LITMIR.BIZ

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it had accomplished was making her come to terms with the fact that she wasn’t cut out for anything beyond work. She just wished that everyone else would come to the same conclusion and allow her to get on with her life the way she saw fit.

      The immediate problem was that right now there was no case to occupy her mind or her skills, which was why, to fill the time, Suzie was doing the paperwork she had put off. It wasn’t that she was more conscientious than most of the people who worked in the crime lab. She just didn’t want to be alone with her thoughts. At least not yet. Not until she learned how to herd them all into a cage and keep them there, away from the day-to-day fabric of her life.

      Aurora’s criminal element, such as it was, wasn’t cooperating. Although she would have been the first to admit that a crime-free city was a wonderful thing, Suzie couldn’t help hoping that something would come up by the time she put the last of the stack of paperwork to bed.

      More than anything, she really didn’t want to be left to her own devices.

      * * *

      It wasn’t all that long ago that Chris had been the exact same age as the boys he’d just cornered. What he couldn’t remember, though, was ever being as scared as they appeared to be.

      At the moment, he was having a difficult time getting either one to be coherent, even after they had recovered their breaths and voices. Now the problem seemed to be that they were both talking over one another. The end result was an annoying cacophony that left him as unenlightened as he had been when he’d first cornered them.

      Straining to follow both disjointed monologues, Chris finally gave up trying to make heads or tails out of the dissonance. He drew in a breath, whistled long and loud, until both teenagers finally stopped talking at the speed of a runaway freight train.

      Stunned, they stared at the man who had pulled them over.

      “Don’t you want to hear what happened?” they cried in unison. It was the first time since they’d come flying out of the building that they were both intelligible.

      “More than you can possibly know,” Chris assured them, “but I won’t find anything out if you keep on talking over one another like two screech owls in a barnyard competition. You,” he said, randomly picking the taller of the two. “What’s your name?”

      “Bill,” the teen answered nervously, apparently worried that he was being singled out. “Bill Peterson.”

      “And I’m—” The other teenager began to give his name, but Chris held up his hand.

      “You’ll have your turn. Okay, Bill Peterson,” he said, addressing the first teenager. “Why were you and your friend here flying out of the old Kresky building like the devil himself was after you?”

      The question had the teenagers turning ghostly pale again. Bill cleared his throat before speaking. “You’re not going to believe me.”

      “Try me,” Chris said patiently, giving the impression that he wasn’t about to go anywhere until he got the truth out of them.

      The two teenagers exchanged looks.

      “Look at me, Bill,” he ordered. “Look at me when you answer.”

      Bill flushed. “Maybe we better show you,” he muttered.

      Instead of urging them on, Chris glanced from one to the other. He figured it was time to get the second teen’s name just in case the two got it into their heads to take off again. If they went in different directions, he could go after only one. Having both their names—if they weren’t lying—at least gave him a fighting chance of bringing the teenagers in.

      He had a feeling this wasn’t just some prank. Something definitely was going on.

      “And your name is?” His no-nonsense stare seemed to glue the second teen’s feet to the ground.

      “Allen, sir.” The youth actually swallowed. Any second, Chris expected to see his Adam’s apple dance. “Allen Kott.”

      “Okay, Allen Kott, why don’t you and Bill here show me what got the two of you looking paler than Snow White.” When the duo looked as if they intended to walk back into the building behind him, Chris gestured that they were to lead the way. He wanted to keep an eye on them the whole time.

      The teens complied.

      “How did you two happen to be in the building?” Chris asked casually as they crossed to the abandoned department store. “It’s supposed to be locked up.”

      Bill laughed nervously. “Yeah, supposed to be.”

      “But it wasn’t,” Chris assumed. This was prime real estate. Most of the strip malls and stores in the city were. He couldn’t see the building being left haphazardly opened so that anyone could have access to it. A great deal of destruction could be done in a minimum of time. That could generate a costly problem for anyone who’d just bought the property. “Did you break in?”

      “No, it was already open,” Allen told him. “I swear,” he quickly added.

      Chris was still having a hard time buying that. “How did you know?” he asked. “Or did you just keep trying different doors until you got lucky?”

      “We figured we’d find it open because this was where the big bash was last night,” Allen told him matter-of-factly.

      “What big bash?” Chris asked.

      Were they pulling his leg, after all? But there was no mistaking the look of fear he’d seen. That had been very real and there had to be a cause behind it. How did it connect to this so-called “big bash” they were talking about?

      “The big one.” When Chris gave no indication that he was any clearer on the subject than he had been a moment ago, Allen stressed, “The floating one.”

      “A floating big bash,” Chris repeated. It still wasn’t making any sense to him.

      “Yeah, man,” Bill said almost impatiently. “These rich guys, they find these big, empty venues to hold these big, flashy parties. Lots of food, lots of dancing, lots of really gorgeous women in expensive clothes with expensive jewelry. None of this fake stuff, you know?” he asked, as if trying to make himself clear. “Everything about these women is super-real.”

      Chris stopped walking, his suspicions aroused. “And you know this how?”

      “We’ve seen them,” Bill said. Allen hit him in the ribs with his elbow. “What’s that for?” he demanded.

      The answer to that was evident by the way Chris looked at the teens. “You’ve been to these parties?”

      “Not exactly,” Bill said, with far less bravado. “We kinda hid out and watched them all go in.”

      Chris looked from one teen to the other, waiting. “Go on.”

      Allen picked up the thread as they began walking again. “When it was over and everyone left, we thought we’d go in and, you know, scout around. See if anybody left anything behind, like maybe dropped some money or some jewelry we could sell.” He looked to see if the detective understood what he was saying. “We weren’t stealing or nothing.”

      Chris used a more descriptive word. “You were scavenging.”

      “We were hunters,” Bill said, with just a touch of indignation, attempting to glide right over the fact that they were both trespassing on what was at bottom private property.

      For now, Chris went along with the euphemism. “Okay, and exactly what was it that you two big game hunters found?”

      The teens’ bravado was gone again, vanishing like the first blush of spring beneath a sun grown too hot too fast.

      And then Chris saw why.

      They were inside the deserted department store now, and rather than finding the debris that was usually left behind after a building was

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