High Risk

by G. K. Parks

  “So what?” Carter asked, shaking his head from side to side in the hopes of getting the world to right itself. “You stole this guy’s keys. How hard is it to stick a key in the hole?”

  “How hard is it to dress yourself?” the third man retorted.

  “I don’t understand why I have to wear this.” Carter finished with the buttons but felt the wet bloodstain at the tip of the collar. Hopefully, no one would notice that. That’s why Diego had waited to shoot the guard, instead of killing him the moment he stepped foot outside the armored truck.

  “I don’t understand a lot of things.” The third man tossed the second duffel over his shoulder and got out of the car. They already wiped the vehicle as best they could. It wouldn’t link back to them, but the dead guard’s head wound had left a stain on the floormat. Instead of worrying about it, the third man hoped it would lead the police on another wild goose chase to track the car’s origin and give him and his team more time to escape. “Namely, why the armored truck was empty.” He slammed the door. “Care to explain that to me, Carter?”

  Carter gulped. “Huh-how should I know?”

  “You’re the one who said it’d be filled to the brim. You said it’d be there forty-five minutes before it showed up. Let me see your phone. Did you call someone? Did you tip someone off?”

  “No fucking way. I just told you what I heard. It’s not my fault if something went wrong.”

  But the third man yanked Carter’s phone out of his pocket, checked his call log and messages, threw the device to the ground, and stomped on it. “You better be telling me the truth.”

  “Why would I lie?”

  The third man grabbed him and slammed him against the dumpster, causing a booming rattle. “Are you trying to double cross me? Do you want all the money for yourself? Or did you grow a conscience and lose your balls?”

  “Uh, guys,” Diego whispered urgently, “we need to go.”

  The third man kept Carter pinned to the dumpster. “Give me one reason why I shouldn’t kill you right here and now.”

  Diego grabbed his arm. “I’m serious. I thought I saw someone over there.” He pointed to one of the windows in the building across the street. A few slats in the blinds remained askew. “Someone’s watching us. We can’t stay here.”

  The third man shoved Carter one final time and stepped back. “I’m not walking away without my payday. You better find a way to make this up to me.”

  * * *

  “Out of the way.” I raced down the steps. Fennel and I had arrived at the crime scene, immediately identified the naked man as Lindsey Rook, and headed for the nearest train station. The vast subway system would make our killer’s escape inevitable if we didn’t stop him in time.

  Fennel headed for the information center while I went straight for the station agent. Nowadays, most of the subway system was automated, but a few people still got their metro cards from the station agent. But before I could maneuver around the throng of people, a blood-curdling scream echoed through the interior, causing the constant droning to suddenly quiet. And then the droning came back with a renewed roar, and additional surprised screams joined the first.

  “Police.” I pushed my way toward the commotion. The report of gunfire boomed in the cavernous tunnels. “Everyone get down.”

  I couldn’t see through the mass of people, but just like animals in the wild running from fire, people raced toward me, away from the deadly sound.

  “He has a gun,” someone said, not slowing.

  “He shot the ticket lady.” At least, I thought that’s what someone else said as they darted past me.

  Grabbing my weapon, I held it at an odd angle at hip-height. I didn’t want to aim and panic the frenzied mob. They were already primed to stampede. Instead, I held up my badge and pushed my way toward the booth, telling people to get back as I went.

  “Oh god.” A woman crouched at the open door to the station agent’s booth. “Help. Someone, help me. She needs help.”

  I rushed forward, kneeling down beside her. “Are you hurt?”

  She shook her head, eyeing my badge as I clipped it back on my belt. “No, but she is.”

  She held the woman’s head in her lap. I nearly missed the gunshot wound amid the station agent’s tight red braids. The shot had gone to the side, entering just beyond her temple and coming out the other side behind her ear. Regardless, I checked for a pulse, but she was gone. Her body just hadn’t gotten the message yet, and her pointer and middle fingers twitched.

  I scanned the area for danger. The shooter was here. Close. He could have escaped in the fracas. “Did you see who did this?”

  She swallowed, clutching the dead station agent’s hand. “Two security guards. They had those khaki shirts with the black. Lock Stock or something?”

  “LockBox?” I asked.

  “Yeah, that’s it.”

  “Did you see where they went?” I hadn’t heard any other shots. The area had cleared, except for a few people who probably lived down here and the folks who were too wrapped up in their own lives or busy listening to their earbuds to notice the world around them.

  She pointed with a shaky hand toward the nearest platform. “There.”

  I reached for my phone and hit the speed dial for dispatch. “Shots fired.” I gave the pertinent details. The cops stationed inside the subway station had to prioritize their actions. The majority were busy making sure everyone evacuated safely. But a few made it through to pursue the shooter. By the time I hung up, three uniformed officers had clustered around me.

  I left the woman and the dead station agent in their care and headed for the platform. After jumping the turnstile, I aimed ahead of me, silently clearing out the few remaining civilians as I made my way across the platform. At the far end, I glimpsed a khaki-colored uniform.

  “Freeze,” I yelled.

  The man hesitated for a split second. He faced the track, staring into the tunnel. Even if he jumped onto the tracks, he’d have thirty feet to clear before he could disappear into the darkness, and that was assuming he didn’t get splattered by a train or hit the third rail.

  “Don’t even think about it.”

  He cocked his head to the side. From here, I couldn’t make out much about his profile. He had short, dark hair. He held up one hand, bending his elbow at a right angle, as if he was announcing a touchdown, and then he turned sideways and fired. He kept his gun pressed against his stomach, practically out of my line of sight.

  The first shot impacted against the metal bench directly in front of me, and I returned fire. He ducked behind one of the large, concrete support pillars and continued to fire blindly, keeping himself out of sight.

  Diving behind a metal trashcan, I edged closer until I could take cover behind another one of the support pillars in that row. I pressed my back against it, spotting my partner making his way along the platform directly across from me.

  After taking another breath, I poked my head out and returned fire, hoping if I couldn’t hit the offender, I’d at least be able to distract him long enough for Fennel to get to him. He fired again. His shots getting closer and closer to my head. I ducked back into cover, my heart pounding in my chest. If I couldn’t see him clearly, how could he see me?

  Quickly, I searched for any mirrors or monitors, but I didn’t see anything that would give away my position. Did he have a sixth sense or a spotter? The woman who attempted to provide aid to the dead station agent said there had been two of them. Where was the second shooter?

  The ground beneath my feet vibrated, followed by the telltale rumble of an arriving train. Disregarding my own well-being, I broke from cover just as the subway came to a stop, blocking my view of the other side. The doors opened, and dozens of unsuspecting passengers exited the row of cars.

  For the briefest moment, I caught sight of a khaki-colored shirt moving with the throng. And then it was gone. I shoved people aside, announcing myself, but it was already too late.

  Fennel app
eared in the open doorway of the emptying subway car. “Where the hell is he?”

  I squinted into the distance. I didn’t see him head for the stairs. “Did he get on the train? Or go in the tunnel?” I couldn’t see into the tunnel since the stopped train blocked it from view.

  “I’ll check the train.” My partner disappeared back inside, moving from the middle car toward the far end, closest to where the shooter had been positioned.

  I shouted to the officers who had arrived to assist to have the train stopped and to be on the lookout for anyone wearing a security guard uniform. Thankfully, they had already radioed the description to all officers in the area after speaking to the woman.

  By the time I made it to the end of the platform, the shooter had vanished. Spent casings littered the ground, and I picked one up and tucked it into my pocket. At this rate, I didn’t need anything else to disappear.

  “He’s not here.” Fennel emerged from the first car. He kept his back to mine, covering me while I checked around the pillar and the alcoves near the end where the homeless liked to sleep and people could lock their bikes. “Did you get a look at him?”

  “No, but he killed the station agent. A woman saw what happened. She said there’s two of them.”

  “That goes along with what the 9-1-1 caller said.” He took a step back. I could feel his reassuring presence behind me. “What about the men’s room?”

  “I don’t know.” I stared into the darkness. “I think he went into the tunnel.”

  He pulled out a radio, asking for an ETA on our backup. With so many people, most officers had been diverted to crowd control and evacs. “On our way,” came a clipped response.

  Fennel kept his eyes on the door to the public restrooms. “I say we check there first. If they went into the tunnels, who knows where they might pop up?”

  Several anti-crime officers approached our position, their badges out and exposed, but they identified themselves just to be on the safe side. They kept an eye on the tunnel entrance while Fennel and I cleared the restrooms.

  By the time we were finished hauling the few occupants out, more cops had arrived on the scene. The trains had been shut down, and several went into the tunnels in search of our suspects. Fennel and I questioned the few people we dragged out of the bathrooms, but they hadn’t seen anything. And since they tested negative for GSR and didn’t fit the description of our offenders, we let them go.

  We swept the area again, questioning anyone and everyone we could find, but the descriptions varied drastically. Most people I spoke to didn’t see anything. They heard the shot or the screaming and followed the crowd to safety.

  “Do you think the offenders blended in and escaped?” Fennel asked as we made our way back to the traumatized woman. She sat on top of a gurney with a blanket around her while EMTs checked her pulse.

  “We already had their descriptions even before the station agent was killed. No cop would let a security guard slip away.”

  “They could have changed clothes.”

  “We would have found the discarded uniforms in the trash or on the ground. I didn’t find anything. Did you?”

  “No.” Fennel sighed, glancing back at the stopped train. Officers were questioning the remaining passengers and checking IDs. Aside from pissing off the commuters and getting several complaints lodged against the department for the holdup, I didn’t think this would achieve anything. “How did they get past us?”

  Security camera footage was already being pulled and compiled, so we’d know soon enough. In the meantime, we had a few eyewitnesses to question.

  Sixteen

  From what we gathered, two men shot and killed the LockBox security guards, left the scene of that crime, found someplace to hang out for a couple of hours, and then dumped Lindsey Rook’s body several blocks away from the dispensary, dressed in his clothes, and abandoned their getaway vehicle. They went down into the subway tunnels and tried to rob the station agent. She must have unlocked the door, possibly in an attempt to go for help or to appease their demands, but either way, they shot her and fled.

  The woman who had been behind them in line hadn’t seen what happened until they knocked her over on their way out. By then, everyone else who’d been clustered around the booth had literally run for their lives. She had crawled to the open door, found the station agent, whom she spoke to every week when she renewed 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.