“Sir,” she said on reaching the restaurant owner. “My name is Ash. I’m with the Guild.”
He didn’t ask to see her ID, just shook his head, his thick hair the same deep black as his neatly groomed mustache, his skin pasty with shock. “I couldn’t leave her in there, like garbage. I know I’m not supposed to touch if I find something like that, but I just couldn’t.” His lower lip shook, his voice hoarse. “She’s someone’s little girl.”
At least, Ashwini thought, the victim had had this, a moment of care, of humanity after the horror. “I understand, Mr. Rocco,” she said, keeping her voice gentle. “But can you tell me how you found her? Was there rubbish on top of her?”
Instead of answering, he turned in the doorway to call out, “Coby!”
A lanky teenage boy with the same facial structure as Tony, but a foot more in height and skin several shades darker, appeared behind the older male. “Yes, Pa?”
“Show the lady the photos.”
The teenager took out his phone, touched the screen to bring up his photo files, then handed it to Ashwini. “I watch the crime shows . . . but I never expected to see anything for real.” His Adam’s apple bobbed. “I made Pa wait a minute to take her out. I helped him then, even though I knew we shouldn’t.”
Gripping his father’s hand as he must’ve done as a younger child, Coby blinked rapidly, added, “She was just thrown away. I didn’t know people did that for real. I thought they made that stuff up for TV.” His voice shook.
Ashwini met a lot of bad people in her line of work, mortal and immortal. A few were plain stupid and violent, others evil and cruel, a percentage selfish and narcissistic. Then she met people like Coby and his father and it renewed her faith in the world. “Thank you.” Forwarding herself the photos from the boy’s phone and deleting his copies so Coby wouldn’t have to do it himself, she said, “Do you usually put out the garbage around the time she was found?”
Tony Rocco nodded after putting his arm around his son and hugging the teenager to his side. “Yes. We clean up for the next morning and—”
“It would’ve been around eleven,” Coby said when his father broke off, the older man’s voice swallowed up by grief.
“Anyone else use this Dumpster?”
“Street people Dumpster dive now and then,” Coby said, “but we try to give them leftovers so they don’t have to.” Another jagged swallow, but the boy kept going. “It’s so cold now that they don’t come around at night anymore. Mostly it’s us and the place next door, only they were closed today.”
Coby’s father pointed a shaking finger toward the black garbage bags on the ground beside the Dumpster. “Who does that?” Making his hand into a fist, he thumped it against his heart. “Who just throws a human being away?”
Ashwini had no answer for him. “Did you come out here earlier in the day?”
“I did,” Coby said. “I do the cleanup after the lunch rush. It would’ve been maybe two thirty, three at the latest.” He rubbed his hands over his sweater-covered arms. “She wasn’t in the Dumpster and I didn’t see no one hanging around.”
Ashwini made a note to check for surveillance cameras anywhere nearby, the cops having already ascertained that the restaurant didn’t have one. She didn’t have high hopes; the area wasn’t wealthy enough for cameras to be an automatic add-on, but not crime-ridden enough that surveillance was a prerequisite for insurance. Here, neighbors looked out for one another, but most places would’ve closed at least an hour before, and while this restaurant butted up against the Vampire Quarter, it wasn’t on a popular pedestrian route for clubgoers, making it doubtful she’d be able to locate any eyewitnesses.