The Great Bike Rescue by Hazel Hutchins Read Free Book Online

And only the duty officer could go back and get it so that…”
    The officer lifted one eyebrow.
    â€œYour dad doesn’t seem like the type to let a kid watch crime shows,” she said.
    â€œHe isn’t,” I admitted. “My friend and I sneak downstairs and watch with his brother sometimes. They’re kind of cool. And kind of gross. But when they want to look up old evidence, they…”
    â€œThis isn’t an evidence room,” said the officer. She was back to her neutral, police-officer face. “Evidence rooms are elsewhere. They’re tightly controlled. Unclaimed goods are inventoried and kept locked up, but it’s not quite the same. The bikes are over here.”
    We rounded the corner, and there they were. And not just one row but four or five. I couldn’t believe how many there were.
    â€œThis must be from the entire year!” I said.
    â€œTwo or three months, at the most,” she said. “A lot more are reported as missing and never show up here at all.”
    Stolen and gone.
    She led me to the bike that had sounded promising. It was larger than mine. The officer was already shaking her head.
    â€œIt’s an adult bike. That wasn’t written here.” She made a note on the clipboard.
    â€œWould it be okay if I looked around some more?” I asked. “Just in case?”
    â€œGo ahead,” she said, already making her way toward another area. “I’ve got one with a serial-number match. That’s what I really came to pick up.”
    I walked slowly up and down the rows. I didn’t see my bike. I didn’t see Riley’s bike. I knew it didn’t make any sense to be disappointed. There hadn’t been any promise that our bikes would be here, but seeing all these unclaimed bikes somehow made it worse. Didn’t people care enough to report their bikes missing? Didn’t they think about telling the police?
    I reached the last row, where bikes that had been damaged were propped against the wall. Bent and battered. Stripped of wheels, handlebars, seats, gears. One was practically twisted like a pretzel. Another had spokes sticking out in all directions. A graveyard of dead bikes.
    The officer was standing behind me.
    â€œI had a bike stolen when I was a kid,” she said. “I even found out who took it. But before I could do anything about it, they dumped it off a bridge.”
    Which I guess explained why she’d gone to the trouble of letting me have an extra look.
    â€œThanks,” I said as the officer opened the back door. Dad was waiting just outside.
    â€œThere were about a zillion bikes. None of them were mine,” I told him.
    â€œSorry, Levi,” he said.
    We held the door open as the officer wheeled out the bike with the serial-number match. It was the one bike out of all those others that was going home. But at least one person was going to be happy. Really happy.
    â€œA zillion bikes, eh?” said Dad thoughtfully. “Do the leftover ones go to the city auction?”
    â€œAlong with other unclaimed property,” answered the officer as we walked toward the parking lot together. “You could probably pick up a replacement bike at a decent price. It’s mostly the bike shops that show up, but the general public is entitled to buy as well. Just make sure you keep the paperwork to show you got it legitimately.”
    Dad talked more about the auction on the way home.
    â€œI’ll find out when it is, Levi,” he offered.
    I nodded, but I wasn’t quite listening. Bike shops used the auction, bike shops like Spoke and Rim . If you were really sneaky, and you knew a really sneaky thief like Sammy, would you hire him to steal certain types of bikes, the kind of bikes that sell well in secondhand stores? And then would you get Sammy or some of his friends to turn them in to the police so you could buy them at auction later? Was anyone that sneaky?
    It was