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  “Damn,” Grandpa said, shooting me a sheepish look from bright blue eyes.

  “What exactly are you doing?”

  “A little job for a friend at State. Can’t tell you more, Emma-Joy—it’s classified. But that man”—he nodded to the man levering his bulk into the backseat of a waiting Mercedes—“is a Moldovan diplomat.” Without another word, he jogged toward a tan Toyota I’d never seen before, folded himself into it, and pulled out after the Mercedes, giving me a beep from the horn and a mischievous grin as he passed.

  I made no attempt to stop him and was merely grateful that whatever trouble he might get into with his Moldovan diplomat wouldn’t involve my mall.

  The rest of my shift passed uneventfully, although I kept an eye on three teens sporting gang colors of red, green, and white. Two youths of eighteen or so squabbled as they strolled, while a tough-looking girl of fifteen or sixteen walked between them, carrying a stuffed animal. When I first signed on at Fernglen, gangs weren’t an issue at our suburban mall. In the past two months, though, we’d seen more gang activity both at the mall and in the town proper. The Vernonville Police Department had gone so far as to set up a gang task force, and they had invited security personnel from nearby businesses to partake in a two-hour seminar. Captain Woskowicz had stuck me with attending, and I learned a lot about gang names, colors, symbols, and rituals, but not a whole lot about how to keep them from meeting up at Fernglen. So far there hadn’t been any big trouble, but our maintenance crews were busier than they used to be scraping gang-related graffiti off the bathroom stalls and repainting. I sometimes thought that if I could invent a surface too slick to write or paint on and too hard to carve into, I’d be the richest woman in America overnight.

  I swam at the YMCA when I got off shift at three o’clock, gradually relaxing as I did laps—mostly freestyle and butterfly—in the deserted pool. Still self-conscious about the way my knee and leg looked since the IED tore into me, I preferred to swim when there was no one around, and the middle of the afternoon was perfect. After showering, I beat rush-hour traffic returning to my one-story, brick-front home with forest green trim in a community that featured a pool, lush landscaping, and reasonable HOA fees. I tipped my head up to let the sunshine play on my face as I walked up the stepping-stone path from my parking spot to my front door. A glimpse of rusty red gave me warning, and I didn’t even jump as a blur of fur leaped out of the shrubbery and attacked my shoelaces. I bent to scoop Fubar into my arms before he could wreak havoc with his claws. Untying shoelaces was one of his favorite games—not one the neighbors thought highly of.

  “Stop that,” I said, giving him an affectionate shake as he lay cradled in my arms, face turned toward me so his mangled and mostly missing left ear was evident. The ear and his truncated tail, products of abuse or a run-in with a car or coyote, had prompted me to name him Fubar—the military acronym for “fouled up beyond all recognition”—when I found him slinking around my house shortly after I bought it. Having just been released from the hospital after several surgeries and many hours of physical therapy, I guess I’d felt a kinship with the beat-up cat. He wiggled to get down—cuddling was beneath his dignity—and zipped into the house when I unlocked the door.

  The house had served time as a rental before I bought it, and I was hiring handymen to tackle repairs as my budget allowed. I hadn’t yet hired anyone to sand the hardwood boards in the small foyer, which looked like someone had practiced Irish step dancing on them, in golf shoes. I’d hidden the worst of it with a pseudo-Oriental rug in blue and white that echoed the colors in the attached living room. Making my way to the kitchen, I found Fubar standing proudly over the remains of a sparrow inside the cat flap cut into the back door. Stifling my distaste, I praised him for his hunting ability, picked the bird up in a paper towel, and deposited it in the outside trash bin.

  “I guess this means you won’t be wanting dinner.” I realized with dismay that I sounded like a mother chastising a kid for snacking too close to dinnertime. Fubar gave me an inscrutable look and wedged himself back through his cat door. “Don’t forget your curfew,” I called after him.

  I experimented with a new ancho chili rub for my pork tenderloin, teased Fubar with his feather toy when he reappeared, chatted via phone with my mom (vacationing with my dad in Cannes), and played my guitar for a while before bed. All in all, a routine evening that gave no hint that a dead body lay in my immediate future.

  Two

  I’m glad I’m not homeless.

  That may sound as obvious as “I’m glad I don’t have herpes” or “I’m glad I’m not married to Charlie Sheen,” but I thought it every time I encountered a homeless person, some of whom, I knew, were vets like me.

  We got our fair share of homeless people hanging around the mall, grateful for the warmth of the corridors on cold days and for the air-conditioning in the broiling summer months. As long as they weren’t drunk or high, I left them alone, unable to imagine how singularly awful it must be to have no home to retreat to, no place of safety.

  When I pulled into the Fernglen lot a bit before seven Wednesday morning, I spotted a homeless person curled up against the wall, apparently asleep. Parking outside the upper level of Macy’s, I slung my gym bag over my shoulder and headed for the mall entrance. The parking lot was deserted at this hour except for a few cars parked along the outer fringe of the lot; they belonged to carpoolers who met up here and made the long trek into D.C. together. The chill bit through my white cotton shirt, and the scent of the air promised rain later.

  Hustling toward the door, I pulled out one of the fast-food gift cards I kept in my purse, planning to offer it to the man slumped on the ground with his back against the rough stone of the mall’s façade. He didn’t stir when I called out, “Good morning.” Drawing nearer, I realized that he was younger than I’d thought, and seemed too clean to be homeless. Oh no. Something about the quality of his stillness jolted me to a halt five feet away. His chest didn’t rise and fall under the thin tee shirt he wore, and no muscles twitched. Only a few silky black hairs trembled, fanned by the fitful breeze. Knowing what I would find, I knelt and touched his cheek lightly, ready to spring back if he awakened. His skin was ice cold. He’d been dead for hours.

  I drew in a breath and held it deep in my lungs for several seconds before releasing it slowly. Damn. Standing, I backed off a few steps, using my cell phone to call 911 and then the security office to let Edgar Ambrose, the officer on duty last night, know I was going to be late. “There’s a dead body outside the east entrance,” I told him.

  “Bad,” Edgar said in his laconic way.

  “Agreed.”

  “Junkie?”

  “Maybe.” I didn’t see any blood or other sign of trauma, but the young man lay on his side, crumpled over, so most of his front and the left side of his head were hidden. I knew better than to disturb the body before the police arrived. His right arm was stretched out, his hand resting on the sidewalk. A tattoo of a cross lying horizontal was inked onto the webbing between his thumb and forefinger, and I wondered if it was a gang symbol.

  “I guess you didn’t see anything?” I asked Edgar. The night-shift officer was conscientious and fearless, roughly the size, bulk, and color of a walrus, and I knew he wouldn’t have hesitated to investigate if he saw something funky going down. In fact, he would have welcomed the break in routine.

  “Cameras are still out.”

  Damn. I was standing outside the wing with the malfunctioning cameras. If the guy had shot up out here, Edgar wouldn’t have seen it. “Gotta go,” I told him as two Vernonville Police Department squad cars and an unmarked pulled up, lights flashing.

  Uniformed cops emerged from the squad car, and a tall blond man got out of the unmarked car. My heartbeat quickened—what was that all about?—as Detective Sergeant Anders Helland strode toward me. He moved with the grace of an athlete, and I could picture him clad in ski gear, poised at the top of a black diamond run. Maybe it was hi
s Nordic-blond hair and name that brought downhill skiing to mind. His handsome face was as expressionless as always, his eyes more gray than blue today as they swept the scene, cataloging every little detail.

  “Officer Ferris,” he greeted me. “Do you realize I haven’t even had a cup of coffee yet this morning?”

  “Poor planning,” I said.

  A muscle at the corner of his mouth twitched. “Wait here.” He knelt beside the body, examining it without touching it, then straightened to issue orders to the six uniformed officers now present. When a sixtyish woman got out of a vehicle marked “Coroner,” Helland hooked up with her and they returned to the body together, chatting in low voices as a crime-scene photographer took photos. When the photographer cleared out and the coroner squatted beside the dead man, I inched closer to overhear their conversation, hoping they’d say something about cause of death.

  As it turned out, I didn’t need to eavesdrop; as soon as the coroner shifted the body onto its back, the bullet hole in the blood-drenched tee shirt became visible. I realized two things almost simultaneously: the victim hadn’t been shot on this spot, and I’d seen him before.

  Detective Helland rejoined me fifteen minutes later, blowing on his cupped hands to warm them.

  “Let’s talk inside,” he said, taking me by the elbow and steering me into the mall. Welcome warmth flowed over us as he held the door for me. “Tell me about finding him,” Helland directed as soon as we seated ourselves on one of two benches halfway up the hall. Luxuriant ferns and hostas flourished in huge cement urns at either end of the back-to-back benches, one frond tickling the back of my neck. The faint scent of orange drifted from the dirt, and I figured someone had emptied a beverage cup into the planter, not an unusual occurrence.

  My hands were frozen, so I tucked them between my thighs as I gave Helland the few details I had related to discovering the body.

  “We’ll need the images from your cameras—”

  I was shaking my head before he completed the thought. “They’re not working.” I explained about the outage in this wing.

  “Damn.”

  “Any ID on him?”

  Helland hesitated a second, looking down his nose at me, then said, “None. No wallet or watch. It might’ve been a robbery gone bad.”

  “He was in here yesterday with two other kids.” I described them as Helland took notes. “Maybe it’s a gang thing.”

  “Possible,” Helland said. He wasn’t much for sharing information.

  “Although,” I continued, “I can’t see why gangbangers would’ve moved the body.”

  “How did you know the body was moved?” Annoyance flickered in the detective’s eyes.

  I sighed. “I was a cop, remember?” I’d been an air force cop, first enlisted and then an officer, before the IED forced my retirement. “I know what it means that there was no pool of blood on the sidewalk, even though his shirt was soaked. He was shot elsewhere and then moved.”

  Helland stood. “Well, you’re not a cop now,” he reminded me brutally, “so don’t go sticking your nose into this investigation. Other than the fact the body was left on mall property, it probably has nothing to do with Fernglen, so you can continue busting shoplifters and leave the homicide detecting to my team.”

  Anger lanced through me, and I stood as well, hating that I had to look up at him; he had at least nine inches on my five foot six. “Anything else?” I asked icily.

  “I’ll let you know.” Without a good-bye or a thank-you, he strode toward the door through which I could see TV vans gathered in the parking lot. Realizing I was almost an hour late for my shift, I hurried toward the security office, saying quick “hellos” to mall walkers I passed on the way.

  “Sorry, Edgar,” I said, pushing through the glass doors.

  Big, black, and bald, Edgar looked like an aging boxer or bouncer or cop with enough hard muscle under a layer of fat to telegraph “Don’t mess with me,” despite being in his fifties. “No sweat, EJ.” He rolled up the graphic novel he’d been reading and picked up his old-fashioned aluminum lunch pail.

  I checked the logbook we used for passing information from one shift to the next, but found no entries. “Anything happen last night?”

  “Besides the murder?” He grinned, showing a gold-plated incisor. “Nah.”

  “Did you call Captain Woskowicz?” The boss would be seriously pissed off if he learned about a murder at “his” mall on the morning news.

  “Didn’t want to wake him.” With a wink, Edgar slid out the door, and I picked up the phone to call Woskowicz.

  His reaction was predictable: profane and loud. I cut him off by saying, “I believe the media are still outside. If you hurry, you might get here in time to comment.” He rang off without another word, as I suspected he might. For reasons I couldn’t fathom, Woskowicz craved publicity and never missed an opportunity to schmooze with reporters.

  I was entering my discovery of the body into the log, when the door swung open and Curtis Quigley—director of mall operations, the big kahuna in charge of renting the retail space, resolving tenants’ gripes, luring customers into Fernglen, and ensuring the mall turned a profit for its investors—came in. He hurried toward me with the prissy walk that Joel could imitate to great comic effect. In his early fifties, I guessed, Quigley favored European-style suits tailored to hug his tall, narrow frame and regimental ties. Sandy blond hair was slicked back from his forehead and tucked behind his ears, brushing his collar. He always wore starched dress shirts with French cuffs and had a set of cuff links for every day of the week. Today’s were jade.

  “There are cops outside the east entrance, EJ,” Quigley said, his expression that of a man waiting for a blow. He spoke with a quasi-British accent, which, rumor had it, he’d adopted during a college semester abroad in England.

  “Yes, sir. I found a dead body outside the east entrance when I came in.”

  “Damn,” he said faintly, closing his eyes. He opened them again. “Someone who works here?”

  “Not as far as I know,” I said.

  “Natural causes, I hope?”

  I shook my head. “He was shot.”

  “So sordid,” Quigley muttered. He licked a forefinger and slicked it across one eyebrow. “Please let the police know I’d appreciate it if they finished up before opening. It looks bad for the customers, you know, having coppers lurking everywhere. Gives the wrong impression.”

  “I’ll keep you posted, sir,” I promised, not bothering to tell him that the police would leave when they’d finished with the crime scene and not a moment before. I also kept silent about my belief that the dead young man was a gang member; I didn’t need Quigley obsessing about the possibility of a gang war played out at Fernglen.

  Joel and two other officers came in as Quigley left. We staggered our shift starting times so the bulk of our officers were on duty between ten a.m. and six p.m., when we had the most customers in the mall. After greeting them, I left to patrol on the Segway, my knee aching from standing around in the cold earlier. Cruising the mall corridors as shoppers began to trickle in, I kept an eye out for the teens who had been with the murder victim yesterday. I couldn’t help thinking how satisfying it would feel to present Detective “Stay Out of My Case” Helland with two potential witnesses. But nada.

  As I glided past the food court, Jay Callahan, proprietor of the Legendary Lola Cookies, flagged me down. “EJ! Come tell me about the body you found.”

  I shushed him with a finger to my lips as a shopper turned to stare at us. “Don’t broadcast it to the world,” I said, dismounting near his counter. “Quigley thinks it’s bad for business.”

  “Of course he does.”

  “How’d you hear?”

  “It’s on the news,” he said, gesturing to the kitchen from which issued faint TV or radio voices. Jay leaned his forearms on the glass countertop, a sprinkling of dark red hairs standing out against his pale skin. With matching wavy hair on his head and hazel eyes, he
looked like he belonged in a pub in Dublin instead of a mall in suburban Virginia. And the muscled chest and shoulders underneath his orange “Legendary Lola Cookies” tee shirt, not to mention the way his eyes seemed to take in everything, suggested he had once pursued a more active career than cookie baker. Federal agent? Soldier? International jewel thief? Investigative reporter? I’d several times found him lurking in the garage after hours, waiting around for something or someone, and he’d helped me capture a murderer waving a gun awhile back. In short, Jay Callahan was something of an enigma.

  “What do your sources tell you?” I asked, accepting the chocolate chip cookie he held out.

  He widened his eyes innocently. “Sources? I’m just a dude trying to sell cookies. I don’t have sources, other than the television.”

  I snorted my disbelief and told him what little I knew about the dead young man.

  “A gangbanger, huh?” He looked thoughtful. “Interesting. I hadn’t heard anything about a gang war. Maybe it’s some new gang initiation rite?”

  “Could be, I suppose.” My stomach lurched at the idea of gangs making new members kill someone to prove themselves. Leaving the bodies on public doorsteps reminded me too much of what Fubar did with his victims when he wanted to get noticed.

  “It’d be interesting to know what kind of weapon was used,” Jay mused.

  I shot him a look as I paid for the cookie. “Yeah, that’s what every John Q. Public is wondering,” I said. “Just a cookie dude, my eye.” On that skeptical note, I mounted the Segway and zipped away, not giving him time for rebuttal.

  Three

  No mass murderers or terrorists roamed Fernglen’s halls, I assured merchants throughout the morning.

  I helped a woman find her car keys, called maintenance for a malfunctioning toilet in the men’s room, and chatted with shopkeepers, all of whom wanted the skinny on the dead body. Word of the murder had zipped around the mall faster than news of a swine flu pandemic. I kept my conversations on the matter brief and factual, trying to tamp down people’s curiosity and fears. No, I didn’t think it was the work of a serial killer, I told one nervous store manager. Yes, I was sure the police would catch the shooter soon, I told another. By the time I could take a break, I was heartily sick of the whole topic.