Judging Time

pretty soon, those bodies are going to be covered with snow in the photos. We better go take a look. Know who they are?'

A tall black man with a down jacket thrown over his shoulders who'd been talking quietly with a uniform just outside the restaurant door started to wail. 'Of course I knew who they were. I knew right away who they were. They'd just left, mon. It's Liberty's wife and his best friend. The owner's wife, I'm telling you. Of course I tried to help them. Why wouldn't I?'

The officer said some things that April couldn't hear, causing the man to protest even louder. April shook her head and went down the steps to calm things down.

'I'm Sergeant Woo.' April introduced herself to the agitated black man being badgered by an officer half his size whose uniform tag identified him as Matthew Hays.

The officer drew himself up and spoke first. 'This is the man who found the bodies. Apparently he moved them around quite a bit.'

The tall black man responded angrily. 'They'd only been gone a few minutes. I thought they might be alive.' His face was wet with tears. He swiped at his cheeks with the back of his hand.

April dug into her shoulder bag for a tissue, handed him the package, then waited while he blew his nose.

'Are you Chinese?' he asked softly after he'd done so, carefully avoiding the eye of Officer Hays.

April nodded, gathered he was asking if she was in charge.

'I've never seen a Chinese cop.'

'Well, I was born here.' She didn't say most Chinese would rather iron shirts than walk a beat in this system.

The man thought over her country of origin and didn't appear to understand how that should enlighten him. He glanced at Hays, then turned to April again, revealing his confusion over whom he was supposed to address— the white man in uniform or the Chinese woman in plain clothes.

It happened all the time. April gave him a smile of encouragement. 'I'm the one in charge. You can talk to me.'

'I'm the manager of the restaurant,' he said grudgingly.

'And your name is?'

'Patrice.'

'Patrice what?' April was shivering but didn't want to go inside yet and leave the bodies.

'Patrice Paul,' the man replied impatiently. 'Please let me go inside. I have to call my boss and tell him— he has to know.'

'Who is that?'

He pointed at the sign. 'Liberty. You know who he is? Don't you?'

April hesitated, unsure of exactly who he was. She didn't want to lose face in front of a possible witness if the victim's husband was someone any educated person should know. Since leaving the 5th Precinct in Chinatown, not a single day went by when April wasn't made painfully aware of all the things she had never even considered until she came uptown. At the moment she had all the credits for a college degree and would graduate in June from the John Jay College of Criminal Justice. But she was beginning to suspect that one degree didn't prove a thing and was not going to be enough in the long run.

Patrice Paul didn't press her. Now that he had someone else to talk to, he glowered at the uniform.

'I'm going inside and use the phone.'

'We'll get to that,' April said, not wanting to tell him that was not his job. 'Can you describe what happened, Mr. Paul?'

'What happened was I tried to help them. I didn't do more than any decent human being would do,' the man insisted. 'Someone attacked my friends. They were my friends. They were my patrons. What was I supposed to do, leave them there to die if they were still alive and I could help them?'

'No one's accusing you, Mr. Paul,' April said gently. 'We're just trying to establish what happened here, that's all. What caused you to come outside?' She glanced at his hands working in his jacket pockets.

'What do you mean? What caused me to come outside? Two people were attacked.'

'Uh-huh. How did you know? Did they call out, was there a struggle?'

'How did I know?' he asked blankly.

'Yeah. What made you come outside?'

April noted that the light-colored jacket hanging on Patrice Paul's shoulders was speckled on the front and on the bottoms of the sleeves with spots that looked like blood. His eyes were puzzled. He was not responding well. He was confused. It was not an uncommon reaction.

'I looked out the window,' he said finally. 'I wanted to make sure they got a taxi.'

'What did you see?

He whimpered. 'I saw them lying there.'

The officer shook his head. 'That's not what you said a minute ago.'

'I'm upset, mon. I'm crazy upset. Can I go inside and call my boss now?'

'Officer, would you go and take down names of the people inside, but don't let anybody out here until I say so. Mr. Paul, where is Mr. Liberty now? We will need to reach him, and the next of kin of the other victim.'

'Oh, God, it's Tor Petersen. He's a very important mon, too. You've heard of him, haven't you? I have his home number somewhere.'

April nodded. 'Thank you, Mr. Paul. Why don't you go inside and warm up. We'll talk in a moment.'

'Can I call my boss?'

'Where is he?'

'I'm not sure, somewhere out of town,' he answered quickly. 'But I can beep him, and he'll call me right back.'

'As soon as we clear a few things up, Mr. Paul.'

April turned away, distracted by the sight of Dr. Washington hunkering down on her high heels in the bloody slush as easily as a Chinese peasant in the fields. The tall woman had gathered up her coat and now the shimmering fur was suspended out of the wet, trapped under her bottom as she flexed her fingers, then casually extracted rubber gloves from her evening bag and snapped them on as if it was something she did at the end of every evening outing. April, too, carried a wad of rubber gloves in her shoulder bag for occasions just like this when she had to root around in something horrid that might contaminate her, or she it. She'd never met anyone else off duty who was so prepared. She was fascinated by the professionalism of the deputy ME as Dr. Washington expertly examined first the female and then the male corpse. Standing beside April, Patrice Paul choked back a sob.

'My, my, this is interesting,' Dr. Washington muttered to herself as she worked. 'Sergeant, come and take a look at this—' A wail of sirens swallowed the rest of her words.

The wail reminded April of something. She frowned. Where was EMS? Shouldn't a team have arrived by now? Snow thickened in the air. April's exposed skin burned as the wind picked up. Under her jacket she was flushed and sweating, terrified for some reason that wasn't completely clear to her. Hcr heart felt ready to burst because she was alone with this. Her supervisor, Lieutenant lriarte, hurrying to beat the snow, was probably halfway home to Westchester by now.

Dr. Washington pulled off the gloves with a loud thwack. 'Sergeant, would you come here for a moment?'

April took control of herself. She hurried toward the deputy ME and stepped into a puddle. Icy water sloshed over the toe of her boot and leaked through the vulnerable place where the rubber sole was joined to the leather. She shuddered as it soaked her sock. Rosa Washington, however, still apparently heedless of her evening clothes and the cruel conditions, pointed at the mouth of the man the restaurant manager had identified as Tor Petersen. 'Blue,' Dr. Washington said.

'Blue?' April looked at the man's grimy face, fixed in its puzzled expression. Where blue?

'See that blue around his mouth?'

The corpse's face looked gray to April, but she figured that was a result of the poor light. 'What does it mean?'

'Looks as if the poor bastard saw his date stabbed in the neck and had a heart attack.'