Free Blind Spot by Terri Persons Page A

checked her watch. Nine o’clock. Nine o’clock on a Saturday. She used the bag to shield her hand while she retrieved the ring from the bench seat. She crammed the bagged jewelry in her pocket, jumped out of her seat, cut through the pew, and flew out of the church. She jogged down the church steps and ran down the block, pulling on her leather gloves as she went.
    Her vision was operating in real time. If she got to her car and drove around town, maybe she’d luck out. See the towers somewhere around the Twin Cities. She stopped at a crosswalk and at that instant realized how wiped out she felt. This had been a tough one. She leaned a hand against a light post. Rising up in her gut were the killer’s emotions, a weird combination of satisfaction tempered by something else. Fear? No. Fear was too strong. Concern. He’s worried, but only a little. The satisfaction was the predominant sensation, and having that smug feeling coming from a murderer sickened her. She pushed the emotions down and caught her breath while she waited impatiently for the light to change. Cars and trucks zoomed by on the nighttime street in front of her. She smelled charred meat again. She looked across the street at the restaurant emitting the aroma. MICKEY’S DINING CAR , read the neon sign mounted on the roof of the diner. Above that, also in neon: FREE PARKING . A chill crawled up her spine, along with a realization. The killer hadn’t been seeing a pair of monuments when he’d glanced outside. She looked back over her shoulder at the building she’d just visited. There they were, rising up on each side of the church. Twin steeples.

 
     
    Ten
     

     
    When the light changed, Bernadette ran across the road to Mickey’s Dining Car. She turned and stood on the corner with her back to the restaurant. Where in the hell was she downtown? She got her bearings. Mickey’s was on Seventh Street at St. Peter Street. From which building was he looking at the diner’s sign? From which window? He was up a few floors. She looked to her right and saw the Minnesota Children’s Museum on the other side of St. Peter Street. No. That would have given him a side view of FREE PARKING .
    Kitty-corner from the diner was the Ramsey County Juvenile Service Center. A county building would have a lot of ugly institutional furniture. Orange upholstery would fit right in. She considered whether the killer could be young. The murderer’s hands were large, so he would have to be a big teenager. She prayed it wasn’t a kid. At the same time, she had to admit it was an interesting possibility. Archer had pissed off a lot of kids; one could have come after him and then, for some reason or another, ended up at the juvenile center. Not all of what she’d seen through the killer’s eyes made sense with that disturbing scenario, however. What would a woman be doing in bed at a kids’ detention center? Was the woman a teenage girl? The corrections staff wouldn’t let a male be alone with a female in her bedroom—not unless there was some hanky-panky going on. What was that reference book about, then? Was it a kid’s math book? She’d check out the view from the juvenile center.
    Making a diagonal dash across the intersection, Bernadette narrowly missed getting slammed by a Suburban. The driver laid on the horn. She stood on the corner and looked at the diner, then turned and looked behind her at the windows dotting the detention center. The angle wasn’t right; he’d been looking at the sign from up high, but facing straight ahead.
    The single-story buildings on West Seventh, directly across the street from the diner, were too low. What was behind them on St. Peter? The traffic was heavy again. She waited until she had a green light and crossed back. Bernadette ran down the sidewalk along St. Peter, passing a check-cashing joint, an empty storefront, a Thai restaurant, and a surface parking lot.
    There it was, across from the parking lot. A hospital. The woman