'Nothing was ever proved,' Kluger admitted.
'Well, then, it's nothing more than hearsay.' She sat back in her chair again. She was obviously pleased with Lieutenant Kluger's discomfort.
'Did you know about this 'hearsay' reputation of his?' the lieutenant persisted.
'If I did know,' she said, 'what possible difference could it make? It couldn't have anything to do with what happened here tonight.' Her voice got hard. There was no longer any amusement in it. 'You're angry because I saw through you, and you're just trying to irritate and frighten me. I won't sit here and be harassed much longer.'
'You'll sit there until I tell you to leave,' Kluger said, an ugly edge to his voice.
'I'm afraid not.'
'You will-'
'Do you have any serious questions? Or are you completely stumped? If you have anything serious to ask, you'd better ask it right now,' she said, pushing back her chair and getting to her feet.
Kluger looked down at his hands. They were curled into tight fists. He made an effort to relax. 'The manhole cover was off the drain entrance in the warehouse. Do you think they escaped that way?'
'I wouldn't know.'
'First they tied you up and left you on the north side of the warehouse. Then one of them used an electric cart to move you to the south side of the room. Why?'
'I guess they were going to be doing something on the north side of the room. Something they didn't want us to see.'
'Could it be that they were going to leave by the drain and didn't want you to know?'
She shrugged. Her full dark hair bounced on her shoulders. 'Why would it matter if we knew? We were all tied up. We couldn't do anything about it.'
Kluger got to his feet because he didn't like to have her staring down at him. 'I may want to talk to you again. What's your home phone number and address?'
'I gave it to the homicide detective,' she said, tilting her head impishly to one side.
'I'll need it, too.'
'You can ask them for it.'
'I'm asking you for it.'
'You can reach me here any weekday afternoon,' she said, ignoring the implied command. 'I'm an employee of the company and not just of Mr. Keski. Even if the new management hires another woman, I'll have to stay on a few weeks to help her get adjusted. I'm convinced you'll have this all wrapped up by then, Lieutenant.' She turned and walked off across the lounge, entered the east corridor, and disappeared around the corner.
At 3:25, Kluger unfolded the blueprints on the card table and studied them more assiduously than he had before. He found no hidden rooms. No secret passageways. No air ducts. large enough to hold a man. Nothing.
At 3:40, a three-man search party that he had sent into the storm-drain system returned without having found anything worthwhile. So far as they were able to ascertain, the original blueprints were accurate in every detail. The entrances to the storm drain from the parking lot were all much too small to pass a man. There was only one way out: the one that Kluger's men, out in that patch of scrub land, had been covering from almost the start.
At 4:00, a representative of the largest local television station came in to bargain for filming permission. He was a short, blocky man who dressed too loud for Kluger's taste and talked too rapidly.
'I told you,' the lieutenant said irritably, 'that I'm not going to allow anyone in here.'
'The media has a right-'
'As far as I'm concerned,' Kluger said, 'those bastards haven't left the mall.'
The television man looked around, perplexed. 'They're still here, you mean?'
'I know they are,' Kluger said, like a religious man earnestly repeating the supreme tenet of his faith. 'And I'm not letting you people interfere with a case when it's still a hot-pursuit item.'
'Hot pursuit?' the man said. 'Where?'
At 4:10 the lab technicians and the homicide detectives called it a night. They put up barriers in front of the bank and jewelry store, closed and sealed the room in which Keski and his bodyguard had been murdered. The chief detective on the case-a sallow, quiet little man named Bretters-came over to the card table by the fountain to see how things were with Kluger.
'You can't be leaving now,' Kluger said. 'They must be here just waiting for us to leave.'
'They can't be here,' Bretters said softly.
'But they can't have gotten out.'
'It's a real mystery how they slipped past you,' Bretters admitted. 'But we'll figure it out in a day or two.'
'They didn't slip past me!'
'Then where are they?'
'Here!'
'Haven't your men looked everywhere?' Bretters asked.
'Everywhere.'
'We'll figure it out in a couple of days,' Bretters said. Then he went out after the others.
At 4:20, Kluger learned that headquarters had begun to take his men away from him, dispatching them to other trouble spots all over the city. By 4:30, he was the only one left besides Hawbaker and Haggard. They went out to their patrol car to wait for him.
The newspaper reporters and the radio and television people had given up at last and gone away. The owner of the jewelry store, his very nervous insurance agent, and the manager of Countryside Savings and Loan had all gone back to their homes to lie sleepless for the remainder of the night. The four corridors and the nineteen stores were deserted, silent.
Lieutenant Kluger walked over to the pool and sat on the edge of the fake rocks. The fountain rose in front of him, two hundred jets of water that shot twenty feet into the air and rained back into the artificial pond. The surface of the pool was like a sheet of opaque white glass through which and in which one could see nothing at all except milky angles, whirlpools of foam, silvered bubbles. It was a restful thing to watch while he went over the night in his mind to see if he had overlooked something, anything.
The two night watchmen came up to the lounge to see if there was anything he needed or wanted.
'Take the chairs and table away,' he said, reaching out to pluck the blueprints from the table top.
As the two men folded the furniture, the big man said, 'How in the hell did they do it, Lieutenant?'
'Do what?' Kluger asked, looking up from the pool.
'Get away.'
'They didn't.'
'What do you mean?'
'They're here.'
The guard looked around at the mall. 'I don't think so,' he said, glancing pityingly at Kluger.
The other watchman, the quiet one, said, 'We were told not to touch anything after we were untied. Does that still go? Or can we finish closing up for the night?'
The lieutenant hesitated, then sighed. 'Go ahead.'
'Will you be leaving soon?' the first guard asked.
'Soon,' Kluger muttered dismally.
They picked up the folded chairs and the collapsed table and carried them out of the lounge, down the east corridor to the warehouse. The carpet soaked up their footsteps. In a moment all was quiet again.
How? Kluger wondered.
Through the north exit? No, that had been guarded.
Through the west? No.
Out of the south doors or the east? No.
Up onto the roof? Impossible and pointless.
Out the storm drains?
He got to his feet and folded up the blueprints. Still thinking about it, searching for the hole they'd used, he walked slowly across the public lounge.
