“No more,” Kellaway said. “I’ll see you at your house in half an hour.”
He ended the call and breathed in the scent of char, of sizzling pinecones, stood tall in the smoke of a burning world. After a moment he tossed the phone back into the passenger seat. He thought that before he got on the road, he might like to grab the Webley and put it in the trunk. Jim didn’t need it anymore.
Jim didn’t need the guns in his garage either. Kellaway decided to take a minute to hunt around, see if there was anything he might want. Jim had said he ought to help himself.
9:44 A.M.
“Right here,” Okello said, pointing at his feet.
They were halfway up the great, curving staircase at the center of the Miracle Falls Mall, in a deep well of sunlight, beneath a banked roof of skylights.
“I got low and stayed here,” Okello said. “Sarah had me texting her every thirty seconds to let her know I was still alive.”
“I’ve been meaning to ask about that,” Lanternglass told him. “Let’s walk up the rest of the way. I want to have a look at Devotion Diamonds.”
They climbed to the top, all three of them: Okello, Lanternglass, and Dorothy. Lanternglass had called Okello over breakfast to ask if she could read and possibly quote from his text messages to his girlfriend. She did not mention she wanted to look at the time stamps on his messages and see if they revealed when each of the shots had occurred. Okello had offered to do her one better.
“The mall is reopening this morning. Going to be a candle-lighting ceremony at eleven.”
“I know,” Lanternglass had said. “I was planning to be there to cover it.”
“So come by at nine-thirty, before the stores open up. Meet me at the entrance to Boost Yer Game. I can show you my texts and walk you through what I did and what I heard.”
“That’s no problem?”
“You kidding? My little sisters are going nuts about me being in the paper. Total strangers have been asking if they can take selfies with me. I might be getting a taste for fame. I think it suits me.”
She’d smiled at that but had felt a kind of gentle twisting in the chest as well. In that instant Okello sounded very like Colson.
The entrance to Devotion Diamonds was still blocked off by yellow crime-scene tape. On the other side of the tape, the doors had been slid shut and locked. The rest of the stores along the gallery were busy, prepping for the eleven o’clock ceremony and the expectation of a curious crowd. Voices yelled and echoed in the big open space of the central atrium. The gate was rolled up at Lids, the hat store next to Devotion Diamonds, and a sleepy-looking stoner with bushy, shoulder-length yellow hair was using a sticker gun to put 20-percent-off tags on baseball caps.
“Hats!” Dorothy cried, squeezing her mother’s hand. Dorothy wore a fuzzy yellow chicken-headed hat today, tied under her chin. “Hats! Mom!”
“Mm-hm,” Lanternglass said. She craned her neck and raised her voice to be heard by the stoner. “Hey, you mind if my daughter has a wander around?”
“Huh? Sure. Go for it,” said the stoner, and Dorothy squeezed her mother’s fingers again and went leaping into the aisles of Lids.
Okello said, “Sorry—there isn’t really anything to see. But you want to look at my phone?” He held it out to her. “I scrolled back to my texts from the day of. Um, don’t go back any further, okay?”
Lanternglass said, “Pictures?”
“You know it.” Okello grinned.
“She’s out of high school, isn’t she?”
Okello scowled, looked offended. “She’s a year older than me!”
“Are you out of high school?”
“I told you I’m in college. College is the reason I work this job. Books don’t pay for themselves.”
“They pay you plenty eventually, if you keep at ’em,” Lanternglass said, and accepted his phone.
Holy shit, this girl just walked into Devotion Diamonds and started shooting.
10:37
For real. Three shots.
10:37
WHAT????? Where are you? Are you okay?
10:37
On the big staircase, about halfway down. I’m flat on the steps. I’m practically close enough to see what’s happening.
10:38
STAY DOWN. Can you7 get away? OMG OMGOMG I’m freakingo ut
10:38
If I go down the stairs I’d move into sight of anyone standing in the hallway above.
10:39
I love you.
10:39
I love you too.
10:39
Don’t move. Stay where you are. Oh Jesus God. Praying so hard right now.
10:39
You said the person with a gun is a girl you saw her?
10:40
Another hots.
10:40
“shot” not “hots”
10:40
ohgod oh god please please please I don’t want you tog et shot
10:40
Im kinda hoping not to get shot too
10:40
you idiot I love you
10:40
Something fell over and then there was another shot.
10:41
r u all right? you havent texted
10:42
I’m fine
10:42
whd you stop texting
10:42
I didn’t it’s only been a minute.
10:42
You cared me don’t you dare stop texting
10:42
Im all right.
10:43
Still all right.
10:44
Shit. Another shot.
10:45
Oh God. Oh God.
10:45
I’m not sure what’s going on now.
10:46
And another shot.
10:46
OK maybe you should run for it
10:46
I’m all right. I dont want to leave the frappachinos.
10:47
THE WHAT YOU ASSHOLE?
10:47
I’ve got frappachinos. I cant run with my drinks. I’ll spill them.
10:48
I hate you. So much.
10:49
There was more, but Okello didn’t mention any other shots. He had the cops arriving and stepping on his hand at 10:52, less than twenty minutes after the first shot was fired but way too late in the day to change what had happened.
The way the St. Possenti police had it, Becki Kolbert had put three into her boss and one into Mrs. Haswar and her child. Kellaway had entered, fired twice, nailing Kolbert once and missing with the second. Then a final shot, when Kolbert rose up again to shoot Bob Lutz. Seven shots in all.
On the time stamp, though, they clustered differently, wrongly. Three, then two a bit later (And something fell over. What? The computer maybe?), then one, and then one more. Lanternglass had some ideas about what that might suggest, but it wasn’t anything she could take to press. She wasn’t sure Tim Chen would even let her note the discrepancies between Okello’s texts and the official report.
She gave Okello back his phone and dug her own out of her pocket.
“You want screen captures of any of these, that’s no problem,” he said.
Lanternglass said, “I might. Let me talk to my editor and run a couple of possibilities by him.”
Dorothy skipped to the threshold of Lids and stopped just inside the security barrier, wearing a raccoon hat with raccoon paws and a raccoon face. Not a Davy Crockett–type cap—more like a raccoon hand puppet that fit on a person’s head.
“No,” Lanternglass said, and Dorothy’s grin vanished, replaced by an ugly scowl.
“Twenty percent off,” Dorothy said.
“No. Put it back.” Lanternglass dialed the office.
Dorothy said, “I have to pee.”