Burn (41 page)

C
inder went to him and rested a hand lightly on his
arm.

“Someone attacked the kids,” Gian said after discon
necting the call. “That was Zae. She’s at the Crestwood
police station.”

“What?” Cinder asked, horrified.

“Jalesa, Eve, and Dawn went to a movie with Cory
after the tournament,” Gian explained. He started for the
stairs. “After the show, they were at their car and a guy in
a balaclava grabbed Eve.” Gian took the stairs two at time, Cinder right behind him. He went into the bed
room and headed straight for the walk-in closet. Dressing
quickly in jeans and a crewneck sweater he yanked from
an upper shelf, he said, “The kids turned the tables on
him. All four of them attacked him.”

“Are they all right?” Cinder sat on the edge of Gian’s bed and put her sneakers on. “Was Eve hurt?”

“They’re rattled, but they’re okay. Zae says Cory got a
good kick in. The guy will be walking around with a
bruise on his face for a while.”

“Where are we going?” Cinder followed Gian back
downstairs.

He cracked a brittle grin. “Zae didn’t think the cops
were taking the assault seriously enough. She made a bit
of a scene.”

Cinder cringed. She could only imagine what kind of
scene Zae might have made in the interest of protecting
her children.

At the front door, Gian took Cinder’s fleece jacket
from the coat tree and helped her into it. He grabbed his
c
ar keys from the pocket of his car coat and opened the
door for her. “The police are holding Zae until ‘a respon
sible adult’ comes for her,” Gian said. “She called me
because I’ve conducted a lot of training seminars with the
Crestwood Police Department. They know me.
Hopefully, they won’t have arrested her before we get
there.”

“Were the kids able to describe the guy?”

“No,” Gian said. He locked his front door behind
them. “It’s Black Friday. There were a ton of people at the
mall, shopping and going to the movies. This is the start
of the parking lot mugging season.”

Gian led Cinder to his SUV and unlocked the pas
senger door. “I’m just glad everybody is all right,” she said
as Gian opened her door.

“Me, too. But that’ll teach the bastard not to mess with Sheng Li students.”

* * *

“Ma’am, I assure you, we’re working with mall secu
rity to do everything we can to find this guy,” an officer
stated for what must have been the tenth time, because
he sounded thoroughly annoyed. “Officers are canvassing
the area and an alert has gone out to all the stores and the
cinema. There’s not much we can do without an accurate
description.”

“Officer, Mrs. Richardson has understandably been
under duress,” Gian started. “Her daughter was attacked
at eight o’clock in a crowded parking lot. It takes balls to
d
o something like that. You’re looking for someone who
is potentially very dangerous.”

“Gian, you think I don’t know that?” the officer said.
“From what I heard from these kids, our perp got the
worst of it.” He lowered his voice. “I don’t think we’ll
ever get this guy. Looked like a classic grab and go. He
went for the girl’s purse, couldn’t get it—”

“Got his ass kicked,” Cory chimed in.

“He’s in the wind now,” the officer finished. “We see
a lot of this type of crime on Black Friday. There are so
many shoppers out, the perps get bold and greedy.”

“Can we get Zae and go home?” Cinder asked. No
fan of the police to begin with, Cinder was irked by the
officer’s cavalier acceptance of defeat.

“Can we?” Gian directed his question to the officer.
“Absolutely,” he said. “I’ll go get her. I had to put her in a holding cell. She got real belligerent.”

“I’m sure she was just upset about her daughter being
attacked,” Gian said.

“Upset or not, there was no reason for her to call me
a ‘monosyllabic morphodite.’ I don’t know what that is,
but it didn’t sound like anything good.”

Leaving Gian, Cinder and the kids in the tiny lobby,
the officer disappeared behind a door to retrieve Zae.
They heard her before they saw her upon her release.

“It’s irresponsible to ignore a perfectly good lead,
that’s all I’m trying to explain to you,” came Zae’s voice.
She kicked open the door, making no move to stop it
from slamming back into the officer on her heels. “Karl
Lange is a troublemaker. He’s got an ax to grind against
Gian Piasanti, and what better way to hurt him than to
strike out at his students?” Zae saw Gian. “Tell him,
Gian.”

“Tell him what? The kids don’t know who the guy
was. It could have been a random crime of opportunity.”

“Cory’s the one who assumed it was Karl,” Zae argued.

At the nearby vending machine, Cory shrugged his shoulders and put up his hands. “He was the first person to pop into my head. He lives near here, right over on
Sappington Road. He’s pissed at Gian and all things
Sheng Li.”

“How would he know that you would be at the mall
tonight?” Cinder asked.

“He could have heard us talking about it at the tour
nament,” Eve said, her stern expression a younger version of her mother’s.

“He was all over the place, fake volunteering,” Dawn
added.

“I couldn’t see the mugger’s face,” Cory said, “so I
can’t say for sure who it was. I just think Karl is the most
likely suspect.”

“Likely isn’t good enough, ma’am,” the officer
directed at Zae. “I can’t go around arresting people
without evidence.”

“You’ll get your evidence,” Zae said. “But by then, he
might have killed someone.”

“I’d consider it a personal favor if you could look into
this a little deeper,” Gian told the officer. “Zae and these
kids are like family to me, and I need to know that every
thing possible is being done to catch this guy.”

“Sure thing, Gian,” the officer said.

With a hand at their backs, Gian guided Zae and Cinder to the vending machines, where Eve sat in a
plastic chair, surrounded by her sister, Jalesa and Cory.
“Eve, are you okay?” Gian asked.

She nodded, though the hand holding a can of Sprite
shook. “He came right at us. It was so weird.”

“He must not have known that we were karate stu
dents,” Dawn said.

“Then that would rule out Karl,” Jalesa said.

“Karl is nuts,” Zae replied. “He probably figured he
could take on all of you. Losing to Cinder this afternoon
probably made him snap.”

“I think it’s time we get out of here,” Gian suggested.
“Hopefully, the police will catch—”

Gian’s cell phone rang. He pulled it from his back
pocket, glanced at the call number in the text window
and answered it. The call lasted seconds, and Gian’s end
of the exchange consisted only of four words. “I’m on my
way.”

He turned to Cinder. “That was the Webster Groves
police. The silent alarm was triggered at Sheng Li. I’ve gotta go check it out.”

“What the hell is going on tonight?” Zae muttered.

“Let the police handle it,” Cinder insisted. It sud
denly didn’t seem so unlikely that Karl was on some sort
of rampage of revenge for his tournament loss.

“The cops are meeting me there,” Gian told her.
“Could you get a ride home with Zae? I don’t know what’s
going on at Sheng Li, so I don’t know how long I’ll be.”

“Sure,” she said and nodded. “Please, be careful.”

“I can handle Karl Lange.” Gian gave her a reassuring
smile, although his comment convinced everyone that
he’d reached the same conclusion Zae had. “Leave a light
burning for me, baby. I’ll be looking for thirds later
tonight.” He kissed her, and it lasted so long, everyone
around them grew impatient.

“For heaven’s sake,” Zae groaned. “You act like you’re
never going to see her again.”

Gian reluctantly pulled out of Cinder’s embrace.
“Wait up for me, baby.”

“I will,” Cinder said, sending him off with a smile.

* * *

Gian squatted at the broken glass scattered over one
end of the studio. “Can I pick this up?”

“Sure,” answered one of Webster Groves’s finest. “It’s
evidence, but we can’t dust it for prints.”

Gian carefully leaned over and picked up the brick
that had been thrown with such force, it broke the plate
glass window in Sheng Li’s lobby and traveled another
ten feet to shatter the observation glass between the lobby
and the studio.

“The guy’s got an arm, I can tell you that much,” the
officer said. “The Cards could use him.”

Gian grunted a noncommittal sound of acknowl
edgement. Someone had caused him a small fortune in
damage. The last thing he wanted for the culprit was a
spot in the Cardinals bullpen. Clutching the brick, he
s
tood and faced the officer, who leaned against the frame
of the doorway between the lobby and the studio.

“It’s pretty obvious that burglary wasn’t the intention
here,” Gian said. “Or else the guy would have used the
brick to break the glass of my front door so he could
unlock it. Someone just wanted to cause me some grief.”

“Can you think of anyone who’d want to damage
your property, Mr. Piasanti?” the officer asked.

“What?”

“Who’d you piss off,” the officer stated more plainly. “A student, a neighbor . . . ?”

Karl.
That was the only name that came to mind.
Gian hesitated before saying, “My club competed in a martial arts tournament today. My fighters took most of
the medals. There might have been a sore loser with an
axe to grind.”

“I’ll canvas the area tomorrow morning when the
stores open, to see if your neighbors saw anything,” the
officer said. He used the edge of his notepad to shove up
the brim of his cap. “I gotta tell you, whoever did it was pretty fearless. All the shops on the street are open late
tonight, what with this being the busiest shopping day of the year, supposedly. There must have been witnesses.”

“What about Natasha?” Gian asked. “She said she
heard the crash and called 911.”

“Mrs. Usher?” The officer had to consult his notes.
“Yeah, the bookstore owner next door. She placed the call
to emergency, but by the time she got outside, the guy
was gone. I’ll re-interview her. Sometimes witnesses
remember details once their nerves have settled.”

“
She locked up early tonight,” Gian said. “You’ll have
to catch her at home. Her daughter was involved in a
mugging or something tonight over at Crestwood Mall.”

“All the head cases are out tonight, huh?”

“Seems like it.” Gian dropped the brick, his shoulders
falling. “I need to get someone here to board up my
storefront. I don’t want the rest of the glass to fall out and
slice some poor passerby into lunchmeat.”

“I’ll file this report as soon as I get back to the station.
If you could come by in the next couple of days to sign
it, I’d appreciate it. I have to tell you, though, Mr.
Piasanti, chances are we’re not gonna find the person who
did this. You got insurance, right?”

“I’m covered. I’m glad I got the full package, even
though I didn’t think I’d ever need it.”

“Unless you need me to stay, I’m going to get started on my report.”