Chương 2
It was the clearest thing she had said.
Marcus turned enough to see her without opening the space between her and Todd’s office door. Leah was twenty-two, but fear had reduced her face to something much younger. Her brown hair had fallen loose from the knot she wore at the back of her head. She clutched the medicine box to her light-blue cardigan, pinning the torn pharmacy bag beneath it. A wet line remained along one cheek.
“You don’t have to,” Marcus said.
Pamela heard him. “Nobody is forcing her.”
“You had an employee drag her seventy feet through a store.”
“I didn’t see that happen.”
“I did.”
“So did I,” the woman with the toddler said.
Another customer spoke from behind a cart filled with frozen dinners. “He had her by the bag and her sleeve.”
Todd’s voice came faintly through the office door. “That’s a lie.”
Pamela closed her eyes for an instant.
The checkout lane continued to collect the quiet wreckage of interruption. A conveyor belt held a gallon of milk, dog food, and a bunch of bananas that had rolled against a divider. Refrigerated cases hummed. Cart wheels passed in distant aisles where customers had not yet heard enough to become interested.
Pamela opened her eyes. “Security has called the police.”
Leah looked up.
Marcus said, “For Todd?”
“For the incident.”
“That means no.”
“It means I’m not making conclusions in a checkout aisle.”
Marcus looked at her blazer, her store shirt, and the thin crease between her eyebrows. She seemed less interested in protecting Todd than in preventing the next thirty seconds from creating a lawsuit larger than the one already forming.
Leah whispered, “Can I take my medicine?”
Pamela glanced at the sealed box. “Not until we verify the transaction.”
The words landed harder than Pamela appeared to expect.
Leah’s mouth opened, then shut. She looked down at the receipt. Her breathing became shallow again.
Marcus lowered his voice. “It’s verified. The pharmacy charged her. The receipt matches the box.”
“I understand what it appears to show.”
“Appears?”
“I need to follow procedure.”
“You had a procedure for reactivating the tag after she paid?”
Pamela looked past him toward the office.
That hesitation changed something. Not the facts, not yet, but the room’s sense of where the danger might be. The woman holding the toddler adjusted the child higher on her hip and began recording again.
Pamela noticed. “Please don’t post that until this has been investigated.”
The woman gave a short, humorless laugh. “That’s not how phones work.”
Two police officers arrived ten minutes later, although to Leah the time seemed to have no shape. She stood beside Marcus near the closed register while shoppers edged around them and pretended not to stare. He did not ask if she was all right. People always asked that when the honest answer would make them uncomfortable.
Instead, he said, “Your hands are going numb.”
She looked at her fingers.
“Open them.”
“I’m fine.”
“Open them anyway.”
She loosened her grip on the medicine. Pins and needles moved through her palms. Marcus took the torn bag, folded the ripped edge inward, and placed the box back inside without touching the label.
“You still carry tape?” she asked.
The question surprised him. Years earlier, when her father was alive, Marcus had fixed nearly everything with black electrical tape: cracked side mirrors, a split garden-hose nozzle, the loose handle on Leah’s first suitcase. Her father used to accuse him of believing tape was one of the classical elements.
Marcus touched a pocket of his vest. “Different vest.”
She almost smiled. It failed before reaching her mouth.
The officers separated them for statements. One spoke with Pamela and Todd in the office. The other, Officer Harlan, led Leah and Marcus a few steps away toward the refrigerated drink case.
Harlan was younger than Marcus had expected, with a tired mustache and a body camera centered on his chest. He listened without interrupting while Leah described paying at the pharmacy counter, walking toward the exit, hearing the alarm, and stopping when Todd shouted.
“You stopped immediately?” Harlan asked.
“I turned around. He was already coming at me.”
“Did you show him the receipt?”
“I tried.”
“He said she could have picked up any receipt,” Marcus said.
Harlan held up a hand. “I need her to answer.”
Marcus’s jaw flexed.
Leah saw it. “He said it wasn’t proof because thieves pick up receipts. Then he grabbed the bag. I told him it was prescription medicine, but he kept saying I had concealed merchandise.”
“Did he touch your body?”
“He caught my sleeve. Mostly he pulled the bag.”
“Did you attempt to leave after he stopped you?”
“I stepped back when he came close.”
“Toward the door?”
“There wasn’t anywhere else.”
Harlan nodded and wrote something. “You said there’s an electronic record showing the tag was reactivated?”
Marcus played the voice message.
Harlan asked to see the sender information. The message had come from an official Northway customer-compliance number. Before Todd had ripped the bag away, Marcus had already called the number printed beneath a paragraph on the back of Leah’s receipt. The specialist had asked for the store number, register, transaction time, and a product code from the box. Marcus had read them while Todd argued with Pamela near customer service. The specialist put him on hold, returned sounding alarmed, and asked him not to let anyone remove the merchandise from the store. A minute later, the recording arrived.
Harlan listened twice.
“What made you call?” he asked.
Marcus looked through the glass door of the office. Todd stood inside with both hands on Pamela’s desk, talking rapidly to the other officer.
“He kept looking at his badge.”
“That’s all?”
“He told the cashier to clear the transaction log before the manager came.”
Devin, still beside the locked register, looked up sharply.
Harlan followed Marcus’s gaze. “Did you hear that?”
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“I heard him say, ‘Clear it.’”
“That could refer to the screen.”
