All Sales Fatal (22 page)

“Why would a cop from New Jersey be interested in a low-life gang minion in Vernonville?” I asked. “I doubt that’s what happened. However, maybe a cop or someone connected with the company contracted to destroy the guns saw a way to make a little profit.”

“And sold it?”

I nodded.

“Was Arriaga from New Jersey?”

Wrinkling my brow, I tried to remember everything I’d heard about Celio Arriaga from Gilda and Eloísa. “I don’t think so,” I said slowly. “I got the impression he was from this area, but I suppose it’s possible he moved from New Jersey. Why?”

Joel’s eyes lit up and he leaned forward, excited as always by speculating about a case. “Well, if Arriaga was from New Jersey, maybe he made some enemies up there. Do they have Niños Malos in Jersey? A rival gang. They got hold of the gun, and one of them came down here to pop him.” He must have seen the skepticism on my face because he plowed on. “You’re going to say ‘Why would they bother?’ Right?”

I nodded, a half smile on my lips. He was learning.

“I’ve got that figured out. He had something on someone, and they were afraid he’d tell. He saw someone kill somebody, or knew too much about someone’s drug-ring operations.” He bounced in the chair, causing an alarming squeak.

“I’m not saying that’s impossible, Joel,” I said after a moment’s thought, “but it all hinges on Celio being from New Jersey, and we don’t have any reason to think he was.” Even if he were from New Jersey, I found Joel’s convoluted scenario unlikely. More probably, the reason for Celio’s death was closer to home: he was in the wrong place at the wrong time and got killed, not an unusual occurrence when one hung out with angry young men who carried guns and thought it was “cool,” or a sign of manhood, to shoot people.

“I’ll find out where he was from,” Joel said, clicking away on his computer keyboard.

I left him to it and went to find Grandpa Atherton. He was Easter Bunnying, and I had to wait for him to finish
with a toddler who burst into tears when her mother plopped her onto his lap. In less than thirty seconds, he had jollied away her tears, and by the one-minute mark he had coaxed a grin from her. He had a way with children, and I smiled at his silliness, remembering how he used to entertain me and Cliff with made-up nonsense songs, much the way he was now beguiling the now giggling child on his lap. The photographer snapped a photo, and the tot’s mother lifted her from Grandpa. The little girl promptly dissolved into tears again, holding her arms out toward Grandpa, and crying, “Bunny, play Bunny!”

When the mother had hauled the heartbroken girl away, Grandpa turned to me and said, “My, you’re quite a big girl. Did you want to have your photo taken with the Easter Bunny?”

I heard the laughter in his voice. “Sure.” I climbed over the low picket fence and stood beside him while the confused photographer readied the camera.

“Say ‘Bunny,’” the photographer demanded and we complied. “I’m taking a break,” he said after accepting my money for the photo. He walked off, pulling a pack of cigarettes from his pocket.

“To what do I owe the honor?” Grandpa asked.

I pulled the photographer’s folding chair up beside Grandpa’s Easter Bunny throne and sat. It was weird talking to the vacant stare from the Easter Bunny’s egg-shaped eyes, and I tried to focus on the mesh screen near his bow tie. “What do
you know about gunrunning or gun amnesty programs?” I asked, thinking that he might have some experience from his CIA days.

“You mean like guns for oil? I wasn’t involved with any of those ops,” he said.

“Not guns for oil so much as gun smuggling into the U.S. or illegal gun sales on a smaller scale,” I clarified.

“You know that would be the FBI’s or ATF’s bailiwicks,” he said. “The Company doesn’t operate within the U.S.”

“I know,” I said. “But I thought you might’ve had some involvement…” I tapered off so he could take the question any way he wanted. There was something surreal about discussing gun smuggling with the Easter Bunny.

“Sorry, Emma-Joy,” he said. “You probably know as much about that as I do. And all I know about amnesty programs is that some police departments offer to accept guns, no questions asked, from citizens. They think that it’ll get guns off the streets and make cops—and other citizens—safer. I’ve never bought their logic, though, since I doubt the lowlifes who are likely to kill are the ones turning in their weapons.”

I was a little disappointed at Grandpa’s lack of expertise in this area, but not too surprised. “Thanks anyway,” I said, hugging him and landing a kiss somewhere on his furry neck.

I grabbed a quick lunch in the food court, toying with the idea of asking the mysterious Mr. Callahan if he knew anything about gun smuggling. He’d asked me to tell him if I heard anything about guns, and this qualified, surely? A grandmotherly woman with poorly fitting dentures was manning the Lola’s counter, however, and I didn’t see Jay.

Checking in with Harold Wasserman, on dispatch duty while Joel lunched, I learned there was nothing of note happening in the mall. “I’ll be in the Pete’s wing if you need me,” I told him and clicked off.

That short corridor of shops pulled at me, like waves inexorably tugging grains of sand from the beach into the depths. The key to whatever had happened to Celio, and maybe Captain Woskowicz, too, lay in one of these shops. I was sure of it. I Segwayed past the shops I’d been in earlier, stopping at the outer doors to gaze into the parking lot.
Nothing unusual. Cars parked nose to nose, the gleam of chrome, a trickle of shoppers crossing the lots, either laden with bags as they returned to their cars or strolling empty-handed into the mall. No one hurried because it was a beautiful, warm spring day.

I did a one-eighty and surveyed the wing that spread out before me. Nothing stood out. Planters overflowed with ferns and hostas. One bench was empty, and one was occupied by a bored-looking man maybe waiting for his wife to finish shopping. The sun slanted in at an angle that revealed little handprints and maybe a nose smudge or two on the toy store window. My gaze drifted upward, lingering on the cameras. The cameras…

I glanced over my shoulder at the sidewalk just beyond the glass doors. My gaze lingered on the spot where I’d found Celio. If Celio was killed by someone gang-connected and his body was dropped at the mall to keep police from discovering the murderer, how likely was it that the killer, or killers, would happen to dump him at the one entrance with a nonfunctional camera? Not very. That was too big a coincidence for me to swallow. Only a handful of people knew the cameras weren’t working, and they all resided in this wing or in the security office.

My eyes widened as a question occurred to me: Was it possible that Celio had been killed
inside
the mall and his body dragged outside? Everyone had been working under the assumption that Celio was killed off mall property somewhere and his body driven to the mall. What if that assumption was wrong?

I tried to rein in my galloping thoughts. If I was right, Captain Woskowicz became the prime suspect. He had means (the gun found in his file cabinet) and opportunity (he knew the cameras were on the fritz). I had no idea what his motive could be, but I knew it wasn’t necessary to prove
motive to convict someone. But if Captain W had killed Celio, who had killed Captain W? A gang member getting revenge for Celio’s death? Or some totally unknown player?

I found myself taking out my cell phone and dialing Detective Helland’s number almost without conscious volition. A bored voice told me he wasn’t available, and I asked to be switched to his voice mail. After leaving a detailed message that laid out my analysis, I hung up, feeling I’d done a little bit to atone for not calling him about Eloísa.

Leaning forward to propel the Segway, I pulled up beside the red wagon in front of Jen’s Toy Store and went in. The store was bright and cheery with shelves of games, toys, stuffed animals, and a large Lego table in the middle with half-built creations rising from the bumpy surface. Resisting the urge to add a couple of Legos to a lopsided castle, I looked for Jen, who hadn’t been in when I canvassed the wing before, and spotted her on her hands and knees beside a shelf, probing beneath it. “Lose something?”

She started and looked up, withdrawing a long piece of wire—a repurposed clothes hanger, I surmised—from beneath the shelf. A soft-spoken woman originally from Oklahoma, Jen was in her mid to late forties, with a spattering of freckles and slightly jug ears that made her look younger. Standing, she said, “Just doing my weekly Lego collection.” She wiped a wisp of hair from her forehead with the back of her hand. “Somehow they end up all over the store, not just around the table. What’s up?”

“Had any more problems with disappearing wagons?”

She laughed gently. “No. Not this week. I sold two, though.”

Did that mean the wagon out front was not the one that had been on display the day Celio died? I felt a twinge of disappointment because it had occurred to me that the
wagon would make an excellent corpse transportation device in a pinch. “Did you sell the wagon sitting out front and then put out another one?”

Jen gave me a funny look. “No, I usually sell boxed ones from my storeroom. That wagon”—she nodded toward the hall—“has been my display wagon for a couple of months. I’ll sell it at a discount in another month or two. It gets a little banged up out there.”

I pulled out my photo of Celio. “Was he ever in here?”

She examined it, absently tapping the wire down the length of her leg. “Not that I remember. Why?”

“He’s the one whose body was left out front,” I said.

“That poor boy. He looks so young.” Her gaze lingered on the photo before she looked up at me. “Have the police arrested anyone?”

Shaking my head, I said, “No. But they’re making progress. Today’s paper has an article about them ID’ing the gun that was used.”

“What’s that tattoo on his hand?” she asked, pointing at the horizontal cross that was barely visible in the photo. “Does it mean something?”

“That’s a good question,” I said slowly, wondering why I hadn’t thought to research an answer before now. “I don’t know.”

“Such a shame.”

Jen knelt again and resumed her sweeps under the shelves, pulling stray Lego pieces to her with the hanger. A display of realistic-looking cap guns and squirt guns trembled as she jostled the shelf. I doubted most people could tell them from the real thing if they were seen from a distance. “Sell a lot of guns?” I asked.

She laughed. “The boys love ’em.”

How easy would it be, I wondered as I left the store, to
insert a real gun into a cap-gun or squirt-gun package and let customers walk out of the store with the gun in plain sight? Pretty easy, I’d bet.

Returning to the
office, I left another message for Detective Helland to relay my thoughts about the wagon, before sitting down at the computer to do a search on “gang tattoos.” I didn’t need to scan more than one page of images to find the horizontal cross I’d last seen inked onto Celio Arriaga’s hand. Text described the cross as the symbol of the gang member responsible for supplying the gang with guns. I leaned back in my chair, gazing intently at the simple black image now magnified on the computer screen. A gang’s division of labor wasn’t too different from the military’s, I thought; the military had staffs for personnel, intelligence, logistics, and the like. And gangs definitely had a command hierarchy, as well. I closed the tab. I wasn’t sure that my new knowledge got me any place. It confirmed that Arriaga was probably interested in acquiring pistols and Mac-10s and rocket launchers, for all I knew, for the Niños Malos, but it didn’t tell me where he went in the mall after splitting from Eloísa and Enrique, and it didn’t tell me doodly-squat about who killed him or why. With a sigh, I applied myself to paperwork until the shift change at three o’clock. Joel left, saying he planned to swim, and Vic Dallabetta arrived. We greeted each other civilly, and I asked if she’d done anything special the day before on her day off.

“Parent-teacher conference,” she said briefly. Bending to pick up a stray piece of paper from the floor, she accidentally cracked her head on the desk. “Ow!” She stood, fingers pressed to her forehead. “Damn it!”

“Sit. Let me get you some ice.”

“I don’t need—”

I was out the door before she could protest. To get ice, I’d have to go all the way down to the food court. So I improvised and bought a can of Coke from the vending machine in the hallway. I was back in the office within thirty seconds. “Here,” I said, holding it out to her.

“Thanks,” she muttered, gingerly putting the can to her forehead.

I studied her, noting dark circles under her eyes and tension in the way she pressed her lips together. Of course, she’d just smacked her head, so the tension might be pain, but the dark circles spoke of sleepless nights or worry.

I sat in the chair Joel had vacated. “Is everything okay?”

“I just split my head open, for Christ’s sake,” she said, looking at me from the corners of her eyes.

“I meant at home, with your health, or with Josie Rae.” I persevered, even though I could see she resented my questions. “I don’t want to pry,” I said, “but if there’s something I could help with, I’d be happy to.”

She didn’t snap my head off as I expected her to. Instead, she leaned sideways so she could support her elbow on the desk and take some of the weight off the arm holding the Coke can to the lump on her forehead. “The swing shift is hard for me,” she said finally. “I have to make arrangements for someone to pick up Josie Rae and keep her after school. One of my friends does that. But she’s got night classes, so she takes Josie Rae to my sister’s for dinner. After dinner, Bree—my sister—makes sure she does her homework and that she goes to bed at a decent time. I pick her up when I get off shift, so it’s eleven thirty by the time we get home and I get her into her own bed. Then we’re up by six to get her ready for school.” Her eyes flitted to me once or twice, but she mostly kept her gaze on the desk.

“I don’t see why we can’t tinker with the schedule to keep
you off swings,” I said, relieved that her problem was a simple one to solve.