Page 37 - Labelle Gramercy, On the Case

Thrown for a Loss

“I’m Lieutenant Labelle Gramercy,” she snapped, frowning like
she wasn’t used to having her orders ignored. “And find out who
pushed that stop button. We’ve got a fatality.”
Well, that badge looked real enough, and she was right. I could see
from ten yards away that the old lady she stood over was crumpled
up with her neck at an impossible angle. Next to her a girl was
bloody and sobbing. The athletic woman turned away from them and
began picking her way up the steps, checking each victim in a quick
but thorough way. You don’t get that kind of training in a mail-order
course for battlefield nurses. I took her at face value and turned back
to the crowd gathered in a rough semicircle around the landing.
People were still coming up the other escalator, greeted by the
bystanders like distant relatives finding their kin among refugees
getting off a ship from a war zone, a situation I saw I had to stop. I
waved off any more who were about to get on at the bottom, and
turned off the machinery with my key when the last one had gotten
off. I called Waylon Sachs, the building engineer. He would have to
put some yellow tape and sawhorses around the escalators on both
ends.
Then I looked again at the mob. I knew a lot of them. Some
worked in the shops in that area, drawn by the excitement. And there
were the mall rats. Yes, I know it isn’t politically correct, whatever
that means, to tag a bunch of teenage boys who hang out in the mall
with such a negative name. But they had gotten to the point of calling
themselves mall rats, almost as a point of pride. Not that anyone else
could call them that, of course! As long as they didn’t make trouble,
they had as much right to be in the mall as anybody. The ones I saw
now were not the same bunch I had been watching over at the
Cineplex. These guys, maybe four or five boys who should be taught
how to shave if they couldn’t figure it out for themselves, tended to
congregate on the benches on either side of the escalator well on
weekend afternoons. I guess they had nothing better to do than
watch girls.
Whoever designed the mall put all the places a teenager would
want to go up here on the second floor. Movies, food, games, casual
clothing—and, come to think of it, the expensive shops were on the
first floor, next to the department store entrance leading right into
the jewelry and perfume. So a serious thief would be down there, not

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