Dolmen’s

Dolmen’s is a suburban department store inside an enclosed mall, and the setting of a pursuit that abruptly changes character when Burke Devore discovers that Hauck Curtis Exman works there. Its corridors, escalators, and menswear department first give Burke a route to follow his intended victim; then a nametag and business card recast the two men as salesman and prospective customer. In a place built for browsing and ordinary commerce, Burke must conceal not only why he came but that he was following Exman at all.

Setting and Layout

The mall’s entrance opens onto a long, broad corridor lined with chain stores. At its far end stands Dolmen’s, a department-store line described as suburban and operating mostly, perhaps entirely, in malls. The corridor meets the store’s fashion windows and branches left and right; the rest of the mall is comparatively low, while the portion containing Dolmen’s rises three stories. The department store is thus both a destination at the end of the main passage and a distinct vertical space within the larger complex.

Inside, sliding doors lead to a central area with escalators. Shoppers are present, but the store is not crowded enough for Burke to lose sight of Exman simply by blending into a crush. A large family occupies one escalator: everyone but the father stands still, slowing Exman’s brisk ascent. The detail makes the store’s circulation feel like everyday public life, governed by other shoppers’ pace rather than by the urgency of Burke’s private pursuit.

The Pursuit Through the Store

Exman walks briskly down the mall corridor and enters Dolmen’s without looking back. Burke follows at a distance, careful not to board the escalator until Exman is nearly at its top. From the first flight he catches sight of Exman turning toward the second; from the second, he sees him angle left on the third floor. The pursuit is assembled from partial views—dark suit, a hand, movement disappearing around an aisle—rather than a continuous line of sight.

Burke expects Exman to remain somewhere in the left rear of the department. He searches the upper floor as if browsing, checking the departments and then the menswear area, where suit jackets and sport coats hang along two walls at right angles. Exman is nowhere in view. Burke assumes that whatever brought him to the store will take at least several minutes to choose and buy, and is not yet alarmed by the disappearance. His confidence depends on reading the visit as a shopper’s errand; the store has not yet revealed the more ordinary explanation for Exman’s brisk, purposeful movement.

The Menswear Encounter

While Burke stands in the middle of menswear deciding where to search next, Exman emerges through a doorway tucked into the corner between the racks. He sees Burke, smiles, and approaches. Burke’s first response is fear: he believes Exman has recognized him and is ready to run. The visual clue that reverses the moment is an oval blue-and-white nametag. It bears the store name above the words “Mr. Exman.”

Exman is not shopping. He is a suit salesman, and the quality of the suit Burke has been tracking now has a professional explanation. Dolmen’s has converted the apparent object of Burke’s surveillance into an employee at work. Exman addresses him as a customer, clasping his hands and beaming in a manner Burke regards as false to his nature. The encounter forces Burke to suppress his astonishment and fear and adopt the blankness of someone who has simply walked into a store to look around.

Commerce as Cover

Burke sustains the customer role by inventing a reason to delay a purchase: he says his wife should be consulted and that she is a teacher working that day, so he might return with her the following day. Exman accepts the explanation and offers to help. His response makes the disguise easier to maintain because it is a routine exchange between salesperson and shopper, not an interrogation or confrontation.

Exman produces a business card from his inner jacket pocket. Like the nametag, it places Dolmen’s prominently above his own name; the lower right identifies him as a “Sales Representative.” Burke notes that the work is mostly commission and takes the card. He then offers the name “Hutcheson” and shakes Exman’s hand, receiving the polite address “Mr. Hutcheson.” The store’s ordinary tools of identification and commerce—the badge, card, customer explanation, and handshake—give Burke a temporary role that conceals his actual purpose.

Narrative Significance

Dolmen’s matters because its familiar commercial order interrupts Burke’s expectation of a private, controllable pursuit. The escalators and shop aisles help him follow Exman, but the same layout also hides Exman from view and brings the two men together in menswear. Burke’s mistaken interpretation of the visit exposes how little he knows about Exman’s immediate circumstances: what looked like a customer’s destination is the workplace that explains his clothing and direction.

The scene’s reversal is compressed into a small, legible object: the nametag changes Exman from quarry to salesman and Burke from pursuer to apparent customer. Yet the danger does not vanish; it becomes something Burke must carry beneath a socially acceptable performance. Dolmen’s therefore functions not merely as a backdrop but as the place where the pursuit is momentarily absorbed into everyday commerce, and where Burke’s ability to improvise a plausible identity becomes essential.