Simmons put the radio back down. “We need to get over to the mall right now.” She looked around for the officer in charge of the crime scene.
“
What’s going on?”
“
I don’t know. Some kind of riot, or a fire. It sounds big.”
13
Stolen car.
That’s what he was in. A car he just jacked from the woman back at the mall. Mitchell’s life had just turned into one of those downward spirals he’d seen on the news. Next was the chase, then the helicopters and then it ended with him making a pathetic attempt to run away as people watched from a news helicopter. He’d make it 10 feet and then he’d be tackled to the ground.
Worse for him was the possibility of what would happen next. He wouldn’t just be tased and kicked; he’d be torn apart.
He wanted to turn himself in, but he was afraid of what would happen next.
He cautiously turned on to the main road by the mall and kept driving. He tried to keep pace with traffic and not stand out. Subconsciously he sank down in the seat. As if people seeing a car with an invisible driver wouldn’t notice.
At the moment, he just had to keep his focus on not getting stopped. Doing that meant avoiding anything that looked suspicious.
“
Fuck,” he said as he drove through a red light.
He needed to pay attention to what he was doing, he scolded himself. Sirens were coming at him from the opposite direction.
Already?
Prior experience told him to pull over to the side of the road. Fear told him not to.
He kept driving and the squad cars blew past him. They were heading to the mall. Of course they were. People were dropping off the roof back there in one horrific trail of carnage from the food court to where he’d stolen the car.
Stolen car.
He had no idea where he was going. He had no idea what to do. This wasn’t the kind of thing he thought about. He was just a third-rate radio host on a second-rate radio station.
The radio station. The fax machine. All those police reports he’d read when they came in when he was working. He had to have learned something! Mitchell searched his mind. How do people get caught?
They get caught when they do something stupid like drive through a red light. OK, don’t do that again. They get caught when they run. OK, don’t attract attention. They get caught because they look like criminals. What did all of the men in the bulletins look like? They were either black, Hispanic or white guys who had neck tattoos and didn’t look like they finished high school. They almost always dressed like thugs or homeless people.
Mitchell looked down at his ripped shirt. The collar had been pulled loose and there were tears in it. Specks of blood dotted his chest. It had criminal written all over it. He had to resist the impulse to take it off right there in the car. He looked over at the passenger side seat and saw his backpack. He still had it. There was another shirt in there. He could put that on when he had a chance.
Where was he going?
A fire engine raced past Mitchell, snapping his attention back to the road. He realized that his best chance of getting far away was right now. But to where? He only had thirty bucks on him.
Hell, how would he even spend money if every cashier wanted to kill him?
He saw an ATM in the middle of an empty parking lot. Should he go empty out his account? It had to be then or never. If he used it farther away from the crime scene, they’d know what direction he was going.
Direction.
Mitchell realized that if he wanted to go north and get as far away as he could he was going the wrong way. He needed to go back where he came from and past the mall.
The mall.
Was that stupid?
He realized it didn’t matter. He didn’t want to go toward Miami, where it was more populated and he had less familiarity. If he was chased down there, there was nowhere else to go unless he felt like swimming to Cuba.
Mitchell got into a turn lane and took the car back in the other direction. He spotted the ATM and pulled into the parking lot. He couldn’t help the fact that the camera on the ATM would see him, but if he parked in back of it, he could avoid the car getting seen. For whatever that was worth.
He looked around the parking lot to make sure it was empty. Pulling up at an ATM in a stolen car was bad enough. He didn’t want to have to deal with the fear of someone getting between him and the car and trying to murder him.
He put the car in park but left the keys in it. He walked briskly around to the ATM, looking over his shoulder every few seconds. His hand trembled when it tried to pull out his wallet. He took a deep breath and put in the card.
His mind went blank for a moment as he tried to remember his pin code. He closed his eyes and took another deep breath. It came to him. He keyed it into the touch pad and withdrew the $500 maximum. There was still another $300 in his checking account. He had no idea what he’d use it for or how, but it would have been better to have it.
More sirens were coming toward him. Out of the corner of his eye he saw three ambulances in a row heading to the mall.
Oh man
, he thought,
that’s a lot of emergency personnel.
All because of him.
Mitchell heard brakes squeal. A bus was coming to a stop at a bus stop in front of the parking lot twenty feet away from him. There was no point in waiting to see if anybody got off. By then it would be too late.
Mitchell hurried back to the car. He shut the door and belted himself in.
The card!
He’d left it back in the machine.
Christ
, he was not good at this, he reminded himself.
He saw three young black men get off the bus with backpacks. He felt guilty for thinking they were just going to steal the card. More guilt. Then he realized that wouldn’t be a bad thing. If someone stole it and used it, it’d put the card far away from him.
Damn
, if he’d thought of that earlier, he could have written his pin number on the card.
Maybe they’ll take it, maybe not. The card was gone for him now. Now he needed to get as far away as he could and think of his next step. He also had to figure out how to get away from the car sooner than later. It didn’t look expensive enough to have tracking in it, but it was a hot car and the license plate could be traced. He either had to ditch it or change the license plate for another one. He didn’t know which was the smarter idea.
Mitchell waited for the bus to leave and then entered the road from the parking lot and headed back toward the mall. Once he was past it, he would take some side streets and just keep going north until something came to him.
As he neared the intersection by the south end of the mall, another row of ambulances drove past. He could see squad cars and unmarked sedans with magnetic blue lights on their roofs pulling in, as well. That made him even more anxious for some reason. Maybe it was the thought that those cars contained detectives and not just beat cops.
He tried not to look, but all the other cars had slowed down as they passed the mall. It was hard to ignore the flashing lights from the fire trucks, ambulances and police. He allowed himself one glance, although he was afraid he was going to get sick from the anxiety.
Two of the fire trucks had their ladders against the roof as firemen carried people down one by one. Mitchell tried not to count, plus it was hard to see from where he was, but it looked like a hundred people were up there. He didn’t want to think how many fell or were trampled.
Pangs of guilt seared into him like hot pokers. He knew he had to do something. Even though he felt like a victim in all of this, he hated being the fugitive. He had to do one more thing before he flat-out left.
Mitchell pulled his iPhone from his pocket and dialed 911.
“
911 emergency services. How can we assist you?”
“
People are trying to kill me.”
“
Slow down, sir. Who is trying to kill you?”
“
The girl. My girlfriend. Fuck, the people at the mall. Everyone.”
“
I see.”
“
Are you in a safe place now?”
“
Are you fucking kidding me? What is safe about everyone trying to kill you?” Mitchell knew the flood of emotion was making him sound like he was insane.
“
Do you need the police?”
“
So they can fucking shoot me?”
“
Calm down, sir. I want to help you. It says here you’re calling from a cell phone. What’s you exact location? Are you near the mall?”
Mitchell’s heart skipped a beat.
They can trace those things. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.
“
Sir, are you near the mall now? If you’re hurt, one of the paramedics there can help you. Just find a place to sit down.”
Oh man
, they thought he was one of the people. One of the victims back at the mall. “Thank you.” He thought for a moment. “I know this won’t make much sense, but when you watch what happened, really watch. You’ll understand that they attacked me.”
“
Yes, sir. We need to keep this line available for emergency calls. If you need assistance, just ask for one of the paramedics or talk to a police officer. We have more coming.” She paused. “Lots more.”
Mitchell hung up and then powered off his phone so they couldn’t track it. Maybe he had more time. They still didn’t know what happened at the mall. He practically tried to confess and she didn’t understand.
A car honked behind him. Mitchell jumped. He’d been standing still for so long he was holding up traffic. He sped up and moved away from the mall as fast as he could without causing an accident or getting stopped by the police.
In his stolen car.
14
When Rios pulled into the mall parking lot, the first thing that came to his mind was a circus. The fire trucks and police cars with flashing lights were all laid out in a ring around the mall. On the inside, he could spot ladders where firemen were helping people off the roof.
He looked for smoke. He couldn’t see any. A riot? At that mall? Was it some kind of Justin Bieber autograph thing that went out of control? He looked at all of the people standing on the roof waiting to be helped down. Why would people be up there from a riot? Unless there was a fire, it didn’t make any sense to him. Between two fire engines, past a row of cars, he could see a sheet on top of a body. It looked like it fell from the roof.
Fell? Jumped? Pushed?
He put his radio on an open channel. He heard first responder teams go back and forth with clipped chatter.
“
Found twelve more in the upper corridor.”
“
Have three in the food court.”
“
Six in the stairwell.”
“
Three on escalator one.”
What were the numbers?
Injured? Dead? Alive?
He spotted Simmons’s SUV and parked next to it. She was already jogging toward the mall. She had her first aid kit under her arm.
Rios grabbed his and chased after her.
He caught up with her as she passed the first row of fire engines.
“
What the fuck?” he asked.
“
I have no idea. I thought we were here to get statements, but,” she gestured to a row of forty people sitting on the sidewalk. They looked banged up but not as bad as the people in the stretchers they saw scattered around near different ambulances.
A van came to a stop in front of them. A dozen doctors and nurses came piling out with first aid kits of their own. A female doctor pointed to the line of people, and half the group went toward there to help them. She led the rest into the mall through the front of the department store.
Rios looked over at Simmons. “It’s like one of those terrorism drills we used to have.”
“
I know. But these people aren’t actors and community college volunteers paid to wear red-colored Karo syrup for a few hours.”
They found another detective who’d been called on to the scene early on. He was talking to a mall cop on a stretcher. The left half of his face was covered in bandages and his right arm was wrapped up.
Simmons called out to him, “Brooks!”
Brooks walked over to them. Tall and thin, just over fifty, he looked seventy that day. His thinning red hair was in total disarray. His white shirt and tie were covered in blood.
“
Where can we help?” asked Simmons.
Brooks rubbed a hand on his forehead. “The paramedics will pull us in if they need to patch someone up. Right now the firefighters are pulling through the bodies and trying to find who needs what kind of attention.”
“
What happened out here?” asked Rios.