Never Fear (59 page)

“
I don’t know, Trudy,”
Marion said. “The mall will be a mad house...”

“
Yes it will be, silly,”
said Trudy with a laugh. “That’s part of the fun. And—-too—all the
Christmas decorations will be up at the Galleria. They’ve got a
humongous Santa’s house near the skating rink this year, instead of
in that children’s area. Ricky will love it. You can take him there
and get pictures.”

“
I don’t know. Ricky’s
almost seven,” said Marion. “He’s getting kind of old for Santa
Claus, don’t you think? Do you think he still really believes in
that stuff?”

“
Sure he does,” said
Trudy. “I heard him telling his cousin Michael that Santa
was
real
. Michael
wasn’t so sure—but, then, Michael is almost ten. Ricky’s at that
age where kids still believe.” Trudy took a drag on her
after-dinner cigarette, irritating Marion who was too polite to ask
her to put it out. “You’ve got maybe one good year left. You ought
to take Ricky out to see Santa. Get a picture of him sitting on
Santa’s lap. Enjoy the innocence of childhood one last time. He’ll
grow like a weed and be too big next year.”

And with that, Trudy stubbed out her
cigarette in the empty pie plate, got up, and disappeared, heading
for the bathroom. Marion waved her hands ineffectually in the air
trying to dispel the smoke. Then she hustled the dead cancer-stick
to the nearest waste receptacle, muttering under her
breath.

Trudy, when urging the Galleria visit,
said all this to Marion as though she were an authority. “Besides,”
Trudy had added, “the madhouse aspect is part of the fun. You
should see the lengths some people will go to just to get a
bargain!” Trudy laughed cheerfully, failing to recognize the irony
of her remark.

Marion sighed, indecisive.

After all the guests left,
the words “the innocence of childhood” kept reverberating in
Marion’s head. Ricky
did
believe in Santa Claus—right now. Would Ricky
still believe in him next year, when he was almost eight?
How many more years will Ricky be an innocent
child who believes in all the childhood myths?

She walked into the bedroom, turning
off the lights after cleaning up from the evening’s festivities,
and asked Tom, “Do you think I should take Ricky to the mall
tomorrow—Black Friday—to get a picture of him with
Santa?”

“
I dunno’,” said Tom. “Do
you
want
to?” Tom
was peeling off his socks. Next, he would throw them toward the
hamper—and probably miss, as usual.

“
Part of me wants to. And
part of me doesn’t want to fight the crowds out in force bargain
hunting the day after Thanksgiving.” Marion sighed.

“
Well, decide which part
of you is strongest and go with that.” Tom smiled and walked over
to hug his wife, who was removing her jeans. “The Galleria is
pretty upscale. All those fancy jewelry stores. Shops like that
luggage place that we can’t afford. Nordstrom’s. Neiman Marcus.”
Always pragmatic, he added, “If you go, stick with Santa and avoid
the stores.”

“
Oh, Tom. You know that
one of the biggest stores is right near where Santa has set up shop
this year. I don’t have to go
in
the stores, but I’m definitely going to be
exposed to all the shoppers who
are
going in all those expensive stores. Ricky will
probably come home wanting some horrifically priced monstrosity
from Neiman Marcus’ window—like a life-sized giraffe or something.”
They both laughed.

“
Well, just keep ye olde
budget in mind, hon. Meeting Santa ought to be a big enough thrill
for a short visit to the glorious Galleria. Then you can come home
and make meatloaf for the three us. We’ll be absorbing the cost of
this year’s Thanksgiving Mega-Feed for a month or so. And, by the
way, your usual wonderful job, Dear. Food was
great
!” He pecked his wife of a
decade on the cheek.

“
Why, thank you, kind
sir,” said Marion, pretending to curtsey. “I’m glad you enjoyed it.
There was absolutely no turkey left over—and that bird originally
weighed over twenty pounds. And all the scalloped corn is gone
too.”

“
Well, we’ll deal with
that tragedy tomorrow. We can buy one of those small turkey breasts
and start all over, can’t we? We still have the dressing and mashed
potatoes and gravy—right?”

“
Yes, dear,” Marion said,
with mock obeisance, sinking down next to him on the bed and
enfolding him in her arms in a loving embrace.

Friday, November 28, 2014

Bright and early on Black Friday,
Marion and Ricky hopped in the tan Hyundai Tucson van and started
driving toward the Galleria Mall at 5085 Westheimer Road, near Post
Oak Boulevard. The Galleria in Dallas was not new, although it had
been remodeled in 2006. It was the 7th largest mall in America. It
got its name from the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele, a shopping arcade
in Milan, Italy.

Walking into the mall,
Marion never failed to be impressed by the barrel vaulted glass
ceiling, interlaced with iron, identical to the treatment above the
huge ice skating rink. Although
her
family was not wealthy enough to spend $200,000
at stores like Hermes, Saks and Chanel, Marion still felt the
Dallas Galleria was the best true “mall” in the United States,
given its scale, size, and mix of luxury and upscale shopping, plus
offerings for mid-range buyers like the Towlertons.

This year, rather than having Santa
set up in the Little Galleria children’s play area, the
man-in-red’s opulent throne was situated quite near exactly those
high-end stores that Tom had warned Marion to avoid. Still, if
Santa was receiving his subjects there, that was where Marion and
Ricky needed to be. And that was where they were headed.

Marion and Ricky made their way
through the throng of holiday shoppers. Marion felt almost
claustrophobic in the crush of people. True, the economy was doing
better, but this was ridiculous! She was just about to pull Ricky
from the throng and exit the mall entirely, when he spied the top
of Santa’s house and began excitedly pulling his mother toward it
through the massive crowd.

“
Look, Mom! It’s Santa’s
house. Santa is here!” His face lit up like the sun rising in the
east.

Marion knew this, of course, but she
had remained mum about the day’s plans, hoping to surprise her
young son with their planned appointment with the Merry Man in Red.
Nothing would do, now, but that they move as quickly as possible to
join the other Christmas shoppers in line, waiting for Santa’s
elves to guide them through the roped-off area until it was Ricky’s
turn to sit on Santa’s lap and tell Santa what he wanted for
Christmas.

As they listened to a small
cherubic-faced blond boy of about two scream bloody murder in the
cordoned off area—a child who definitely needed a nap—Ricky became
more and more excited at the prospect of telling Santa about the
video games he’d like. The games for his iPad. The skates he had
his eye on.

The noise level in the
mall was deafening. It was always a bit noisy on weekends, as the
sound would travel up to the extremely high vaulted glass ceilings,
necessary to provide light in the huge mall, but today the babble
was particularly loud. Marion heard what she thought was the sound
of firecrackers.
How can they let someone
set off
firecrackers in the
Galleria?

Ricky had just reached the
head of the line. He was being ushered toward Santa by two
green-suited elves in pointy-toed boots, elf caps, and
red-and-white striped vests paired with green leggings. Ricky
climbed onto Santa’s lap. The kindly old gentleman
(and he was
a really
GOOD Santa
, Marion thought) was just
beginning the first of his “Ho! Ho! Ho’s!” when Ricky turned to his
mother (
standing nearby to offer moral
support
) and said, “What’s that noise,
Mom?”

And then they both saw them: three
armed men, faces covered with ski masks, smashing the windows of
the expensive jewelry store nearby. Smashing and grabbing. Scooping
up the jewelry displayed in the cases. Dumping the loot into black
soft-sided bags that were slung across their shoulders. Moving
quickly toward them.

A middle-aged mall security guard came
running from the Main Galleria, the rink/Nordstrom side, but before
the rent-a-cop could reach the center of the storm, he was cut down
by gunfire. The shots immediately set off complete crowd chaos.
People were running. Falling. Screaming. The guard dragged himself
behind a planter, leg and left torso bleeding profusely. A second
shot rang out. The guard lay still.

A little girl, standing with her
mother, next in line behind Ricky, age four, was so frightened that
she began shrieking at the top of her lungs and promptly wet her
pants. The smell of urine wafted toward Marion and
Ricky.

Santa appeared to be an elderly
gentleman with a real white beard (no wig or fake beard.) He looked
baffled by the sudden disturbance swelling around his opulent
house. Slow to comprehend, perhaps his hearing wasn’t as keen as
that of younger folk. Santa didn’t seem to realize what was
happening—until it was too late.

Having ransacked the chi chi stores
nearby (Saks. Chanel. Hermes. Neiman Marcus.), three masked gunmen
were demanding of everyone that they “hit the ground.” Marion,
standing next to Ricky and Santa, was too stunned to move at all.
Even if she had understood what was being asked of her, she would
not have left her child there, vulnerable and alone. She remained
standing erect after the gunman’s edict. The shortest of the masked
and vested trio shot Marion. The bullets entered her abdomen, right
shoulder, hip and the right side of her head. She fell to the
ground, hitting the terrazzo floor with as much force as though
she’d jumped from the balcony above. She lay there, mortally
wounded, covered in blood.

When the gunman yelled “Throw over
your purse, lady!” at her, it was as though Marion were in a
trance. Marion did not comply. She wasn’t defying the masked man.
She had not fully comprehended what was occurring, initially—too
petrified to move. The consequence was death. Nor had the elderly
Santa Claus quite figured out what was happening.

“
Mama! Mama!” The cries of
children echoed throughout the area, a cacophony of terror. One of
those shouting was Ricky, who watched in horror as his mother was
shot a second and a third time. He remembered nothing but Santa
clutching him one moment and his mother bleeding on the floor the
next. Although he cried out once, he couldn’t hear himself
screaming above the din. He was petrified into silence by what
happened next.

The gunman turned toward
the very life-like Santa and said, “I always hated you, you
son-of-a-bitch. You never brought me one damn thing I asked for!”
The smash-and-grab thief pulled the trigger. He shot Santa in the
head from nearly point-blank range. The mall Santa, bleeding
profusely from a ragged hole in the middle of what was left of his
forehead, slumped onto the terrified child still seated on his lap.
Because Santa died nearly immediately—(
in
a horrible and grisly fashion
)—his
considerable girth collapsed onto the stunned child
(
whose scream was cut short by the impact
of the portly adult man
). The costumed
figure’s body shielded the six-year-old as Santa collapsed onto
him, Santa’s red suit appearing unstained by the blood dripping
from his face to his chest, a liquid which matched the outfit, now
giving it a sodden look.

At this point, still silent, Ricky
wriggled free of the dead man atop him. He ran to his mother. She
gurgled twice. Death throes. Ricky threw himself onto her body. He
clutched his mother around the waist, screaming, “Get up, Mommy!
Get up!” His arms were red with her blood. And then Ricky fell
silent. He didn’t utter another sound or make another move for
ninety minutes.

That is how and where the authorities
found him, an hour later, after the S.W.A.T. team entered the mall
and gunned down the trio of would-be robbers. One of the shooters
was still exchanging gunfire with officers sixty minutes after
Ricky’s turn on Santa’s lap. The killer had barricaded himself
inside the Chanel store.

Ricky lay atop his mother’s body,
bloodied, unmoving. Shaken. In shock. The police and emergency
personnel who emerged from the gunfight victorious went from victim
to victim lying on the Galleria floor, searching desperately and
frantically for signs of life. When they reached Marion and Ricky,
they found the small boy curled in the fetal position, perfectly
motionless. Silent. Apparently catatonic. He was
unharmed.

At least physically.

Marion Towlerton’s funeral was held on
Saturday, December 6th.

Ricky’s Aunt Trudy came to Dallas from
San Antonio (where she and her husband and her ten-year-old son
Michael lived) and stayed for a week, taking care of Ricky and her
brother Tom. Eventually, Trudy returned to her own family in San
Antonio.

School was still in session. Tom
Towlerton knew that Marion would not have wanted her only child to
miss weeks and weeks of classroom instruction under any
circumstances. Tom vowed to try to make Ricky’s life as normal as
possible for a child who had just witnessed his mother murdered in
cold blood. As normal as possible for a child who had felt the
clutches of the Grim Reaper while visiting the mall for a happy
outing with his mom. As normal as possible for someone who has
experienced abject terror and utter hysteria and remained catatonic
throughout ninety minutes of chaos—a lack of movement which
probably saved Ricky’s life from the savagery of the gunmen. The
armed assailants opened fire on any unarmed shopper who moved.
Twenty-six people were killed, six of them under the age of
ten.