Free Alien Nation #1 - The Day of Descent by Judith Reeves-Stevens

down and connected to the parking garage. “First two hours are free, with or without purchase.”
    “Don’t get carried away, rook. He’d still need to carry his license and insurance in something. And usually that means a wallet.”
    It was only his first day on the job, and he still had a headache that was ripping through his skull like the San Andreas Fault, but Sikes was no longer sure that theft of a wallet was enough to explain what had happened here.
    “Look,” he said testily, “if I wanted to rip off wallets, why would I do it up here? I mean, so I pull out my gun, get the guy to hand his wallet over, and then what? I’m on the fifth level of a parking garage. It’s going to take a minute or two to get down to the exit, and then I’ve got a stop light and the traffic on La Cienega or Beverly or Third to worry about. If anyone sees anything, I’m nabbed within a block.” Sikes shook his head emphatically. He had walked foot patrol around Sunset and Highland long enough to know how wallets and purses were best stolen—ground level, bad lighting, easy getaway.
    Angie regarded him patiently. “So what does that wonderfully convoluted chain of reasoning suggest to you, Detective Sikes?”
    “Uh, that something else was stolen,” Sikes said.
    Angie checked her watch, then glanced over at the S.I.D. techies who were shooting the bull with the meat-wagon drivers. “The rook hits pay dirt in twenty-seven minutes, boys. What do you think? Does he get another point?”
    Sikes felt the tension in his shoulders ease. The techies gave him two thumbs down. The meat-wagon boys gave him one down and one up. He sighed and pulled his sunglasses back out of his pocket. The test was over.
    Angie looked at Sikes as if to say, so what should I do?
    “Good work,” she told him. “Slow and plodding but good.”
    Sikes rubbed at his eyes and saw little fireworks go off. He put his sunglasses back on. “Can we save some time and you just tell me what else you’ve got?”
    “Poor baby,” Angie said pitilessly. And then the real lesson began. “Look, Sikes, thoroughness is good in its place, but in a murder case the trail starts going cold in thirty minutes. Now, I know you know that, because of the bang-up job you did back of Mann’s six months ago. That was good police work because you acted fast, went on gut reaction. You stick at this and you’re going to find out that sometimes it’s better to just rush off and follow your instincts instead of sitting around deliberating and evaluating every possibility.”
    Sikes said nothing. It felt as if he should be taking notes, but he remembered he had left his notebook and pen back on his dresser in his bedroom. What a great way to start the first day of the rest of his life.
    “So,” Angie continued. “ I come up here, I see the car and victim, and in one minute I know it’s murder and that there’s not going to be a wallet.”
    “A minute,” Sikes said.
    Angie smiled. “It’s a gift. So anyway, you’re right, this isn’t the place for a perp to be ripping off citizen’s wallets. So whatever the perp was after was something else. I knew that in a minute five. Now you tell me, what was the perp after?” She snapped her fingers at him. “C’mon, you’ve already almost said it.”
    Sikes nodded. “A Nintendo set.”
    Angie beamed. “Good boy.”
    “Or a stereo or a television . . .”
    “Or any one of numerous fine consumer items on sale at the electronics emporium below,” Angie agreed. “Me, I’m betting it was a portable stereo, maybe with a CD player.”
    Sikes waited for the explanation. He was certain she had one.
    She did. “This is the fifth level, Sikes. With all those stairs, whatever happened up here was a young person’s crime. Ergo, whatever was stolen was something that a young person might want to steal.”
    Sikes could feel sweat trickling down his neck. He decided he needed to get into the shade pronto. It was late October and