Die Trying

Maybe three or four people. He quartered the room again. Frozen with indecision. He should be pounding and kicking at the new pine boards. He knew that. But he wasn’t. Because he knew it was hopeless, and because he felt in his gut he must be silent. He had become sure of that. Convinced. If he was silent, they might leave him alone. They might forget he was in there.

    MILOSEVIC FOUND THE right place, the seventh of the eleven establishments on his list. It was just opening up for business, seven-forty in the morning. Just a store-front place, but elegant, not really aimed at the typical commuter’s cheap worsteds. It advertised all kinds of specialized processes and custom treatments. There was a Korean woman in charge of the store. Milosevic showed her his FBI shield and placed Holly’s file picture flat on the counter in front of her.
    “You ever see this person?” he asked her.
    The Korean woman looked at the picture, politely, with concentration, her hands clasped together behind her back.
    “Sure,” she said. “That’s Miss Johnson, comes in every Monday.”
    Milosevic stepped closer to the counter. He leaned up close to the woman.
    “She come in yesterday?” Milosevic asked her.
    The woman thought about it and nodded.
    “Sure,” she said. “Like I told you, she comes in every Monday.”
    “What kind of time?” he asked.
    “Lunch hour,” the woman said. “Always lunch hour.”
    “About twelve?” he said. “Twelve-thirty, something like that?”
    “Sure,” the woman said. “Always lunch hour on a Monday.”
    “OK, yesterday,” Milosevic said. “What happened?”
    The woman shrugged.
    “Nothing happened,” she said. “She came in, she took her garments, she paid, she left some garments to be cleaned.”
    “Anybody with her?” he asked.
    “Nobody with her,” the woman said. “Nobody ever with her.”
    “Which direction was she headed?” Milosevic asked.
    The woman pointed back toward the Federal Building.
    “She came from that direction,” she said.
    “I didn’t ask you where she came from,” Milosevic said. “Where did she head when she left?”
    The woman paused.
    “I didn’t see,” she said. “I took her garments through to the back. I heard the door open, but I couldn’t see where she went. I was in back.”
    “You just grabbed her stuff?” Milosevic said. “Rushed through to the back before she was out of here?”
    The woman faltered, like she was being accused of an impoliteness.
    “Not rushed,” she said. “Miss Johnson was walking slow. Bad leg, right? I felt I shouldn’t stare at her. I felt she was embarrassed. I walked her clothes through to the back so she wouldn’t feel I was watching her.”
    Milosevic nodded and tilted his head back and sighed up at the ceiling. Saw a video camera mounted high above the counter.
    “What’s that?” he said.
    The Korean woman twisted and followed his gaze.
    “Security,” she said. “Insurance company says we got to have it.”
    “Does it work?” he asked.
    “Sure it works,” the woman said. “Insurance company says it’s got to.”
    “Does it run all the time?” Milosevic asked.
    The woman nodded and giggled.
    “Sure it does,” she said. “It’s running right now. You’ll be on the tape.”
    Milosevic checked his watch.
    “I need yesterday’s tape,” he said. “Immediately.”
    The woman faltered again. Milosevic pulled his shield for the second time.
    “This is an FBI investigation,” he said. “Official federal business. I need that tape, right now, OK?”
    The woman nodded and held up her hand to make him wait. Stepped through a door to the rear of the establishment. Came back out after a long moment with a blast of chemical smell and a videocassette in her hand.
    “You let me have it back, OK?” she said. “Insurance company says we got to keep them for a month.”

    MILOSEVIC TOOK IT straight in, and by eight-thirty the Bureau technicians were swarming all over the third-floor conference room again, hooking up a standard VHS player to the bank of monitors piled down the middle of the long table. There was a problem with a fuse, and then the right wire proved too short, so a computer had to be moved to allow the video player to get nearer to the center of the table. Then the head tech handed McGrath the remote and nodded.
    “All yours, chief,” he said.
    McGrath sent him out of the room and the three agents crowded around the screens, waiting for the picture to roll. The