“Yeah, he’s that half-Asian something or other crazy martial arts guy around here. He’s got some brain damage. He was pretty harmless for a long time, but lately he’s getting a little more off his rocker.”
“Where would I find this Little Mitt guy?”
“He hangs around the homeless shelters more than anything,” she noted. “Other than that, you’ll find him sleeping on a bench somewhere.”
“He was in last night?”
She nodded. “Yeah, it surprised me too because he had ten bucks on him.”
“Is that a lot for him?”
She nodded again. “It’s a lot for most people around here. When they get a couple coins, they come in for coffee.”
“What do you do at the end of the pot, when you can’t sell it anymore?”
An odd look came in the woman’s gaze, as she turned to face Kate again. “What do you mean?” she asked, her voice almost worried.
“I’m not here to tell on you,” she responded quietly. “But surely, when a pot of coffee has been sitting there for too long, you don’t serve it.”
“No, I don’t. We’re supposed to dump it down the sink.”
“And, in most cases, you would.”
But she waited. As if she had a lifetime of waiting for others to speak first, never being the first to jump in with an answer. She just stared at Kate. “You got a point to make?” The woman finally caved in to the awkwardness, speaking with a note of challenge in her voice.
“I’m just wondering how many of these people know that a pot of coffee will get old after a while, so there might be free stale coffee available.” The woman frowned and looked down at her hands, and Kate realized that she’d hit a vulnerable spot. “Again, I’m not here to tell your boss. I’m also not here to complain about you making good use of food that’ll be wasted anyway,” she added. “I’m just trying to get an idea of who was in the area last night, who might have seen something, and who we can talk to next.”
The woman turned, looked out the window. “If he finds out, he’ll fire me.”
Rodney piped up. “For dumping old coffee into a cup instead of down the sink?”
She nodded. “He doesn’t like these guys hanging around. Calls them freeloaders and says that they’re a waste of space. He doesn’t even want them in his place,” she said. “He just doesn’t get it.”
“He doesn’t get it because he’s never been there,” Kate stated quietly. “You have, so you know what it’s like to go without any hot coffee on a cold night, don’t you?”
The woman looked at her and then nodded. “I do,” she answered, “and I don’t see the harm in not wasting something. Yet the boss would rather it be wasted than help someone who doesn’t have the money to buy a cup anyway.”
“Well,some people,” Rodney noted, “are supposed to follow orders regardless.”
“Some people, quite true,” she snapped. The woman crossed her arms over her chest and looked at him. “And your point is?”
“His point is, it doesn’t matter,” Kate said, with a wave of her hand. “The bottom line is that a few people stopped by looking for coffee last night. Can I get the names of those people?”
“I guess.” She paused. “They won’t thank me for passing on their names.”
“No, of course not.” Kate nodded. “I get that. But the woman who died in that alley won’t thank anybody either. Not unless we help her and at least give some meaning to her death, like by making sure nobody else goes the same way.”
“You think he’ll strike again?” the woman asked, scratching her arm.
Kate could see psoriasis patches, old ones, with dead flaky skin, and the woman just kept scratching. Kate reached out a hand and stilled the other woman’s movements. In a calm voice, Kate spoke, while removing her hand from the woman’s arm. “It’s possible. We just want to do our job, so we can put a stop to it.”
The woman frowned and pulled her sleeve over her scaly skin and leaned back a little farther. Obviously the contact was something she wasn’t comfortable with.
Rodney walked toward the door, ready to leave. “All we need is a couple names.”
The old woman looked at Kate first, then Rodney. She muttered a couple names in a soft and quiet voice that Kate couldn’t make out.
“I didn’t hear that,” Kate said, pulling out her notepad. “Can you just write them down, so we can remember them?”