Delivering Death: A Novel (Riley Spartz) Page 3

  All this may have been for the best. The downside to being a patron saint was that you had to be dead.

  I turned off my computer and crawled back between heavy flannel sheets; the fuzzy bedding was to fabric the equivalent of what mashed potatoes are to food—ultimate comfort. All that religious exercise checking out saints had proved worthwhile; by then I felt drained and ready to rest—albeit fitfully.

  CHAPTER 8

  It was a slow news day in the Twin Cities, and Bryce wanted fresh ideas at the huddle. Neither of us mentioned the teeth. We had an understanding to keep our mouths shut about that story.

  Ozzie spoke up. “A viewer called, mad about the Mall of America’s curfew. Says they only enforce it against minority kids.”

  “The mall has a curfew?” Bryce asked.

  “They like to call it a ‘parental escort policy,’ ” I said. “Anyone under sixteen must be accompanied by an adult after four o’clock on Fridays and Saturdays.”

  Bryce looked puzzled by the rule. “Isn’t that bad for business? After all, they have an amusement park in the middle of that giant mall. Who do they think is going to flock there if not teens?”

  “They used to have a gang problem,” I said. “Shoppers were feeling unsafe, or so the mall claimed.”

  “But that was at least a decade ago,” Ozzie added. “Once they started the curfew, things calmed down. Except for that one fight with all those kids throwing chairs in the food court that went viral off someone’s cell-phone camera over Christmas break. Now they’re expanding the curfew to school holidays.”

  Bryce seemed to be mulling over this information. “We’ve been doing some focus group research.”

  After those words, I zoned him out by pretending I’d received an important text message. TV stations like to hire research companies to help them figure out how better to appeal to viewers between the ages of 25–54, the most coveted age bracket for advertisers. To me, that seemed like media hocus-pocus. All I cared about was doing the best reporting I could, and trusting that the ratings would follow.

  “The Mall of America tests well with our key demographics,” he continued. “Maybe we should investigate this curfew idea.” He turned to look at me and smiled as he said the word investigate. “Riley, what would it take to nail this?”

  I would have been elated to chase the story, except for one thing—location, location, location.

  I didn’t want to set foot in the Mall of America. My former betrothed, Nick Garnett, was director of security. Things had been said during our breakup that would have been better left unspoken. I had since vowed to do my shopping online rather than cross his turf.

  “Riley?” Bryce was sounding exasperated. “What would it take to air this?”

  “Sorry.” I stopped daydreaming about lost love and focused on how to convince Bryce to steer clear of the Mall of America. “Trying to document this story would demand a lot of time with no guarantee we’d be able to prove any discrimination. It’s a long shot.”

  “That’s for me to decide,” Bryce said. “What would it take?”

  “Well, we’d have to set up some surveillance and watch which teens got kicked out,” I said. “Maybe even use some undercover kids. Might be best to have someone hang out there casually some weekend to see what they could observe before bringing in a full team with hidden cameras.”

  Ozzie interrupted to point out that the mall required news cameras to register with the media relations office before videotaping on-site.

  “They’ll never give us approval to shoot this,” he said, “and it’s not worth being shut out of future stories because we antagonized them by using hidden cameras.”

  “Ozzie is right,” I said, thinking fast. “We should just forgot this angle. That ice castle the mall built outside is still attracting plenty of attention. And it’s visual. How about an update?”

  Bryce disagreed and ordered me to conduct the pre-surveillance at the Mall of America this weekend and report back to him.

  “You mean tomorrow? I can’t. I have plans.”

  There was no way I could tell him I was boycotting the mall for personal reasons relating to my love life. He was the only one in the huddle who didn’t know about my broken engagement. I glanced at the other reporters around the table, hoping nobody would bring up that juicy detail in front of Bryce or suggest that might be the real reason for me shirking the mall assignment.

  “Perhaps someone else might enjoy working on the story.” I finally asked, bluntly, looking straight at Nicole.

  I knew she liked to shop. Nicole wore sleeveless sheath dresses, even in the winter, to show off her toned arms. No cleavage, just bare arms that communicated a smart-sexy look on the air. The trend was a way for women journalists to show skin on television without seeming slutty. Just the other day, Nicole had talked of giving my wardrobe of colorful blazers a similar makeover.

  I shot her a save-me look, but before she could express interest in the curfew assignment, Bryce nixed any volunteers.

  “Nope.” He shook his head, while pointing at me. “Riley, you claim to be our investigative reporter. When it comes to news, we all have to make sacrifices for our job. You’ll just have to change your plans.”

  I played my ace. “I’m sorry, Bryce. But I’m going to my high school reunion. Many of my old classmates are Channel 3 viewers. I can’t disappoint them.”

  CHAPTER 9

  Parking was the worst.

  CLOSED signs flashed at each of the lower levels in the Mall of America ramp. Waiting in bumper-to-bumper traffic, I cursed my news director.

  I lost both ends of my fight with Bryce, and was going to have to go to two places I would rather have avoided: the mall and my reunion. He decided there was time for both, that I could case the mall starting midafternoon Friday and drive to my hometown on Saturday. I had been using my reunion as a bluff, but now he was insisting I post a picture of myself with my classmates on Channel 3’s Facebook page and tag their names to their pages.

  “It will be a great ‘relatable,’ ” Bryce said. “That’s the key to social media promotion. People have to relate to you by feeling you share common interests or experiences outside your job. Kids. Pets. A class reunion. Those all work.”

  I was tempted to add bad bosses to his list of relatables, but knew better than to push him too far.

  Finally, I found a parking space at the mall and took a picture of the nearest numbered pillar with my cell phone to help me find my vehicle later. I don’t like wandering around the ramp alone at night when it’s easy to become disorientated in the vast space and—in my case—spooked by the shadows.

  Yet, I’m always wowed when I walk inside the Mall of America, sort of like Dorothy was when finally entering the Emerald City before clashing with winged monkeys and a wicked witch.

  MOA is an enclosed city, with more than 100,000 people passing through many days. Shopaholics surrounded me, eager for a buy, but not necessarily a bargain. Surveys estimate nearly half of all the mall visitors are tourists—some traveling from around the world to browse specialty stores under one roof. And they’re willing to pay top dollar for the experience, especially since Minnesota has no sales tax on clothing.

  I walked a lap of about half a mile and when four o’clock hit, started looking for teenage curfew breakers. I kept my distance, taking notes and pictures reflecting their numbers, sex, race, and whether or not security guards escorted anyone off the property. At some of the mall doors, other guards were quizzing teens trying to enter.

  “So how old are you guys?”

  I overheard one exchange, and saw a couple boys being carded. Because it was so easy, I took photos of the rotunda with my phone, pretending to be a tourist enamored with Legoland rather than a reporter chasing a potentially controversial story.

  “Do you mind showing me some ID?”

  Similar scenes played out during the next hour. But the teens being asked to leave the mall seemed just as likely to be white as black
or Asian. My impression was that proving racial bias in curfew enforcement might be difficult. I wasn’t looking forward to breaking that news to my boss.

  As I stepped off an escalator on the third floor, a figure abruptly moved in behind me. I instinctively clutched my purse close to my body and stepped up my pace.

  “Relax, I’m not after your bag,” a man said. “I just want to talk.”

  It was Nick Garnett’s voice, but I kept walking toward the parking ramp without even turning around. “How long have you been following me?” I figured a curfew officer must have complained about me, but I was wrong.

  “One of the guards monitoring the security cameras alerted me to a suspicious patron,” he said.

  I’d been in the underbelly of the Mall of America’s security headquarters when Garnett and I’d been on better terms. The team had an impressive wall of surveillance cameras in their security center—resembling the news control booth of a TV station—all the better to track miscreants through the millions of square feet of open space.

  “Your threshold for ‘suspicious’ must be pretty low to focus on me,” I said.

  Garnett cut in front of me, so I had no choice but to look him in the eye, then casually up and down. His hair had a touch of gray, but not enough to age him. He wore a well-cut suit, and could have passed as a business executive, except for the small print of a gun under his jacket.

  We stood near the Chapel of Love—the scene of thousands of weddings at the Mall of America. He didn’t seem to notice the irony.

  “You met the criteria, Riley. Alone. No apparent shopping pattern. No purchases. You were observed taking photos.”

  Suddenly I realized I wasn’t suspected of being a common criminal, but something much more dangerous. “You think I’m a terrorist?”

  He had the decency to be embarrassed. “If anyone thought you were a terrorist, one of our security team would have questioned you by now. I decided to take care of the situation myself.”

  “So now I’m a ‘situation’?” That was a far cry from once being a fiancée.

  “Certainly not,” he said. “I just was surprised to see you on the surveillance screen and wondered what you were doing here.”

  “I wasn’t looking for you, Nick, if that’s what you mean.”

  “I deserve that. I’m sorry for how things ended between us, Riley.”

  “Which time?”

  I’d broken up with him once. He’d broken up with me twice. That meant he was leading in our game of love and war. Looking back on our long romance, I concluded neither of us were at fault for the early rifts. Our relationship became a casualty of evil, when those around us were destroyed in dual waves of bloodshed. We had each killed killers, pulling the trigger on psychopaths. That shared experience should have bonded us for life, but we were too racked with guilt to find comfort in love. Yet, on some level, we both were desperate for another outcome . . . willing to try again.

  Garnett still hadn’t answered my question, so I tried another. “Why did you move back?” He had returned to Minnesota from Washington, DC, after our broken engagement without even telling me.

  “I wanted this job.”

  His answer was cold. The job meant more to him than me. I remembered a time when those priorities were reversed and was tempted to get into the kind of pointless squabble one gets in with a frustrating ex, but controlled the urge. I suspected the security guards in the dispatch center were monitoring us on surveillance cameras and taking bets on how long before I slugged him.

  Or kissed him.

  That sudden romantic fantasy startled me, and I pushed it away, but once you’ve shared passion and danger with someone it’s hard to stand close and not remember the heat.

  Our third and final split was different from the others. He considered it a trust-breaker, while I saw it as a misunderstanding. I’d kissed another man while Garnett and I were broken up. It had meant so little to me, I thought nothing of telling him. It had meant so much to him, he couldn’t bear to hear it. And thus ended our courtship.

  Meanwhile, a young woman in a floor-length, strapless white gown almost crashed into us as she danced by in wedded bliss. Following on her heels were tuxedoed men, bridesmaids in shimmery dresses, and flower girls in puffy skirts. The bridal party all wore broad smiles, except for a white-haired lady who dabbed the corner of one eye with a pink hanky. Nick blushed as he finally realized we were standing outside the wedding chapel.

  Bad juxtaposition.

  He took me by the elbow, out of the way of the celebratory nuptials, but I yanked free from him. “You’re not allowed to touch me anymore.”

  “Not so fast,” he replied. “I’m still curious what you’re doing here.”

  “Are you asking me as a friend or as a cop? As far as friendship goes, I’m not sure those criteria apply anymore. And when it comes to law and order, there’s this legal issue called probable cause. Unless I’m on your ‘No Trespassing Wall’?”

  The security team had a wall in the basement where they posted pictures of small-time crooks, vandals, and disturbers of the peace who had been warned they’d face arrest if they were found on the property again.

  “Anyone in the mall is subject to a security interview if we deem it prudent,” he said.

  “A security interview?” I replied. “Since when? Are we taping an episode of Mall Cops? I don’t see camera crews anywhere.”

  My reference to a reality TV show filmed on-site riled him. “Our security policy is on the mall website. You certainly should appreciate that where we’re standing is the ultimate terrorist target.”

  He was correct about what’s in a name. When the shopping complex first opened, the label was considered a stroke of marketing genius. But after the September 11 terrorist attacks, Minnesota braced for the worst. Pairing “America” with “Mall” had pros and cons. That’s why the Mall of America employed a highly trained security team consisting of Israeli counterterrorism experts, explosive-sniffing dogs, and more than a hundred officers. Bombings at the Nairobi mall and at the Boston Marathon had brought that fear home again, but I still didn’t like Garnett’s implication.

  “Don’t mess with me, Nick.” I moved forward into his space, to see if he would step back. He didn’t, and neither did I. We were both too close for comfort. “You didn’t stop me because I’m suspicious. You stopped me because I’m me.”

  He didn’t deny it.

  I didn’t remember our exact parting words, only that our breakup lacked good closure. While dating, we used to play a movie trivia game, weaving famous lines from film dialogue into our conversation, then goading the other into guessing their origin. I’d long settled on what my final words to him should have been, and no coincidence, they came from a memorable breakup movie.

  “You don’t even know how much you’ll miss me,” I said.

  Before he could answer, “Shirley MacLaine, Terms of Endearment, 1983,” we heard screaming, and a red object came hurling toward us.

  I don’t know what he was thinking, but I had terrorism on my mind and envisioned blood. With only a split second to spare, Nick shoved me away as the thing hit him full in the chest and I fell flat on the floor.

  CHAPTER 10

  Applause and cheers filled the air around us as I turned in shock.

  Nick was clutching a bridal bouquet.

  Did he rescue me as a friend, someone he harbored feelings for, or as part of his cop duty? I decided his motivation didn’t matter. The sight of him, holding roses and ribbons, was so comical, I stopped being mad and started to laugh.

  “Well, Nick, I think that catch means you’re the next to get married.”

  He was reaching a hand down to me, when a woman’s voice interrupted any reconciliation. “Who do we have here?”

  I recognized her as Velma Roberts, part of the mall’s public relations team. She recognized me as a local television reporter. Whether she knew about my personal relationship with Garnett was unclear, but I’d interviewed h
er a couple of times as a mall spokesperson about consumer shopping trends.

  “So, Riley Spartz,” she said, “I heard talk you were around the place. But since you didn’t stop by our office for media credentials, I’m quite certain you’re not here on Channel 3 business, although I don’t see a shopping bag.”

  From her trendy shoes to her blunt-cut bangs, Velma resembled a walking fashion plate in figure and dress. Her job was to promote all the mall had to offer. With auburn streaks through shoulder-skimming hair, she even looked good enough to anchor TV news, except that Velma had an irritating manner of speech in which she gave each word equal emphasis. I found her difficult to listen to, but apparently viewers could handle her in ten-second sound bites. I’d heard she was seeing a voice coach, but whenever she was nervous, Velma reverted back to her old habit.

  Apparently, I made her nervous.

  She didn’t wait for me to answer, instead turning her attention toward Nick, who had seemed to forget I was still on the floor. She took the flowers from his hand and savored the scent of the fresh petals.

  “Sweet.”

  Velma seemed momentarily wistful and I noticed her left ring finger was bare. I remembered hearing some gossip about her and a divorce. But her personal experience with marriage didn’t seem to sour her on the idea of weddings in general. She waved the bouquet enthusiastically toward the mall’s newest bride, who was skipping down the corridor in glee.

  “Congratulations!” Velma called. “Come back on your anniversary!”

  She glanced at an ornate wristwatch that seemed more decorative than functional, before tugging playfully at Garnett’s sleeve in a way that conveyed familiarity.

  “I’m almost off duty, Nick. Why don’t we grab dinner and I’ll fill you in on the mall’s upcoming venture. It might pose some special security challenges.”

  That sounded like news so I scrambled to my feet and put myself back into the conversation. If I couldn’t deliver a curfew story, maybe I could appease Bryce with some other Mall of America idea. Preferably one I could hand off to another reporter.