush. C’mon, we have to find Grandma.”
Charlie stared straight ahead, dimly aware of the woman taking the little girl away. Christmas rush—she had that right. Security and the police would crawl all over the complex like ants at a picnic. They would look and look and snoop and snoop and never find anything. The last time it happened someone had leaked a photocopy of the threatening letter and it had been posted for about five minutes on the employee bulletin board before someone else had taken it down. A lot of hours had been spent cutting words and letters out of newspapers and magazines to compose the thing—his brief glance told him that. He’d played detective in his mind that day. The big letters were from the covers of common magazines, the ones everybody got. Nothing unusual. But he’d recognized a few letters right out of the sales circular from Skyer’s. From someone at the mall, maybe? Someone like him?
Kind of ironic. And hard to fathom. Right now it was most likely the dumb shits were looking for a standard bomb—sticks of dynamite and an alarm clock. Tick tick tick. He laughed.
He reviewed his plan.
His mind flipped back to two weeks ago. The weather had been cold and dry then, perfect for mending the roof. The maintenance crew had come down to the employees’ cafeteria for lunch and Charlie had overheard them discussing the procedure for patching the roof where the rain was seeping in. When the talk got around to using propane for heating the tar vat, Charlie’s ears had pricked up—propane? Up on the roof? The information had lodged itself in his mind.
He hadn’t said anything, just hummed along with the music being piped into the cafeteria. Thinking about the guys there on that day, he wondered if anyone besides him had been harboring a grudge. An outsider, who wanted to belong . . . if not in life, then in death.
Maybe even someone contemplating suicide, the last lonely act a man could perform. Charlie could understand that. He himself was sick of being lonely, and Christmas was a particularly bad time—the worst of all. It seemed everyone had someone to love but him. He had no family, no friends . . . no one at all. The only people he talked to were the guys he worked with, and he hated them. It would serve them all right if he or anyone else, even one of them, took down the whole freaking mall with one big bang. They were always ribbing him, waiting for him to make a mistake, to lose his balance and fall down—anything was reason enough to ridicule him.
Yeah, that fit. It wasn’t impossible that someone besides him was thinking of rigging a whatchamacallit—an IED, improvised explosive device—with that propane. Charlie shrugged. He sure as hell wasn’t going to be a hero and find out who. He didn’t owe anyone favors. But it could be a golden opportunity to pin the blame on someone else after the fact.
Kaboom. Point the finger. Lie low and eventually file that lawsuit claiming discrimination. He had the cartoon and the scrawled names on it. The suit would be the least of mall management’s worries—they’d be facing record liabilities for what he was planning. He’d cut them some slack and settle out of court just to speed things along. Collect his award and retire to a palm-fringed island and live happily ever after.
The unlikely fantasy was fun to think about, but he had things to do. Charlie ditched the bulging bag behind a potted palm and headed for the three long flights of stairs to the roof. Puffing and panting, he opened the door and stepped out onto the flat black expanse, the cold air hitting him like a physical blow. A tour of the area led him to where the maintenance crew had left the vat of tar to cool. He waved his arms around to keep warm.
The fifty-gallon, silver liquid-propane tank was attached to a burner-like system beneath the tar vat, its heat slowly melting the chunks of black tar into a glossy, viscous liquid. Three spare tanks stood at the far end of the roof, well away from the open flame.
Causing a major explosion was definitely doable. Charlie’s brain fired into high gear and ticked through the possibilities.
That evening, back at home, Charlie dug through the air-conditioning plans stashed away in his basement. He found the HV
AC blueprints for Timberwoods easily enough, and two hours later lifted his head from the papers, a euphoric smile on his doughy face. He’d solved every piece of the puzzle of how to do it, if not who exactly could be blamed for it—if there was someone else besides him. There could even be cash in advance in it for him, he mused, if he went further and figured out a way to mislead the cops. He pictured himself taking a reward and a smiling handshake from the mall CEO. But he’d blow the damn place up anyway.
As soon as he could the next morning, he again checked out the machinery and propane tanks on the roof. Everything would fit into his scheme.
He allowed himself a few idle moments to figure out the thought processes of the scapegoat bomber, pretending he was an FBI profiler.
He had to be as angry as Charlie—and as smart. That left out the dolts in maintenance. Charlie prided himself on secretly being the smartest, someone who considered all angles.
Given that, he had to factor in the possibility that his scheme to incriminate someone else might complicate the plan too much.
Keep it simple, he told himself.
Whatever. The blast would do that for him when it leveled the mall. He’d be out the door and safely away when it happened, close enough to watch and laugh. In his hiding place, he’d smear ash and dirt on his face and body, and stab at his skin to look like a bona fide, bleeding survivor and stagger back to help out.
And why not, he thought triumphantly. He could also collect a fat award for pain and suffering on top of everything else. He knew his imagination was running away with him, but his fantasies were exhilarating. The joke would be on that clown of a CEO, Dolph Richards, for not closing the mall.
Someone jostled him and, startled, Charlie quickly returned to the present. Mike Wollek from security was standing in front of him. “Roman, is that you?”
“Yeah, it’s me,” Charlie answered flatly, pulling himself away from Mike’s rough hand. Why did people have to react to him in a big way just because he was big? Big voices, big hands, big slaps on the back.
“Christ, you look scared to death,” Mike exclaimed, not noticing that Charlie was shrinking from his touch. “Look, take it easy, fella. I guess you heard about the bomb threat, huh? It was a letter, same as before, but we’re trying to take precautions.”
Mike’s walkie-talkie beeped shrilly and he stepped away from Charlie to answer it.
Charlie stood on shaking legs, expecting the floor to come up and hit him in the face. He turned and walked in the direction of the door to the stairs leading down.
He had to hurry back to the Santa in Toyland display and all the happy, happy people, and come up with an excuse to cover his brief absence.
Over his shoulder he heard Mike call to him, “Hey, you okay?” but he kept going, suddenly too preoccupied to answer. What if the bomb didn’t go off? Nothing would change, he thought dully.
Eric beat the angry shop owners to Dolph Richards’s office by mere moments.
“Here it comes!” He breathed raggedly as he regained his stance. “They’re stampeding. Word must have leaked out somehow. Mike says the customers are leaving as fast as they arrive. Get ready!” he gasped as the door was thrust open.
Heather followed Harold into Richards’s office. Lex also inched his way past the angry shop owners. Richards remained seated, his movie-star smile fixed on his face. “For heaven’s sake, what is this?”
“You aren’t sugarcoating this one, Richards. We heard,” shouted an angry shop owner. “What’s going on?”
“That is what I’m asking you. Why the commotion? Why are you all so angry?”
“Angry?” shouted the owner of the crystal shop. “The mall is almost empty. As fast as they come in, they leave. Word is out there’s a bomb somewhere!”
“Use your head.” Harold smiled. “If there was a credible threat, don’t you think you would have been told? Don’t you think we would have evacuated the mall?”
“Enough with the rhetorical questions. If there’s no bomb, get on the PA system and say so. Now!” bellowed the owner of the leather goods shop.
“Detective Summers, why don’t you explain the circumstances?” Harold said jovially, oblivious to Richards’s scowl.
Eric cleared his throat and spoke quietly. “We did receive a bomb threat yesterday. We get them regularly, as you know. This particular threat said the bomb would go off in seventy-two hours. The seventy-two hours will be up Friday morning. We doubled the security as soon as we received the threat. We haven’t found anything so far, but I can’t speak for tomorrow or Friday. When the mall closes tonight, the dogs and the bomb squad will arrive. By Friday morning everything should be A-okay. There isn’t anything else I can tell you. You say the customers are leaving the mall. Did you stop to think that your own actions could have something to do with it? My officers told me you were clustered in the mall discussing this among yourselves. What do you expect?”
“You only have yourselves to blame,” Richards said loftily, ending Summers’s speech. “Go back to your stores and show a little confidence in our security. An announcement will be made in a few moments. And for God’s sake, smile when you leave here.”
The group of owners dispersed, muttering among themselves. Several mouthed sincere apologies while others looked doubtful. Richards followed them out, reassuring some and dismissing the concerns of others with soothing phrases.
“You think that went well, Harold?” Eric sounded exhausted. “I didn’t.”
The other man’s answer was sidetracked by an incoming call. He looked at the blinking buttons. “Line Four. That’s mine. What, you didn’t know our CEO listens in?” He kept his voice low as he spoke to the caller, saying “no comment” more than once, until he replaced the receiver and turned back to Summers.
“Who was that?”
“Someone from the media. And no, it didn’t go too well, to answer your other question,” Harold said nervously. “That was only a few of the owners from the smaller shops. What happens later when they all get together? How did this leak out in the first place?”
“Don’t ask me. You know this sort of thing always gets out no matter how you try to hide it. A cop is a cop, and looks and acts like one in or out of uniform. It only takes one mom or dad or grandparent to tell the family to stay out of Timberwoods Mall and why. Harold, I still say we should close and explain it from the beginning, lay the whole thing before the merchants. I’m talking about Angela’s vision.”
Dolph Richards burst back into his office, his face mottled with self-righteous anger. “You dumb, stupid bastard! You almost blew the whistle!”
Eric swung around and shot Richards a piercing look. “I’m sick and tired of you, Richards. I’m doing what I have to do the best way I know how, and so is Baumgarten. If you cross my path once more today, I’ll personally do a frontal lobotomy on you. With no training and no anesthesia.”
“Summers, when I’ve finished with you—and you, too, Baumgarten—I’ll—” Richards sputtered, “I’ll—”
“You’ll what?” the detective inquired. “I’ll stand on my record any day of the week. If push comes to shove, can you say the same?” Eric said harshly. Richards shook his fist in the air and muttered a few choice obscenities that followed Baumgarten and Summers back to Harold’s office.
“He’s losing it, big time.” Harold smirked.
“Dolph Richards may be in charge, but he never was a leader and never will be,” Eric retorted.
Harold chuckled as he opened a drawer and pulled out a small laptop, setting it on the desk. He opened it with a confident gesture and sat down.
“Progress reports on the hour, Summers,” he said briskly.
“Yes, sir.” Eric gave him a mock salute as he closed the door behind him.
Charlie Roman almost fell against the back of Santa’s throne when he heard the announcement.
“Ladies and gentlemen, may I please have your attention. At the present time we are conducting security drills for your
safety and testing the alarms. But keep right on shopping, please. Enjoy the displays and have a happy holiday.”
So he wasn’t the only one who knew something was up. High-level management was on it.
Chapter 8
Angela steered the Porsche down the dark, winding road, peering intently through the windshield. Was it safe to switch on the headlights? The visceral roar of the engine was enough to wake the dead. What time was it? The digital clock on the dash read 2:12. Almost the middle of the night. It didn’t look as though there were any cops on her trail. She was going to be a lot more careful in the future. The Porsche was a dead giveaway; there wasn’t another like it in the area.
Her nerves were still rattled from before when the police car had blared its siren and pulled her over. She had known immediately that this was no ordinary speed check. The young officer hadn’t asked for her license or registration and he had called her by name. It was when he had physically tried to remove her from the car that she had panicked and begun to struggle against his grip. A well-aimed kick had worked, though it would count as assaulting an officer, a serious charge.
All the same, they’d have to find her first.
Angela had scrambled back into her Porsche and roared away. She pressed her foot down and the car took wing, up one street and down another. A good thing she knew where West End Avenue was. Cross over the highway, forget the light. There weren’t any cars out anyway. Another mile or so and she would be at Charlie Roman’s place. Did he live in the house by himself? She was about to find out. What if his mom was on the premises? That would put her mind at ease, but she just didn’t want to deal with anyone else. He was a weird kind of guy but nice. Maybe he’d be more at ease once they got to know each other a little better.
It was really strange the way she felt drawn to him, almost close. They were two lonely people who recognized one another, she guessed. Whatever. She couldn’t be picky about where she hid out. And she was almost there.
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