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As I drove away from the scene of whatever it was that had happened on the street where Brie and I used to live, I noticed a car coming the other way that was obviously an unmarked police cruiser. You don’t exactly have to be Jack Reacher to spot them. Black or dark gray, unadorned by chrome, the cheapest hubcaps money can buy. You’d think the cops would have figured out by now that even a simple ten-dollar pinstriping kit would make it less obvious who they were.
I initially had an impulse to slide down into the seat, below the window, but that’s not an easy thing to do when you’re behind the wheel. So I sat up straight, back rigid, and tried my best not to turn for a better look at the driver as we slipped past each other. Being a gawker, I figured, would only draw attention to myself.
But I did get enough of a look to satisfy myself it was Detective Marissa Hardy behind the wheel.
Thanks, Max. Thanks a bunch.
She hadn’t changed much since I’d last seen her, which had been maybe a year and a half ago. I saw plenty of her, of course, in the eighteen months or so following Brie’s disappearance, and sporadically after that. An occasional encounter, to let me know she hadn’t forgotten me. She’d probably have visited me more often if I hadn’t hired a lawyer, Nan Sokolow, and threatened Hardy’s department with a harassment suit.
Hardy still had the short, almost buzz-cut salt-and-pepper hair, the oversized black-rimmed glasses. I’d always thought she looked more like a stern women’s prison librarian than a cop, but maybe that’s some unfair typecasting of prison librarians. But Marissa Hardy certainly never endeared herself to me. She was humorless and annoying and, I guess I have to give credit where credit is due, relentless. She was not the kind of person you wanted hounding you if you’d done something wrong.
Now it seemed likely she’d be back in my life again, unless she deemed what Max had to tell her as jumping to conclusions, or considered the surveillance video from the house next door as inconclusive. Except that didn’t strike me how Hardy would react. If she saw the slimmest opportunity to make my life hell again, she’d take it.
I headed north out of town on the Milford Parkway, and when I reached the Merritt Parkway I took the long curving ramp to get onto the westbound lanes. I stayed on the parkway until I got to Trumbull, where I took the White Plains Road exit. I made a few rights and lefts until I reached TrumbullGate Mall. Took no more than fifteen minutes.
It had been a few years since this place had been a shopping destination. The massive lot was empty, save for part of the south end that had been cordoned off and was full of new Hyundais. A local dealership was clearly renting some space to store their stock. Even though Greg had told me to come in through the south end service entrance, I did a loop of the mall just to get the lay of the land.
All the windows, including the grand entry points, were boarded up. Most malls, considering that they looked inward instead of to the outside, which explained why so many of them were so goddamn ugly, didn’t have that many outward facing windows to begin with. The outer perimeter of a mall was usually a maze of cinder-block corridors that allowed stores to bring in merchandise without traipsing it through the main concourse.
I found the south service entrance partially hidden behind a false front that would have allowed tractor trailers to be unloaded without being seen by the public. Tucked in there was an early 2000s Audi A3 in black parked behind Greg’s oversized pickup truck. The cargo bed was loaded with all manner of building materials. Scraps of railing, pipe, several mannequin torsos and limbs, undamaged ceiling panels.
A regular door up on the loading bay was propped open an inch with a chock of wood to keep it from locking. I was reaching for the handle when it opened from the other side.
A woman stepped out and was briefly startled to see me, then smiled broadly.
“You must be Andrew,” she said. “I’m Julie.”
She stuck out a hand. She was almost as Greg had described her on the phone. Short turquoise hair, yes, but also with streaks of black. Petite and instantly cheerful, with a smile that took over half her face.
“Hi,” I said.
“Oh hell,” she said, and threw her arms around me for a quick hug. “Greggy has told me so much about you I feel I know you.”
“Well,” I said, a bit caught off guard, “it’s nice to meet you.”
“I’m just heading off,” she said. “Back in a while with more donuts.”
I didn’t remember Greg being much of a junk food addict. She must have caught my puzzled expression.
“Not for him,” she said. “You’ll see. Just head in and follow the buzzing and hammering. You’ll find him. Gotta run.”
She headed for the Audi as I entered the facility. I found my way through the service area that shoppers never see until I reached a door that took me to the mall proper. There’s something about a now-abandoned but once-public space that raises the goose bumps on one’s arms. The mall consisted of two levels, open through the center so you could look down from the upper concourse to the one below. I’d come in on the lower level, near one of the abandoned anchor stores that at one time had been a thriving Sears, JCPenney, or Kohl’s.
Countless roof panels from the upper shopping level that hung over the first floor had come free and were arranged as though set up for some psychotic hopscotch game. Trees planted in interior gardens that had, at one time, brought a hint of nature to the concourse were now dead and leafless. Tentacles of ivy from those same gardens snaked out beyond their enclosure across the debris-strewn floor like something from an alien movie. Water dripped down from a cracked skylight overhead, no doubt from an overnight shower. An immobile, rusted escalator was just ahead, its rubber handrails missing, several steps absent, making the stairwell look like a gap-toothed, vertical mouth.
I saw no people, but that didn’t mean I was the only living thing here. A squirrel went bounding up the dead escalator. A couple of pigeons flew overhead. A rat was slinking into what used to be, judging by the cracked sign overhead, a Cinnabon.
Over by the entrance to one abandoned store I saw a grungy sleeping bag balled up against the wall. Not surprising that this place might have a few squatters, homeless people using it for shelter until this entire complex came tumbling down.
I was briefly startled by the shadow of something flying over me. I glanced up and saw not a pigeon, but what looked like a hawk, judging by the wingspan. It was a mini-postapocalyptic world in here.
And if it seemed foreboding now, I imagined what it would be like at night. The power would most certainly have been cut off to the facility, and had it not been for that windowed ceiling that ran from one end of the mall to the other, I’d have had a hard time finding my way without a flashlight.
Given that the place was not bustling with shoppers, noises carried, and somewhere on the floor above I could hear the sound of a power drill. I made my way carefully up the escalator, stepping over the gaps, and when I was on the upper level, I paused, waiting for another blast of the drill.
When one didn’t come immediately, I decided to make some noise.
“Greg!” I shouted, my call echoing throughout the abandoned space.
