Then, just inside the door leading to the lobby there are two more bodies. They’ve fallen over each other. A Mossberg military combat shotgun rests a few inches from one of the outstretched hands. The same guy has a red canvas backpack still clutched in the other.

One more man is sprawled faceup and arms out a few feet away. He’s wearing a suit and tie. It’s Barry.

Ten people.

Ten and out.

That’s a lot of dead men.

I lean against the building and look up at the towering overpasses and their halos of headlights. I breathe deeply and try to see things for what they are. I look through the window again for security cameras: nothing. I look to the rear of the bay, to the metal roll-up door where they bring the vehicles in and out. It’s closed. I see the control panel for that door, the big red button and the big black one.

Then I go back to the front door and try it. Locked.

I get a feeling that isn’t quite a thought. Something to do with the guns inside and the locked front door.

Back under the second window I squat in the darkness and wonder how loud the firefight must have been. It looks to have been brief by the way the bodies fell. Nobody got very far. I try to gauge the roar of the interstates and imagine the blasting and popping of the pneumatic wrenches of the tire shop nearby, and I figure, sure, it’s possible, you could have a neat little ten-man shoot-out here in this industrial wasteland under the freeways, and unless you had a customer waiting in the lobby or a bum in the Dumpster out back or a Sheriff ’s patrol just happen by, nobody would even hear it. The whole thing could have been over in a minute.

I can see that.

But I can’t see the victors walking out the front door and locking it behind them.

And I can’t see them scrambling to get out ahead of the back roll-up door as it rattled down.

And I can’t see them climbing out the window right above me, either.