Dee Henderson - The Witness

Already a crowd of shoppers was slowing, stopping, and asking questions of each other. Luke walked through them and around the corridor to the restrooms. The cleaning cart remained where he had left it. Luke stepped around it and into the ladies’ restroom.

The chair sat in the lavatory section, empty but for his folded jacket. “Ma’am? Kelly Brown?”

He left the lavatory and walked through the stalls. The restroom was empty. She’d left. As shaky as she had been, she’d still managed to leave.

He walked out of the restroom and looked around the corridor. She wasn’t watching the officers at the store, propelled there by the awfulness of what she had seen. There wasn’t a need to run, Kelly. You were safe now .

“I need an address and a vehicle make for Kelly Brown, early forties. Give me any DMV records close to the name and age registered in the city.” He started the trace and then flipped through the phone book to locate the main Bressman store. He tore out the page. Five branches. Why this one?

Luke reentered the jewelry store and moved into the small office area; the hallway had begun to fill with forensics people.

Connor looked up from a file. “Your witness?”

“Skipped. And from the sound of it, she saw the shooter. I’ve got a trace running for her car now. Anything here show addresses, phone numbers of the staff?”

“I’ve got customer information-jewelry repair and special orders-but the best I’ve done so far on the staff is an index card taped by the phone. The main store has all the personnel files. I’ve got an officer bringing them over.”

Luke checked the index card. Just first names, but only one Kelly. He touched his radio. “I need a reverse lookup on a phone number.” He read it off and got an address back. “She’s close by; I’m heading over there. You’re good here?”

“The photos and phone numbers give me a place to start, and forensics has a priority to tell me the weapon used. I’ll have preliminary inventory confirmed in twenty minutes. Right now you’re right; it looks like everything is here.”

“Former staff, recent firings-this types as a workplace shooting, not a robbery. Station a patrol car and officer at the other Bressman stores; there’s no reasoning yet for why this branch. Let’s make sure it’s not simply the first.”

“Marsh had the same thought; he’s got officers on the way to the stores now.”

Luke stopped at the restroom to retrieve his jacket and his purchases from an hour ago. He headed toward his sedan. He could send other officers, but Kelly was spooked enough, and what she had seen was their strongest lead right now.

The trip took seven minutes, three of them spent idling at red lights. He turned on Amber Road. He wasn’t sure he would personally like to live this close to where he worked. He slowed as the house numbers counted down to the address he sought and he stopped: an old two-story red brick with a massive front porch and a narrow lot. The oak tree in front towered above the house and shaded the yard. No vehicle was in Kelly Brown’s driveway, and a slow drive past showed the garage had a blown-over trash can rolling back and forth in front of the door, suggesting she hadn’t pulled through into the garage.

“55-14.”

He touched his radio. “10-2.”

“DMV records for Kelly Brown at that address show only one vehicle registered, a Honda Odyssey, plates alpha-bravo-nine-two-five.”

“Alpha-bravo-nine-two-five. 10-4.”

Luke circled the block and saw no sign of her vehicle. He parked on the street. Picking up his jacket, he slipped it on. He lifted the collar closer to his face and caught the faint trace of her perfume. A lady’s scent: welcoming, a touch elegant. He walked up the sidewalk to her front porch. Mail jammed the mailbox, and potted plants lined inside the front window. Lights were off. He rang the doorbell and opened the screen door to also knock. “Ms. Brown, Kelly, please come to the door. It’s Officer Granger.”

He didn’t get an answer.

He walked around the property and knocked on the back door. The house appeared locked and quiet.

He hadn’t seen her purse in that lavatory, and she hadn’t reentered the jewelry store. If she wasn’t home, then where? He touched his radio. “Connor, get the mall security guard Richards on the radio. Check if a Honda Odyssey is still in the mall parking lot. Plates are alpha-bravo-nine-two-five.”

“Hold on.”

Luke checked windows around the property, but what he could see of Kelly Brown’s life were plants, books, one bowl in the draining rack beside the sink, and a jacket lying over the back of a chair. He checked the mail and found it all addressed to K. Brown or Kelly Brown . She lived alone.

“The vehicle is parked in section G, aisle five.”

“Tell Richards to keep an eye on it. Have you found any purses in the office?”

“No. There’s a locker in the storeroom that may be for coats and such. I’ll check just as soon as forensics gives me access.”

“I’m on my way back to you.”

He had left her at the mall restroom. If she didn’t have her purse, she didn’t have car or house keys, and she would have no cash beyond what she might have slipped into her pocket. But if she’d worked at that mall branch for three years, as the photo indicated, she likely had friends on staff at other stores. Lack of keys or cash wasn’t going to slow her down. And if she was running scared- come on, honey, the last thing I want to do is go knock on the doors of your friends and leave them worried when I can’t tell them for sure you’re okay .

She’d seen the shooter well enough to know his eye color. She hadn’t been killed. The two facts were incongruent. Someone she knew? Someone she recognized on sight? Then why hadn’t she just said his name as the person who shot her coworkers?

Kelly Brown, I need to find you or you need to find me, and it has to be soon .

Luke parked beside responding squad cars at the mall and walked back inside. Marsh had set up shop east of the jewelry-store entrance in a small storefront available for lease, officers streaming in and out with information and new assignments.

Luke handed Marsh Kelly’s photo. “I need a canvas of the mall, staff at the stores, anyone who has seen her or knows her. She’s going to be wound pretty tight, so have me paged rather than approach her if someone spots her. She may have already left with a friend, so also be asking at stores for the names of who got off duty in the last hour and a half.”

“You’ll have it.” Marsh passed the photo to the officer behind him. “Thirty duplicates, color. Tom, get me another stack of mall maps to mark store assignments. What’s the latest count on the mall security tapes?”

“Nine scanned so far,” Tom replied. “They just brought down another six.”

“Your witness is going to turn out to be our best lead on the shooter. The initial interviews of those around the jewelry store are coming up dry, and the security tapes from the store and mall aren’t offering much.”

Luke suspected that too. “She saw enough to give us the shooter-I’m convinced of that. Stress that ‘do not approach’ when she’s spotted; have me paged.”

“Will do.”

Luke stopped beside the mall security guard Parker. “Does the mall have a regular bus stop?”

“One by the movie theater and the other by Sears. The blue bus line stops at both every thirty minutes.”

Luke headed over to the movie-theater entrance. The bus was on time. He stepped aboard, confirmed the driver had been on this route the last two hours, and got a negative when he described Kelly Brown.

Luke stepped back off. It had been a long shot. He flagged down a mall-security patrol car and got in beside Roberts. “Show me the van I tagged.” As they drove the lot, Luke flipped pages in the license-plate list. They’d been recorded by section. “Three hundred cars, give or take?”