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“Attention, shoppers.” The announcement rang out over the loudspeakers. “The store will close in fifteen minutes.”
Walking as fast as she could, she pushed the cart toward women’s clothing. She grabbed a pair of jeans in her size, a sweatshirt, a denim jacket, then darted over to the underwear section. A pack of panties went into the cart, followed by a pack of socks. Looking at the overhead signs in the store, she located the shoe department, and set off for the back of the store; on the way she passed through the men’s clothing section, and she grabbed a baseball cap as she went by. When she reached the shoe department, she swiftly selected a pair of white athletic shoes. They would be better for walking than her loafers, which were much the worse for wear.
Okay, now for a bag. Luggage was at the front of the store, sandwiched between the sports department and the pharmacy. Grace gave the selection a quick survey and chose the cheapest of the medium-sized duffel bags offered. On her way to the checkout counters, she also tossed in a toothbrush, toothpaste, and shampoo.
Five minutes after entering the store, she wheeled the cart up to a checkout counter. She didn’t look around to see if anyone was watching. The counter was lined with boxes of chewing gum and candy bars. Her stomach growled, and she stared at the selection. She had to eat something, and she loved chocolate, but somehow the thought of candy was sickening. Nausea twisted her stomach, making her swallow the mini-flood of saliva that threatened to overflow.
Peanuts weren’t sweet. Peanuts were nice and salty. The customer ahead of her finished checking out, and Grace shoved the cart forward. She grabbed a pack of peanuts and tossed it onto the counter, then began unloading her selections.
The bored, sleepy-looking cashier rang up the items, stuffing them in crinkly plastic bags. “One thirty-two seventeen,” she muttered.
Grace gulped. A hundred and thirty-two dollars! She looked at the two plastic bags and the duffel. If she were to be more efficient in hiding, in traveling, she needed every item there. Grimly she dug in her pocket and pulled out the wad of bills, counting out seven twenties. When her change was returned, she took the duffel in one hand and the two plastic bags in the other, and used her body to nudge the cart toward the lines of nested carts waiting for another day’s flood of shoppers.
There was a vending machine in front of the store. Grace got a soft drink from it and dropped it into one of the bags.
Her heart was pounding as she strode back around the lawn and garden section. It was empty now, except for an employee covering plants for the night. When his back was turned she quickly ducked down behind the stacked bags of seed. Releasing the duffel, she swept her free hand over the dark, cold pavement, searching for her trash bag. Her fingers encountered only grit and dampness. Sheer horror immobilized her. Had someone been watching her after all, and stolen the bag as soon as she’d disappeared into the store? She crouched in the shadows, eyes dilated, her breathing hard and fast as she tried to think. If someone had been watching her, he must have been hidden in the woods. Had he gone back there? Could she manage to find him? What would she do, attack anyone she saw carrying a bag? The answer was yes, if she had to. She couldn’t give up now.
But had she come far enough down the fence? Was she in the right location? The store’s bright lights had ruined her night vision, and perhaps she had underestimated how far from the corner she’d left the bag. Carefully setting aside the rustly Kmart bag containing her new clothes, she crawled along the fence, not really daring to hope she had simply miscalculated the distance but making the effort anyway.
Her outstretched hand touched plastic.
Relief poured through her, making her weak. She sank down on the pavement, gathering the reassuring weight into her arms. Everything was still there, the computer, the disks, the papers. She hadn’t lost them, after all.
She shook the weakness away. Hastily she collected the duffel and unzipped it, stuffing both her new clothes and the computer into it. Then she melted into the trees, losing herself in the night before she dared stop to eat the bag of peanuts and drink the soft drink.
After she’d eaten and rested, she stared through the trees at the bright signs that beckoned her. Kmart had closed, but down the street shone the lights of a fast-food joint and a grocery store. The thought of a hamburger made her feel queasy, but a grocery store… she could buy a loaf of bread and a jar of peanut butter, the makings of many meals, the purchases themselve
s so ordinary no one would remember her or what she’d bought.
Do it all tonight, she thought. She had already done so much: spoken, if only to a dog, gone among people again, bought clothes. The customers who frequented grocery stores at night were stranger on average than the day crowd; she’d often heard cashiers talking about the weird things that happened at night. She would be just another of the weirdos, and no one would pay much attention to her. Resolutely Grace lifted the duffel and began walking up the street to the grocery store.
Obviously she couldn’t enter the store carrying the bag, though. She stood across the street and surveyed the situation. The street behind the store was residential, lined with houses and cars. A ten-foot-high chain-link fence ran around three sides of the store. On the left side of the store was a receiving bay and a huge, jumbled stack of empty cardboard boxes, prefab housing for a wino, or for a woman on the run. Even a cardboard shelter felt good during the cold nights.
She thought of the denim jacket in the suitcase, and laughed silently, humorlessly, at herself. She was cold; why hadn’t she put on the jacket? A silly reason came to mind. She was dirty, and the jacket was new. She didn’t want to put it on until she’d had a bath and changed into her new, clean clothes. The teachings of a lifetime were holding sway even though she’d been shivering for three days.
Tomorrow, she told herself. Somehow she would manage a bath, a real bath, and wash her hair. Tomorrow she would put on her new clothes.
For tonight, she just had to buy sandwich makings, and be on her way.
Some odd caution kept her from crossing the street right then; instead she went up to the corner, crossed with the light, then worked her way back. She kept to the back edge of parking lots, worming her way around smelly trash bins, slipping into the shadows of trees whenever she could. Finally she was behind the grocery store, but something about it made her uneasy. Maybe it was the fence, restricting her choice of escape direction, if escape became necessary. She had planned to leave the bag there but changed her mind, instead carrying it toward the front. There weren’t any cars parked in back, which meant the employees all parked in front too, probably along one side of the lot in order to leave the most desirable center-aisle spots for the customers.
Grace lurked at the side of the building, waiting until the lot was momentarily empty of customers either arriving or leaving, before bending down until her head was just below the level of a car hood and darting to the side row of parked cars. Crouched in front of the first car, she put her hand on the hood and found it cold; the vehicle had been there for hours, so she’d guessed right about where the employees would park. She slid the bag beneath the car, between the front tires. The store hadn’t closed at nine so it should be open at least until ten, if not all night, and the employees would stay later than that. She would be back long before the owner of the car.
As an added caution, she didn’t immediately straighten up and walk toward the store. Instead she crab-walked down the line of cars until she reached the last two. Then she moved between them, stood, took a deep breath, and braved the public exposure of a grocery store.
“Got her,” Paglione reported. “I thought I spotted her walking down the street, but then I lost sight and all of a sudden she popped up in a grocery store parking lot. She’s in there now.”
“Give me the directions,” Conrad said calmly. By this time, he and Paglione knew Eau Claire fairly well, having spent more than a day simply driving the streets, studying maps, memorizing the layout of the city. As he listened to Paglione’s voice in his ear, he realized he was less than a minute from the grocery store.
He smiled.
Grace moved swiftly through the brightly lit aisles, focused on two things and two things only: bread and peanut butter. Her appetite was nonexistent, and none of the calculated displays caught her attention. She would buy food because she had to eat, but that was the only reason.
The peanut butter was, as always, on the same aisle with the ketchup and mustard. She grabbed the biggest jar available, then set out for the bakery section, only to be sidetracked by a sudden realization that she needed a knife to spread the peanut butter. A box of plastic utensils sprang to mind; that’s what she would have bought before, but fragile plastic, designed to be disposable, would soon break and she would have to buy more. It would be cheaper simply to buy a real knife. She backtracked to the previous aisle, where she found the kitchen supplies. There was a row of plastic-sealed knives hanging from hooks. She took the first one she came to that wasn’t serrated, because cleaning peanut butter from all the little teeth would be a pain. Her choice was a paring knife with a four-inch blade, and the print on the cardboard backing guaranteed its sharpness. Knife and peanut butter in hand, she hurried to the bakery section and grabbed a giant-size loaf of bread.
Looking at her watch, she saw that she had been in the store for one minute and twenty seconds, a personal record for her, but that was eighty seconds her computer had been left unguarded.
There were two checkout counters open. At one, a bachelor was unloading a couple of microwave dinners, a six-pack of beer, and an economy-size bag of potato chips, standard fare for the unclaimed male. At the other, a bent old gent was carefully counting out his money for a bottle of aspirin. Grace chose the second counter, placing her items on the belt just as the clerk gave the receipt to the old guy, who smiled sweetly.
