The sky turned midnight blue as the light slowly faded. The two dicks still stood ringing the doorbell. The smell of fall was in the air.
“Unh-unh. In China lots of wives for
one
husband. We’re talking dozens of children, with complicated combinations of relatives you can’t even imagine. Uncles and part uncles one-tenth the age of their part nieces and nephews. All living in huge compounds. Unbelievable.”
“Let me figure this out. Your mother is a multiple wife and this guy Dong is your brother.”
April gasped. “How’d you know his name?”
“You told me his name.”
“I never told you his name,” April fumed. “I never mentioned him at all. I can’t stand this. You’re spying on me again. I thought we talked about this. I don’t ask about your life. I don’t care what you do. I don’t care,” she insisted.
Mike regarded her with delight. “You know, we should do this more often. I love it when you get excited.”
“You can’t spy on me like this.” April was almost choking on her fury. “And my mother wasn’t—
isn’t
—a multiple wife. There’s no such thing as a multiple wife.”
“I thought you said—”
“Forget it. Sister-cousin used to mean part of the family even if there was no real blood tie. But now it means closer than a friend. A relationship that’s like a friend but has some tie that makes it more than a friend. Okay? Got it?”
Mike nodded again. “So, how did it go?”
Braun and Roberts gave up on the doorbell and approached
the unmarked car with identical determined strides.
“Uh-oh. Here they come.”
All the windows were rolled down. The car was facing downtown. Mike was driving. Lieutenant Braun approached April’s side.
“Look, she must be out for dinner or something.” He made a quick check of his watch. “We’re going to go out for a bite. You stay here.”
“Yessir,” April said.
“If she comes back, don’t approach her,” Braun ordered. “I want to do this.”
Neither one in the car said anything.
“Got it?” Braun demanded.
“Don’t approach her,” April repeated.
“Right.” Braun turned away, headed downtown toward the Irish bars.
After a minute Mike said, “You know, none of this plays.”
“I know.”
“I mean none of it, from the beginning.”
“Maybe we’ve just been going at it from the wrong direction.”
“How about now?”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t see a woman strangling women, do you?”
April shook her head. “Not in general, but there’s the makeup and dressing the body up. And did you see the size of the sister?”
Mike shrugged. “Big.”
“Big and redheaded.” April was silent for a minute. “I’ve seen women who could kill.”
Mike laughed. “Their husbands, maybe.”
“Other women, too. Ever see a fight in a women’s prison?”
“I saw a skinny girl try to give her rival an unscheduled mastectomy with a carving knife once.”
They sat watching the building as the sky darkened. After a few minutes a light went on in an upstairs window.
“Well, look at that.” April opened the car door and got out.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Mike demanded.
“He only said not to approach her if she came outside. He didn’t say we couldn’t go
in
if she opened the door.”
“Right.” Mike closed the windows, then got out and locked the car.
A
n intercom was set into the plaster next to the doorbell on the short piece of putty-colored wall that turned the corner into the doorway. The whole building was dilapidated and sad-looking, the black paint on the doorframe cracked and gray with city grit. A faint odor of urine rose from the corners of the worn stone threshold. The door looked as if the top half had once sported a glass insert of some kind. Now it was crudely paneled and painted over and had a peephole in the middle. The lightbulb over the door was blackened with age.
No nameplate indicated who lived there.
April pushed the bell, then stepped back to look up at the windows, as Lieutenant Braun had half an hour before. A few feet away, Mike leaned against a streetlamp, peering up. He shook his head. Nothing.
April rang the bell again. Then a third time, and a fourth. After the second ring she thought she heard a yelp way in the back of the house.
“Come here. I think there’s a dog in there.”
“No kidding.” Mike let go of the lamppost and approached the door.
April hit the button again. They listened and were rewarded by more excited barking.
After a short pause the intercom crackled.
“Bouck?”
April glanced at Mike.
“Bouck?”
Mike raised his chin at her, indicating that she should be the one to answer.
“Ah, no.” April put her mouth close to the speaker-phone holes. “It’s Detective April Woo, New York Police. I’d like to talk to you. Would you let me in?”
In the lengthy silence that followed, April thought the woman had gone away.
There was some more crackling and a faint whisper, like the sound of leaves blowing in the wind. “What did he do?”
“I can’t hear you. Would you open the door?”
The voice rose to a wail. “What did he do?”
“Miss Stanton, could you open the door so we can talk to you?”
No answer, only the sound of a dog’s crazed yapping.
“Jesus,” Mike muttered.
“Miss Stanton, we just want to talk to you. Please open the door.”
“… I can’t.”
“Why not?”
There was another long pause before she answered. “He’ll hurt me.”
“No one will hurt you. I promise. We just want to talk to you for a few minutes. Please open the door.”
“Yes, he’ll hurt me.”
The whisper was hoarse and intense. April had to strain to make out the words.
“Who’ll hurt you?”
“I can’t tell you.”
“Who’s Bouck?” April tried.
“He owns the house. I’m not supposed to let anyone in.” The voice was timorous, more like that of a frightened little girl than a grown woman.
“Tell her to come outside,” Mike suggested.
“Huh?”
“Tell her to walk the dog.”
April nodded. Good idea.
“Miss Stanton. Can you come outside?”
“No, no. I have to stay until he comes back.”
“When is he coming back?”
Silence.
“Did he say when he was coming back?”
“He said four o’clock.”
“It’s way past that now.” April spoke carefully into the intercom. “What happens when he’s late?”
“Uhh.”
“Ask her to walk the dog.” Mike nudged her arm.
“Miss Stanton, doesn’t the dog have to go out?”
Silence.
“Are you allowed to take the dog out, Miss Stanton?”
The intercom crackled. “Of course I can take Puppy out.”
“Miss Stanton, why don’t you do it now?” “Why?”
“It sounds like Puppy wants to go out.”
“Puppy
always
wants to go out.”
No more sounds from the intercom.
“Miss Stanton, Miss Stanton—damn.” April turned to Mike. “What do you say?”
“At least we know she’s in there. This guy—Bouck. Maybe we should run a check on him.”
“She seems scared to death of him.”
“Confirms what the sister said.”
“Uh-huh.” They headed back to the car to put in a call to Sergeant Joyce. “Yeah, but she also said the woman was out of it.”
“She sounded scared, not exactly out of it. Give me the keys.” Mike held out his hand.
“You were driving. You have the keys.”
“Unh-unh. You put them in your bag.”
April rolled her eyes. “That was yesterday.”
Mike patted himself down, found the keys in his jacket pocket. “Oh, yeah, I knew that. Just testing your memory.”
“Sure.”
Mike unlocked the passenger door and opened it, then walked around to his side of the car. He got in and called Sergeant Joyce. While he was still speaking, April punched him in the arm.
The black paneled door of the building opened a crack. The woman they thought was Camille Honiger-Stanton stuck her head out and looked around.
After a second or two, when the woman didn’t see anybody lying in wait for her, she came out with a tiny poodle on a retractable leash. A current of electricity, kind of like lightning, jolted through the car. April felt the familiar rush of adrenaline. She looked at Mike. It had hit him, too. His body was still, but she could feel his heart racing, his blood pressure rise at the sight of the red-haired woman walking a dog that was a hairball with a muzzle. “Holy shit,” Mike murmured.
It was kind of an orange color, a bit lighter than the hair of the woman, who was even taller than her sister. April estimated her height at five eleven. She wore a long, flowered skirt with a white blouse hanging out over it. The blouse had big sleeves and reminded April of another one she had seen somewhere like it. Her shoes were black flats, like ballet slippers. Her hair was long and wild around her head. In the darkening light, with her tall, slight frame covered in billowy clothes, she looked almost ghostly.
Mike made a move to get out of the car, then stopped. “She’s not going anywhere,” he said softly.
“No. Look at that dog, will you?” April shook her head. Unbelievable. Ducci was going to be impossible after this call.
The poodle had fluff all over it, was clearly a puppy that hadn’t been clipped into poodle shape yet. The little dog looked to April like a lamb. Immediately the puppy squatted in the doorway, then took off, leaving a little puddle behind. It raced down the sidewalk as far as the leash would go. At about twelve feet, the cord ran out, pulling the dog up short.
It stopped and turned around to look at Camille questioningly. Its mouth was open in what appeared to be a smile.
“Oh, my God, it’s smiling,” April muttered. “Have you ever busted a dog?”
“No, have you?”
“Not exactly an everyday thing.”
They were silent, watching the woman. She did not move from the front of the building. The dog raced back to her, then ran down the sidewalk the other way, until the
leash ran out just before the corner where April and Mike were parked.
“Cute,” Mike muttered.
“Yeah, but what is it? Accessory to murder? Witness to murder?”
“All of the above. But it doesn’t look like it’s going to tell us about it.”
“We don’t know what Ducci will turn up from this one.” April jerked her head toward the crime scene where they’d spent the better part of the day.
The store where Rachel Stark died was almost directly across the street. Some of the yellow tapes that had sealed off the sidewalk in front of European Imports earlier were still stuck on a tree. They were still in place all over the front of the shop.
Camille Honiger-Stanton didn’t seem to be aware of them. Her attention was focused on the dog, now racing for the street.
“We’ll have to pick it up. It appears to be evidence.”
They were both silent again, thinking their own thoughts about how Lieutenant Braun would handle this suspect and her canine accomplice. April could see how the dog could work to win over a victim, make a murderer welcome anywhere. She remembered that the Boston Strangler had gotten into his victims’ apartments by mewing like a cat.
“Ohhh shit.” Mike stiffened in his seat.
Finally the woman felt it was safe to move. She strolled toward the opposite corner, where Lieutenant Braun and Sergeant Roberts were returning from their dinner.
J
ason checked the clock as Milicia gathered up her things. His face was rigid. She was taking a lot of time to get organized. He willed himself to appear relaxed and neutral at her resistance to leaving. Daisy was Jason’s next patient. He hoped she and Milicia wouldn’t meet in the waiting room. Daisy would be disturbed by Milicia.
Finally Milicia was on her feet, but she wasn’t happy. Only seconds before she had been calm, as if a great pressure inside her had finally eased. Now she was hurt and angry again because Jason wouldn’t drop everything and take care of her now that he understood the true nature of her crisis. She felt he had tricked her into going to the police alone. She was furious, but there was absolutely nothing he could do about it. Daisy was probably sitting in his waiting room already, and she was by no means his last patient.
He glanced down at his appointment book. Tuesdays he had patients until eight-thirty at night. The only thing that would stop him from seeing them was an actual medical emergency. One of them getting shot or hit by a bus. A suicide crisis. An accident where blood was flowing all over the ground. Nothing else.
Once a very sick patient he was visiting in the hospital became suicidal during the visit. Jason had stayed at the hospital until the patient was stabilized. He got back to his office an hour and a half later. While he was gone, the patient whose session he missed had become hysterical waiting outside his locked office door, knocking and getting no answer.
He had planned to come right back, had left the lights and the radio on in the office. The patient, a woman, saw the crack of light under the door and heard the radio. She fantasized that Jason was in there, had had a heart attack, and would die if the doorman didn’t break down the door to save him. The doorman wouldn’t do it. A male patient confronted by a locked door would probably have shrugged and left. But his woman patient never really felt safe with him after that.
Jason watched Milicia turning things over in her mind. How she would handle this apparent betrayal on his part, how she would manage the police. Jason was intensely aware in those moments that he didn’t fully understand this situation, had no idea what was really going on.
There are so many levels to the relationship between psychiatrist and patient, so many secret recesses of the mind where events and feelings were processed but never fully explored no matter how many hours are scheduled.
Jason knew most people couldn’t make connections between things, and even when they could, human communication was an iffy undertaking at best. From the first moment he saw her, Jason knew Milicia was not like anyone else. It was more than her extraordinary presence. He couldn’t place her, couldn’t define her, wasn’t sure of her purpose, her character. His method was always to let the patient inform him of these things. But every time he saw or spoke to Milicia, something totally unexpected came out of left field. This was an uncommon thing. Very rarely did he remain perplexed for very long. With Milicia he had been perplexed ten whole days. That was as long as he had known her.