Stealing Time (41 page)

"You're getting ahead of me. Look at this." Bernheim popped on a plastic glove and pointed out a line of ants emerging from the corner of the window and marching along the floor and up the tilt of the wall, where it slanted in to meet the roof. The ants disappeared into a straight crack in the wall. Bernheim prodded the crack with the business end of a chisel. As it shifted, the rounded side of two hinges came into view.

"Open sesame." He pushed the plaster board with the flat of his hand and the door to a walk-in cedar closet popped open.

In a corner the ants had converged on two shiny drops, which Cartuso quickly photographed. Then he scraped them up, ants and all, and put them in a plastic bag. He sniffed.

"Honey," he said with raised eyebrows.

CHAPTER 46

T
wo police cruisers and the Crime Scene van were parked in front of the Popescu building when April arrived with Alfie in his unmarked Toyota. April surveyed the party of vehicles, including Mike's red Ca-maro, which needed a bath, and gathered up her stuff. The driver killed the motor. Alfie hitched around in the passenger seat to look at her. "Thanks for the update," he said.

"Well, thanks for coming to get me," she replied. "I have to pick up Mike and get going."

"Too bad you'll miss the picnic—you okay to travel?" He gave her a second appraising look before getting out.

"Oh sure, I'm fine." April took a stab at pumping herself up for action.

"I mean for the trip to Garden City. You up for that?" Alfie regarded her so apprehensively she knew she must still look pretty bad.

"I wouldn't miss it for anything in the world. I want to nail that bastard." April said this with considerable force, but Alfie didn't appear altogether convinced. He leaned over to open the car door for her, then took her arm as she got out. She was impressed. "Just one quick look, and I'm out of here. I've called for local support. They'll be there waiting for me," she said.

They moved across the sidewalk like the team they used to be. Alfie greeted the uniform guarding the door, a tall, big-nosed blondie who'd propped open the front door with a shim. Alfie waved his hand for April to enter the building first. "Turn right," he directed her.

What she saw in the office was one middle-aged Popescu sitting on the sofa with his head in his hands. The other one, slightly grayer and fatter, was at a rolltop desk, seemingly unconcerned with the proceedings. He was playing a computer game on his laptop. The two uniforms, who'd been lolling by the door watching over them, came to attention.

"How's it going?" Alfie asked.

"No problem, we got them printed," Lapinsky said.

"Good, good." Alfie turned his attention to the suspects.

The one on the sofa stood up and started in on Bernardino in an aggrieved voice. "I don't know why you insisted on finger-printing, Sergeant. After all these years I thought we were pals. I'm really upset with what's going on here."

Alfie shook his finger at him. "You guys were holding out on me when I came in here yesterday. I don't like that."

"Wait a minute, you got it wrong."

"Don't give me that, Marc. What am I supposed to think, huh? I pay you and Ivan here a friendly visit, and the next thing I know, a girl dies in your place. This is more than careless." He took a disgusted look at the food, the beer cans on the table, and the full garbage can beside it. "And by the way, it's Lieutenant."

"Yeah, yeah. I knew that. When are you going to get these people out of here? This is bad for our image," said Marc.

"I can think of worse things," Alfie spat back. "Are we going to have problems with you two, or are you going to tell me what happened here last night?"

"I have no idea what happened. Ivan was the one who closed up yesterday." Marc let tearful eyes wander over to his cousin at the desk. "I didn't want to say it. I
hate
to say it. But truth is truth. Ivan knows more about this than I do."

"Hey, wait a minute, asshole. I told you that's not going to fly. I had nothing to do with this." Ivan shut down the computer indignantly. "I told him to send the girl to a hospital last week. See what happens when you try to do a good deed?" he added bitterly.

"What good deed was that?" April asked.

Ivan spun around to where she was standing by the door. "What's she doing here?"

"She's the one on Heather's case." Marc gave her a hurt look, too. "What are you doing here?" he asked.

Before April could answer, a scraping sound on the wall outside the door distracted them. Startled, Marc turned to it. "What the hell is that?"

"Mice. The place is full of them," Ivan said, unperturbed.

April popped her head out the door. Cartuso and Bernheim were heading down the stairs, working the tools of their trade.

"There's another one here." Cartuso was busy examining the wall and handrail with a magnifying glass while Bernheim carefully dug out of the plaster and aged paint the browning spots Cartuso indicated.

"Hey, April. Your boyfriend's waiting for you upstairs," Bernheim told her.

She left the lieutenant in the office to do his job and closed the door behind her. "Hey Saul, you got something?"

"You bet. Real geniuses, these guys. They left us the works. Looks like they kept her in a closet upstairs on the third floor. We found signs of habitation up there—cup, saucer, honey drips. Greasy food spots. Dirty towels. Blood and other stains on a folded mattress up there. We also got what we think is blood caked in cracks in the floor. The perp mopped up, but the mop only got the surface. The windowsills showed us that the victim didn't go out any window up there, so we checked out the stairway. Blood droplets on the treads." He swept his hand in a downward motion.

"You can see how they came down the stairs. There was a smear with a hair stuck in it on the wall. Must have bumped her head. Then two drops on the railing there, on the railing above it. And we have some more down here. My guess is that there wasn't that much blood, so he just carried her down the stairs, took her out the back door, and dumped her. You saw the door in there." He pointed at the office.

April nodded.

"We'll probably get something on the floor. There were a few drops outside on the pavement—not hard to pick up. He must have wanted it to look like a suicide. That's why he didn't wrap her in something. You'd think he'd have wrapped her up in something so she wouldn't drip all over the place." Bernheim shook his head at the sloppy work.

"Men don't think housekeeping. And these don't strike me as detail men. You think maybe they did it together?" April mused.

Saul shrugged. "Same thing, one or two. Neither of them wrapped her up." Saul seemed upset about this.

"Maybe it was a rage thing and they panicked when they realized they'd killed her," April speculated.

"Possibly."

"Is it okay if I go up?" she asked.

"Yeah, but keep to the middle and don't touch anything."

April met Mike in the room with the sewing machines. He was taking copious notes. "Feeling better?" he asked without looking at her.

"Okay. I'm sorry I acted like that," she murmured. "It upsets me when you get all protective on me when I'm in the middle of something."

He shook his head, still mad. She considered touching him, decided against it. "Forgive me? We've got to get moving here."

He turned a page in his notebook and wrote some more.

"Oh come on," she wheedled. "You're always bugging me to make the call. So this time I made a call. You can't be mad at me for that. I happened to be right. And time is passing here. I need you."

"You don't have to make the call when you're deathly ill," he said.

"I wasn't deathly ill," she insisted.

"Let's hope not. I wouldn't want to have to replace you." He turned another page.

Oh, God, she was in a hurry. This wasn't the time for a debate.

"When you love somebody, you're in it together." He was pushing every button.

"Okay, I'm sorry, but we've got a time limit here. This guy Anton is on his way out to Garden City, pretending to be a police captain."

"So I heard."

"He beat up his wife. For all we know he killed this poor girl. Who knows how far he'll go to get the baby back?
Caw,
we have to get going. What do you think, should I call for a bird?"

In the old days they were not supposed to call for the expensive equipment, like Aviation, unless there was a real emergency. These days, pulling out all the stops and getting a chopper was not that big a deal. April checked her watch anxiously. She didn't know where Anton had started. He had a car in a garage near Fifty-ninth Street; he might be leaving from there. But if he intended to take the baby home with him, he might well use a car service. April wanted to get to Garden City before he did. She considered how long it would take to get a bird. The helicopters were on standby at Floyd Bennett Field. They'd have to bring one over to Battery Park or South Street Seaport. It would take half an hour, minimum.

"It's all a matter of form,
querida.
Brushing me off is bad form." Mike stood his ground, still on love. He could be very stubborn.

April was thinking about a landing site. Where would they be able to put the bird down? Somewhere along the Southern State Parkway? That meant they'd need coordination with Nassau County agencies for the vehicles on the other end.

The minutes were mounting up. April did not want to resort to groveling to get her boyfriend on the road.

"Fine. Don't bully, then. Do you want to drive, or should I get Aviation into this?" She
really
didn't want to grovel.

"Aviation will take too much time on both ends. We'd do better on the road." He made the snap decision and eye contact at the same time. He was kicking in.

"Whatever. You finished here?" April figured she'd won and smiled. He gave it up on the basis of the smile.

"Yeah." He stuffed the notebook in his pocket and took her arm as they hustled down the stairs. She must really look bad, but miraculously, she was feeling a lot better.

"Hey, watch that." An irritated Cartuso, now on the bottom step, complained at the stampede for the door.

"Did you see everything?" Bernheim asked April.

She shook her head. "I'll have to save it for later."

"No matter. It's not going anywhere."

They pushed past him, jostling each other for first out the door. Suddenly, after the delay, they were racing. April rushed out into the street and jumped into the passenger side of the unlocked Camaro, almost slamming the door on her foot. Mike dove into the driver's side and reached for the gum ball under the seat. He plopped it on the roof, turned the ignition key, and hit the hammer. His siren wailed all the way across the Brooklyn Bridge and kept wailing as they headed out on the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway.

CHAPTER 47

R
ing Road did not run in a circle. It traveled parallel to Roosevelt Field, cutting a wide swath of comfortable, tree-and shrub-lined boulevard across a ten-block length of suburban city. Two lanes of traffic could travel each way, yet there was still room along the sidewalk for parking. Since every house had an ample driveway, few cars were parked on the street at any time of the day; even at peak traffic hours, a sense of quiet and order prevailed. By anybody's standards, it was an area not without its charm, even elegance.

After their long vigil on Allen Street and a frantic phone call in the early afternoon, Frankie and Joey arrived at the Hua house at 4:03. By a quarter past four they had settled in the living room and were heatedly reporting what they knew about the murder of Nanci's cousin.

"We saw those guys go in real early. Unbelievable, they were opening up as usual. These guys are something. They both have green Mercedes." Milton's friend Frankie had been marveling over the cars for hours now.

"We got there at seven-thirty. The two fat dudes showed up, like almost instantly," Joey confirmed.

"But then when the girls showed up for work, they didn't let any of them come in. They stood at the door and sent them all away. One guy went out for food. Then a couple hours later, a pizza was delivered and another joker turned up in a taxi. This one was wearing a suit, but he looked just like them. He left in a hurry just before the cops got there. Then a whole bunch of cops were in and out of there, are probably still there. But your little Chink lady never showed—"

"Hey, watch that," Milton said sharply.

"What?" Frankie entreated Nanci with a what-did-I-do expression.

"We're Chinks," she reminded him. "My cousin was a Chink."