Stealing Time (44 page)

CHAPTER 50

T
here was something terribly serious about the blue limo, unlike anything else with wheels parked on this Garden City street. The car was long and wide, and even from a block away it was clear the thing had leather seats and a phone and a TV. The fancy car with its emblem and its shiny paint and its driver sitting inside made a clear distinction between the kind of people who rode around in conveyances like that and the kind of people who didn't. The car was a symbol of power that indicated how carefully and importantly those driving in it had to be treated. In the police department, these people held the ultimate rank the officers were taught to respect and fear.

As they drove toward the car, April couldn't help thinking of Anton's wife, Heather Rose, who had come from the same melting pot as she but had so much more promise as a child and such a different fate. By outward appearance, Heather Rose was superior to April in every way. Somehow, she'd been able to study during the years April had had to work. She'd been smart enough to go to a great university, fortunate enough to attract a man of wealth and influence. It occurred to April that she must be used to riding around in limos with her husband. But Heather Rose's marriage to a professional man, and the wealth April's own mother so wanted for her daughter, hadn't exempted Heather Rose and her family from torture and shame.

The phone call to her mother had also made April think of shame. All her life Skinny had shamed April, made her feel like a worm. It was unsettling to think that Mike Sanchez had done more for her self-respect than her own parents, and even more shocking that he was willing to take a detour to check on Skinny even though she hated him. This made April ashamed of her mother.

As the Camaro approached the limo, April started to feel even more anxious. Half a block from the house, Mike slowed the car and turned off the siren. Instantly, all became quiet on the street. April swallowed, breathed in and out a few times, testing for nausea and dizziness. She still felt all right.

"Maybe this'll be easy, and we can go check on your mother soon," Mike said hopefully. She touched his hand on the wheel.

"I have to admit, I didn't want you in this when it started," she said slowly.

He brought her hand to his lips and kissed it. "I love you."

It was the first time he'd said it in English. She felt his mustache and his warm lips. Her anxiety intensified. The air in the car seemed to get colder, not warmer as it should with the heat of their love. She wanted to say she loved him, too, but instead she said, "Do you feel that?"

"What?"

She frowned. "You don't feel it? Cold?"

"No."

"Maybe it's just me." She unholstered her gun, checked out the 9mm, then cradled it in her lap. The quiet lasted only a few seconds. Before they had time to formulate a game plan, the unmistakable sound of a shot came from behind the house. Mike braked hard. April was thrown forward into her seat belt and recovered her balance as Mike reached for his gun and dove out of the car into the line of fire.

"Wait!" The word wrenched from her throat. It wasn't what she was supposed to say.

"Cover me," Mike ordered over his shoulder.

She was supposed to do it without question. In the middle of a power surge, though, April reverted to type and rankled at the command. Their situation had changed. He was no longer her supervisor.
She
was the squad supervisor. He didn't outrank her. So who was in charge here, who was supposed to take the lead, be in the line of fire? All this in a split second.

What she was supposed to do was get out of the car, position herself somewhere behind Mike, and cover him. But she was overwhelmed with a sudden feeling of inadequacy. "Wait," she said again.

But either Mike didn't hear her or he wasn't going to wait. He was out of the car and across the sidewalk before she could say anything else. He hit the edge of the lawn as Anton appeared around the side of the house, running toward his big shiny car. Clutched close to his chest was a bundle wrapped in a blue blanket, and the bundle was screaming. Behind him more shots were fired. A young man with a handgun ran out from behind the house and dove behind a large oak tree.

"Police! Drop the gun!" Mike shouted. April heard it. Anton heard it. Anton saw Mike's gun in front of him and froze. The baby was shrieking. It wasn't clear if the gunman ever heard him. Anton stood still on the lawn as Mike moved forward to protect him. At that moment more shots were fired.

"Mike!" April screamed as the first bullet ripped through Anton, turning the bundle a sickening red as he fell. The second bullet hit Mike. She could see him miss a step as it slammed him. He fell to one knee, then struggled to get up again.

"Get down!" she screamed at him. She had her gun aimed at the tree. She fired, hit nothing. She could see the muzzle of the gun, but not the shooter.

She did not fire again, because other people ran from the side of the house, right out into her line of fire. Nanci was screaming, racing toward the bloody blanket. Milton and another man were trying to stop her, screen her from the sight of Anton, with half his head blown off. The gunman was behind the tree. April couldn't get a shot off with the three of them racing toward her.

"Get back!" April shouted at them. A second passed. Only a second. She wanted Mike down, everybody back. She had only a second. Mike wouldn't stay down. His gun was in his hands. He was up again, aiming at the shooter. His angle was better than hers, but Nanci kept coming. She was screaming, and Milton was screaming at her. And April was screaming at them to get back. Mike had a growing red spot on his shirt.

She was supposed to cover him, but she'd failed. He was supposed to get down, but he didn't. She knew what was going on in his mind. If he had to die, he was going to take the bastard down with him. Nanci and Milton were supposed to get out of the way, but they wouldn't. April had been in this kind of position several times in her life, the latest in enhanced computer-simulated training that was supposed to teach appropriate reactions to situations like this when there was no good line of fire and no easy solution.

Now her instinct was to dive out onto the lawn and make herself the target, to save Mike and the others with the shield of her own body. She knew that was not a good idea. Instead she moved right, intending to make the shooter turn away from the four of them and toward her. She fired at the tree. The shooter shifted his position and fired at her. Mike rushed him. He turned to get off a shot at Mike, and April fired, taking him down.

CHAPTER 51

J
ason abruptly canceled his supervisory session just as Alison Peters, his attractive psychiatric resident, was coming into his office. In the elevator, as they went down to the street together, he explained hurriedly that he had to go to the police station. At first she was impressed; then she soured because he couldn't tell her when they'd be able to reschedule. In turn, he couldn't help being troubled by her selfishness in an emergency. By the time he hit the street, though, he was thinking of nothing else but Heather Rose.

He hailed a taxi and gave the address of the Mid-town North police station. April used to be assigned to the 20th Precinct, only a few blocks away. Now he had to travel nearly twenty-five minutes into the traffic nightmare of midtown. As he sat in a dirty taxi, with a driver who couldn't speak English, didn't know the city, and hadn't had a bath in some time, he tried to digest the tragedy: another victim of the Popescus'; this one the teenage girl whose baby Heather had returned. Jason played over and over what April had told him and still it was hard to imagine the cruelty of a young woman forced to give birth in a closet, having her baby taken from her, and recovering him several weeks later, only to die violently in the end.

The silence among the family members surrounding all the catastrophic events of many years (possibly starting with Anton's cancer but equally possibly going back even further than that) was what Jason focused on. Anton's family was perpetually in denial about the permanent effects of his childhood illness. Heather Rose was horribly afraid to tell anyone that the man she'd married was impotent. In the hospital she'd made clear to Jason that she was afraid she was the crazy one. Her husband had kept her in line by intimidating her, torturing her, and isolating her from anybody who could help her.

The meaning of Heather's responses to her situation up to the time when she returned the baby, and of her responses to him in the hospital, was now clear to Jason. She'd given the baby back as atonement, and the punishment she'd received because of it had come as no surprise. Jason arrived at the police station, paid his fare, and got out.

Inside the precinct, he went to the front desk and asked for Sergeant Woo because he didn't want to deal with Lieutenant Iriarte. He waited for what felt like a long time before Detective Baum appeared, looking very upset.

"The situation's changed," he said, preempting Jason's greeting. "There's been a shooting."

"A shooting?" Jason frowned.

"It's not clear if Sergeant Woo took a hit. We do know that one officer and the perp were shot. They're on the way to the hospital. The third victim is dead."

"What? April was in a shooting? Are you sure? I just talked to her an hour ago." Jason was incredulous.

"Yeah, the local cops arrived on the scene immediately. I don't know. They were alerted earlier. I don't know. It's not clear what happened."

"I just talked to her. . .." Jason was stunned. "What hospital has she been taken to?"

"Unclear. And we don't know it was her. Could have been Sanchez."

"Sanchez!" April's boyfriend, Sanchez? Jason tried to take it all in. "You said someone is dead. Who's dead?"

"Anton Popescu. It looks like the perp shot him when he took off with the baby."

"Jesus." For a moment Jason was speechless. Anton Popescu was dead? How could that have happened? It was staggering. Finally he recovered enough to ask, "Does his wife know this?"

"No. It just came in this minute. Do you want to tell her?"

"Where is she?"

"We have Mrs. Popescu and her parents separated. They've been here a while now."

"What, you left Heather alone? She has a history of unexplained injuries, she could hurt or kill herself in unguarded minutes." Jason spoke mildly, but thoughts of the shooting and all the bungling in the case made him furious. Suicide was an issue here. Now that her husband was dead Heather Rose would really have to be watched every minute.

Baum was taken aback. Apparently he hadn't considered this. "All she did was cut off her hair," he said defensively.

"She cut off her hair?" April hadn't mentioned that.

A commotion commenced at the front door when a well-dressed man wearing handcuffs was brought in by two uniformed officers. Detective Baum touched Jason's arm to move him out of the way as the cops hustled the prisoner to the front desk. The prisoner was complaining, and the two officers were trying to shut him up. They all had such strong New York accents Jason didn't understand a word. He tried to concentrate on Heather Rose's near-simultaneous loss of the baby she'd loved, who wasn't hers, and of her husband, who'd hurt her and had never consummated their marriage. It was a heavy load.

"How long has she been in there alone?" he asked.

"Several hours."

"She's been alone for several hours. Are you

crazy?"

"She's all right. We have an officer at the door." Baum jerked his head for Jason to follow him up the stairs.

Jason paused outside the interview room to take a look through the window in the door. Heather was sitting on a metal folding chair with her shorn head in her hands. On the table sat an unopened paper bag, presumably the lunch she hadn't eaten. She looked frail in jeans and a summer pullover, with her impromptu haircut. With her hair less than an inch long, the ugly scalp wound was clearly visible.

Jason felt a huge wave of relief, and another of sadness for her double loss. And he wondered if Heather was up to the questioning she would no doubt have to endure. April had asked him to question her. Now he had his own good reasons for doing so. He composed his features and quickly went inside, chiding himself for the mundane things he always said in the direst situations. This time it was "Hi. Long time no see."

Heather looked up, startled. "What are you doing here?"

"I told you last night I'd be around for you. You didn't think I'd disappear so fast, did you?"

"Who asked you to come here? Why are they keeping me here? What's happening?" Heather cried. She reached up to her head in a characteristic gesture of hair arranging, then realized her hair was no longer there. The hand became dispirited and fell to her lap. All the time she was anxiously focused on the door, where Detective Baum stood behind Jason, waiting to see if he'd be allowed to stay. Jason shook his head and closed the door.