The face of Nicholas Easter was slightly hidden by a display rack filled with slim
cordless phones, and he was looking not directly at the hidden camera but somewhere off
to the left, perhaps at a customer, or perhaps at a counter where a group of kids hovered
over the latest electronic games from Asia. Though taken from a distance of forty yards
by a man dodging rather heavy mall foot traffic, the photo was clear and revealed a nice
face, clean-shaven with strong features and boyish good looks. Easter was twenty-seven,
they knew that for a fact. No eyeglasses. No nose ring or weird haircut. Nothing to
indicate he was one of the usual computer nerds who worked in the store at five bucks an
hour. His questionnaire said he'd been there for four months, said also that he was a parttime
student, though no record of enrollment had been found at any college within three
hundred miles. He was lying about this, they were certain.
He had to be lying. Their intelligence was too good. If the kid was a student, they'd know
where, for how long, what field of study, how good were the grades, or how bad. They'd
know. He was a clerk in a Computer Hut in a mall. Nothing more or less. Maybe he
planned to enroll somewhere. Maybe he'd dropped out but still liked the notion of
referring to himself as a part-time student. Maybe it made him feel better, gave him a
sense of purpose, sounded good.
But he was not, at this moment nor at any time in the recent past, a student of any sort. So,
could he be trusted? This had been thrashed about the room twice already, each time they
came to Easter's name on the master list and his face hit the screen. It was a harmless lie,
they'd almost decided.
He didn't smoke. The store had a strict nonsmoking rule, but he'd been seen (not
photographed) eating a taco in the Food Garden with a co-worker who smoked two
cigarettes with her lemonade. Easter didn't seem to mind the smoke. At least he wasn't an
antismoking zealot.
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