Page 53 of So Bleak

“I didn’t! That’s my point!”

Michael sighed and crossed his arms. “It just looks really bad, Clive. Four restaurants. Four hours. Four victims. It’s far too pretty a package for us not to wonder what it means.”

“Or for a jury to think about what it means,” Faith added.

“Well, I can’t help you,” Clive insisted. He was sweating profusely now. “What do you want me to say? If I don’t know what happened, I don’t know what happened. You can look through all the chemicals the restaurant uses and compare them to what you found in the bodies. A lot of the cleaning chemicals are poisonous, and I sample a lot of them as part of my job. I don’t put them in dishes or food, but if enough of them got inside the food, then that might have done it.”

That was actually worth following up on. “Thanks for the hint,” Faith replied. “We will look into that. In the meantime, I still want to hear an explanation from you.”

Clive sighed and poured himself a third shot. “I don’t know. I don’t know. Shitty luck? I did my job, and apparently, I did it at the right time to look like a murderer."

He downed the third shot, and Michael commented, “Damn. They must pay health inspectors a lot for you to chug a hundred fifty dollars of scotch like it’s water.”

Clive flinched and nearly dropped his shot glass. “I… I… I… well, there’s no reason I can’t. It’s my money.”

Faith noticed his reaction and followed up on Michael’s point. “That’s true,” she said. “It’s a lot of your money. Who’s paying you that money?”

He swallowed. “The city.”

“Yeah, I don’t think so. Come on, Clive. Talk. How do you make enough money to afford all of this? How do you make enough money to have your flooring replaced with the stuff pop stars have in their ten thousand square foot mansions?”

“I’m good with my money.”

“That would mean you live more frugally, Clive. Not more lavishly. Try again. Or do I need to verify your salary with the Health Department and start doing some math.”

“I get kickbacks, okay?”

Faith blinked in surprise. She looked at Michael and saw the same shock on his face. Even Turk looked stunned.

Clive sighed and poured himself another shot. He drank this one just as fast as the other three, but whether it was the confession or the alcohol, he was far calmer when he said, “I get kickbacks from the restaurants. The fine dining places, you know, it’s not enough just to pass. They have people looking at them who demand perfection. The Michelin guide notices a single line item marked wrong on an inspection, and it’s a death knell. Sometimes there are simple things that can get a restaurant shut down, but it’s really hard to get a passing grade. Fruit flies is a big one. If I see two fruit flies in a restaurant, I have to fail them that point, and it’s a big point. Basically an entire letter grade. But it’s a bitch and a half to keep those things out of some businesses. If you’re an ice cream shop or a café in a strip mall and you have high traffic, so your doors are opening and closing all day, it’s next to impossible to keep your place so clean that there’s never at least a couple of flies hanging around. Some of these places can’t afford the labor to spend four hours every night cleaning. So, they kick me a few thousand a year instead. It’s still cheaper than four hours a night of cleaning. I sign off on the report, they can keep costs down, everyone’s happy.”

“Except the diners, right?”

“Oh, those places are still cleaner than most people’s kitchens. They’ll be fine. Fruit flies don’t even do anything.”

“Okay,” Faith said. “So you’re a dirty inspector who takes kickbacks. That still doesn’t explain the timing. How are your kickbacks four hours apart from each victim each time?”

He shrugged dejectedly. “I don’t know. Shitty luck is all I can think of. Maybe karma. Maybe God really does exist, and he’s pissed at me for taking bribes, so he sent you guys over here to punish me for it. I don’t know, I really don’t.”

Faith shared a look with Michael. Clive hadn’t given them anything that could clear him, but he hadn’t given them anything they could use to connect him to the murders either.

They had enough to arrest him, though. If they found anything that suggested he was a murderer as well as a corrupt inspector, they could come back around to him.

“All right,” Faith said. “You’re under arrest for taking kickbacks. You’ll probably catch a charge for the flooring too. If I were you, I would use what’s left of those kickbacks you received to hire a very good lawyer.”

“What? But I didn’t kill anyone!”

Faith sighed. “Yeah, I’m starting to believe you about that. But you still failed in your obligation to the people of Philadelphia.”

“This is bullshit!”

Turk growled, and he calmed down.

Michael cuffed him and called the police to come pick him up. Faith headed outside, Turk at her heels.

She should have known better. She did know better.

But she followed this lead anyway because she was desperate and she was grasping at any straw to save herself from the mess she was in.

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