For a winter day, the beach temperatures weren’t that bad. The weatherman said it would reach the high fifties (Fahrenheit) that afternoon and it was close to that by lunch time. There were a few high whispy clouds hovering over the ocean, but for the most part, Max and JP were enjoying beautiful weather as they walked the boardwalk after lunch. Max had learned that JP generally didn’t like to come anywhere near the beach on her days off, since she worked beach patrol on duty and got tired of being there, but he also had learned that she enjoyed the mall… so here they were. JP liked window shopping as much as anyone Max had ever met but spent money very rarely. He considered it a worthy trade off. She didn’t actively shop; she just enjoyed weeding out what she would or wouldn’t spend money on when she had extra cash on hand. That made their casual dates easier.
Max’s squad had finished their rotation of evening shifts the night before. JP was starting her rotation of day shifts the next day. So they had found themselves with a whole day off to enjoy. They had very carefully avoided going to the gym on New Year’s Day because it was sure to be packed with all of the folks who made resolutions to start working out. Half of them didn’t know how to use the equipment and the large majority of them weren’t familiar with courtesy protocols – like reracking your weights and wiping down the equipment after you used it. Still, they both liked to exercise and although New Year’s Day was a few days behind them, they still hadn’t felt like going to the gym that morning. Instead they had met at the high school closest to Max’s place, very early so it was before school started, and done some running interlaced with calisthenics. Max hated running the bleachers. JP loved it. JP didn’t like doing pull-ups behind the bleachers, and Max didn’t mind them. They did sit-ups and push-ups in the field inside the track and then ran a set of wind sprints before settling into a two mile jog. They got cleaned up back at Max’s, and then set out to spend the day together. Breakfast followed by some sight-seeing at the local Naval museum / base, and then some more at an Army base just north of the city. Lunch rolled around and then they headed to the mall.
They had parked down at the inlet and walked up to the mall – about ten blocks – and then decided to “work” the mall from the top down. JP had shops on each level that she wanted to look in so up all the escalators they went. They joked about taking the stairs but both of them had jelly-legs after all the bleachers they’d run that morning. The top level was Level 5 and there were roughly forty shops per level. Max had followed JP in and out of various shops on the top level, down one on level 4 and they were on Level 3 when the disturbance began.
The center of the mall was open from the ground floor to the skylights that were built into the roof and the walk way for each level wound around the open center. The architect had been creative so it wasn’t a circle, oval, rectangle or square. It was like a softly curved figure eight and the walkways in the middle curved in so that they were ALMOST close enough that people could hand stuff to one another across the open space; ALMOST being the operative word. The middle of the walkways were closest on the 2nd level, and got a little farther apart with each level going up. Max always thought the juvenile delinquents would spit over the higher rails down to the lower levels but he’d never heard of such happening when he talked to the mall security personnel.
Max and JP were walking on the 3rd level near the center curve when they heard the shouting from the 2nd level somewhere on their side of the mall from what they could tell. It sounded beneath and behind them as they walked. What was being yelled wasn’t all clear enough to understand but the tone and emotion behind what was being yelled made it clear enough that there was anger and threat being exchanged.
JP pulled out her phone to call 9-1-1 if necessary while they started to head toward the closest escalator. The escalators were at both ends of the figure eight shape and they were in the middle. It would have been MUCH faster, Max thought, if he could have gone over the rail but he knew he wasn’t Batman and he was pretty sure Karma would do something to him if he acted so foolishly – like break his ankle when he landed on the next level down. Such actions are great in fiction stories but not so great in real life.
In her left hand JP held her phone, with 9-1-1 already dialed and her thumb on the CONNECT button, unpushed… so far. Her right hand was inside her purse on the grip of her handgun, holster unsnapped but weapon still holstered… for now. Max had his hands free as he moved down the escalator. The yelling seemed to be coming from the same location but had intensified in volume and tone. Added in were now the sounds of a scuffle and a crowd had started to form at either end of the second story walkway on that side. Then there was the sound of a gunshot…
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