is something about her that’s—”
“What?”
“I don’t know, a little offputting. Something that doesn’t quite fit.”
“Oh?” That was interesting. “Like the way she dresses, the way she acts?”
“No, not the way she dresses. She is one of those phallic women though. Go for it.”
“Same old Charles. So what doesn’t fit?”
“Hmmm, research, old pal? Or something bothering you about her?”
“Call it research, Charles. What about the way she thinks?”
“No, it’s not her behavior, and not the way she thinks. I can’t put my finger on it. It’s just a feeling.”
“Thanks.”
“Have I helped you?” Charles sounded doubtful.
“Oh, yeah, you’ve helped me.”
“Well, good luck, and let’s get together soon.” Charles rang off.
The inky coffee was cold. Jason poured it down the sink and tightened the knot on his tie. It was a nice deep blue with red French horns on it, the first tie Jason’s fingers had touched when he reached in the closet for his tie rack that morning.
He rinsed out the coffee cup and left it in the sink. His stomach growled. He ignored it. He was thinking that Charles always knew what was off about somebody. His not being sure about Milicia might mean simply that Charles couldn’t relate to the powerful aspect of her. But the concept of falseness might come from the woman herself. It was something to think about. The carriage clock on the hall table chimed the hour. It was fifteen minutes late. Jason sighed. He didn’t have time to go out and get milk before his first patient showed up at seven- thirty.
17
The alarm didn’t have to scream at April for her to know it was time to wake up. She always heard the click before the alarm sounded. Sometimes she was up before the click. Last night she had fallen asleep studying her notes, and now their contents were the first thing she thought of as she pulled herself out of bed.
No one was allowed to take anything home from a case. All evidence had to be carefully labeled and locked up. Only thing you could take home was your notes. April took a lot of notes. She studied them at night, working on questions, angles, speculations, hypotheses. Every case to her was like being in training for the police Olympics. Every morning she started thinking before she could see. That morning she was thinking, who killed Maggie Wheeler? Was it a random thing—some crazy off the street—or somebody involved with the girl herself?
April drank some water, pulled on her tights, and started exercising. Last night she’d had Maggie’s address book copied, took the photocopy home with her, and made a few calls. She was rewarded for that bit of ingenuity by not being able to get through to anybody. She tried always to do things right. There was a rule of procedure and a reason for everything the department did. But doing everything right took a lot of extra time and wasn’t always so easy to do.
Not everything happened the way it was supposed to. For one thing, no one was supposed to go into a crime scene but the cops who caught the run and the two crime-scene people. The catching cops were supposed to rope off the area and keep everyone out, but it didn’t work that way. Call came in on a homicide like this, and twenty, maybe thirty people from the bureau wandered through, wanting to see the corpses and check out the murder scene. Problem was thirty cops and detectives wandering through a murder scene couldn’t help but contaminate the evidence quite a bit.
No way could anyone keep the bureau out.
In the Wheeler case ten squad cars rolled up before Crime Scene got there. The new Captain of the precinct, an uptight Irishman of the old school who wore blue shirts with white collars, and half a dozen ranking officers from the Two-O were among those “having a look.”
The hordes of Europe tramping around didn’t make too much difference in a gore-spattered scene where the murder weapon was visible and a picture of what happened was pretty clear by the marks on the body, the way it was lying, the pooling and spatters of blood around it. But here, where there was nothing, it was a different story.
“How many?” was the first question Igor had asked when he and his partner, Mako, named for the shark, entered The Last Mango.
“Many,” Mike said.
“Shit. When are you people going to learn?”
Old gripe of the science people. They said the whole story of every murder was right there on the spot, even if the dumb cops couldn’t see it. It was there in traces of dust and fiber and hair and grease and stains. All they had to do was collect, identify, and match. But ninety-five percent of trace evidence was contaminated or left behind. Five percent was collected, and maybe one percent used to nail the suspect. April was taking a course on this and knew how to look at things through a microscope.
“Hey, what’s that?” Skinny Dragon Mother opened the door to April’s apartment with her own key, not bothering to warn her with a polite knock. Right away she started in on her in Chinese.
“What’s that?” she demanded again in case April hadn’t heard her the first time.
“Hi, Mom. What are you doing up so early?” April was on her hands and knees on the floor, doing leg lifts with a book open in front of her.
“Have to be early bird catch this worm,” she said in Chinese.
This was the time of day that showed Sai Woo was not so new-style Chinese as she claimed. She was wearing black pants and black canvas shoes with absolutely no embroidery on them, a plain blue peasant jacket. Summer version, not padded. Very skinny woman, eyes narrowed with deep suspicion at the book on the floor. April knew her mother dressed like a peasant in her own home to fool the gods into thinking she wasn’t so well off and fortunate. Clearly there was something on her mind.
“What worm is that?” April asked, lowering herself to her elbows for the next set, which was a lot harder.
“Worm daughter.”
Great, she had a big new case, her Sergeant’s test in less than two weeks, and exams in the summer courses she was taking at John Jay. She couldn’t qualify for Sergeant without two years of college, but she already had three and a half and was hoping to graduate this year. And now her mother was calling her a worm.
“Why am I a worm, Mom?” April tried to concentrate on the leg.
“What’s
April sighed. So it was the Sanchez thing again. Ever since Mike had driven her home in the red Camaro that first time, her mother had been thinking the worst. “It’s Spanish, Mom.”
“Ayeiiii, I knew it,” Sai cried, still in Chinese. “I knew it.”
“You don’t know it, Mom. The department wants everybody to speak Spanish. It’s a new thing. You want to get ahead, want to get a degree, you have to speak another language.”
Sai Woo switched suddenly to English to show she was bilingual, too. “You speak other ranguage. You speak Chinese.”
“Doesn’t count. Have to speak Spanish.”
“This New York. Not Miami, not Rrr.A. Not so Spanish here, every kind people in New York.”
“That’s true,” April agreed, finally rolling over and sitting up. A lot of people thought like her mother, didn’t like this new Spanish thing, thought the Spanish should learn English.
“Not Spanish lestlant on every brock.
April smiled. “That may be, Mom. But the department still wants everyone to speak Spanish.”
“Humph.” Sai turned her back and touched the little table beside the couch. It slanted a bit on the floor.
“What’s bugging you, Mom?” April closed the book guiltily because her mother was right about one thing. This, of all mornings, she didn’t have to be studying Spanish during her exercises. She could be doing management styles, or preparing the oral answer to such questions as:
