Concealed in Death (In Death #38)(53)

“I’ll take his confession, he can keep his contrition.”

He sat back with a sigh, one lightly tinged with pity. “Your work takes you into dark places. Greta, get Lieutenant Dallas a complimentary package.”

“Thanks all the same.” As she rose Eve thought she’d rather have a sharp, burning stick jammed in her ear. “We’re not allowed to accept any gifts. Thanks for your time. If I have any more questions, I know how to find you.”

He looked momentarily nonplussed at being so abruptly dismissed. “I hope I’ve been of some help.” He got to his feet. “I’ll wish you clear-sightedness on your path.”

He glided out as he’d glided in, but she thought she’d dulled that shine a little.

She decided it made her a small person to take pleasure in that, but she was fine with it.

11

Eve stood on the sidewalk studying the crime scene, imagining how the building looked fifteen years ago. Not quite as shabby, she thought, no boards on the windows. From her sense of the Joneses, they would have assigned staff, kids, themselves to scrub off any tagging.

Maybe this time of year there had been some holiday wreath instead of a police seal on the door.

The buildings around it would have changed a little here and there. Owners selling, tenants moving out, moving in.

She considered the tat parlor and the bargain electronics shop with the going-out-of-business sign that had likely been up since it opened. Then scanned over to the small, anemic market on the other side.

According to the canvass the tat parlor had only been in that location for seven years, but apparently the market had been struggling along for more than twenty.

The uniforms she’d sent out hadn’t gotten much from the owner . . . Dae Pak, she confirmed from her notes.

She crossed over, stepped inside. It smelled earthy, the way she imagined farms did. A guy of about twenty with ink-black hair hacked into an airboarder chop at the counter. A dragon tat he might have gotten a couple doors down circled his left wrist. From his sullen expression, she deduced he wasn’t in love with his work.

She ignored him and walked up to the old man with a face the color and texture of a walnut who methodically stocked bags of instant noodles on a shelf.

“I’m looking for Mr. Pak.” Eve held up her badge.

“I talk to cops already.” With an expression as sullen as the counter boy’s, he pointed a stubby finger at her. “Why you not come around when the kids steal me blind? Huh? Huh? Why you not here then?”

“I’m Homicide, Mr. Pak. I work murders.”

He held out his arms to encompass the market. “Nobody dead here.”

“I’m glad to hear it, but twelve girls were killed in the building next door.”

“I hear all about it, don’t know nothing. You come in here, you buy something.”

She dug for patience because he looked about a million years old, and the kid at the counter was snickering at him. She walked over to the cooler, yanked out a tube of Pepsi, snagged a candy bar at random, then slapped them on the counter in front of the snickerer.

He scanned them, and under her baleful stare stopped snickering. She paid, stuck the candy bar in her pocket, cracked the tube of Pepsi.

“I’m a paying customer,” she told Pak.

“You bought, you paid, you go.”

“I’m amazed you’re not packed with paying customers with all this cheerful, personalized service. Twelve dead girls, the oldest we’ve identified from what was left of them was fourteen, the youngest twelve. You’ve been in this location a long time. Some of them must have come in here. You’d see them walk by, hear their voices. Whoever killed them left them to rot away to bones, with no respect, with families who searched for them.”

He only scowled, jammed packages on the shelf.

“Every day when you opened, when you closed, when you stocked your shelves, swept your floor, they were over there in the dark. Alone.”

He tightened his walnut face. “Not my business.”

“I’m making it your business.” She glanced around the market. “I could probably find some violations around here if I wanted to play hard-ass like you are. Or I could put in a request for an extra beat cop to patrol this area. Which way do you want it?”

“I don’t know about dead girls.”

Eve gestured him to the counter, took out the photos, and laid them out with the boxes of gum and breath mints at point of purchase. “Anyone look familiar?”

“You all look the same.” But for the first time he cracked a little smile. “They come in here all the time, the girls, the boys, steal from me, make noise, make mess. Bad girls, bad boys. I think when they leave there it stops. But there are always more. I work, my family work, and they steal.”

“I’m sorry about that, but these girls sure as hell won’t be stealing from you. They’re dead. Look at them, Mr. Pak. Do you remember any of them?”

He huffed out a breath, adjusted his stance, leaned over until his face was only inches away.

“Hasn’t had his eyes fixed in over a year,” the boy said.

“My ears work. Go finish stocking. This one. Trouble.”

He jabbed the stubby finger on Shelby’s face.

“She steals. I tell her she can’t come in here no more, but she sneaks. I go over, talk to the lady, and she is polite. She gives me fifty dollars and says she is sorry, she will speak to this girl and the others. She is gracious, and it is better for a little while. This girl.”