Chapter 5
Andy trudged up the sloping drive from one deserted parking lot to the next. The yellow-pink glare of the sodium lights threw odd, harsh shadows that made features stand out strongly while leaving ominous pools of shadow in the planters and other sheltered areas. Without meaning to, Andy found himself staying to the center and keeping his right hand near his gun.
LaVonne was right; this place was spooky at night. Objectively, he knew he was a lot safer here than he’d been in his cruiser on patrol, but the emptiness and shadows still made him jumpy.
First-night jitters. He wasn’t supposed to be working nights after just three days on the job, but Henderson had called in sick and Dunlap had asked him to take the outside tonight. Morales was the inside man, and a guy named Tuchetti, whom he’d never met, was on the board in the security office.
He’d parked the golf cart because he felt like walking. Now, after half his shift, he was beginning to think longingly about zipping up the drives in electric-powered comfort. Well, he needed the exercise. He’d been getting soft since he left the force and he was puffing slightly by the time he reached the top-level parking lot.
There was a sound from one of the dumpsters.
Andy spun and grabbed his flashlight. The noise came again, as if there was someone in the dumpster. Moving on the balls of his feet, fatigue forgotten, Andy eased over to the building side of the lot. “Central, this is Unit Two. I think I’ve got something in a dumpster on north side of Level Two.”
“Unit Two, this is Central,” Tuchetti’s voice came back. “Do you want me to call the police?”
“Ah, negative, Central. Just keep the cameras on me and let me see what it is first.”
“Ten-four, Unit Two. I have you on the monitors now.”
Andy put the radio away, unsnapped his holster strap and slowly and deliberately worked along the wall toward the dumpster. It wasn’t a good tactical situation. The trash container was steel and it sat in an alcove in the concrete block wall. The Glaser ammunition in his revolver wouldn’t penetrate a thick sheet of glass, never mind steel or concrete. If whoever was in there fired on him it would be virtually impossible to return fire effectively.
Quit worrying, he told himself. This isn’t Southside. Whoever was in there probably wasn’t armed with anything more than a knife and almost certainly didn’t want to shoot it out. Most likely a transient sleeping, or a couple of kids screwing. But still his stomach tightened and his mouth tasted metallic. Maybe I should have called for backup.
He flattened himself against the wall and peeked around into the alcove. Nothing. He listened. Only the near-inaudible hiss of distant traffic and the sound of a far-off jet. He peeked again. Still nothing.
There wasn’t space between the dumpster and the alcove walls, so whoever it was had to be in the dumpster itself.
Andy drew his gun and hefted his flashlight in his left hand. Still no sound from inside. He took a long, deep breath. Okay, hit it!
In a single fluid motion, Andy spun around the wall and jumped on the dumpster step. As soon as he hit the step, there was a frantic scrabbling from inside the dumpster. Before he could get his flashlight on it, a ball of black fur shot out of the dumpster on the other side and bounded across the parking lot.
A cat. Just a goddamn cat! I really am jumpy, he thought as he let out his breath in a sigh.
“Ah, Unit Two,” the radio crackled to life, “what is your situation?” Tuchetti was laughing so hard he could barely get the words out. “I say again, do you require assistance?”
“Negative, Central,” Andy told him as he tried to reholster his gun while juggling the flashlight and radio in his left hand. “Everything is under control.” He hoped the security cameras couldn’t pick up the color of his face. “Back on rounds.”
Well, that will probably make Morales’ damn blooper tape! Andy thought as he strode away from the dumpster with as much dignity as he could muster. In a couple of days, every guard in the mall would have seen his encounter with the cat. Damn Tuchetti probably knew damn well what was in that damn dumpster.
###
The cat was nearly seven, old for a stray. He was scarred, starved and invested with a full measure of the caution that comes to feral things that must live on the edge of civilization. In the three hours since he had been frightened out of the dumpster, he had searched unceasingly for something to eat.
It wasn’t a good night. The exterminators had been here recently, and the ground squirrels and mice that normally infested the outside planters were gone. The dumpsters containing the Food Court’s garbage were shut tight and there wasn’t so much as a spill of grease around them.
The cat didn’t even consider begging from a human. To him, humans were as dangerous as the automobiles that would snuff out his life in an instant. He had been born wild, part of a litter from a mother whose owners had dumped her at the mall when they found she was pregnant. There had been six kittens in the litter and he was the last survivor by goodly margin.
The cat paused, body low to the ground, as it searched the loading dock. Above the closed metal shutters, two small lights threw harsh patterns of light and shadow on rolling metal doors and the parking area where the trucks unloaded. There was no way onto the dock proper, not even for a cat. But in an angle of the building and the retaining wall there was a place where the workers ate lunch. Sometimes they threw scraps of food up into the bushes and ivy planted above.
The cat’s whiskers twitched as he sucked in air to test for smells. There was a faint taint like long-dead meat and a hint of another strange smell as well.
The cat hesitated. But he had lived around human places long enough that strange smells were part of his world and his senses were beginning to dull with age. Besides, he was hungry.
He leaped down from the edge of the dock to the parking lot and trotted toward the retaining wall. His path took him close to a patch of deep shadow near the wall.
Too close.
Something moved in the darkness with blinding speed. The cat’s reflexes were sharp, but he was no match for the thing that lashed out. The cat bit and clawed frantically at the paw that pinned it, but its teeth and claws could barely penetrate the thing’s coarse gray fur. Inexorably, the claws tightened, and with a final despairing yowl the cat gave up his life.
The noise brought Andy on the run.
###
Sudstrom’s loading dock was quiet and still, but not empty. There was something laying over by the retaining wall on the far side. Andy skidded to a halt when he saw what it was.
The bloody rag had been a cat. Or rather half a cat. Someone or something had sheared the animal in half and smeared the remaining part over the asphalt. The pinkish viscera and purple-gray intestines stood out vividly against the blood, black fur and dark pavement.
Andy knelt and examined it more closely. The cat looked like it had been run over by a car. Only there weren’t any cars in the loading area.
A dog? But Andy hadn’t heard any barking. A kid maybe? A really sick kid.
Andy’s hand moved to his holster and he swung the flashlight in a quick sweep of the shadows. But there was nothing there. The light probed the bushes and ivy above the retaining wall. They were as still and silent as the rest.
Besides, it didn’t really look like the work of a kid or psycho. They cut their victims, or sometimes burned them. The cat had been torn, as if it had gotten run over or caught in some kind of machinery.
He reached for his radio and then hesitated. No sense in reporting a dead cat. He didn’t know for sure what had killed it, and he’d made a fool of himself over a cat once tonight.
Maybe it was run over by a car, and he just hadn’t noticed it before, he thought. Then he looked at the bloody carcass again, laying in the middle of the open space. Yeah. Right.
With a final look at the cat, he moved on—cautiously.
###
The sun rose bright and reddish in the uniformly gray sky. It would be especially smoggy today, Andy thought, with the special kind of stickiness that came from the combination of a hot summer day and an extra load of air pollution.
It didn’t matter. He’d spend most of the day asleep in his air-conditioned apartment. Just two more hours and he’d be off. It would still be fairly cool for the drive home, and he lived west of the mall, so he’d have the sun at his back. Could be worse, he thought as he headed for the drive to the main lot.
He heard a car drive up as he rounded the corner and started down the drive. That was wrong. It wasn’t six yet, and no one but the guards was supposed to be on the property. Some natural caution, or the night’s events, kept him from simply walking out to confront the driver. Instead, he peeked around the corner at the bottom of the drive.
It was Morales. He was parked over by one of the dumpsters and rummaging in the open trunk of his car. Andy ducked back as the other guard straightened, so he didn’t see what Morales was carrying. He heard a sound like paper crumpling in the still cool morning air and then a dumpster lid opening and clanging shut.
Andy looked around the corner again as Morales slammed the trunk of his car, got behind the wheel and sped off. As soon as he disappeared around the corner, Andy checked the dumpster.
It was empty—almost. Back in the corner was a wad of crumpled paper and plastic. Andy had to crane on tiptoe and use his flashlight before he identified the stuff. It was an outer wrapper, the kind some merchants put around bundles of half-dozen expensive suits or dresses to protect them in shipping.
Just the sort of thing you’d expect to find in a mall dumpster. Except the outer paper was clearly labeled “Sudstrom’s” and Sudstrom’s had its own dumpster—which was down at the far end of the mall next to the store’s loading dock.
Andy switched off his flashlight and looked off the way that his coworker had gone. Maybe, he thought, just maybe this job isn’t the piece of cake everybody said it was.