She bit her lower lip.
“Let’s wait and we’ll get him when he comes out,” she said.
—
The restroom was big, big as an airport restroom, with eight urinals, most of them occupied. Farther in at least a dozen stalls. There were no windows in here. I walked past the men standing and washing or drying their hands at the sinks in front of the mirror. Stopped at a stall with a handwritten note taped to the door, OUT OF ORDER. The O in the middle had an eye, a nose and a smiley mouth drawn on it. A large fan whirred in the ceiling above the stall. I tore off the note, pushed open the door, stepped inside, locked it and unwrapped the gun and the leather case from the bubble wrap. Then I started to strip the weapon, breaking it down to its component parts.
28
Skyways III, October 2016
Bob had taken up a position some distance from the SWAT team that was waiting in readiness outside the door to the restrooms. Men who emerged at irregular intervals through the swinging door jumped at the sight of those black-clad men with automatic weapons pointing in their direction. Kay, Hanson and O’Rourke stood behind them and watched. Behind Bob, curious passersby stopped to watch, even after being told to move on.
One of the SWAT team pushed a thin wire through the door. Bob knew there was a micro camera on the end of it. Kay approached him.
“What’s up?” she asked.
“What?”
“You’re shaking your head.”
“Am I?”
“Yes. So what is it?”
“I don’t know,” said Bob. He saw Hanson say something to O’Rourke, who turned and looked in Bob’s direction. “It just…it feels wrong. As though…”
“As though what?” asked Kay. She was standing next to him. Her arms were folded, same as his.
“As though he’s playing cat and mouse with us. And he’s the cat.”
“Why—” Kay began, but Bob interrupted her.
“Wait a moment.” He ran after a man in a gray Minnesota Twins sweatshirt who had just emerged from the bathroom and was being waved on by the SWAT men. Bob caught up with him outside the bag store. “Excuse me, sir. MPD. Did you see anything in there?”
The man looked at Bob. “Like what?”
“A Latino carrying something wrapped in bubble wrap?”
“No. What’s going on?”
“You’ll see it on the news. When you say no, do you mean he might have been there but that you didn’t see him?”
The man hesitated. “He could have been in one of the stalls, I guess.”
“Thank you, sir.”
Bob ran back.
O’Rourke and one of the SWAT team were studying a phone screen that was relaying a feed from the micro camera.
“We have to go in and take himnow,” said Bob.
O’Rourke glanced at Bob, then held up his palm like a Stop sign. As Bob waited for the SWAT chief to finish looking at the screen he saw that the man in the Twins sweatshirt had stopped next to a guy wheeling a janitor cart who looked like Super Mario. He was saying something, then pointing to the bathroom, then up at the roof. Super Mario nodded like he understood.
“We need you to get out of here.”
Bob turned, realizing that O’Rourke had been talking to him.
