“Did you — how is Judy?” she asked. “Would they tell you?”
“In intensive care,” I said. “Critical but stable is my impression. Still unconscious.”
She stepped over to the table, sat on a kitchen chair, and pushed the waves of hair back from her face. “R. J.,” she said, “I don’t want to sound like an alarmist, but... you have to find this person quickly.”
“You mean Judy’s assailant.”
“Assailant, yes. Stop it at that, before the term becomes murderer. Of Judy — or you. You’re both at risk, I think.”
“And other people, too,” I pointed out. “But, all right — pedal to the metal at Speedway Mall. That’s what I told you last night, in fact. And in answer to the question you haven’t asked yet, the main problem at Speedway is a rash of thefts. Have you looked at those?” I gestured at the security log in front of her.
“I just came to that section, I’m afraid. Come and sit next to me. We’ll look together.”
So I sat and we looked. After a minute or so, Ginny said, “Bring me a piece of paper and a pen, would you, please.” I got them from a drawer.
“Do you see what I’m seeing?” she asked, as she began making notations.
I looked a little more. “Well,” I said, “there are about a hundred stores in Speedway, and I’d guess not over fifteen are on here, but—” I stopped and leafed quickly through the six-page list. “Wow! Orchid Records. Mason’s. Catterson Furs! Ginny — those stores have security sensors at the exits.”
“What?” she said, looking up from her notes.
“You can’t shoplift anything from those stores — or not without a heck of a lot of trouble. Their merchandise has a label or a sealed-on container or an embedded computer chip that sets off an alarm if it isn’t deactivated or removed by a salesclerk.”
“But, it’s those stores and—” she looked down at her notes “—and three others, Slade Jewelers, California Kitchens, and The Wedge, where... And look, look at the dates.”
I looked, we looked, and in five minutes we’d worked out what was happening in pretty clear terms. Someone was targeting those six stores for expensive and in some cases fairly large articles, targeting them over and over, in fact, on Wednesdays and Fridays, if the pattern of Thursday and Saturday reporting meant anything.
“What do you think?” I asked.
“I — you’re the expert on this type of thing, but my opinion is that — have there been any arrests?”
“No,” I said. “The last column tells the status. Three or four apprehensions on theft in other stores. Kids, I’d guess — but this doesn’t look like kids.”
“No. To me it looks far more like, oh, a carnival of crime — or organized crime in a very special sense. Someone has analyzed security at Speedway Mall and found a weak spot.”
“Six weak spots. And you’re right about it being professional work, Ginny. The only items taken are fenceable goods. Look at this: fur stole, food processor, diamond bracelet, a box — an unopened box, Ginny — of the latest album by The Grateful Dead. Not that we’d be interested, but...”
“No.” She smiled a rare, sardonic smile before continuing, “Although doubtless it is a popular seasonal gift and already in short supply — unlike the new boxed set of Handel’s Messiah that I’m parenthetically hoping to find under our humble tree. Fortunately for me, though, that album is almost certainly not a fenceable item, and no one could ever accuse it of having anything to do with Christmas.”
She made another comical face, then said, “Musical tastes notwithstanding, however, something seems quite apparent in what’s happening at Speedway Mall, R. J., and it’s just this very element: the Christmas season. Nothing here says so, precisely, but what makes the shoplifting possible on this scale must have something to do with the Christmas shopping season.”
“How?”
“I don’t know. But my sense is that someone is taking deliberate advantage of it somehow, as cynical and horrible as that seems. It can’t be just a coincidence. Larger crowds, more harried clerks, longer store hours — there has to be some one thing, or a combination of things.” She gave me a look of sudden misgiving. “Or don’t you agree?”
“Maybe,” I said. “It’s a starting point, anyway. But the ‘thing’ you’re talking about has to be something so basic and simple that nobody notices it. What I mean, Ginny, is that it can’t be very complicated, or it would have been spotted by this time. The people running those businesses aren’t babes in the woods, you know, and according to what Malin just told me, everyone over there has been on the alert for the last few days, trying to figure it out.”
We talked a few more minutes without much result before I said, “Well — it’s probably not worth asking, but you didn’t see anything in the rest of the log that might throw some light on the thefts, did you?”
“No. It’s almost incomprehensible to me that people can be so sad and sick in so many ways, but I honestly didn’t notice anything beyond the shoplifting pattern. What I did notice — I wonder if anyone else has made the connection — is that the woman who was the hit-and-run victim, the one who died, was struck on the same evening that the only car theft was reported. In fact, before you came in here talking about shoplifting, I was certain that the attack on Judy had to be related to the car theft and hit-and-run. The presence of the insurance form misled me.”
I thought for a moment, then said, “You’re suggesting that the car thieves ran her down as they escaped?”
She hesitated. “Stated thus baldly it sounds unconvincing, I admit. But... I don’t think ‘coincidence’ describes the way the two fit together either.” She examined the form in her hand while I waited.
“Yes,” Ginny said, then looked up at me. “I thought I noticed that name. She was an employee of The Wedge, R. J. It might not mean anything, of course, but Judy did seem to hide away this form, as if she were holding it back to show you.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Maybe.”
I didn’t like what was happening. When Ginny’s arguments and my instincts pointed the same way, we had never been wrong on a case that I could remember.
Part III
I got over to the mall at quarter to eleven and wandered into the office complex through the reception area. After saying hello to a couple of familiar faces and ducking more than a couple of questions, I headed to the interior where the private offices were. As I approached Judy’s office door I heard a sound, probably a file drawer closing, and for some reason that made me step quietly and look before I entered. What I saw, from the rear, was a young woman of medium height, thin as a stick, and with long, straight brown hair. She was searching rapidly through the things on Judy’s desk and not finding what she wanted. She stopped, raised a hand to her chin as if thinking, and then, as I had the previous evening, she raised the blotter pad and looked beneath it.
After another five seconds I tapped on the door, just to get a reaction, but she only turned briefly and said, “Come on in, whoever you are. You can help me look.”
“What are we looking for?” I asked, as I slipped around to the front of the desk where I could see her better: frameless glasses and no makeup on a small-featured, somewhat pretty face. She was new to me, but she wore a mall identity pin that read Barbara Becker, Program Coordinator.
“You’re Mr. Carr, aren’t you?” she said, looking away quickly from my birthmarked face. “So you know about Judy. They say she’ll pull through, but the whole thing is just so terrible that I feel like going home and crying.” She shook her head sadly, but then continued in a perky tone, “Oh! I’m Barb Becker, by the way, and what I can’t find is an insurance claim form. It’s for one of my Christmas Temps. She was killed by a hit-and-run driver out in the parking lot last week. Another horrible thing.” She gestured vaguely and made a deeper frown. “You didn’t hear that. We’re not supposed to say negative things about Speedway Mall.” She picked up a cigarette from the desk and lit it with Judy’s lighter.