High Risk by G.K. Parks (books for 10th graders TXT) 📕

her metro card, and tried to save her. She didn’t know the station agent was already dead, and as far as I could tell, no one had told her yet.

“Gloria,” she said. “Her name’s Gloria. I don’t know her last name, but she has a son. A teenager. Someone needs to call him. She’d want him to know what happened.”

“We’ll make sure that’s taken care of,” Fennel promised. “Try not to focus on that. Think back, before that happened. You were waiting in line, like you always do. Was there anything different about today? Did you notice anything weird? Did you happen to overhear anyone’s conversation? Possibly you heard what the men in front of you might have been saying?”

She shook her head. “I wasn’t paying attention. I tune everything out. It’s the usual. Well, it was. Now,” she blinked and looked around, “nothing seems normal.”

“It’s okay,” I said. “Just try to remember.”

“There were two of them in the same khaki shirts and dark work pants. They had belts like that.” She pointed to a nearby officer. “Thick with the holes and the gadgets.”

“Did they have guns?” I asked.

She nodded. “I didn’t think anything of it. They had uniforms. That made it okay. At least, I thought it did.”

“Did you see a name tag?” Fennel asked.

She bit her lip and stared at the turnstiles.

“What about their height or hair color?” I asked.

“Dark hair. Both of them. One was darker than the other, skin too.”

“Could you guess their race?” Fennel asked.

“I don’t know. Probably white, maybe Latino, Asian, or Middle Eastern. Hell, one of them could have been a light skinned black man for all I know.”

Fennel glanced at me. That didn’t help us any. “Okay, but they were both men?”

“Yeah. I’m sure of that.” She sized him up. “About your size.” She gave his pants an odd look. “Are you a baseball player?”

“No, I’m a homicide detective.”

She arched an eyebrow. “Undercover?”

“No, ma’am.”

A thought dawned on her. “Their clothes didn’t fit right.”

“What do you mean?” Fennel and I asked simultaneously.

She shifted her gaze from me to my partner. “It looked like they grabbed the wrong uniforms. One guy’s shirt was snug, and his sleeves didn’t come down all the way. And the other guy, his pants were baggy, like they might have fallen off if he loosened his belt. I don’t know. It was just weird. But I kinda thought maybe they just had a one size fits all kind of thing going on. I mean, it’s a uniform, right?”

“But they both had the same uniforms?” Fennel asked.

“Yeah.”

“Not just similar clothes, but uniforms?”

“That’s what I said,” she insisted. “Why? Does that mean something?”

The EMTs stepped closer. “We should take her to get checked out, just to make sure she’s okay. She took quite the fall.” He nodded at a few of the bandages they’d placed on her scraped knees and forearm. “It’d be best to make sure she didn’t hit her head or lose consciousness.”

“Okay.” I copied down her information, told her we’d follow up if we had more questions, and watched the paramedics wheel her away.

“They both had uniforms,” Fennel said. “But they only stripped one of the LockBox guards. That would mean the second offender is part of LockBox.”

“You saw Pandori and whatshisface. They looked sharp. Even the two slain guards were dressed nicely.”

“You paid attention to that?” Fennel asked. “You didn’t notice what I was wearing yesterday.”

I rolled my eyes. “We would have noticed if their clothes didn’t fit right.” A theory wormed its way through my brain. “Assuming these are the same assholes who knocked over Star Cleaners, I’d say they stole more than the ticket pad and the cash in the register. I think they took someone’s dry cleaning too.”

“You think they stole a security guard uniform. That would make sense. That’s why Gardner’s killer needed the ticket pad.” Fennel let out a low whistle. “Didn’t you say Mr. Lee runs a uniform special? We should find out if he cleans any of LockBox’s uniforms.”

“Or if Star Cleaners is one of LockBox’s clients,” I said.

After getting a progress report on the officers in the tunnel and an update on the passengers who had been questioned, Fennel and I made our way up the steps. The morning had turned to afternoon. But even the midday sun couldn’t improve my mood. Four more dead and at least one woman injured, and the bastards responsible had gotten away again.

We backtracked to the alley where we’d left Lindsey Rook’s body with a few uniformed officers. The scene had been roped off. The coroner’s van had parked at the mouth. Two police cars and one unmarked cruiser had boxed in our vehicle, but it didn’t matter. Right now, this was where we needed to be.

“What do we know?” Fennel asked the medical examiner.

The ME pointed to the vehicle. “Blunt force trauma to the head. It probably knocked him out. He did quite a bit of bleeding in the back of the car. But you can see here,” he turned the guy’s head to the side, “it didn’t trickle down. Most of it is in his hair. They probably had him upside down.”

“They didn’t want to get blood on the uniform,” I said.

“Any idea what hit him?” Fennel asked.

“The impact is focused here.” He pointed to an ugly, uneven gash at the side of the man’s head. “But I don’t recognize it. Once we get the area cleaned and take a mold, I should have an answer for you. I just told your two pals from homicide the same thing.” He jerked his chin toward the nearby dumpster where they’d fished out Rook’s body.

“Thanks, Doc.” Fennel took a slow, deep breath and peered into the dumpster, jumping back when Jake Voletek