Page 29 of Sinful Justice

“That was a double negative,” Fletch inserts.

“So why keep the place open?” I ask. “If you’re not making money, why stay open?”

“Because the sign out front says twenty-four hours! And I only pay her six bucks an hour.”

“She makes seventy bucks for the entire night? You put someone through a night inside this shithole for thirty bucks profit?”

Scottsdale shrugs. “She’s a college kid. She sits in this seat, studies all night long on my time, serves the customers who come in, and then she gets seventy-two dollars for her efforts. Sounds like a good deal to me.”

“Says the guy who sleeps in a bed at night while making money off someone else’s desperation.” Turning away, Fletch crosses the unkempt store and looks up at a security camera nestled high in the corner. Right beside it, a second camera pans out to view the street outside. “Lemme guess,” he looks back to Scottsdale. “They’re dummies, right? They don’t record?”

“Do I look like someone who can afford top-of-the-line security?” Flustered, his eyes swing to the front door as a customer walks in. A girl, thirteen, maybe fourteen years old, stops with a skid when she spots me and the store owner at the counter, but after a moment of staring, she makes her way to the row of chips and peruses her options.

“I don’t have the capital for the kinda security you want,” Scottsdale grits out for my ears only. “And I don’t have footage of what happened last night.”

“And Arianna?” I ask. “What did she see?”

“She already talked to the cops!” he growls. “Before I even came on shift, she talked to the cops, man. They were here for hours already, they shut the place down and lost me money during my morning peak, when all your people are heading to work and looking for coffee and bagels.”

“Yeah, well… That’s the nature of these things,man.” I rest my elbows on the counter and study his pockmarked face. His old acne scars, and the bags that hang under his eyes.

This is a guy who treats his body like a garbage disposal; the stains on his fingers tell me he’s a smoker, the pallor of his skin says he’s a regular drinker, his overhanging belly screams terrible diet, and though his eyes say he sleeps at night, I’d be surprised if he slept anywhere but in a recliner with his hands inside his underwear.

“Listen up,man. It’s not your fault someone killed someone else outside your store, but if you had more pride in your place, maybe proper lighting that discouraged assholes from using your shadowed sidewalk to murder a man, and a little CCTV to keep an eye on things, this kind of behavior wouldn’t happen just outside your doors in the first place. And since you want the morning crowd in here to buy coffee and day-old bagels, it would be in your best interest to make your sidewalk an inconvenient place for homicide.”

Turning back to catch Fletch’s eyes, I pause when the teen girl stands only three feet behind me with wide eyes and windswept hair. She holds a tube of Pringles in her left hand, and loose change in her right.

“You’re the police, huh?” Unaffected, she steps around me and sets her chips and coins on the counter in front of Scottsdale. “You’re here to investigate that old guy’s murder, right?”

Frowning, I study the girl and walk a fine line,knowingI can’t question a minor without her parents here. “My name is Detective Malone. Do you know something about what happened here last night?”

“No.” She speaks so easily, so carefree, it sends a jolt of curiosity through my gut. “I was at home in bed. Unlike Mr. Scottsdale, my mom bought security cameras for our place, and she would beat my ass if I was out in the middle of the night.”

She accepts her change and snack, then making her way to the door, she stops again and glances back. “But everyone knew who that man was, Detective. Everyone knew this area wasn’t safe at night because of him.” She flashes a cute grin and looks down at herself. “But now he’s dead, and my mom finally let me come to the store on my own.”

“Because he was a bad man?” Fletch comes up beside me. “You heard the rumors that he was a bad man?”

“Uh huh. When we saw it on the news this morning, my mom said his death was a good thing.” She chews on her bottom lip in thought. “That’s not nice to say, because of karma and all that. But it’s still the truth.” She places her free hand on the doorframe and pauses. “My mom said whoever killed him is a hero.”

“Well, hell.” The moment the girl dashes outside and Scottsdale spins to tidy the cigarette case, as though turning his back on us is the equivalent to telling us to fuck off, Fletch heads toward the door and strides out.

I follow him into the cold and drop my hands into my coat pocket.

“He’s not a hero.” I say it before my partner has a chance to say something else. “Murder is murder, Fletch. Whether or not we like the vic, murder is still murder, and we have to work this case just as hard as we work the others.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

He lowers his head in defense of the wind, and together, we step off the curb and leave behind the partitioned crime scene and a store owner who chooses to close his eyes and pretend nothing bad happens at night.

“We need to go see Arianna again.” I take out my phone and pull up her details. “I have some follow-up questions for her.”

“Do we think that girl’s mom did it?” Fletch nods toward the girl skipping along the street toward her home. “Because I’d say just about any parent of a teen girl in a five-mile radius has a motive to get filth like Dowel off the streets.”

“Every parent,” I agree, “the families of the girls he’s already hurt, and anyone else with a conscience or a general distaste for a man raping and murdering minors. This was a crime of convenience, Fletch. Dowel was there, he was out in the dark, and no one was around.”

“Chances are he was out searching for his next victim,” my partner inserts. “He might’ve been readying to hurt someone new.”

“It’s possible our murderer saved a life by taking another.” Shaking my head, I make my way to our department-supplied cruiser and beat Fletch to the driver’s side. “But we can’t get sentimental about this shit. A murderer is a murderer, and there’s no guarantee Dowel’s killer won’t hurt others. We have to tie this up. It’s the job.” I slip into the driver’s seat and push the key into the ignition barrel.

Department budgets mean while we’re on shift, Fletch and I are relegated to twenty-year-old buckets of shit and a constant hope they don’t blow on us when we need them most.

“Let’s go see Arianna before lunch,” I mutter.

“Uh huh.” Fastening his seatbelt, Fletch takes out his phone and scrolls while I pull out into light traffic. “And at what point today are we gonna talk about the delicious Doctor Mayet?”

“Fuck you.” I cut around the block and avoid going past the George Stanley on my way downtown. “Don’t call her sexy. And don’t call her delicious.”

He whistles under his breath, low and obnoxious enough to make me snarl. “First time you’ve ever gotten pissy about a woman.”

“I’m not pissy. Just stop talking about her. Fuck!”

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