“Did I wake you?” Charles demanded.
“No.” Jason was disappointed. He’d been thinking about Emma, more than half hoped it was her.
“Are you alone?”
“Yeah, I’m alone. What’s up, Charles?”
There was a lengthy silence. “Look, I’m sorry I ripped into you today.” Charles sounded sorry.
“That’s okay. I’d probably have felt the same.”
“We’ve been friends for a long time.”
“Yes, we have. Thanks for calling.”
“That’s not the only reason I called.”
“Oh, what’s up?”
There was a short pause, then Charles spoke. His voice had a catch in it. “The shirt came back from the laundry.”
“The shirt? What shirt?” Jason searched his memory for a shirt.
“Milicia gave a shirt to Brenda in Southampton. The Saturday night before you got there. The night the first woman was murdered. It was a weekend gift, a big white shirt. I have it in my hand.”
“Was that the shirt Brenda was wearing the day I came?”
“Yes. Brenda must have worn it to appear appropriately grateful. It was way too big for her.”
Jason remembered. “Yes.”
“Look, I don’t know if it’s the one the police were looking for. It doesn’t have a store label in it. But I wanted you to know. And Jason—happy birthday.”
Jason closed his eyes. “Thanks, I appreciate it. I’ll call the detective on the case and let her know.”
The first clock began to strike the hour. Then the second. Suddenly the room went into its bonging frenzy. Jason took the portable phone with him and shut the connecting doors. Now he couldn’t see the lightning, or the river, the trees on Riverside Drive shuddering in the wind, or the crooked horizon of New Jersey. He went into the kitchen and turned on the light. It was midnight, but Jason dialed April’s work number anyway. The polite voice that answered said Detective Woo was not there, was off tomorrow. He had no idea what her home number was.
A
pril swallowed down some hot lemon water from the mug that said
GOOD LUCK, LONG LIFE
in gold Chinese characters on the side. The mug was a thank-you gift from the sister of a man who’d been kidnapped upon arrival at Kennedy Airport by the people who arranged for his immigration. The kidnappers demanded an additional thirty thousand dollars for his life. April had located the man in an abandoned warehouse in Newark. In addition to the mug, she was given a bag of oranges and a live eel.
This important and symbolic morning she sat at her tiny kitchen table in her underwear, drinking from her lucky mug, trying to calm down and stop sweating so she could put her clothes on. It was just before eight. Her exam began at ten.
After two weeks of working what she now called the sisters case, it was over. It didn’t matter if Camille Honiger-Stanton struck her as a victim, not a killer. This wasn’t the first time she was unsatisfied with the resolution of a case. Probably wouldn’t be the last. Anyway, the ghosts under the ground would surface sooner or later. There was still the evidence, the handwriting samples to match with the boutique guest book in the Maggie Wheeler homicide, the dog’s teeth marks to match the bite on Rachel Stark. And who knew, maybe Albert Block could give them a positive ID on the woman he saw leaving The Last Mango before he discovered Maggie’s body.
April couldn’t calm down. How could she be afraid of answering a few questions? What was the big deal here?
She’d taken and passed a lot of exams in her life. She’d testified in court. She’d inspected putrifying corpses, tussled with muggers twice her size. She’d been shot at and burned. She had a father who was an expert at the silent treatment and a mother who demanded answers to more questions, of greater depth and complexity, than any prosecuting attorney she ever encountered. How could a mere written exam, followed by an oral one in front of no matter how stony-faced a board of examiners, be any worse than a thousand things she’d already experienced? And yet she had to admit she was scared to death. Didn’t want to fail and lose face in the squad. Didn’t want to endure the contempt of her mother, let down Sergeant Joyce.
She’d hardly closed her eyes all night. She felt slightly nauseated and hung over, so tense that she almost fell off her chair when the phone rang. She was certain it was her mother.
“Wei?”
“April, it’s Mike.”
“Calling to wish me good luck?”
“Good luck,
querida.”
He didn’t remind April that if she made Sergeant, she’d lose her job as a detective. She’d have to go back into uniform, would have to leave the Two-O, become a supervisor in some other precinct, maybe even go back to the street. He didn’t say it, but April thought she could hear some conflict about that in his voice.
“Thank you. I’ll call you later—”
“One other thing,” Mike interrupted. “The forensic dentist just called. Seems like this guy’s a morning person. He’s already made a mold of the teeth of Milicia’s dog and had it bite a few things, including some stuff they use that acts like human tissue.”
April let her breath out. “And?”
“He says we got a match with the bite mark on Rachel Stark’s ankle.”
April was silent as her excitement mounted. She’d been right. It wasn’t over.
“You with me?”
“Yeah. I’m coming in. I’ll see you in twenty minutes.”
“What about the exam?”
“I’ll make it.”
April hung up and hurried into the bathroom, adrenaline pumping in with every heartbeat. She prepared for battle, smeared on more deodorant, dusted her armpits with powder. She threw on the good-luck outfit she’d laid out the night before, then slipped out of her house without encountering a parent.
After last night’s heavy rain it was a glorious day, finally crisp and cooling into autumn. The leaves on the trees outside the house were brown around the edges. Some were already on the ground. The rest of the leaves would fall early. April breathed in the fragrance of grass and damp earth. The season was changing. Her heart lifted as she moved toward her car. Suddenly it all seemed easy. All one had to do was dig a little deeper, like her mother said, and whole armies of ghosts would rise up from the earth to tell their stories. April wondered if maybe she were turning out to be an optimist after all.
The first thing she saw when she entered Sergeant Joyce’s office at eight-twenty was the spatter of ugly rust-colored stains on her blouse. Exactly at the third button, between the Sergeant’s generous breasts, the spray of dried coffee indicated a day of chaos had already begun. The second thing April saw was the dog kennel on the floor. It was a pale putty one, for a small dog, the kind people used for traveling. The apricot poodle inside was weeping like a baby, the heart-rending sounds pleading for release.
Surprised, Sergeant Joyce glanced up and scowled. “You’re not here today. Aren’t you supposed to be—?”
April swallowed. “Yeah, taking the exam. I have a few minutes. I thought I’d check in.”
Sergeant Joyce frowned some more. “What the hell for?”
“I heard we got a bite-mark match in the Stark case with Milicia’s dog.” April’s confidence still soared. She still felt good. They were going to nail the right person after all.
“So?” The dog’s whine went up an octave. Sergeant Joyce’s attention was diverted. “Shut up,” she told the dog fiercely. The poodle didn’t seem impressed. It didn’t stop crying.
“So, we got the link. We got the evidence. It was Milicia,” April said over the noise.
The dog’s whine grew louder.
“Shut up!”
Sergeant Joyce turned back to April, furious. “Can you tell
which
dog
that
is?” she demanded.
April shifted from one foot to the other, suddenly a little uneasy. “Well, no, not from here. Which one is it?”
“What’s the matter with you? How the hell are you ever going to make Sergeant? What are you doing here? What are you
thinking?
Get out of here and take your test.”
“But it was Milicia’s dog that bit the victim.” April felt her own irritation rising.
“Use your head. Let it go, Woo.”
“But if it was Milicia’s dog, it changes the case,” April persisted.
“How the fuck do we know that? There are
two
damn dogs. They could have been switched at any time.”
“But—”
“What are you—stupid?” Joyce’s voice was a snarl.
April could almost see the sounds traveling into the squad room. The supervisor of the squad was calling her stupid. She flushed all over, hot with shame. Perspiration ran down her sides. The dog was crying. Her head was bursting. She had to get out of there. “I thought it would make a difference—”
“Well, it doesn’t make a difference. It doesn’t mean squat. There’s no way to prove who carried that dog into the boutique. Try that in court, and you’d get chopped to pieces. Stupid,” she said again.
April’s jaw set. She moved a step closer to Joyce’s desk. If she made Sergeant, she’d be out of here. If she failed, it wouldn’t matter anyway. Her voice did not falter as, very deliberately and clearly, she said, “Don’t ever talk to me like that again.”
“What?” Sergeant Joyce looked surprised.
“I’m one of the best detectives you have. Don’t ever call me stupid again.”
Awwwwoooooo
. The dog wailed.
Sergeant Joyce pursed her lips as if preparing for another abusive outburst. Then, suddenly, her forehead smoothed
out, and she turned her attention to the little dog in the cage. “Yeah, you’re right. Why don’t you get that animal out of here.”
April picked up the kennel and muttered a few soothing words into it. The ear-shattering noise ceased. “What do you want me to do with it?” she asked.
Sergeant Joyce waved her hand toward the door. “Take it back. The tooth man is finished with it. Some idiot brought it here and left it before I got in. When I find out who, I’ll cut his balls off.”
April’s head pounded. One confrontation a decade was enough. She didn’t have time for another. Her exam was in an hour and twelve minutes. “Take it back where?”
“Take it back where it came from. This is the NYPD, not the ASPCA. It’s not evidence. We can’t keep it here.”
“Where’s the other one?” April said faintly, afraid suddenly it wasn’t anywhere anymore.
“The other one is evidence. It’s still being held.” Sergeant Joyce waved her away.
“Oh.” Still April hesitated. If this was Camille’s dog, she couldn’t take it back. Camille was in Bellevue. Bouck was in intensive care in the hospital. There was no one to take care of it.
“It’s been released, April,” Joyce said impatiently. “Guy called Jamal phoned for it. He’s the employee. Take the dog over. Is that asking too much?”
Under the circumstances it was, but April didn’t want to push her supervisor any further. She headed for the door with the dog kennel in her hand. As she closed the door behind her, she thought that she heard Sergeant Joyce mutter “Good luck.”
I
n the car, however, April had a change of heart. Should she have left the damn dog behind, just dumped it somewhere else in the precinct? She felt like an idiot with the bulky kennel on the front seat of her car. The puppy was quiet, but April was really rushed and anxious now. She had less than an hour to get to her exam. She muttered to herself all the way across and downtown.
“Calm down, calm down. We’ll make it.”
She drove more aggressively than usual, weaving in and out between double-parked cars and vans, speeding up in momentary gaps in the dense traffic. She did not look at the clock on the dashboard, didn’t want to know.
When she got down to Fifty-fifth and Second, the iron grille was still in place across the front of Bouck’s shop. In spite of all the antiperspirant she had used that morning, she broke into another sweat at the sight of it. What if no one was there to take the dog? How could she walk into her exam with it? She didn’t think she had a choice here. The thing wasn’t exactly NYPD property. The examiners would think she was nuts. She had to get rid of it.
April could feel her good-luck shirt sticking to her back as she pulled the car into an empty spot in front of a hydrant and looked up at the windows in Bouck’s living quarters. The light was on in the living room. She could even see the crystals in the huge center chandelier sparkling faintly. The guy Jamal must be in the house.
April got out of the car, slipped her purse over her shoulder, then went around to the passenger side for the
kennel. She figured she still had about forty minutes. It was almost a straight line downtown to One Police Plaza. She could take the FDR Drive and make it in thirty.
Puppy poked her muzzle out of the wire mesh and tried to lick April’s hand as she reached inside the car for the kennel. April stroked her wet nose. “Hi, sweetheart. Someone wants you. Guess you’ll never be mine.” She hurried across the sidewalk to the door of the building and pressed the buzzer. “Didn’t really want a dog anyway,” she muttered.
The downstairs door clicked open instantly. Carrying the kennel in front of her, April climbed the stairs. At the top, she rang the doorbell. A few seconds later the door swung open. A smiling face greeted her.
“Oh, it’s you.”
April’s jaw dropped. In the doorway, dressed in a lavender silk camisole and a long, loose purple skirt, Milicia Honiger-Stanton grinned at her.
“How nice of you to bring my baby back. Hi, baby.” Milicia reached for the kennel and took it inside the apartment, where she crouched down to open the wire door and release the excited puppy.
April followed her in. “That’s your sister’s dog. A man called Jamal telephoned for it.”
“No way, hon. This one’s mine. Hi, Hannabelle.” Milicia picked up the ball of fur and hugged it to her chest, laughing. “You think I don’t know my own puppy?”
April frowned. “What are you doing here?”
“Oh, I came for Camille’s things.” Milicia cuddled the puppy. “I had to check up on everything, you know. I’m responsible. Will you look at this place?” Still holding the puppy, she led the way down the hall to the living room. “All this stuff. It’s Camille’s. She bought it all. A compulsive shopper. Camille has money hidden everywhere. It used to drive me crazy. I can’t just leave everything here like this. Who knows what will happen to it? I’m so glad you brought my dog. I was so worried about her.”