going on here.'
Alfie shook his finger at him. 'You guys were holding out on me when I came in here yesterday. I don't like that.'
'Wait a minute, you got it wrong.'
'Don't give me that, Marc. What am I supposed to think, huh? I pay you and Ivan here a friendly visit, and the next thing I know, a girl dies in your place. This is more than careless.' He took a disgusted look at the food, the beer cans on the table, and the full garbage can beside it. 'And by the way, it's Lieutenant.'
'Yeah, yeah. I knew that. When are you going to get these people out of here? This is bad for our image,' said Marc.
'I can think of worse things,' Alfie spat back. 'Are we going to have problems with you two, or are you going to tell me what happened here last night?'
'I have no idea what happened. Ivan was the one who closed up yesterday.' Marc let tearful eyes wander over to his cousin at the desk. 'I didn't want to say it. I
to say it. But truth is truth. Ivan knows more about this than I do.'
'Hey, wait a minute, asshole. I told you that's not going to fly. I had nothing to do with this.' Ivan shut down the computer indignantly. 'I told him to send the girl to a hospital last week. See what happens when you try to do a good deed?' he added bitterly.
'What good deed was that?' April asked.
Ivan spun around to where she was standing by the door. 'What's she doing here?'
'She's the one on Heather's case.' Marc gave her a hurt look, too. 'What are you doing here?' he asked.
Before April could answer, a scraping sound on the wall outside the door distracted them. Startled, Marc turned to it. 'What the hell is that?'
'Mice. The place is full of them,' Ivan said, unperturbed.
April popped her head out the door. Cartuso and Bernheim were heading down the stairs, working the tools of their trade.
'There's another one here.' Cartuso was busy examining the wall and handrail with a magnifying glass while Bernheim carefully dug out of the plaster and aged paint the browning spots Cartuso indicated.
'Hey, April. Your boyfriend's waiting for you upstairs,' Bernheim told her.
She left the lieutenant in the office to do his job and closed the door behind her. 'Hey Saul, you got something?'
'You bet. Real geniuses, these guys. They left us the works. Looks like they kept her in a closet upstairs on the third floor. We found signs of habitation up there—cup, saucer, honey drips. Greasy food spots. Dirty towels. Blood and other stains on a folded mattress up there. We also got what we think is blood caked in cracks in the floor. The perp mopped up, but the mop only got the surface. The windowsills showed us that the victim didn't go out any window up there, so we checked out the stairway. Blood droplets on the treads.' He swept his hand in a downward motion.
'You can see how they came down the stairs. There was a smear with a hair stuck in it on the wall. Must have bumped her head. Then two drops on the railing there, on the railing above it. And we have some more down here. My guess is that there wasn't that much blood, so he just carried her down the stairs, took her out the back door, and dumped her. You saw the door in there.' He pointed at the office.
April nodded.
'We'll probably get something on the floor. There were a few drops outside on the pavement—not hard to pick up. He must have wanted it to look like a suicide. That's why he didn't wrap her in something. You'd think he'd have wrapped her up in something so she wouldn't drip all over the place.' Bernheim shook his head at the sloppy work.
'Men don't think housekeeping. And these don't strike me as detail men. You think maybe they did it together?' April mused.
Saul shrugged. 'Same thing, one or two. Neither of them wrapped her up.' Saul seemed upset about this.
'Maybe it was a rage thing and they panicked when they realized they'd killed her,' April speculated.
'Possibly.'
'Is it okay if I go up?' she asked.
'Yeah, but keep to the middle and don't touch anything.'
April met Mike in the room with the sewing machines. He was taking copious notes. 'Feeling better?' he asked without looking at her.
'Okay. I'm sorry I acted like that,' she murmured. 'It upsets me when you get all protective on me when I'm in the middle of something.'
He shook his head, still mad. She considered touching him, decided against it. 'Forgive me? We've got to get moving here.'
He turned a page in his notebook and wrote some more.
'Oh come on,' she wheedled. 'You're always bugging me to make the call. So this time I made a call. You can't be mad at me for that. I happened to be right. And time is passing here. I need you.'
'You don't have to make the call when you're deathly ill,' he said.
'I wasn't deathly ill,' she insisted.
'Let's hope not. I wouldn't want to have to replace you.' He turned another page.
Oh, God, she was in a hurry. This wasn't the time for a debate.
'When you love somebody, you're in it together.' He was pushing every button.
'Okay, I'm sorry, but we've got a time limit here. This guy Anton is on his way out to Garden City, pretending to be a police captain.'
'So I heard.'
'He beat up his wife. For all we know he killed this poor girl. Who knows how far he'll go to get the baby back?
we have to get going. What do you think, should I call for a bird?'
In the old days they were not supposed to call for the expensive equipment, like Aviation, unless there was a real emergency. These days, pulling out all the stops and getting a chopper was not that big a deal. April checked her watch anxiously. She didn't know where Anton had started. He had a car in a garage near Fifty-ninth Street; he might be leaving from there. But if he intended to take the baby home with him, he might well use a car service. April wanted to get to Garden City before he did. She considered how long it would take to get a bird. The helicopters were on standby at Floyd Bennett Field. They'd have to bring one over to Battery Park or South Street Seaport. It would take half an hour, minimum.
'It's all a matter of form,
Brushing me off is bad form.' Mike stood his ground, still on love. He could be very stubborn.
April was thinking about a landing site. Where would they be able to put the bird down? Somewhere along the Southern State Parkway? That meant they'd need coordination with Nassau County agencies for the vehicles on the other end.
The minutes were mounting up. April did not want to resort to groveling to get her boyfriend on the road.
'Fine. Don't bully, then. Do you want to drive, or should I get Aviation into this?' She
didn't want to grovel.
'Aviation will take too much time on both ends. We'd do better on the road.' He made the snap decision and eye contact at the same time. He was kicking in.
'Whatever. You finished here?' April figured she'd won and smiled. He gave it up on the basis of the smile.
'Yeah.' He stuffed the notebook in his pocket and took her arm as they hustled down the stairs. She must really look bad, but miraculously, she was feeling a lot better.
