the receiver.
Milicia’s voice came out of it like a snake out of a charmer’s basket. “Bouck, what’s happened to Camille?” Her voice was harsh and wild. “I’m so worried about her.”
Camille didn’t say anything.
“Talk to me. I know you’re there.”
Still Camille didn’t say anything.
“You son of a bitch. You’re responsible for this. If Camille is sent to prison, I don’t know what I’ll do. Poor Camille, you did this to her.” Milicia was sobbing.
Milicia was crying for her. Camille didn’t want Milicia to cry.
“Bouck, just tell me where she is. I want to see her.” Milicia’s voice was pitiful.
“I’m here,” Camille said in her little-girl voice.
“What?” The crying stopped abruptly.
“I’m right here,” Camille said.
“I thought—I came by, looking for you last night. There were police all over the place. They said you weren’t there.”
“Well, now I’m here,” Camille said, watching the big policewoman by the door.
“Didn’t they arrest you?”
“I didn’t shoot. I think Bouck did.”
“What? Are you crazy? They were hung, not shot. Don’t play dumb. You know they were hung.” Milicia sounded annoyed.
“They were shot, Milicia. There’s blood all over the place.”
Milicia thought about that for a second.
“Camille, let me talk to Bouck,” she said finally.
“He’s in the hospital.” Camille started to cry.
“Which one?”
“They didn’t tell me.”
“Shit, are you alone there?”
“No. They’re watching me.” Puppy stirred at her feet, stretched, then squatted on the rug.
“Who’s watching you?” Milicia demanded.
“Police,” Camille whispered.
“Look, I’ll be right over.”
Camille shook her head. No, Milicia, don’t come over. Don’t. But Milicia had hung up. She was already gone. The policewoman started talking into the radio she carried on her belt. Camille couldn’t hear what she said. She glanced at the puddle Puppy had left on the floor, then picked Puppy up and hugged her.
64
Okay, what do we have here?”
The A.D.A. surveyed the room full of people, half of them with containers of coffee as well as their notebooks in front of them. They were all talking at once.
“Come on, let’s see if we have a case here.” Penelope Dunham was a no-nonsense kind of woman somewhere in her middle forties who looked as if she ate only on rare occasions, saving up her appetite the rest of the time for her opponents in court. Tall and excruciatingly thin, she had a sharp nose with half glasses perched on the bridge, short curly brown hair, intense brown eyes, and a perpetual furrow between strong, untweezed eyebrows. She wore a gray suit with a pearl-gray blouse buttoned all the way up to the neck, low-heeled gray pumps, no jewelry or makeup. Two heavy black bags sat at her feet.
“For those of you who don’t know me, I’m Penny Dunham, the assistant district attorney on this case. Before we’re through, you’re going to know me better than you want to.” After having been up half the night and giving herself no cosmetic help, she looked every minute of her age.
She finished shuffling her papers and turned her unflinching gaze on Sergeant Joyce. Joyce had had even less sleep and the additional job of getting two unwilling kids off to their second day of school. Still, she’d taken the time to put some rouge on her cheeks in approximately the right places, some lipstick on her mouth, and the drops she used in her eyes “to take the red out.”
April had seen her struggling to pull herself together only moments before. April’s own eyes, hidden in their Mongolian folds, looked as fresh and bright as always. She was lucky that way, and knew if she could keep enough fat on her body, and not wither away like her mother, she’d age better than anybody. Joyce, Woo, and Dunham were the only women in the room.
Penelope nodded at Ducci, who had made his second rare emergence from the police labs, and Dr. Baruch from the M.E.’s office. Penelope, with her Daughter of the American Revolution background, was an anomaly in a D.A.’s office, where most of the prosecutors were on their way somewhere else, were ethnically diverse with distinct New York neighborhood accents and a wide range of coloring.
April had never worked with her before, but Mike called her “lock-’em-up Penny” because he once heard her dismiss the testimony of a hostile witness by demanding, “Don’t you think our police officers have better things to do than go around arresting innocent people?”
It was nine o’clock in the morning, the earliest they could get together. Dunham had requested that the detectives on the case go downtown to the D.A.’s office because it would be easier on her team—her second in the case, Mario Santorelli, and her investigator from the D.A.’s office, retired Lieutenant Bill Scott of NYPD, now just Bill Scott. Because of the delicacy of the situation and the number of people involved, however, it hadn’t turned out that way.
Sergeant Roberts was off the case, being investigated himself for having shot the suspect. Bouck had taken a .38 slug in his right lung, which had made such a mess, he only just survived the surgery. He was as yet unable to speak, and his condition was listed as guarded. Lieutenant Braun was in the hospital, on a different floor, not feeling too good with a couple of mashed bones in his right foot.
But still there were a lot of people. In addition to the three from the D.A.’s office, there were six people from the Two-O, Ducci, and Dr. Baruch. There weren’t enough chairs. Sanchez and two other detectives leaned against the wall.
Ducci scowled as if already he wasn’t happy with the way things were going. “I got the stuff from the Stark case only yesterday. Haven’t
“—yesterday evening. What do you think I am, a magician?” Baruch’s words rose to the surface, then he looked around and was silent.
“Supposed to be. Want to share the autopsy report with us or keep us in suspense?” Scott threw his two cents in.
“What do you want—the whole thing, or just the pertinent parts?” Baruch opened the report.
“What do you think?”
“Fine, the pertinent parts. Rachel Stark died by strangulation, same as Wheeler. Can’t tell you the exact time. Sometime Saturday night, probably. Interesting thing. Recently she’d had surgery, had only one kidney. Had some pretty bad keloid scarring around her—”
“Anything else relevant to the case?” Penny interrupted. “We have a lot to go through.”
“Bruises around the neck and shoulders. Makeup on her face like the other case”—he looked up—”traces, I mean. Three deep scratches on the right arm. Some dirt under her fingernails, nothing else. Looks like she was overpowered and died without too much of a struggle. Just like the Wheeler case.”
“What about the blood on the floor?”
“She had her period. Must have bled right through her Tampax just prior to, or at the time of her death.”
Ducci coughed. “What about the pattern marks on her right ankle?”
Baruch nodded and passed around some photos of Rachel Stark, naked on the autopsy table. Two blowups showed a small black curve with four tiny black dots on one side of it. “Looks like a bite mark. I’ve called a dentist
