turned around and spoke into it softly, requesting backup from the 5th.
'This is very puzzling. How could she have been murdered . . . ? Maybe the medical examiner is wrong.' Marc seemed at a loss. He looked helplessly at the garbage.
'Well, Annie is nuts. She'll say anything for a buck,' Ivan threw in.
'How can you say that?' Marc cried. He dragged the garbage can over to the coffee table. In the crisis he'd decided to clean up.
'Leave everything the way it is, please.' Mike put the phone away and jumped on the bribery angle. 'How much did you give her to say the girl jumped?'
'Hey, now. Watch your mouth.' Ivan's voice cracked like a whip.
'Look, I'm not going to beat around the bush. We know everything that happened here. We know the girl had a baby—'
'Hey, that's no crime,' Ivan said quickly.
'The baby was given away or sold or stolen; his mother was murdered. And the woman who had the baby was also assaulted.
are crimes. So is bribery.'
Three uniforms and Bernheim entered the room. Saul looked the room over, giving particular attention to the back door. Mike nodded at him. 'Mike, you want to come upstairs with me for a minute?' Bern-heim said.
'Sure.' Mike turned to the Popescus. 'Gentlemen, would you take a seat for a few moments?'
'What are you looking for?' Marc asked, almost tearful now.
'Can I sit at my desk?' Ivan said sarcastically.
Mike glanced at the desk, then jerked his chin at the three uniforms, noting their name tags. He didn't want the Popescus leaving or touching anything. 'Officer Lapinsky here will take your fingerprints.'
Ivan's face reddened. 'Hey, it's our building. Our prints are everywhere.'
'It's routine. We'll do them for everyone who works here. Would you sit on the sofa, please?' Mike stepped out without waiting for an answer. 'What do you have?'
Bernheim walked him through the place. On the second floor he demonstrated how easily the windows opened and closed and showed him the wooden props used to hold the windows open when the weather was warm. He also pointed out that the outside screens hadn't been disturbed, nor had the large fans placed in front of the windows. Even on a bright day, the room looked ghostly and dark, filled with stilled sewing machines and overhead wires. Under one window a sticky glue trap had recently claimed two mice and a cockroach almost as big as the mice.
Then they climbed a more primitive staircase to what looked like a messy storeroom. Up there Cartuso was busy taking photos of the layout.
'Pay dirt,' he murmured.
Two of the windows in the back wall had been painted shut a long time ago, and the skylight was padlocked.
'Take a look over there,' Bernheim ordered. 'See how the paint has been chipped all around the frame of the third window, and it was jimmied open?' There were smudges in the dust that highlighted the activity. Mike moved in to get a closer look.
'I picked up some prints here.' Bernheim pointed. 'Two thumbs and the bottom half of one palm. Someone opened the window, leaned out, then closed it again. Now look out there.'
Mike nodded. 'Okay, I see it.' The dirt on the outside of the sill had not been disturbed.
'If he had picked the body up, he would have rested it on the sill before pushing it out. The dirt would be disturbed on both sides. It's unlikely that he would have picked the body up, held it over his head, or even in his arms and then thrown it without touching the outside of the window, or dusting off the whole of the front side. You with me?'
Mike nodded.
'You can see he thought about it but decided against it. Check out the view.'
Mike took in the view. Across the way was an apartment building. Two floors above them, a man wearing an undershirt sat in the window, holding up a newspaper, but watching them, not reading it. The ME's report said the skull had been fractured, but didn't mention broken bones. Now they had confirmation that the body hadn't gone out the window at all.
Saul let the window come down with a bang. 'Now look at this.'
Mike looked around at the abandoned furniture and sewing machine parts, and a folded mattress tied with rope. The floor had been swept recently, and parts of it had been washed. Cartuso flashed one more photo and put the camera away.
'Any sign of the mop that washed the floor? Any idea where she died?' Mike could feel the dead air crackle with the criminologists' excitement. The body was gone; to anybody else, this space might look like an unused attic. To them, it was a treasure trove.
'You're getting ahead of me. Look at this.' Bernheim popped on a plastic glove and pointed out a line of ants emerging from the corner of the window and marching along the floor and up the tilt of the wall, where it slanted in to meet the roof. The ants disappeared into a straight crack in the wall. Bernheim prodded the crack with the business end of a chisel. As it shifted, the rounded side of two hinges came into view.
'Open sesame.' He pushed the plaster board with the flat of his hand and the door to a walk-in cedar closet popped open.
In a corner the ants had converged on two shiny drops, which Cartuso quickly photographed. Then he scraped them up, ants and all, and put them in a plastic bag. He sniffed.
'Honey,' he said with raised eyebrows.
CHAPTER 46
T
wo police cruisers and the Crime Scene van were parked in front of the Popescu building when April arrived with Alfie in his unmarked Toyota. April surveyed the party of vehicles, including Mike's red Ca-maro, which needed a bath, and gathered up her stuff. The driver killed the motor. Alfie hitched around in the passenger seat to look at her. 'Thanks for the update,' he said.
'Well, thanks for coming to get me,' she replied. 'I have to pick up Mike and get going.'
'Too bad you'll miss the picnic—you okay to travel?' He gave her a second appraising look before getting out.
'Oh sure, I'm fine.' April took a stab at pumping herself up for action.
'I mean for the trip to Garden City. You up for that?' Alfie regarded her so apprehensively she knew she must still look pretty bad.
'I wouldn't miss it for anything in the world. I want to nail that bastard.' April said this with considerable force, but Alfie didn't appear altogether convinced. He leaned over to open the car door for her, then took her arm as she got out. She was impressed. 'Just one quick look, and I'm out of here. I've called for local support. They'll be there waiting for me,' she said.
They moved across the sidewalk like the team they used to be. Alfie greeted the uniform guarding the door, a tall, big-nosed blondie who'd propped open the front door with a shim. Alfie waved his hand for April to enter the building first. 'Turn right,' he directed her.
What she saw in the office was one middle-aged Popescu sitting on the sofa with his head in his hands. The other one, slightly grayer and fatter, was at a rolltop desk, seemingly unconcerned with the proceedings. He was playing a computer game on his laptop. The two uniforms, who'd been lolling by the door watching over them, came to attention.
'How's it going?' Alfie asked.
'No problem, we got them printed,' Lapinsky said.
'Good, good.' Alfie turned his attention to the suspects.
The one on the sofa stood up and started in on Bernardino in an aggrieved voice. 'I don't know why you insisted on finger-printing, Sergeant. After all these years I thought we were pals. I'm really upset with what's
