their guns and turning them over to her, did indeed worsen Sergeant Joyce’s mood. She headed for the uniform, drew him aside, and talked to him for a few heated minutes.
“Yo,
“Nothing’s up.” April was cool. “What’s going on? You said in ten minutes two hours ago.”
Another angry woman. He shrugged. “Unavoidable delay.”
“Oh, yeah? What kind?”
He cocked his head toward the uniform, who was suddenly galloping off down the hall toward the elevator bank. Sergeant Joyce turned to them, honking into her handkerchief. “So what am I doing here?” she demanded.
April closed her mouth and led the way to the late Harold Dickey’s office. She repeated the facts as she knew them while the two Sergeants looked around.
“Dr. Treadwell told me she locked the office after Dickey died, and no one’s been in here since. No way to know, though.”
April pointed out the almost empty glass with its greasy coating. They all crouched around the glass studying it.
“Smells like scotch,” April said. “So where’s the bottle?”
Joyce turned away to sneeze on a stack of spilled files.
“
Joyce finished mopping her face. “Bag it.”
“You want the place dusted, sealed?” Reluctantly, Mike turned his attention to her.
Joyce shook her head, rolling her watery eyes. “How many people were in this room when the guy collapsed? What, ten, fifteen?”
“Probably not that many. Maybe seven,” April said.
“I got a call on this last night.” Joyce wiped her eyes. “Seems this Dr. Dickey treated a lot of important people in his day. One of the trustees claims Dickey saved his kid’s life when she had a breakdown a few years ago. Three or four seem highly motivated to know what happened to him.”
Mike’s scrutiny focused on the laptop. He could feel April looking at him.
“So it’s not going to go away,” she said.
“That’s right. They want it clean. No mystery,” Joyce said.
So the Sergeant had known it before they even met in the squad room. Known she was coming here and there was cause to investigate further. Mike chewed on the end of his mustache. Nice of her to tell him.
“So you want the place gone over.”
“Yeah. And don’t release the files.”
Mike pointed at the laptop. “You been into that yet?” he asked April.
She shook her head. “Didn’t want to touch it.”
Suddenly Joyce fixed her attention on April. “You been here all morning?”
“Since nine-thirty.”
“You haven’t interviewed the wife?” the Sergeant demanded accusingly.
“No, ma’am.”
“Why didn’t you go interview her?”
“Ah, I was concerned about leaving the scene. I’ve had two requests for the return of the files,” April replied evenly. “The hospital lawyer was down here. He told me we couldn’t have access to them. Said they’ve been patient with us so far. But the files are confidential and have to be returned today. As far as I can tell, nobody’d given them a thought until this morning, when we turned up. There seems to be a lot of anxiety around here.”
“What’s his name?”
“The lawyer? Hartley.”
“Fine, I’ll talk to him.”
“He may want a higher authority,” April muttered.
“Oh, yeah? Whose?”
“I don’t know. The Captain, an A.D.A. I get the feeling different parties here have different agendas.”
“Fine. I’ll take care of it.” She sneezed again.
“All right, already. I heard you the first time,” Joyce barked at Mike. “I take it you’ll be wanting to go, too?”
To Westchester to interview Dickey’s wife? Mike lifted his palms. Of course he did.
“Great. Now we got an efficiency problem.” Joyce’s beeper bleated. She sighed. “Where’s the nearest phone?”
Mike pointed to the one on the dead man’s desk.
“Not that one.” Idiot.
“There are some secretarial offices at the end of the hall. I used the phone there earlier,” April said.
Sergeant Joyce went to find a phone. A few minutes later she returned and said, “You wait for the crime boys. I’m out of here.”
She paused for a second, then told them the phone call was to tell her that half an hour ago one of their African-American decoys had been pulled off the street by a soft-spoken, well-dressed Caucasian twice her size who wanted extra help with directions to a certain part of a building. They had a suspect in the rape case.
forty-one
At three-thirty it was still an unseasonably warm afternoon as Mike and April headed up the Henry Hudson Parkway in Mike’s red Camaro toward the town of Hastings to meet with Harold’s widow, Sally Ann Dickey. April swallowed the last of her coffee and squashed the cup. It seemed a bit too coincidental that two unnatural deaths had occurred while, or very soon after, the victims had talked to Clara Treadwell. Okay, Cowles was a suicide, but what about Dickey?
April shook her head. Oh, sure, there were thousands of coincidences in police work. In fact, sometimes it seemed as if coincidence was the detective’s only ally. Consider the car-jacked Chinese jewel merchant hit on the head and locked in his own trunk as thieves sped away to keep his diamonds and dispose of his body. He happened not to be dead, however; he had his cellular phone in his pocket, came to, and called the police, who rescued him within the hour.
According to Sai Woo, this was a perfect example of Confucius alive and well in Chinatown, New York. Clear as day. No coincidence. Even a worm daughter should be able to see it Heaven—which always did and always would rule the universe—made its own connections as the Earth and other planets traveled their course, providing every change necessary for the cycle of life and death.
“Heaven does not speak, but the four seasons proceed in their course and a hundred living things are produced, yet Heaven does not speak.” This tidbit from the
It meant four million things. One was that Heaven was the perfect being that determined what was coming down at all times. Two was that Heaven in its apparent silence actually never shut up. And three, one could hear what Heaven was not saying if one learned how to listen. Nothing, not one single thing, was random. Nothing happened by chance. April was taught she was put on this Earth to be quiet and listen while her mother interpreted Heaven’s intentions for them both, according to Sai’s own hopes and wishes.
Fortunately or otherwise, Heaven, like every member of the hospital staff and every member of the NYPD, had its own agenda. Always. April knew if she could only be still and quiet enough, others would reveal themselves to her. The deceitful Sergeant Sanchez always did.
On the surface April was thinking about what part Dr. Clara Treadwell really played in these two unnaturals. She was thinking of Sex Crimes expert Sergeant Joyce “interviewing” the hapless raper suspect. She was thinking of the possible reassignments of the Sergeant and herself and where the future would take them in the Department. But underneath her totally passive facade, she was fuming over the death of love.
