Odd Thomas

and glamorous displays that not so subtly implied the merchandise was as valuable as diamonds.
        The jewelry department dazzled with black granite, stainless steel, and Starfire glass, as if it offered not common diamonds but baubles from God's own collection.
        Although the gunfire had fallen silent, shoppers and employees still sheltered behind counters, behind marble-clad columns. They dared to peek at me as I strode among them, but many flinched and ducked out of sight again.
        Even though I didn't have a gun, I must have appeared to be dangerous. Or maybe I only seemed to be in a state of shock. They weren't taking any chances. I didn't blame them for hiding from me.
        Still crying, blotting my eyes with my hands, I was also talking aloud to myself. I couldn't stop talking to myself, and I wasn't even saying anything coherent.
        I didn't know where psychic magnetism might be taking me next, didn't know if Stormy was alive or dead in Burke & Bailey's. I wanted to go back to find her, but I continued to be drawn urgently forward by my demanding gift. My body language was marked by tics, twitches, hesitations, and sudden rushes of new purpose. I must have looked not just spastic but psychotic.
        Sweet-faced, sleepy-eyed Simon Varner didn't have such a sweet face anymore, or sleepy eyes. Dead in front of Burke & Bailey's.
        So maybe I was tracking something related to Varner. I couldn't guess what that might be. This compulsion to keep moving without a clearly defined quarry was new to me.
        Among racks of cocktail dresses, silk blouses, silk jackets, handbags, I hurried at last to a door marked EMPLOYEES ONLY. Beyond lay a storeroom. Directly across from the door by which I entered, another led to a concrete stairwell.
        The layout was familiar from the department store at the north end of the mall. The stairs led down to a corridor where I passed employee-only elevators and came to oversize swinging doors marked RECEIVING.
        This room reflected a thriving enterprise, though it didn't quite equal the size of the one at the north-end store. Merchandise on racks and carts awaited processing, prepping, and transfer to stockrooms and sales floors.
        Numerous employees were present, but work appeared to have come to a halt. Most had gathered around a sobbing woman, and others were crossing the room toward her. Down here where no shots could have been heard, news of the horror in the mall had now arrived.
        Only one truck stood in the receiving room: not a full semi, about an eighteen-footer, with no company name on the cab doors or the sides of the trailer. I moved toward it.
        A burly guy with a shaved head and a handlebar mustache braced me as I reached the vehicle. "Are you with this truck?"
        Without responding, I pulled open the driver's door and climbed into the cab. The keys weren't in the ignition.
        "Where's your driver," he asked.
        When I popped open the glove box, I found it empty. Not even the registration or proof of insurance required by California law.
        "I'm the shift foreman here," the burly guy said. "Are you deaf or just difficult?"
        Nothing on the seats. No trash container on the floor. No scrap of discarded candy wrapper. No air freshener or decorative geegaw hanging from the mirror.
        This didn't have the feel of a truck that anyone drove for a living or in which anyone spent a significant amount of his day.
        When I got out from behind the steering wheel, the foreman said, "Where's your driver? He didn't leave me a manifest, and the box is locked."
        I went around to the back of the truck, which featured a roll-up door on the cargo trailer. A key lock in the base bar of the door secured it to a channel in the truck bed.
        "I've got other shipments due," he said. "I can't let this just sit here."
        "Do you have a power drill?" I asked.
        "What're you going to do?"
        "Drill out the lock."
        "You're not the guy drove this in here. Are you his crew?"
        "Police," I lied. "Off duty."
        He was dubious.
        Pointing to the sobbing woman around whom so many workers had now gathered, I said, "You hear what she's been saying?"
        "I was on my way over there when I saw you."
        "Two maniacs with machine guns shot up the mall."
        His face drained of color so dramatically that even his blond