“No, sir.” Mike’s mustache closed over his lips.
“I don’t ever want to hear that you’re holding out on the Lieutenant. We’re all the same team.”
“Sergeant Joyce?” Captain Higgins tilted his head the other way.
“Yes, sir.” Sergeant Joyce stood one step behind Sanchez and Braun. It was clear she had combed her hair and tried to repair her face for this meeting. Apparently she knew that without a little makeup, she tended to resemble a codfish fillet.
April watched her supervisor struggle to maintain a strict air of neutrality, her hope for support from her C.O. revealed only in the shiny pink lip gloss on her mouth. The rest of her fire-hydrant-shaped body, packed into a forest-green jacket and skirt, was rigid with hate.
“Are you holding out on Lieutenant Braun in any way?”
Sergeant Joyce took a step forward. She was the supervisor of the squad. April could read her thought that she should have been standing ahead of Sanchez, not behind him.
“No, sir.”
Higgins glanced quickly at April. Her lips twitched in a small smile at the triumph of her being in this exalted place for the very first time. The Captain nodded, but didn’t say anything. Apparently he didn’t consider her high enough in the hierarchy to hold out on Braun. She lowered her eyes in the classic gesture of submission, unable to resist the reflex action. Ten thousand thoughts juggled for position in her brain.
April couldn’t help thinking that ambition, like the sucker-covered tentacles of an octopus, encircled them all, clouding every issue. And she wasn’t immune in the least. Her own ambition had her slated to spend the first ten hours of the day studying for her Sergeant’s exam. And the next eight hours on the job. The discovery of Rachel Stark’s decomposing body had cost her precious study time. Unless somebody else was found dead at the exact moment her exam was scheduled, she’d have to take it anyway, prepared or not. And if she failed, she wouldn’t get another chance at it for a long, long time.
The other four had their own careers to worry about. And there they were, jockeying for position. Three of them had spent the day very close to a former human being, someone who had a mother and a father, two brothers—way out on Long Island. Somebody who had had a life and hadn’t wanted to lose it. The stench of the former Rachel Stark would stay with them for quite a while no matter how hard they tried to wash it off and ignore it. And yet they were not exactly willing to unite to find her killer.
“Okay, so what have you got?” Higgins asked.
Braun scowled at Sergeant Joyce because he couldn’t attack Captain Higgins. “You tell me.”
“So far we have found no connection between the suspects in the Wheeler case and Rachel Stark—”
“And this new lead?”
Sergeant Joyce hesitated. “Some kind of mental case. Female, lives across the street from European Imports; name’s in the guest book of The Last Mango. It’s just a lead.”
“And the informant’s the sister. A redhead, I heard,” Braun said angrily. “I didn’t get a chance to question her.”
“Uh-huh,” Higgins said. “Where does that get us?”
He directed his question at April. After a moment she realized the Captain expected her to answer. She wasn’t sure exactly what he meant.
“Two long red hairs were found on the body of Maggie Wheeler, sir.” She articulated carefully, didn’t want him to think she had an accent or anything.
“Yes, yes,” he said, impatient now. “I know that. So work it out. You got twenty-four hours to put it together. Two is too many.”
“I can’t work under these conditions,” Braun protested. “I don’t want my people undercut like this. We get a lead,
“I don’t have a problem with that. Do you have a problem? Sergeants?” Higgins searched the faces of Joyce and Sanchez.
Yeah, they had a big problem. They thought Braun was an asshole. He had handled that preppy McLellan with all the skill of a pile driver, had the analytical skills of an un-programmed computer. It was their case. They didn’t want any assistance from Homicide to solve it.
Mike’s mustache twitched. “No, sir,” he said.
Sergeant Joyce chewed off her lip gloss. It was clear to April that Joyce couldn’t tell whether her team had won the skirmish or not.
45
The folding metal gate across the front of the chandelier shop was locked with a heavy padlock, but somewhere deep inside the store a light was on. Lieutenant Braun reached his hand through a diamond formed by the steel grate and pressed the doorbell. Sergeant Roberts, one of Braun’s people, waited beside him. Like Braun, Roberts was wiry, with gray skin and lackluster, thinning brown hair. His beaky, humorless features suggested a poor digestion.
After a short wait they tried again, then walked the few steps to the entrance of the residence located above the shop. Braun rang the bell there. Then he leaned backward and looked up. The lights were off on the second and third floors of the building. Roberts stepped back and copied Braun’s action. Now they both knew the lights were off. But that didn’t necessarily mean no one was home. Twilight was only just beginning. The two men took a step closer to each other, put their heads together, and conferred.
In the maroon unmarked car on the corner, Mike’s stomach gurgled. He coughed to cover the sound. “This really sucks.”
April hadn’t heard him use the term before. She couldn’t stop the confirming laugh from jumping out of her mouth. “Yeah.”
In fact, the situation with Braun and his people sucked so much that in the last few days Captain Higgins and Sergeant Joyce had started looking pretty good to her. Not until that afternoon had it occurred to her to think well of Sergeant Joyce. Then Dr. Frank called. It wasn’t often that a civilian from an old case came back with a lead on an unrelated new case. But then, a lot of things happened out there on the streets all the time that weren’t supposed to happen. Having to sit in a car and watch two homicide people from downtown follow a lead in their case was just one.
April didn’t like to remember that Sergeant Joyce had not opposed her investigating her first big case. And there was one other little thing April didn’t like thinking about. After Sergeant Joyce had her picture in the paper and took all the credit for the Chapman case that April had solved with Dr. Frank’s help, she had suggested April start thinking about taking the Sergeant’s test.
Sergeant Joyce had stood over April’s desk, scowling, and spat out, “You’re ready,” as if all along April had been nothing more than some turkey roasting in the oven.
At the time April didn’t know what to think of it. Was the Sergeant pulling rank, mocking her? Was she hoping April would take the test and fail? Failing would cause April to lose face. Succeeding would get her reassigned.
But now April considered another alternative. What if her superior acted like a shit all the time just to challenge the people around her to do things they didn’t think they could do?
Braun and Roberts were taking a long time deciding no one was home.
April sighed. She didn’t want to reassess her opinion of Sergeant Joyce. It put a new spin on the Sergeant’s exam. What if Sergeant Joyce actually wanted April to succeed and April let her down?
Braun and Roberts hit the bell for about the tenth time. By now they were developing the defeated look that forecast some ominous new action.
“What will they think of now?” April muttered. It was after seven-thirty. Both she and Sanchez were on duty until midnight. Both of them had better things to do than follow Lieutenant Braun on their lead, not to be of help in any way, but so they couldn’t come up with anything else in his absence.
Mike shook his head. “What a day.” He paused for a beat, then asked, “He ever call you back?”
“Who?”
“Your lunch date.” Sanchez kept his eyes on the homicide detectives.
“What?”
