This bus featured a cigarette advertisement below its rear window, an air-brushed photograph of a broadly smiling outdoorsy blond beauty who looked as if she could throw off lung cancer like a cold. This time Nudger memorized the company service number stenciled in neat black numerals high on the exhaust-darkened back of the bus. He didn't look again at the blonde.
When Kell got off the bus near where Highway 40 crossed Kingshighway, then transferred to the Cross County Express, Nudger suspected where he might be going.
Squinting through the rain-specked windshield, he followed the lumbering bus west beneath the low gray sky bent over them, toward the suburban land of mortgaged dreams and domestic delusion. And Twin Oaks Mall.
XXVIII
When they were half a mile from the mall, Nudger drove ahead of the bus and found a parking space in the main lot. Then he walked to the doorway of a shop that sold nothing but athletic shoes and stood where he could see the bus stop. He wondered how a place could stay in business selling only striped sneakers expensive enough to last forever.
The Cross County Express lumbered around the corner by Sears, intimidated a few smaller vehicles into turning into intersecting parking lanes, and belched and hissed its way tentatively to a stop. Business was thriving at the mall today; over a dozen people stepped down out of the bus. The last one off was Luther Kell.
Kell stood still for a moment and looked around, as the bus emitted a noxious black cloud near him and eased away from the stop. Then he turned and went in through the mall's tinted-glass main entrance. Nudger noticed that Kell was wearing soft, black, crinkly leather moccasins. They were probably part of the reason the muscular blond man moved with such litheness and oddly ominous calm. Like the stillness before the storm.
Nudger followed, taking his time, sure of where Kell was going. Apparently the mall fountain was a favorite meeting place for people on the nightlines. Kell had probably talked on the lines last night and made a date with another woman. Unless Nudger was making false assumptions. He'd be disappointed if Kell simply shopped around for a while and then returned home with some new socks and shirts. For that matter, what was Nudger supposed to do if Kell did meet a woman here? She might be his regular girlfriend. Surely the man didn't murder every woman he dated. Possibly he had murdered no one, ever.
Kell slowed his pace as he approached the fountain, moving toward the center of the wide promenade, into the calm area between the thick streams of shoppers making their way to one end of the mall or the other. He ambled over to the raised concrete ledge that circled the gently splashing fountain, propped one foot up on the ledge, and began slowly rotating a toothpick between his front teeth. Sandy the vinyl-clad cowboy had picked his teeth in the same manner while waiting here. Deja vu, Nudger thought.
Kell rotated the toothpick, absently rolling it between thumb and forefinger, for quite a while, then began diligently probing molars with it. Mr. Tooth Decay was no friend of his.
This time Kell wasn't stood up. Within ten minutes a long-haired brunette wearing a navy-blue skirt and red blazer walked up to him and they chatted briefly. Then she snaked her arm around his and walked away with him.
Nudger watched them stroll toward the mass of shoppers moving toward the east end of the mall.
Now what? Should he follow? Were Kell and the woman leaving the mall, or were they going to have a sandwich at the Woolworth snack counter and take in the mall theater movie? Or browse through merchandise at one of the department stores? Might they be shopping for her wedding gown? Possible. Shouldn't a model citizen like Kell, with a neat little house, have a neat little wife to go in it? Was all of this any of Nudger's business?
Of course not.
Unless…
He began walking in the direction Kell and the woman had taken. He could still see Kell's blond head, catch an occasional glimpse of the woman's flowing auburn hair and her red blazer.
Just as he reached the fountain, Nudger realized that, though he'd only glimpsed her from the back, there was something faintly familiar about the woman. About the compact, controlled way she swung her arms when she walked, and the way she carried herself, so smoothly and erectly.
An after-image flashed in Nudger's mind.
Her shoes! The dark-haired woman had been wearing high-heeled silver shoes with black bows! Like the shoes Nudger's former wife Eileen had worn. Like…
Like Jeanette Boyington's shoes!
Nudger sucked in his breath and plunged forward, skirting the fountain at a run to gain ground on Kell and the woman.
His leather soles scraped wildly on the synthetic stone floor and he did a mad little dance, almost losing his balance, as a weighty hand fell on his shoulder and stopped him as if his knees had suddenly locked tight.
"I been watching you, Nudger," a deep, thick voice said. "Mrs. Boyington says it's time me 'n' you had a little talk 'n' settled some things 'n'…"
Nudger barely heard the rest. Hugo Rumbo, wearing a hideous green plaid sport jacket that made him appear even more gigantic than he was, prattled on about Agnes Boyington. The timing and setting for this encounter were absurd as well as inconvenient. Nudger didn't even have it in him to be afraid.
Rumbo came around in front of Nudger, moving closer, a gaudy muscular expanse of cloth. He was still babbling threateningly. "So whyn't you 'n' me take a little walk 'n' you can…"
Nudger squirmed loose from the painful grip and shoved hard at Rumbo's chest, slipping and falling to his knees with the effort. It was like trying to move a wall. Rumbo said, "Huh?" in delayed surprise, got his feet tangled with each other, and the backs of his knees struck the concrete ledge around the fountain. There was a tremendous splash. Nudger felt cold water on his face as he struggled to his feet and started after Kell and Jeanette. He saw people stopping, turning, gawking at the spectacle in the fountain pool, and caught a glimpse of what looked like a floundering green plaid whale, as he began to run.
He shoved his way through the mass of shoppers, hearing a heavyset woman grunt as his elbow sank into her doughy midsection. He stepped on somebody's toes, stumbled, nearly fell. Someone cursed at him as he ran past the drugstore: "Goddamn maniac! Gonna kill somebody!"
He stopped running outside a men's shop, jumped up on a bench and stared out over the heads of hundreds, maybe thousands, of milling shoppers. Everyone with a dollar to spend seemed to be here. Almost everyone.
Kell and Jeanette were nowhere in sight.
He dropped from the bench and ran for the escalators that led up to the second shopping level or down to the parking garage, trying to catch a glimpse of a red blazer or silver high-heeled shoes. All he got were curious amused stares directed at him by the lines of escalator riders gliding past with the calm, smooth precision of ducks in a shooting gallery. Nudger ignored the stares and sprinted for the exit to the lot where he'd left his car.
He drove the Volkswagen to the largest parking area driveway and pulled to the side, hoping to see Jeanette's blue sedan from where he was illegally parked.
Dozens of cars were streaming in and out of the lot, none of them Jeanette's. Nudger popped an antacid tablet into his mouth and chewed frantically, still breathing hard. His pulse pounded at his temples.
Five slow minutes passed. Nothing in the world changed.
Screwed it up, he told himself. Screwed up everything. He had a client who was on her way to kill an innocent man. Or kill a guilty man. Or be murdered herself. Whichever way fate moved the pieces, it was going to be a bad day for a lot of people.
Nudger squirmed in the little bucket seat. His stomach was zooming and twisting like a crazy carnival ride; his blood felt carbonated. He had to act, had to do something!