LUCAS TOOK an escalator to the second level, where people were peering over a railing at the floor below. He called, as loud as he could, “U.S. Marshal! Did anyone see a man shouting about cops? A man shouting about cops? Anyone see . . .”
He had no faith in the possibility of finding a witness, but he unexpectedly did. A woman in a red dress, pushing a baby carriage, which turned out to be full of magazines, raised a hand and called out, “I saw him.”
Lucas went to her. “Tell me.”
She pointed at the atrium’s railing. “He was leaning over it, like he was waiting for somebody. I was sitting right over there.” She pointed to some seating. “I noticed him because, you know, he was nice-looking. Brown hair. Thin. Like an athlete. Anyway, he was standing there for several minutes. Like he was watching. A blond woman walked up to him and said something and walked away again. Then—I wasn’t exactly looking at him—someone yelled, really loudly, ‘Please! Please! Cops!’ I looked up and saw it was him. And then I heard the shots and stood up and started to run. I saw him in front of me, hurrying down the hallway, and the blond woman came up behind him and grabbed his hand and went with him . . . out of sight. I hid in that store over there. And when the shooting was done, I ran here to look over the railing with some other people.”
Lucas got on his phone, called Harvey, said, “I’m right at the top of the escalator, I’ve got a witness who saw the guy who yelled at Deese. You need to send one of your people up here to take a statement.”
“On the way,” Harvey said. Lucas peered over the railing to the first floor and now saw paramedics beginning to move the wounded.
He asked the woman to wait, then called Bob. “Have you found a camera?”
“Yeah. We can see the Chipotle’s, the area above the shooting . . .”
Lucas told him what to look for on the second floor, and Bob went away from the phone for a minute and then came back and said, “Yeah, we see him. We’ll run it back and see if we can spot the blonde. We might be able to follow them down to the parking structure.”
* * *
—
WHEN HARVEY’S COP arrived, Lucas turned the witness over to him, then went back down the escalator. Mall security guards had roped off the area of the shooting, and Rae, who’d come back after looking for Deese, said, “I didn’t find him. People are streaming out of the place, it’s a traffic jam out there. They’re closing the mall.”
“No hope?” Lucas asked.
“Nope. He’s not hiding, he’s gone.”
He told her about the man and woman upstairs, and she said, “It’s Cole and the woman who was in Altadena, the same one who was with Beauchamps.”
Lucas nodded. “Probably.”
“But then they must be the ones who tipped us off. If they are, why did they warn Deese?”
“You want the snaky reason?” Lucas asked. “Because they wanted us to kill him. They were working with Roger Smith and they wanted us to kill him.”
“Then why was Santos—”
“Because he didn’t know,” Lucas said. “Smith didn’t tell him. If the cops kill Deese, Smith is in the clear. If Santos pays Deese, Smith is in the clear. Either way works.”
“You’re making Smith sound like an asswipe,” Rae said.
“There you go.”
* * *
—
ACROSS THE MALL, Tremanty, covered in blood, was facing Harvey. They were arguing. Lucas headed that way, trailed by Rae.
Lucas heard Harvey saying, “. . . taking the blame for this mess. If you’d waited, we could have gotten a SWAT team here.”
“That’s bullshit. We were told he was staying for five minutes, and we had reason to believe the tip came from someone who knew what she was talking about. He’s a serial killer, and a cannibal, and we couldn’t wait,” Tremanty said heatedly. He jabbed an index finger at Harvey without actually poking him. “It wasn’t us who set this off, it was you guys. You came running down the mall, and I never saw anybody looking more like cops than you did. Deese’s lookout saw you and yelled to him. If you’d walked down here separately, if you let us do it, it’d all be over with and we’d have Deese in custody. Lucas told you to stay away, told