Hanging Time

“What for?” he wanted to know.

There was a long silence. April let him think it over to see if he could come up with any ideas. Why else would they need a blood type? Finally he got an idea.

“Oh, God,” he cried. “Was she raped?”

“He didn’t know,” April told Sanchez when she hung up. “He didn’t know anything.”

She gathered up her stuff, then wasted several hours escorting Block to his blood test. She took a female officer assigned to the case, a woman more muscular than the suspect, name of Goldie, with her to drive. April sat in the back seat with Block, hoping he might tell her something she didn’t already know. But he sat there in his jeans and green lizard boots and didn’t have a thing to say. He had shut down at the prospect of the needle.

It was still August hot. It hadn’t cooled down at all. The windows were rolled down, but the air that blew in gave no relief. Block was trembling all over.

“You all right?” she asked.

“I don’t like needles,” he muttered.

“No one does.”

“Yeah, but I really don’t. I don’t get this at all.”

Goldie stopped the car with a jerk that April wouldn’t forget. This wasn’t the time to tell him Maggie had been pregnant.

“We get out here.”

“I don’t get it,” Block muttered again. “Why the blood test? You can look at me. No cuts or bruises.”

Oh, so now he didn’t want to be the suspect. April shook her head. They already knew he didn’t have any cuts or bruises. Maggie had plenty of bruises, but her nails had been short. She either didn’t have an opportunity to use them, or they were too short to do any good. Still, Block was the wrong size to overpower her. Unless she had been totally out of it, Maggie could have done him some damage.

“You’re not going to tell me, are you?” It was a fact he accepted.

Block didn’t know why the police were doing what they were doing, but even though he was really scared, it didn’t seem to occur to him that he could object. April concluded from his passivity that he must have some sort of problem with authority. Lot of suspects objected to everything, their jailhouse lawyers forcing a new court order at every step of the way to an indictment. Block complied with everything, but he was so nervous, April thought he might wet his pants when the needle hit his vein. Some killer.

In the waiting room of the lab he wrinkled his nose at the smell of the place, the bite of ammonia cleaner with the undercurrent of iron from the metal chairs scattered around and, he insisted, from the faint smell of blood. He was afraid of getting AIDS.

His eyes darted around. “Are we in the morgue?” He was obviously under a lot of stress.

“Nowhere near.”

During his long questioning he had hinted darkly that he had other information about the case. He said it again now.

“I’ve got the stuff.”

“What stuff?” Maggie’s missing clothes? The keys to the store? They were waiting on a worn plastic-covered sofa in the reception area of the lab, surrounded by a lot of people who apparently didn’t believe in soap and water. Block had said he had the stuff before and had come up with nothing. He turned toward the wall, did his usual, and clammed up.

Forty-five minutes went by before he was taken into a treatment room. At one point April saw that tears had formed big puddles in his eyes and threatened to spill out down his cheeks. The man was actually crying. He turned away and dabbed at his cheeks with a checkered handkerchief he dragged out of a pocket.

Later she took him back to his apartment, then returned to the precinct. She was certain little would come of the exercise.

31

It was Friday, the end of a frustrating week. Other than Block, they had no leads on Maggie Wheeler’s killer. April spent the morning dialing numbers in Maggie’s phone book of people who hadn’t answered before. Sanchez and Joyce had disappeared soon after roll call. A tall, thin-lipped, gum-chewing detective in a powder-blue jacket with a department tag proclaiming him Lieutenant Braun, Homicide, was using the phone at Sanchez’s desk. As the hours passed, the surface of Mike’s desk became ever more littered with green gum wrappers.

In between calls the Lieutenant sat there, staring at the ceiling, cracking his gum and ignoring everyone around him. April wondered where the hell Sanchez and Joyce were. She smoldered quietly. She could see where this was leading, and hated feeling left out.

Around midday she could smell Sanchez enter the squad room. His aftershave, or whatever it was, reached out and proclaimed his entrance.

“Ah, lover boy is here,” Aspirante said, loud enough for six detectives and Gina the secretary to hear over four phone conversations and the protests of an extremely well-dressed suspect in the pen who had tried to walk out of Charivari with a lot of stock he hadn’t paid for.

“This is so embarrassing. I didn’t do a thing,” he kept saying. “I don’t know why I’m here. Hey, let me out of here.”

“What’s with him?” Sanchez tossed a file on April’s desk, cocking his head at Aspirante.

“I think the suspect came on to Sol in the car on the way over. Thing with this guy is he keeps ripping off the expensive stores, and then he tells his friends. And they rip the stores off.” She shrugged. “Sol caught the run.”

The waste of time had pissed Aspirante off. The suspect would be out in a few hours. April didn’t add that Aspirante, like herself, was maybe concerned that Sanchez might be moving up the department ladder on Captain Higgins’s discomfort with Sergeant Joyce.

“Who’s this?” Mike raised a crooked eyebrow at the man addicted to Wrigley’s spearmint who sat at his place.

“Papa bear?” April shrugged. “I thought you knew.”

“Not me. I’ve been in the field all morning. Look at this.”

April picked up the file he’d put on her desk without looking at him. She didn’t want him to read in her face the fact that Dr. George Dong had called her the night before. Now she had a date with a guy who wasn’t in the department and just happened to be Chinese. She wasn’t exactly sure how she felt about it, but she was certain she didn’t want Sanchez interfering.

After she’d gotten home, she had put aside her anxiety about Maggie Wheeler and started preparing her notes to study for her Sergeant’s exam. Tonight she was working on prioritized items, phone calls, and model responses.

Crime Pattern Bulletin must be read at roll call. Information is crime- and location-specific. Put special detail in area to work problem. Depending on procedures in your department, either implement special detail or recommend it to your Lieutenant or patrol officer. Prepare routing slips.

She was about to write up a few in-basket exercises, when the phone rang.

“Wei,” she said, thinking the caller was Lonely Skinny Dragon Mother on the first floor, too lazy to walk up the stairs.

“April Woo?” A male voice.

“Yes, this is Detective Woo.”

Silence.

“Hello?”

“Uh, this is George Dong.”

She almost said, “What’s your problem, Mr. Dong,” as if she were at her desk in the squad room, where no one called her who didn’t have a problem. Then she realized she was the problem. Her mother had done the feng sui, had fixed the tilting table and exorcised the bad spirit from her apartment. And still, no good daughter resisted the chance at happiness offered by smiling God.