Nanci could hear the pride in her voice. 'Congratulations. That's—great.' There was a lot of noise in the background that stopped her from going on. April was at work. Nanci couldn't help being afraid of the police. Now she was nervous because April had a higher rank. She wasn't sure how that altered the situation. Would she be more sympathetic to the situation or less?
'So, you called me, Nanci. What's going on? You have a problem?'
'Yes, I have a big problem. But we haven't seen each other for a while. Things have kind of changed. I don't know where to start.' Nanci dropped the phone cord and started twisting her wedding band around on her finger.
'Nothing's changed between us. I've known you since you were seven.'
'And you were a real goody-goody twelve-year-old.'
'So give.'
'Did I ever tell you about my cousin Lin?' Nanci knew she probably hadn't.
'What about her? Is she the one in trouble?'
Nanci was ashamed of herself, ashamed of this story. She was sitting in a comfortable house and her cousin was sick somewhere and a lot of people who should be taking care of her were lying about where she was and what had happened to her.
'Yes, and she's all the family I have left. Except for Milton, of course. She came in from China last summer.'
'Illegal?'
'You going to make trouble about it?'
'Immigration is not my department, you know that. Go ahead, what's the problem?'
'You know how difficult sixteen-year-olds can be. Lin got here, thought she was too old to go to school, didn't want to live with us. Went to work in a factory. I couldn't get a word out of her. I thought she might have a boyfriend in the gangs and that was the reason for her being so secretive.'
'What kind of secretive? Was she into something, flashing money around?'
Nanci sighed. 'No. That was the thing. She was a mess, living in a dump. I didn't hear from her for a while.'
'Could you hurry it up a little, Nanci? I'm working on something.'
Nanci's voice got very small. 'I know you're busy. But I didn't have anybody else to call.'
'Hey, I'm sorry. I'm under a lot of pressure right now. Go ahead.'
'Well, we had a fight. I wanted to apologize. So I went to look for her, but the people where she used to work told me they've never heard of her. The people where she lived say the lady from work took her to the hospital. I went to Beekman Downtown; she wasn't there. Then I called
the hospitals. She's not anywhere. I even checked the morgue. That's pretty crazy, isn't it?'
'I hope so.' The noise intensified on the other end of the line.
'What's going on there? Did something happen?'
'Don't you read the newspapers out there on Long Island? We got a missing-kid case.'
'Are you working on that, April?' Nanci said faintly.
'The mother's Chinese. ABC, but they thought she might not speak English. I got lucky.'
'American-born, huh?'
'Yeah, she got herself beaten up. Nice mixed marriage. He's a lawyer. Looks like it's not working out. You're lucky you have Milton.'
'I know.' Nanci fell silent. 'I'm sorry to bother you, April. Maybe I'm making too much of this.'
'It's not a problem.' April's interest seemed to sharpen suddenly. 'Give me some last-seens and I'll get on it. I have to go downtown tomorrow anyway. I'll make some time for it, okay?'
Nanci was doubting the wisdom of having made the call. She should be able to deal with this herself. Why involve the cops? She might even make it worse. 'Could be she's just run off with a boyfriend,' she said slowly.
'Could be.'
'People lie all the time,' Nanci said.
April agreed with her. 'They do. But you're worried. I'll check it out. Where did she work? Where did she live? What's her name?'
'Tsing, same as mine was. Our fathers were brothers. Maybe I should give it another day, huh? Do you think I'm overreacting?'
April sounded impatient. 'I'm not going to fight with you. You want help, you give me the info. I'll handle it discreetly, okay? Do you have a picture of her?'
'We just moved. Stuff is everywhere. If I look around, I might be able to find one. Can I let you know about all this tomorrow?'
'You can let me know any day. You have my number.'
'Really, thanks. I appreciate it.' Nanci hung up. She didn't even know where to look for a photo of Lin, and she knew April was mad at her because she was afraid to follow through. That made her feel worse. Even so, she decided to wait another day before pursuing it further.
CHAPTER 24
T
hursday morning dawned bright and warm. The air was fresh in New York, and April drove into the city, breathing in the promise of a summer like no other. That morning, for the second time in her life, she'd had coffee in bed with a naked man. It happened to be some bitter Mexican brew, but the man was
and
Thinking about her travels back and forth from Queens last night ending with an unscheduled return to Mike's apartment for all of two hours before returning to work—instead of going home to sleep as she'd promised herself she would do—made April bold. She was determined to get out of the fog on this case and find the baby today, so she was full of purpose when she strode into the squad room of Midtown North at 7:48
A.M
. The press was still all over the Paul Popescu case, and the squad room looked pretty much the same as when she'd left it late the night before. Three strangers were drinking coffee in the path to April's office. None of them said good morning to her. No one was in her office, however, and Special Agent Gabe Samson was nowhere to be seen. He wasn't her problem, though, and she didn't give his whereabouts another thought.
In her office, she filed her purse in a bottom desk drawer and inspected the pile of complaint forms that had accumulated in the last few hours and now awaited assignment to a detective for investigation. Since becoming a supervisor, she had the power to hand over the shitty cases to guys she didn't like. She tried to avoid succumbing to that temptation, though, because they often did a shitty job in retaliation. Nothing major had come up, just the usual stuff: drunk and disorderly, a couple of muggings, a car theft, break-in. Assault. Now everybody on the squad had the shitty stuff.
Before dealing with the complaints, she spent a half-hour going over what they had so far on the Popescu case. The available paperwork included some preliminary lab reports on the crime scene, Hagedorn's background information on Heather and Anton, notes on the canvass of the comings and goings of people in the building and around the neighborhood that day, notes on as much as was known so far about the twenty-four hours preceding the incident. There were lots of pages but many gaps in every category. Most crucial of all: the baby's arrival in the Popescus' lives had not been dated, nor had his origin been discovered. April glanced up and saw her co-workers starting to straggle into the squad room with their containers of coffee.
'Hey, Sergeant.' Baum walked by her door without stopping.
Hagedorn and several of the other detectives didn't bother to make eye contact at all. April wondered what it would take to make friends, wondered if she really wanted to, and knew in the bottom of her heart that she did.
Lieutenant Iriarte called his new gang of five favorite detectives into a meeting in his office at quarter past
