Off to the right, two or three small groups of people were hemmed in by more police who had their notebooks out, and a couple of officers were unreeling yellow tape, one end of which was tied to a sign stand, advertising pizza by the slice. Still more were herding people to the back of the Food Court, trying to control a panicky crowd of frightened kids and distraught parents.
Helen looked over the heads of the onlookers and spotted us. She freed one of her hands and gestured in the air with her radio. I put mine to my ear.
“Jenny, do you have something I can cordon off this area with?”
“Send the rabbit over.” My fingers were trembling so hard I couldn't get the transmit button to work. I didn't want to go over there, to get any closer. I tried the button again. “Send Joe over.”
“Who the hell is Joe?” Her voice was strained. “I don't have a Joe.”
“The rabbit, Helen. Send me the fucking rabbit.”
I watched as she dropped Joe's paw, raised herself up on her toes and spoke into the mouth of the costume, pointing towards me. A bubble rose in my throat, but I managed to swallow it back down.
“Joe, don't speak.” I held up a hand as he came near. “Just lose the outfit right here and get over to the storage at the back of the taco place. Bring the screens we use for the Blood Donor Clinic. All of them. Peter, you'd better go and help. They're pretty awkward to carry.”
Joe took off the rabbit head. He was refrigerator white. Poor kid hadn't reckoned on this for his first after-school job.
“But I've just got underwear on.”
“Joe, I don't care if you're starkers. This is an emergency. There's no time to shuffle around in that suit and besides, nobody'll pay any attention. Listen, there's an old sweatsuit of mine hanging behind the door in the storage. Put that on. Now move it.”
They were back in five minutes, five minutes that seemed to take an hour to tick past. I stood and waited, anchored to the spot by the awful keening sound from the back area. It was mixed with kids' voices now, scared and crying, needing the comfort of the familiar.
I looked at my watch and was amazed to see it was just after twelve. Only about half an hour since Dick Simmons had been in my office. Surely to God, this couldn't be his doing. I shook my head. Not over a pair of shoes. It was too absurd.
“Move aside, please,” Peter called. “Move aside.”
He held the front of the screens, with Joe bringing up the rear. They carried them like a battering ram and waded into the crowd around Helen. She started directing her staff to put them up and hide what she was guarding. A man at the edge of the crowd stepped backwards into me, and I dropped the radio. I bent over to pick it up and he bumped me again, sending me to my knees.
Just then, the crowd parted, and I saw the carnage.
In a heartbeat, I was centred in silence. I heard no sound, saw no movement. My brain, bereft of logic or thought, saw death and could register only the horror.
Two bodies were slumped across a table.
They lay, one with its head tucked tightly into the other's neck, almost as if they had fallen asleep in a lovers' embrace. The face turned towards me had a couple of red circles on the cheek and above one eye. It was lying on a paper plate holding the remains of a pizza. A second plate poked out from the shoulders of the other body. It, too, had bits of food spilling onto the table.
An arm from each drooped down towards feet that splayed away from the wooden pedestal of the little table and rested, lifeless, on their sides.
It was a macabre mirror image.
Two large soft drink cups lay beside the feet, straws bent. I could see drops of blood from the edge of the table hitting the side of one cup and slowly, so slowly, falling to the floor. They left little splatter marks like a child's spin painting, and the red matched, exactly, the red in the pattern of the sweater on one of the arms.
Just off to the left, I saw another figure lying on its side on the floor. The legs in blue jeans and feet in sneakers weren't moving either, as if their owner had fallen asleep.
Finally, mercifully, my eyes closed.
“C'mon, Jenny,” Helen said, her voice calm but tight. “Take a few deep breaths. Come on now, get beyond it.”
She knelt beside me, one hand on my shoulder, giving my face sharp little taps with the other.
“In through your nose and out through your mouth,” she coached me, “just keep breathing. That's right. You can do this, Jenny. I need you to do this. Come on now.”
We got me to my feet after a couple of minutes.
“I'll…”
“…be okay,” she finished. Her voice softened a bit. “I know you will, hon. Just keep focussed.”
“Helen, that mans got slices of pepperoni on his face. Can't somebody just take them off? He looks so sad with bits of sausage stuck to his face.”
“It's not pepperoni, Jenny. They're bullet holes. He's dead. They're both dead.”
“But they can't be dead, Helen, there isn't enough blood. Shouldn't there be more blood?”
“Jenny, don't think about that now. You've got a job to do. I need you to concentrate on the kids over there.”
“But who is it, Helen? Who are they? I mean, I know who one of them is. I think I do, anyway.”
I knew I was babbling, but my mouth just wouldn't stop. “I recognized a sweater, Helen. On an arm. It was hanging down, and I recognized it. Please don't say it's Cathy from the wool store. If it's Cathy from the wool store, Helen, I'm not going to like it. Can she be the one who's just wounded, Helen? Please?”
“Hang it up, Jenny, I don't have time for this.” Her tone sharpened. “Here's what I need you to do.”
She turned me to face the far end of the Food Court, where the colouring contest had been going on.
“Take your kid, Joe or whatever, and get some semblance of order going over there,” she said. “The mall's been closed down. The police are controlling all the exits, and the parking lot's barricaded off. Nobody leaves until they give the okay, and that could easily be five or six hours from now, if not longer.”
She gave me a little push.
“If you can get that area organized and settled down a bit, it'll help. Besides,” she gave a little grin, “you got them in here, so I guess they're yours. Look at it as your next project.”
That was dirty pool, and she knew it. Any time I heard somebody say they were bored or fed up, I'd snap back: “You need a project. You can't be bored if you have a project. I'm never bored, because I always have a project.”
She was right, of course. In a bad situation, and this surely was a bad situation, I'm better at doing than talking. I was starting to pace back and forth, nodding my head. It's a habit of mine when I need to regroup and get organized. Helen says I look like an ostrich, but it works for me.
“But Cathy…” I looked at Helen's face and saw it. “It is her, isn't it?”
“Yes, Jenny.”
“But…”
“Not now. I've got work to do, and so have you, so let's get to it. I'm going to be tied up with the police, so keep your radio handy. We'll talk that way. Two of my people have gone to the pumpkin carving area to stop the contest. I told them to tell your other three kids to change and come here on the double to help. Talk to you later.”
And she was gone.
Poor Joe. I'd forgotten about him. Looking around, I spotted him next to