“We’re barely even police officers,” Billy said.
Charlotte glared at him. “Speak for yourself.”
“We’re the only law in Darwin Gardens,” Wade said. “So we’ll have to do.”
Mission Possible was a soup kitchen by day, but at night the tables were replaced with cots for the junkies, drunks, and transients who had nowhere else to go.
About sixty of those sallow?eyed men and women, most of them Native American, were milling around waiting as Friar Ted and some volunteers made the switchover, folding up the tables and stacking them.
Wade and Charlotte walked in and the homeless tried to melt into the shadows, only there weren’t any to be found in the harsh fluorescent light. So they lowered their heads, hoping if they didn’t see the cops, the cops wouldn’t see them. It wasn’t as childish as it seemed. Invisibility was something they rarely had to work to achieve.
Charlotte carried a folder and followed a step or two behind Wade, who greeted Friar Ted and introduced him to her.
“May we have a word with you?” Wade asked.
“Certainly.” The preacher led them over to one of the remaining tables in a far corner of the former warehouse.
“That was quite a show you put on the other night,” Friar Ted said.
“Just doing my job, Padre.”
“Arresting cops seems to be your specialty.”
“Not by choice,” he said. “I need your help.”
“I’ll do anything I can.”
Wade glanced at Charlotte, who passed the folder over to Ted.
“I have to warn you,” she said. “These are disturbing images.”
“That’s just about all you see around here, Officer. You’ll learn that soon enough.” He opened the folder and looked at the morgue photos of the dead women. True to his word, he appeared unshaken by the sight.
“Do you recognize any of them?” Wade asked.
“I recognize the sunken faces of the suffering, the faithless, the damned. I see them every day.”
“What I meant was, did you know any of these women personally?”
Friar Ted shook his head. “I wish I did. And I wish they could have known the glory of God.”
The preacher slid the folder over to Wade, who made no move to take it.
“You can hold on to those. The killer is probably a john. I’d appreciate it if you’d show the pictures around to the women who come in here-maybe they know the guy.”
“Of course,” he said. “But I wouldn’t be too hopeful if I were you. They aren’t a very talkative group.”
“I have faith,” Wade said.
Chapter twenty
Wade had somewhere he wanted to go downtown, but his stomach was growling, so he made a detour first, stopping at one of the mini?marts in Darwin Gardens that he hadn’t visited yet. The store had more bars on the windows than the county jail.
“What are we doing here?” Charlotte asked.
“Stopping for a snack. I skipped lunch. Or maybe it was dinner. Whatever. All I know is that I’m hungry.”
“There are a dozen places we could go downtown for a decent meal.”
“But that wouldn’t help me build relationships with the people on our beat. I’m getting a Coke and a Slim Jim. Want one?”
“What is a Slim Jim?”
“A stick of spicy meat,” he said. “You could buy it now and eat it in a year and it will still be fresh.”
“You say that like it’s a good thing.”
“It is if you leave food in the cupboard as long as I do,” he said.
“I’ll pass, thank you.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’ve never been more sure of anything in my life,” she said.
Wade shrugged, got out of the car, and strode into the mini?mart. It was like all the others in Darwin Gardens-cramped and garishly lit, with narrow aisles that were overstuffed with items. The front counter was cluttered with impulse?buy candy and snack displays.
The guy behind the counter was his thirties, lanky and unshaven, with an enormous head of tangled hair and a faded T?shirt. He forced a smile.
“Hello, Officer, what can I get for you?”
“I’m looking for Slim Jims,” Wade said.
“Over there.” He gestured in the general direction of the rear of the store, which was an odd thing to do, since there was an assortment of Slim Jims on the front counter.
“Thanks,” Wade said and knew in that instant that he wasn’t going to make it downtown tonight, that what he’d wanted to do would have to wait until tomorrow.
He picked up a basket and headed purposefully down the aisle to the glass refrigerator case in the back, which was full of beer and soft drinks.
Wade slid open the glass door and grabbed a liter of Diet Coke, stealing a glance up at the round mirror mounted in the corner, near the ceiling.
The mirror was angled so that the clerk could see if anybody was shoplifting in the back of the store. But it also allowed Wade to see the storeroom door that was behind him and to his right.
The door was ajar, held open by the toe of someone’s scruffy tennis shoe.
At that moment, all that existed in Tom Wade’s world was that mini?mart, the guy at the counter, and whoever was in the storeroom.
Wade unscrewed the cap from the bottle of Diet Coke, took a sip out of it, and then stuck the open bottle in his basket as he made his way to the candy aisle. He picked up a roll of Mentos mints and a few other candy bars, dumped them in his basket, and then headed back to the register.
He set the basket down on the counter. “I couldn’t find the Slim Jims, so I made do.”
“Sorry,” the cashier said. “We must be out.”
Wade began unwrapping the Mentos as the cashier rang up his items.
“That’s funny,” Wade said. “What are these right here?”
As the cashier leaned over the counter to look, Wade dropped a Mentos into the open bottle of Diet Coke, which burst into a foam geyser that blasted into the man’s face.
In the same instant, Wade whirled around and drew his gun, aiming it at the storeroom door. “Do you want you want to die tonight?”
“No, fuck, no,” someone said behind the door.
“Drop your weapon and step out with your hands behind your head.” Wade took a step back so he could keep his eye on the drenched cashier at the same time. “You too, hands up.”
Wade heard something metallic hit the floor in the storeroom and then the door opened. A man came out. He was thin and jittery and sweating from every pore, his hands on his head.
Charlotte rushed in now, her gun drawn and pointed at the Diet Coke?doused man behind the counter. “Don’t move, stay right where you are.”
“Is there anyone else with you?” Wade asked.
“No, it’s just us,” the man behind the counter said.
She covered the two men while Wade, his gun still drawn just in case, went to the storeroom and slowly pushed open the door the rest of the way with the toe of his shoe. Inside, he saw an old man sitting on the floor, his mouth sealed with duct tape, his hands bound behind his back, a gun on the floor at his feet.
Wade kicked the gun aside and carefully removed the tape from the man’s mouth.
“Was it just them?” Wade asked.
The man nodded.
“Are you OK?”
“Yeah,” the man said. “I’m used to it. Those two assholes came in, pointed a gun at my face, and said they’d let me keep my brains if I didn’t make trouble. I didn’t get this old being stupid. A week doesn’t go by that I don’t get robbed by somebody.”
“Those days are over. I owe you $2.99 for a liter of Diet Coke and a buck for a roll of Mentos. Don’t let me forget.” Wade turned back to Charlotte. “Cuff ’em and read ’em their rights.”
She did.
They took a report from the shopkeeper, then drove the two robbers back to the station and locked them up while Charlotte filled out the necessary paperwork.
Wade used the time to start patching some of the holes in the walls left from the shelves, the posters, the firebombing, and the drive?by shooting.