Die Buying (21 page)

“You were on duty,” I observed neutrally.

“Screw that! You were at the scene—you’re all over the damn news reports. I should fire your useless ass.”

It was turning out to be a banner morning: I’d been threatened with arrest and firing, both before seven o’clock. The day could only go up from here.

“I was surprised you didn’t come down to talk with the police,” I said. Actually, I was more surprised that he hadn’t come down to score some face time with the reporters.

“Oh, you were, were you?” He advanced toward me, an ugly look twisting his face. I held my ground. He stopped a yard and a half away and swiped at his nose again. “I have a cold,” he said, “not that I owe you an explanation. Took some NyQuil and it knocked me out.”

Hm. He looked more like he’d been knocking back tequila shots. Or snorting cocaine. The thought popped into my head as he dabbed a tissue under his nose. Could Woskowicz have a drug problem? That might explain some of his erratic moodiness and current symptoms. But just being a bastard could account for his personality, too. Was it even remotely possible that Woskowicz knew Robbie Porter, maybe bought drugs from him? I closed my eyes to try to picture last night’s runner in my head. No, no way it was Woskowicz. He was too damned big. The person I’d chased had been shorter and less bulky. I opened my eyes to see him staring at me suspiciously.

“That’s too bad,” I said. “You’d better go home and rest. Maybe have some chicken soup.”

“Well, if you aren’t Little Florence Nightingale,” he said. “Maybe now that you’ve finally turned up I can get out of here.”

I didn’t remind him that my shift didn’t officially start until seven o’clock, that I had done him a favor by agreeing to show up early. He waited a moment, to see if I’d respond, then stiff-armed the door and tromped away.

Grandpa Atherton’s words about finding another job came back to me. Maybe he was right. Why was I putting up with Woskowicz? I liked my coworkers and the whole Fernglen family, and I liked feeling like I was doing something akin to police work, rather than working as an insurance claims adjuster or a teacher or pet groomer, but I had to admit that this career had its downsides, too, not least of which was the way real cops—Detective Anders Helland came to mind—sneered at us mall cops.

I reviewed the log, such as it was, and saw that Woskowicz had typed up a paragraph about Robbie Porter’s death, making it look like he was actually on the scene, helping the investigators. He must have gotten details from a newscast. What a worm. I noticed that one of Macy’s loss prevention officers had asked for our help with a shoplifter late yesterday afternoon, and the Christian graffiti artists had tagged a school bus, of all things, with the entire text of John 3:16. A parenthetical remark from Joel said the bus was at the mall to deliver a middle school band to play. Fernglen had a small stage, more of a dais, near the fountain, where Santa took requests at Christmas and the Easter Bunny posed for photos in the spring. The rest of the year, Quigley’s office scheduled in a variety of performers to entertain mall patrons.

Joel came in before eight and plunked a bag of baby carrots on his desk. I bit into one, appreciating the crunch. Helping myself to another carrot, I filled Joel in on the night’s events and watched his eyes get rounder.

“And Woskowicz never even showed?”

“He said he had a cold and his meds knocked him out,” I said neutrally.

Joel blew a raspberry. “It’s good to be king,” he said. “If one of us fell asleep on duty, he’d fire our butts faster than a speeding locomotive.”

“As well he should,” I said. “Look, my knee aches, so I’m going to do dispatch today and keep an eye on the cameras. You take a turn at the patrols.” Low man on the totem pole usually got stuck with the boredom of dispatch duty, so Joel’s face brightened.

“Wilco,” he said, standing and tucking his uniform shirt more securely into his slacks. “Who else is working today?”

I checked the schedule. “Tracy and Harold come in at nine thirty. It’s just you and me until then.” Our staggered schedule ensured an overlap of officers on duty during the peak hours when the mall was open.

“I’d better get to it, then,” Joel said, self-importantly.

“Yeah, keep an eye out for the python.”

Joel bustled out, and I scanned the screens for fifteen minutes, not seeing anything of interest except a news van parked outside the garage. An idea hit me and I took advantage of my solitude to slip back to Captain Woskowicz’s office. The desk was bare of papers, but I took that as a sign of work avoidance rather than efficiency. His computer was off. Glancing over my shoulder to ensure I was still alone, I zeroed in on my target: Woskowicz’s metal trash can. Brimming with used tissues, it looked like a certain source of plague or worse. Unwilling to fish through it with my bare hands, I found a ruler in Woskowicz’s desk drawer and used it to sift through the can. Sure enough, halfway down, I came upon two empty NyQuil bottles. Not proof that Woskowicz had told the truth, but enough to allay my worst suspicions.

Returning to the front, I turned on the small television mounted high on the wall that kept us abreast of news. A perky reporter was relaying the details of Robbie Porter’s death, ending with, “Unless you have a fancy to die buying, you might want to avoid Fernglen Galleria where this is the second death in a week. Rumor has it that a giant python is also at large in the mall. I’m—”

I muted the television with an internal groan, hoping Curtis Quigley hadn’t been watching.

No such luck. Quigley burst through the door on the thought, radiating outrage. Today’s paisley bow tie quivered with the force of his emotion. He pointed a stiff finger at the television. “Did you see that? Did you hear what she said?”

“No one will pay any attention to that,” I said soothingly. “They—”

“Nothing of this sort has ever happened to me before,” he said, pacing. “Two deaths in one week! A homicide and a drug overdose! Three deaths if you count Officer Wembley—”

“Wedzel.”

“—who at least had the common decency not to die at Fernglen. I will not countenance all this dying in my mall. Only once before has someone died on one of my properties and that was a man who suffered a heart attack while his wife tried on St. John suits.”

And who could blame him? The price tags on the designer knitwear would give anyone a coronary.

“You need to fix this, EJ,” he said. “The chairman of the board of Figley and Boon Investments”—the conglomerate that owned Fernglen—“has been on the phone with me already this morning, wanting to know what I’m doing about all this. Please contact the investigators in charge of the case and tell them I want an update. And tell Captain Woskowicz—” He broke off and looked around. “Where is Captain Woskowicz?”

“He worked the night shift,” I said, “and went home sick this morning.”

“Well, tell him that I want to see a plan to prevent further incidents of this kind. On my desk first thing Monday morning.” And with an emphatic nod of his sharp chin, he returned across the hall to his office.

I jotted a note for Woskowicz—“Submit plan to prevent mall murders”—then crumpled it to write something less facetious. As I turned back to the security log on the computer screen, intent on compiling some statistics for our weekly report, weariness caught up with me. Using the sink in our small unisex restroom, I poured out the sludge Woskowicz had left in the bottom of the coffee carafe and brewed another pot. Maybe caffeine would kick-start me. Steaming mug in hand, I kept an eye on the cameras for a while and then briefed Tracy and Harold when they showed up for their shift. The mall opened soon after that, and I stayed busy answering calls about Agatha spottings, a lost toddler, a soda spill in the Dillard’s corridor, and a fire in the wastebasket in the movie theater men’s room.

I filled in the time between calls by researching “animal+ rights+activists+violence” via Google, and Jackson Porter’s development projects. The first search generated a results list that would take a full-time staff of twenty people a week to sort through. Near as I could tell, roughly every fifth citizen in the United States was willing to burn a puppy mill to the ground (after removing the dogs, of course), shoot scientists who used lab animals for experiments, or booby-trap construction sites to discourage development. Such acts were officially called “animal enterprise terrorism,” a new one for me. On a whim, I printed out photos of people identified as belonging to some of the more radical groups, thinking I’d run them by Kiefer and Monica on the one-in-a-billion chance they might recognize one of them.

The Jackson Porter list was more manageable, although still lengthy. He had a lot going on, especially considering the current state of the economy. I clicked through some of the articles, stopping when a familiar face startled me. Under the headline “Protestor Arrested for Assaulting Developer” was a three-year-old photograph of a very angry-looking Dyson Harding, Kyra’s college friend, beaning Jackson Porter over the head with a placard. I skimmed the article and then stared at the black-and-white photo for a long moment, trying to figure out if it was just coincidence that Dyson Harding had led a protest against one of Porter’s projects three years back and was now at it again, or if he had a vendetta against the man.

Only one way to find out. I called Kyra and asked if she could set up a meeting with her old buddy. “Today would be good,” I told her.

She called back minutes later. “He’ll meet you at noon,” she said. “At the museum on campus. He’s only got an hour between classes, so don’t be late. Want me to come with you?”

“Thanks,” I said, “but I think I can handle it on my own. What’s he going to do if I piss him off? Chuck a pot shard at me?”

She laughed, but said, “Be careful. Dy’s got a temper.”

Two hours later,
with Joel back in the office as dispatcher, I took my lunch hour and drove to the Vernonville Colonial College campus on the western edge of Vernonville. A pond complete with ducks and fountain for aeration fronted the combined student center and administration building, a newish edifice built to look old with red brick salvaged from the destruction of a nineteenth-century warehouse. I knew this because of the handy college brochure I picked up just inside the sliding glass doors that gave way to a maze of halls and offices. I stopped a passing student and asked for directions to the archaeology museum.

“I’m a math major,” he said, staring at me as if I’d asked for a lemonade recipe.

“Right,” I said, as if his non sequitur made sense.

A girl’s voice piped up from behind me and I turned. “It’s out the door to your right, down that walkway, and behind the building that looks like a pyramid.”

“Great, thanks,” I said, smiling at her. She smiled in return and continued on, weighed down by a backpack that looked like it held enough supplies to climb K2.

I followed her directions, wishing I’d worn a heavier jacket, and found myself in front of a small, square building with smoked glass windows and metal letters over the door spelling out “Richard D. Ruxton Museum of Archaeology.” I figured old Dick Ruxton was a big-time donor. A muddy green SUV was the only vehicle in the small lot that fronted the museum. Pushing through the glass door, I found myself in a dimly lit space with a linoleum floor. Glass display cases lined the walls, and what looked like an Indian encampment of some kind, complete with teepee and canoe, sprouted from a display in the center of the room. Dr. Dyson Harding, half-eaten sandwich in hand, gestured to me from the far side of the room. He had on the same jacket he’d worn at the mall, and bread crumbs dotted his soul patch. He looked professorial and soft, not like a radical primed to take violent action to protest overdevelopment.

“I thought you might like the chance to see our museum while we talked,” he said, swallowing. “Kyra said you’re interested in archaeology.”

Only when it provided a motive for murder. “I haven’t been into it very long,” I hedged. “I got interested when I was in Afghanistan. Some of the sites there are fascinating.” Not that I’d been to any of them. We were strictly confined to base when not on patrol.

His eyes lit up. “What a fabulous opportunity. My area of specialty is early paleo-Indian settlements in Virginia, but I wouldn’t turn down the opportunity to visit the BMAC.” He chuckled.

At my blank look, he said, “The Oxus Civilization?”

I nodded in an “oh, yeah” kind of way, as if that had clarified anything.

“Right. So, Kyra said you were interested in helping with my petition drive?” His brown eyes, magnified by the glasses, studied me.

Damn Kyra. “I was hoping to find out more about it. What exactly are you protesting?”

His face darkened. “The destruction of hugely important archaeological sites by profit-driven developers.”

“Specifically . . . ?”

“On that site by the mall, where Jackson Porter Developments wants to put up a golf resort—as if there weren’t enough water-hogging golf courses in the county already—there’s evidence of a pre-Clovis settlement. I’ve found unfluted bifacial tools on that site!”