CHAPTER SEVEN

Gina heard him, too. She looked at me with empty, hopeless eyes.

My brain froze. I had zilch bright new ideas.

But maybe I didn’t need anything new. What worked before might work now.

It was worth a try, even if it was the last try I ever made.

I grabbed a DVD, a multiple-disc one, to make the maximum noise. I rose slowly, quietly, just like I’d done up on the ceiling when I’d heard Jon.

Heck had stopped singing and was proceeding, with bent, silent steps, to the end of the DVD aisle. He must’ve sensed us. He was panther-like, all right.

I stretched my arm way back and threw.

The DVD sailed over the electronics section to smash down into babyware. There was a frantic clang of musical chimes.

Heck charged toward the baby department. I turned to Gina, to forcibly lug her off to safety, if necessary.

But Gina was already standing. She took a breath, tried to speak, and couldn’t. She nodded at me, though. She was going to be okay – more or less – for now.

With me in the lead, we dodged around another DVD display. I still wanted to reach the control room’s side exit. First, though, I wanted to get us away from Heck.

We headed to the front of the store, over to the right, near the coffee shop. I could see shattered glass all over the counter and floor, under the light pod Heck had shot up. I stopped and put up a hand to show Gina we shouldn’t get any closer. If our feet crunched on the glass, Heck might hear.

For the moment, he was at the front entrance again. “GIMME FIFTEEN MINUTES,” he yelled through the cracked pane. “NOBODY’S GONNA GET HURT IF WE DO THIS MY WAY.”

“Why is Heck lying?” I whispered, puzzled.

Gina whispered back angrily, “He’s lying because he’s a psycho.”

“He’s a smart psycho,” I said. In frustration I made a fist and punched it on the palm of my other hand. “And, being smart, that means he’s lying because … ” I hesitated, processing the thought, yet unable to understand it.

I finished slowly, “He’s lying because, for whatever reason, he’s sure he can get away with it.”

“RAFFERTY BACKS ME UP ON THIS, DONTCHA, OLD GUY?” Heck boomed.

I held up my hand again, this time as a signal that Gina should stay put. Tiptoeing to the end of an aisle of pots and pans, I cautiously peeked round.

Mr. Rafferty was sitting slumped on a cash-register conveyor belt. A skipping rope was wound around him, bundling his wrists together behind him.

Heck prodded his shoulder with the rifle point.

“Yes … yes,” Mr. Rafferty called out weakly to the police. “Do whatever he says.”

Heck chuckled. “Thatta boy,” he said in a low voice. “And after this is all over, you never saw me, right? It’s no skin off your nose. You got insurance.”

Heck then walked off, humming. Off-key or not, the tune had infiltrated my brain. Da da da DA da, da da da DA da.

With those silent, panther-like steps, Heck moved to the left side of the store. Looking for Gina and me, no doubt.

Heck hadn’t headed our way. I’d been wrong. There was some luck happening. It was about time.

Mr. Rafferty had bent his head as if he was praying. Maybe he was. Or maybe he just wanted to fall down and die.

He knows Jon is mixed up with Heck, I thought suddenly. He has to.

And Heck knows he knows. That’s why Heck is so confident the storeowner will stay mum. He’s certain Mr. Rafferty won’t incriminate his son.

But how is Heck so certain he’ll get away with all this?

Gina nudged me. “The hardware section is three aisles away.”

Huh? Then I realized what she was talking about. A fresh axe, to chop through the side door with.

“Good girl,” I whispered. “Okay, let’s move carefully. We’ll grab an axe and slip over to the control room.”

Some dish towels – Red roses pattern! Specially marked down! – were hanging between the pots and pans. I grabbed one to wipe my forehead off. Tylenol or not, my head had started pounding again.

I warned Gina, “Every time we step out from the end of an aisle, we’ll have to make sure Heck isn’t watching.”

To my surprise, Gina broke into a wan grin. “Not ideal circumstances, you’re saying.”

“Now who’s joking?”

Her grin widened.

Then – all the lights in the store blazed on.

It was like travelling from dusk to bright noon in a nanosecond. Eyes burning, Gina and I blinked to focus.

I peered around the pots and pans. Heck was striding back toward Mr. Rafferty.

Heck had headed to the left of the store, not to search for us, but to turn the lights back on. I didn’t get it. Why bother with lights?

And where was Jon?

I pointed to the far end of the pots-and-pans row, indicating to Gina that we had to start moving.

We began our trek to the left side of the store. When we reached the cosmetics section, I looked up to the front of the store, as usual, for Heck. But then I couldn’t help it. I looked down the aisle, too, to the custodian’s body. I don’t know why I looked, except what had happened to Rick was so awful I still couldn’t bring myself to believe it. In some weird way, I guess I was hoping he wouldn’t be there.

I noticed something. A nylon had been pulled over the dead custodian’s head.

And then I got a chill glimmer of what Heck was up to. The police had seen a gunman whose features were disguised by nylon. Heck had pulled the nylon over Rick’s head. Heck intended to frame Rick as the gunman.

I didn’t get how Heck was going to do this, but I knew, with sudden, horrible certainty, that Heck planned to walk out of Rafferty’s a free man. Somehow he’d claim that he was just an innocent bystander.

That was Heck’s way out of this.

It was too wild and far-fetched a way to work, though.

Wasn’t it?

Because I’d looked at Rick, Gina looked, too. She clapped her hand to her mouth, but not before a choking noise had escaped it. We both froze. Had Heck heard?

But all at once I wasn’t thinking about Heck.

I was thinking about Jon.

Beyond Rick’s body, at the far end of the store, I saw Jon pacing back and forth in his dad’s office. He was studying the TV screens set into the wall.

Before, with the power off, the screens had been blank.

They weren’t now. Black-and-white images flickered on each one of them. The security cameras were beaming the images into the office. That’s why Heck had switched the power back on. Not for the lights. For the cameras – so Jon could track me down.

“What are you talking about? Jon, working with that psycho?”

Gina was so indignant her whispers had risen to a squeak. Her dark eyes were tearful, accusing. “Jon is Mr. Rafferty’s son!”

We were sitting inside the large, red-roofed playhouse. My theory was, any overhead cameras wouldn’t detect us.

So I hoped, anyway.

Gina hissed, “This is one of your sicker jokes, Sam. I might have known not to trust you. After all, you’re nothing but a – ”

“Yeah, I get the picture,” I whispered back grimly. “You’re not going to nominate me for Citizen of the Year. Moreover, if you were on a cliff, with me walking below, you’d shove a large boulder over the edge.”

I had jammed the dishtowel into a side pocket. Now I took it out. “Here, take this,” I said. “You’re a walking Niagara Falls.”

That didn’t improve Gina’s mood. She blew her nose in the dishtowel and glared at me. “You’ve gone too far with what you’re saying about Jon. He wouldn’t double-cross his father. I’ve been to their house for dinner. They get along really well. Mr. Rafferty’s proud of Jon.”

She paused for a breath, then admitted, “Okay, so Mr. R. does get cheesed about Jon skipping classes all the time. Mr. R. tells Jon that, instead of blowing off school, he should hang in and – ”

“Wait. What you just said,” I interrupted. “About hanging in. You started to tell me about that before. It was something Jon said to you. Jon urged you to hang in at Rafferty’s, even with the long hours and the complaining customers, because in a while … ” I opened my palms out in a questioning gesture. “In a while what, exactly?”

Gina stared at me as if I was the nutter of all time. Shrugging, she explained, “Jon said that, in a while, I’d be promoted to assistant head of the cosmetics section and make better money.”

“If you hung in.”

She nodded.

I hadn’t thought it was possible to feel more loathing for Jon Rafferty, but I did now. I said bitterly, “Jon meant, if you cooperated. He was planning this robbery. Remember how he and his dad sent all the other employees outside? He kept you in.”

“Because I’m his girlfriend.”

“Yeah, and as his girlfriend who was expecting a promotion and a raise, you’d be a friendly witness. You’d say – because you’d be on his side and you’d want to believe – that Jon was a victim of the robbery just as much as his dad.

“Don’t you see?” I said. “Jon kept you inside as insurance, in case, later on, there was any suspicion that he was working with Heck. He knew you’d back him up.”

Gina crumpled the dishtowel and frowned, thinking.

Then, slowly, she broke into a small, rueful smile. “Even if I believed you, Jon’s just not mechanical enough to figure out the power system for this place. He can barely figure out how to program his cell phone.”

I nodded. Jon the mini-mind. This was the point, inescapable, where my theory always collapsed. The power went off before Heck entered the store.

But … what about before that?

I stared at Gina. “My stupidity up to now would fill a stadium,” I said. “Sure, Heck was outside. Before that, though, he could’ve been in the control room, shutting off the power and external phone lines. I remember hearing Jon come out of the control room, into the store. Heck could’ve left through the emergency exit, out to the sidewalk, then walked round to the front.”

Gina replied slowly, “So you’re saying – Jon knew Heck before today. Showed him the layout of the store at some point.”

I nodded.

“But you have no proof, Sam.”

True, too true, I almost replied.

However, the voice that emerged wasn’t mine.

It was Jon’s. He was stooped down, watching us through the open playhouse door.

“Not enough to steal wallets, huh, Jelly? Stealing girlfriends now.”