Gloria Torres smiled as she approached the counter and placed two Hershey’s candy bars down on the glass. She then pulled her purse up, opened it and took out her wallet as Mr. Kang punched keys on the register.
Gloria looked up, money in hand, when suddenly another figure entered the frame. It was a man with a black ski mask covering his face and wearing what looked like a black jumpsuit. He moved up behind Gloria unnoticed. She was still smiling. McCaleb looked at the time counter, saw it said 22:41:39 and then looked back at what was happening in the store. It gave him a strange feeling to watch the action take place in this surreal black-and-white silence. From behind, the man in the ski mask put his right hand on Gloria’s right shoulder and in one continuous move of the left hand put the muzzle of a handgun against her left temple. Without hesitation he pulled the trigger.
“Badda-BING!” Arrango said.
McCaleb felt his chest clench like a fist as he watched the bullet tear into Gloria’s skull, a horrifying mist of blood jettisoning from the entry and exit wounds on either side of her head.
“Never knew what hit her,” Walters said quietly.
Gloria jerked forward onto the counter and then bounced backward, collapsing into the shooter as he brought his right arm up around her and across her chest. Stepping backward, Gloria in front of him as a shield, he raised his left hand again and fired a shot at Mr. Kang, striking him somewhere in the body. The store owner bounced off the wall behind him and then forward, his upper body crashing down over the counter and cracking the glass. His arms flung out across the counter and his hands grappled for a hold like a man going over a cliff. Finally, he let go, his body flopping to the floor behind the counter.
The shooter let Gloria’s body slide to the ground and her upper body fell outside the view of the video frame. Only her hand, as if reaching across the floor, and legs stayed in the picture. The shooter moved toward the counter, quickly leaning over and looking down at Mr. Kang on the floor. Kang was reaching into a shelf below the counter, frantically pulling out stacks of brown bags. The shooter just watched him, until finally Kang’s arm came out, a black revolver in his hand. The man in the ski mask dispassionately shot Kang in the face before he ever got the chance to raise his gun.
Leaning further over the counter, his feet in the air, the shooter grabbed one of the bullet shells that had ejected and fallen next to Kang’s arm. He then straightened up, reached over and took the bills from the open cash register drawer. He looked up at the camera. Despite the mask, it was clear the man winked and said something to the camera, then quickly left the frame to the left.
“He’s picking up the other two shells,” Walters said.
“No sound on the camera, right?” McCaleb said.
“Right,” Walters said. “Whatever he said there, he said to himself.”
“Only one camera in the store?”
“Only one. Kang was cheap. That’s what we were told.”
As they continued to watch, the shooter made one more pass through the corner of the screen on his way out.
McCaleb stared blankly at the television, stunned by the harshness of the violence, despite his experience. Two lives spent for the contents of a cash drawer.
“You ain’t gonna see that on
McCaleb had dealt with cops like Arrango for years. They acted as though nothing ever got to them. They could look at the worst crime scenes and find the joke. It was part of the survival instinct. Act and talk as if it means nothing to you and you’ve got a shield. You won’t get hurt.
“Can I see it again,” McCaleb said. “Can you slow it down this time?”
“Wait a minute,” Walters said. “It’s not over.”
“What?”
“The Good Samuel comes in just about now.”
He said it with a Hispanic pronunciation. Sam-
“The Good Samuel?”
“Good Samaritan. Mexican guy comes in the store, finds them and tries to help. He kept the woman alive but there was nothing he could do for Kang. Then he goes out to the pay phone out front and makes-there he is.”
McCaleb looked back at the screen. The timeline now read 22:42:55 and a dark-haired, dark-complected man in jeans and a T-shirt had entered the picture. He first hesitated on the right side of the screen, apparently looking at Gloria Torres, and then went to the counter and looked over it. Kang’s body lay on the floor in a lake of blood. There were wide, ugly bullet wounds in his chest and face. His eyes were open and still. He was obviously dead. The Good Samaritan returned to Gloria. He knelt on the floor and apparently hunched over her upper body, which was off-screen. But almost immediately he was up again and out of the picture.
“He went down the aisles looking for bandages,” Arrango said. “He actually wrapped her head with masking tape and a Kotex. A supersize.”
The Good Samaritan returned and went to work on Gloria, although all of this was off-screen.
