What Window Nine Sees

The shredder tray was still full of my ticket's confetti when the transit police walked Sedgwick out.

They took him across the same marble floor he had marched me over, one detective on each side, his charcoal suit suddenly too big for him. Nobody filmed it. Nobody had to. The charge was falsifying safety records, and I would be signing my real name to that complaint, in ink, in front of a witness.

The Limited rolled in eleven minutes later, moving at walking pace over the main line, four hundred and twelve people unaware of what they had not ridden into. Hector's crew found the cracked lock rod by noon. Its lead car would have taken the crossover at forty miles an hour with the switch half thrown.

Bridget stood at Window Nine and did not sit down.

"I'm finished," she said. "I know. I'll clear my locker."

"Ms. Marlowe." I waited until she looked up. "You shredded my ticket in front of forty people. You treated an old woman with a hearing aid like a delay. Then you carried eleven names in your vest for months, and this morning you opened a box you'd been told to leave shut."

"That doesn't cancel the rest."

"No. It doesn't." I put the folded notebook page on the counter between us. "If I fire you, the next agent gets the same rules from the next manager, and I've fixed nothing. Every agent at this station will learn one thing from you instead. Every warning gets written down, in front of the rider, and reaches a person who can act on it."

Her mouth trembled. "You want me to teach it?"

"I want you to do it first."

She was quiet a long moment. Then she took her badge from her lanyard, laid it face up on the counter, took it back and clipped it on again.

She walked out from behind the glass for the first time since she'd been hired and went straight to the bench by the pillar, where Adele Wren was sitting with her suitcase, and knelt beside her. I couldn't hear what she said. I saw Mrs. Wren put a hand on her shoulder. I saw Devon Alcott and his daughter stop and listen.

By noon, the shredder had been unplugged and carried to a supply room. The yellow tape was gone from the box. The portrait on the wall stayed where it was, though someone had polished the brass plaque.

Before I left, I went back to Window Nine and slid my card across the counter.

"One ticket to the lakefront," I said. "The 11:58."

Bridget printed it slowly and checked every line of it twice. She handed it over with both hands.

"Anything else I can check for you, sir?"

"Just what's on your list," I said. "Write everything down."

She did.