the baby.' The doctor was getting annoyed, as if April were really thick.
'Why do you say that?' Baum asked.
Dr. Kane pointedly consulted her watch, showing the two cops that she'd given them enough of her time. 'She doesn't appear to have a postpartum body.'
'Did you give her a pelvic exam?' April asked.
'For head injuries?'
April glanced at Baum. 'What's a postpartum body?' she asked.
'There are changes that occur in a woman's body after childbirth.' The doctor gave April an amused look.
April flushed. 'What are they?'
Dr. Kane slapped her clipboard against her hip impatiently. 'The breasts become engorged with milk. The skin on the belly is loose. The belly itself is soft, enlarged. Not all of the excess weight would have come off yet—a lot of things.' She glanced at Baum. He was writing it all down. Probably didn't know a thing about women. But apparently, neither did she.
'And Mrs. Popescu?' April asked.
'No engorged breasts, no soft, distended belly. She either didn't have a baby, or she sure got her figure back fast.' Clearly the doc didn't think that was possible. 'Her body looks like yours,' she added.
April was a little over five five, well-proportioned and willowy. She had an oval face with rosebud lips and lovely almond eyes, a slender neck but not the hollows and protruding bones of a truly skinny person. She also had clearly discernible breasts, though not really ample ones by American standards. Her hair came down to the bottom of her earlobes. When she was away from her boss, Lieutenant Iriarte, she hooked her hair back around her ears so her lucky jade earrings would show. Mike Sanchez kept telling her she was more beautiful than Miss America, and the thought of an Asian Miss America always made her smile.
At the moment, though, she wasn't amused. She didn't see how Dr. Kane could tell anything by
body, since it was covered by loose, nubby-weave slacks, a thin sweater, a silk scarf, and a cropped whis- key-colored jacket. Except maybe, if she was looking really hard, she could tell that April was carrying a 9mm at her waist.
'Maybe she'll come to soon and you can get something out of her,' Dr. Kane said as she walked away. April would not have liked to be one of her patients.
'I'll handle this,' she told Baum. Then she opened the treatment room door.
Heather Popescu was lying on a rolling hospital bed, covered up with a sheet so that only the shoulders of her blue-flowered hospital gown showed. The sides of the bed had been put up so she wouldn't fall off, but she wasn't going anywhere. One eye was covered with a cold pack. Her lip was split and already puffed. Her extremely long, inky hair spilled off the pillow. April was startled, then recovered fast. The unconscious woman, Heather Rose Popescu, was Chinese.
No wonder Iriarte had ordered her here immediately. Iriarte hated her. He'd never voluntarily give her a big case. He'd sent her here because the victim was Chinese, and it would look better to have a high-profile Chinese detective on it. April flashed to the husband standing out in the waiting room. A belligerent Caucasian. Oh man, was she in trouble. She didn't like this one bit. Skinny Dragon would think this was a warning just for her. She was going to shake her finger at April over this. 'See what happens,' she'd scream. 'Mixed marriage, woman beaten to a pulp. That's what you can expect when you marry
shit-faced foreigner.
Oh, man. Suddenly April wished Mike, her mother's nightmare, were here with her now. He could take this case in hand. Woody Baum was too inexperienced to be of any help, particularly with the husband. If Popescu beat his wife, he wasn't going to like having April as his interviewer. April needed the expert partner she'd had in Mike, then lost on purpose because she hadn't wanted to mix business with pleasure. So much for integrity and scruples. She was on her own. Thank you, Lieutenant Iriarte.
April studied Heather Rose's battered face. Where were her parents, her protectors? 'Heather? Can you hear me?' she said softly. 'I'm April Woo. I'm here to help you.'
No answer from the unconscious woman.
'Heather, we need to find the baby. Where's the baby?'
Heather did not stir. April felt the cold brick of fear in her belly. 'Come on back, girl. We need your help here.'
It was no use. Heather wasn't coming back.
April tried in Chinese. 'Wo
No response.
Finally, April turned to leave the room. 'Whoever did this to you, I'll get him,' she promised.
Back in the waiting room, Heather's husband was standing in front of his chair. Baum was talking to him and writing down what he said.
'I want to see my wife.'
April gave him a look. 'She's unconscious.'
'That's what you say. I want to evaluate her myself.'
April studied him, this man who kept tabs on his wife and felt qualified to evaluate her himself. She made a note to herself to keep tabs on
Popescu's cheeks were gray, like a dead man's. He glanced at the two cops who'd stuck by his side since he'd come in. Duffy and Prince lounged against a wall as if they were used to hanging around for long periods of time with nothing to do. A baby on someone's lap on the other side of the crowded waiting room started to wail. She was trained to think like a cop: when faced with a mystery, think dirty. She was thinking dirty about Anton Popescu.
Then another brick hit her. If the baby wasn't Heather's, whose was it? Who was this man Heather had married, and why was he lying about why he went home at the early hour of three-thirty?
He caved abruptly. 'Fine. If I can't see my wife, I want to go home now.'
'We'll take you,' April said. There wasn't anything they could do for Heather here.
CHAPTER 5
O
n the return trip to the apartment, Baum and April sat in the front seat of the unmarked Buick. Popescu sat in the back. At Central Park South, two uniforms were out directing traffic. Roadblocks were up on Seventh Avenue, and only one lane was open to cars. The noise of honking horns and cursing New Yorkers was phenomenal. It was now 6:45, the height of the dinner and pre-theater hour. Thousands of people in taxis and limos were stuck on their way to Lincoln Center to the west and Carnegie Hall to the south.
'Oh Jesus!' Popescu cried when he saw the jam of police cars, emergency vehicles, and press vans parked in front of his building, clogging Seventh Avenue all the way down to Fifty-seventh Street. The uniform at the neck of the bottle opened traffic for the Buick and waved it through immediately. Woody sardined the car in the driveway and turned off the motor. As April got out, a strong perfume from the garden confused her senses.
Looking dazed, Popescu emerged from the car.
Somebody among the crowd of media hacks and gawkers shouted, 'Who's that?' and the press with cameras was galvanized. People ran at the car with minicams and still cameras, yelling questions over the blasting horns. Several uniforms came forward to contain them. Baum took Popescu's arm and hurried him toward the building. The cameras rolled and clicked for the late news deadlines.
'Oh shit. Oh Jesus.' The blood had returned to Popescu's cheeks and nose in a rush. Baum propelled him into the lobby. He stuck up his hand to hide his face, and that was how he appeared later on the eleven o'clock news, his arm raised as if warding off blows.
Looking terribly important, Lieutenant McMan was talking on his radio to uniforms and detectives and
