Concealed in Death (In Death #38)(33)

“Your choice.” She set the tin aside. “I’m going to read you your rights, for your protection. You’ve been down this road before. You have the right to remain silent,” she began.

“I didn’t do anything!” Clipperton claimed.

“We’ll talk about that. Do you understand your rights and obligations?”

“Yeah, yeah, but—”

“Were you employed as a carpenter’s helper by Brodie Fine fifteen years ago?”

“Done some work for Brodie, sure. Did some a couple weeks ago.”

“And did this work—fifteen years ago—include a building on Ninth Avenue, then known as The Sanctuary?”

“Huh?”

“The Sanctuary, a shelter for youths in need.”

“Oh, the dump over on Ninth. Sure, we did some repairs and crap there. So what?”

“How many times did you go there without Mr. Fine?”

His face, sallow, soft—perhaps once reasonably attractive—pulled into really hard lines as he thought.

“Why would I do that?”

“To see the pretty young girls, Clip. Like Shelby, the thirteen-year-old you bartered brew for sex with?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. If she said I did, she’s a liar.”

“Like Mook?”

“Yeah. Fuckin’ A.”

Eve leaned forward. “I’ve got witnesses, on both counts, Clip. Lying to me isn’t going to help, and with your record, I can send you away for a good, long stretch.”

“Wait a minute. Just wait. I told you Mook had her tits right out there. That was just a misunderstanding. That’s it.”

“And Shelby?”

“I don’t remember her name.”

“So there was more than one minor you traded brew for sex with.”

“No. Jesus. And it wasn’t sex. It was a bj. That’s not sex.”

“You’re stating that a minor female in residence at The Sanctuary fifteen years ago preformed fellatio on you in exchange for alcohol?”

“It was a blow job.” He looked momentarily and sincerely horrified. “We didn’t do nothing weird like that thing you said. It was a straight bj.”

“In exchange for alcohol.”

“It wasn’t alcohol. It was just a couple brews.”

She wondered why this go-round half amused her, but tried to shortcut it to the point. “Let’s put it this way. The minor female gave you a blow job in payment for a couple brews.”

“Yeah. That’s all it was.” He sat back, obviously relieved all was clear. Then jerked up again. “And wait. It was like all that time ago, right? So there’s like a statue of limits on that, yeah?”

“That would be statute of limitations.” She slid the ID shot of Shelby Stubacker across the table. “Is this the minor female?”

“I don’t know how I’m supposed to remember—oh yeah! Yeah, this one. She was a steamer. And she asked me about the bj and brew.”

“She was thirteen.”

“Said she was fifteen.” Folding his arms over his thin chest, he nodded in satisfaction. “Told you she was a liar.”

“And that makes such a difference, that you solicited o**l s*x from a girl you assumed was fifteen.”

“She already had a nice little rack on her.”

Eve simply stared at him until he blinked.

“How many times did you trade her a couple brews for a blow job?”

“A couple. Maybe three.”

The way he cut his eyes away had Eve leaning in again. “How many other girls, Clip? She wasn’t the only one.”

“There was just the one more, and this one here brought her into it. Plus she wasn’t any good at it. Kinda fat girl—the hefty kind. Kept giggling, you know. I barely got off.”

“Where did these famous blow jobs take place?”

“Right there. I mean right outside the place. Kid knew how to get in and out, how to get around security. She was a steamer, like I said. And if she’s trying to come back at me for it now, that’s bullshit. She asked me, and there’s the statue.”

“Some things have no statue, Clip. Like being a revolting shit, such as yourself.”

“Hey!”

“And things like this.”

She shoved the photo of Shelby’s remains across the table.

“What the hell is that?”

“That’s Shelby Stubacker.”

“Uh-uh. This is.” He nodded toward the first photo. “That looks like some old skeleton, like for Halloween or something.”

“This is what Shelby looks like now, after being murdered, then rolled up in plastic, and hidden for fifteen years behind the wall you built.”

“You’re f**king with me, ’cause we didn’t build no walls in that place. Patched a few, painted some, but we didn’t build none. And if we did, and we didn’t, we sure as hell woulda seen that. You ask Brodie. We didn’t see nothing like that. Just ask him.”

“I didn’t say you and Brodie built the wall. I said you built it, after you killed this girl and eleven others.”

“You’re shitting me now.” His face died from sallow to pasty gray. “What the f**k? I never killed that girl. I never killed anybody. I just got a couple bjs, that’s it. Just a couple blows.”