The Death Row Complex (41 page)

Katrina leaned out over the railing and scanned the crowd. McMullan joined her, his eyes sifting through couples holding hands, families, and groups of women or teenagers giggling and clutching bags from the various retailers. There was no sign of Alexis.

Abandoning their present vantage point, McMullan and Katrina stepped away from the railing and ran forward on the catwalk, passing the large, blue structure that linked the two sides of the mall. As they passed, McMullan looked down the corridor within it.

Inside were two staircases separated by a foot-thick wall. The staircase on the left led downward from where they were standing, and the one on the right upward. Neither was steep enough to actually provide access to a different level of the mall. McMullan could not tell what they connected to or where.
What a
zoo.

Katrina was now leaning over another balcony. In front of her was a threatening triangular structure, painted an odd, geometric pattern of black, white and red. An escalator disappeared upward into it from ground level. There was no corresponding down escalator at the same level, but McMullan could make out one at a distance. It did not, however, connect the same two floors.

The triangular structure was punctuated with arches through which McMullan could see more shoppers as they passed, and others that appeared to be sitting or standing still. Two more catwalks connected the structure to the floor McMullan and Katrina were on, or so he thought.

Next to McMullan and Katrina, a booth attendant talked boisterously on the phone. A siren approached, momentarily drowning out the constant hum of multiple conversations surrounding them, and then faded. A shriek cut through the din.

“
Mom!
”

McMullan and Katrina looked in unison toward the source of the sound and saw Alexis through an arch in the triangular structure looming before them. She was on a level not quite an entire floor above them. McMullan raced to the nearest catwalk that appeared to connect with the triangle. As he crossed it, he realized he had taken the wrong path. The catwalk led to a staircase heading to a lower level.

He turned back around to see two gently graded wheelchair ramps, one leading up and the other down, both leading toward unknown and different destinations. There was also an escalator between the floor he was on and the one where he thought Alexis had been. It ran in the wrong direction.

Katrina had already disregarded the intended direction of the escalator and leaped onto it, running against its flow and past surprised tourists. Slowly and laboriously, she began to overtake its movement. McMullan followed.

The path led to a food court stretching along one side of the mall. The mixed scents of international cuisines blended with the unmistakable aromas of hot dogs, popcorn, and cinnamon. Extending into the triangular structure they had seen from the other side was a small, shaded outdoor café, where patrons of the various eateries sat at tables enjoying their meals. Some of them looked a bit startled. Alexis was gone.

“Lexi, where are you?!”
Katrina shouted into the crowd as McMullan caught up to her in the food court. When he stopped running, he felt a light tug at his pant leg and looked down.

A small boy of perhaps four years was looking up at him. “She went through there, mister,” the child said softly and pointed to another staircase heading upward.

McMullan smiled kindly and thanked the boy, then ran up the stairs with Katrina at his side. Another catwalk came to a T on the opposite side of the mall, one floor—a true floor—above the spot they had started from.

“
Which way!?
” Katrina shouted rhetorically, glancing feverishly to her left and right. To the right was a long, shaded corridor. To the left, a shorter one extended through a sunny patch into another triangle. Alexis answered the question.

“
Mom!
” she shouted again, and McMullan and Katrina followed the sound.

Katrina’s eyes flashed when she saw her daughter.

Alexis stood atop a protruding square balcony lined with flowers. The balcony was a true top level, and through the brilliant blue sky Alexis was exposed and vulnerable. Her arm was bleeding heavily from two sources: one at the shoulder, the other, the inner crook of her elbow. And there was also something else wrong with her, something that only Katrina could see. Her daughter was not well.

Katrina had always known instinctively when one of her children was falling ill. She knew even before they knew. It was in the color of their skin, the glint in their eyes, even the smell of their breath. When Christopher had died, the ability to detect illness in Alexis had intensified within Katrina.

Her need to reach Lexi was suddenly the strongest she had ever felt in her life. But then she saw a shadow loom over her daughter.

The Doctor grabbed Alexis again from behind, his arm over her neck, his gun again pressed firmly into her back. She jumped and a shriek escaped her lips.

Beside Katrina, McMullan shouted, “
You!
” And Katrina realized that he recognized Lexi’s kidnapper. Katrina did not.

McMullan raised his pistol, but then hesitated. As if reading his thoughts, Katrina shouted, “
No! You’ll hit
her!
”

The Doctor had no such concerns. He aimed his pistol toward Katrina and a shot rang out. And backward she fell, crashing to the floor behind the waist-high stucco wall.
I’m
dead
.

The only pain she could feel was in the back of her head where it had hit the concrete floor, but the world was swimming, the carnival of Horton Plaza around her a backdrop for the confusion that threatened to drown away her consciousness. But then slowly, her vision stabilized and she came to realize that it was not the gunshot that had knocked her down. It was the two hundred pound Navy Corpsman on top of her.
Tom
.

Katrina struggled to speak.

Her ex-husband was faster.
“Are you hit?”
he demanded, rolling off of Katrina to examine her horizontal body.

Katrina looked over Tom’s shoulder for Sean McMullan. He was gone. In his place, a portly, unfortunate tourist lay on the concrete a few feet away, each puff of his chest spewing a geyser of brilliant red like the blowhole of a whale harpooned through the lung. Mall patrons scattered, screaming.

Tom poked his head up to assess the balcony where Alexis and the Doctor had been standing, and then immediately dropped back down as a second bullet whizzed past and crashed into the glass window of the store behind them.

Tom reached into his waistband and withdrew a pistol—the same pistol over which he and Katrina had fought constantly while they were married. Because Katrina was afraid for the children.

Together, the former couple raced along the walkway, alternately popping up to catch a glimpse of Alexis and then dropping back down to avoid the Doctor’s bullets. But the Doctor held Lexi close, and Tom still had no shot.

Directly across from the balcony on which her daughter was held, Katrina dropped down behind the wall beside a bench.

Tom fell in beside her. “I can’t get a shot,” he said. “I might hit her.”

“I’ll get you one,” Katrina said. “When you get it, take it.”

Before Tom could ask where she was going, Katrina jumped back up and began running across the walkway. This time, she was not ducking under the gunfire. As if on cue, the Doctor fired two shots. Remarkably, neither connected. But he did not let go of Alexis.

Katrina caught her daughter’s eye and stopped running. Defiantly, she stood still in front of the Doctor, no more than twenty feet away as the crow flies, a moat of confusion separating them. “
Come on, you bastard!”
Katrina held her arms out beside her, surrendering, inviting her own death.

The Doctor pulled Alexis slightly off to one side and slowly took aim on Katrina. And as he did, a thin popping noise came from below. A small chunk at the back of the Doctor’s head burst outward, and a thin, red river began pouring from his right eye.

Alexis screamed and dropped down out of Katrina’s sight. The Doctor’s intact left eye reflected bewilderment. His head tilted sideways like that of a dog trying to pick up a distant, high-pitched sound. Then his body followed, and gravity dragged him down.

The Doctor flipped forward over the balcony, that absurd, quizzical look still on his face. Three floors below, or what might have been four in the numerically devoid architecture of Horton Plaza, he smashed through a classic San Diego gaslamp before coming to a rest on a staircase.

Katrina turned backward to behold Tom, whose eyes moved from her to the man on the stairs. Tom shrugged. In answer to a question she had not yet posed, Tom shouted, “It wasn’t me! I didn’t shoot him!” Tom trotted over to join Katrina. Together, they scanned the crowd alongside and below them. And then they saw Sean McMullan, at ground level, walking slowly toward the Doctor’s body and holstering his pistol.

“Holy shit,” Tom said. He cast his eyes at the impossible angle and distance between McMullan and the balcony, on which the FBI agent had somehow managed to put a bullet into the Doctor’s
eye
while avoiding his daughter. Tom looked toward Katrina, and the respect on his face was unmistakable.

A frustrating five minutes later, Katrina and Tom finally made it to their daughter.

Alexis was sitting on the concrete of the balcony where the Doctor had lost his eye, her body slumped over, her mother’s maroon suit filthy and torn. Her breathing was shallow and labored, her face pale. Katrina raised a hand to Alexis’ forehead, while Tom examined the wounds on her arm.

“He stuck me with a needle,” Alexis said quietly.

Katrina and Tom exchanged a look.

“When?” Katrina demanded. “How long ago?”

“Maybe an hour?” Lexi guessed.

As they processed the information, McMullan came running toward them, panting. Katrina was amazed that he had found them so quickly.

“Nice shot,” Tom said.

“Hurry,” McMullan panted, leaning forward momentarily to catch a breath. “He’s still alive.”

10:58 A.M.
PST

Behind a one-way mirror in a small room at San Quentin, a young inmate sat fidgeting in his chair. He was in way over his head. All this stuff with the cops, the FBI, and a bunch of lawyers babbling legal bullshit at him, and nobody would tell him anything about what was going on. But two things had been promised. If he told the truth, his own sentence would be reduced. And they’d keep him away from the guy he ratted on.

Several months earlier, the young prisoner had been serving kitchen duty. All he had to do was ration out a bunch of dinners for one of the death row wings. Some Mexican had paid him to take over the job for one night. And he wasn’t about to argue about it or ask why. He took the money and went back to his cell.

Now, months later, he was supposed to point out the Mexican. He wasn’t sure if he’d get the right one. It was a long time ago, and he hadn’t been paying much attention. He didn’t know what would happen if he picked the wrong guy. Maybe they already knew who the right guy was, and this was a test. Maybe his sentence would be even longer if he gave the wrong answer.