had gone missing in her precinct on her watch. And further, since they didn't know who his biological parents were, she and the rookie detective, Woody Baum, who was all she had in the way of support, had better find Paul very soon.
CHAPTER 6
The hall was empty when April and Woody came out of the Popescus' apartment. 'What do you see here, Detective?' April asked him.
Baum looked worried. 'What do I see?'
'Yeah, what's going on here?' A hint of impatience crept into her voice. If Baum wanted to be useful and go somewhere, he couldn't answer a question with a question. He had to answer a question, period.
'Is this a test?' Baum was a preppy-looking guy; he wore a blue blazer and kept a second gun strapped to his ankle. His brown hair was so short it was hard to tell whether it curled. He rubbed at it with a free hand, as if trying to make it grow.
'Everything in this life is a test,' she told him.
He walked along, chafing the stubble till they reached the elevator, where he punched the Down button. 'The beating happened in the kitchen,' he said finally. 'This looks like a domestic case to me. Maybe they'll find some of the husband's blood in or around one of the puddles on the floor. Then we could nail him for beating his wife.' He looked hopeful.
'What about the baby?'
Baum frowned at the second part of the equation.
'If he battered the wife, what do you think he did with the baby?' she elaborated.
'He didn't seem to know where the baby was.'
'He could be lying, though. What else?'
'Isn't it your turn yet?' Baum hit the elevator button again.
'Are you some kind of smart aleck, Detective?' April wasn't amused.
'Nah, just a Jew,' he cracked.
'Well, keep it in check, will you?'
'Yes, ma'am.' Baum saluted.
'You have a problem with a supervisor who's going to run you over hot coals every day to teach you something?'
she didn't add.
'No, ma'am. It's just what my mother does.'
'Good. So what about the baby?'
'The doc said it's not hers.'
'So what do we do about that, Woody?'
'We question Popescu.'
'Right. Now you just saw a crime scene where all the violence occurred in the kitchen. Was there blood on the back door?'
'No.'
'Blood on the back doorknob?'
'No.'
'Blood on the outside of the back door, or on the walls in the back hall, on the fire-stairs door, or on the fire stairs?'
Baum shook his head.
'There was blood in the front of the apartment. So what does that tell us?'
'The perp didn't go out the back way.'
'What if he washed up first?' April demanded.
'He didn't wash up in the kitchen sink. There's a duck in a bowl of water in the sink, and there's no blood in or around the bowl of water. How long does it take to defrost a duck?' Baum wondered.
'Where I come from we buy the duck already
roasted. Would a frozen duck begin to soften in about two hours? It's fully defrosted now. We'll have to ask CSU how hard it was when they got here at what, four-fifteen? Might help with the time frame.'
The elevator door slid silently open. They got in with a woman in a pink halter and purple pedal pushers who had a toddler in a stroller. The toddler was busy gnawing on a bagel.
'They talked to me already. The detective said it was okay to go out now,' she said, looking at the badges on April and Baum's jackets. 'Terrible thing. Terrible.' She put her hand on her blond baby's head.
'Cute baby,' April murmured.
On the main floor, the woman pushed ahead of them and exited the elevator first, pushing the stroller out into the lobby, then on out into the crush of cameras.
April wondered where the woman was taking her baby at this hour. Then it occurred to her that anybody could wheel a baby out, and no one would ask if it was hers. Everyone assumed that babies belonged to the people they were with. She turned to Baum. 'You notice anything missing from that apartment?'
Baum watched the woman wheel the baby outside, then stop to talk to the reporters. 'Wouldn't they have had a stroller?'-' he said.
'Yes. What else?'
'What, more twenty questions?'
'More like twenty thousand questions. What's the answer?' April clicked her tongue at his silence. 'All right: when my cousins have babies, they have showers.'
'So where's the stuff, right?'
'Exactly.' She watched McMan signing off on the first of the teams. There was no sniper on the roof, no baby in the garbage, the incinerator, the elevator shaft. EMS was cutting out.
'So there was remarkably little baby stuff in there. Almost nothing in fact,' Baum said.
'Right. Either Heather wasn't expecting a baby, or she didn't intend to keep it long.'
They watched the young woman in the halter finish talking to the press and turn toward the park.
By 8:35 P.M., there was press activity at the precinct, too. The reporters were spreading like bacteria, and April didn't want to catch anything. When she arrived at Fifty-fourth Street and got out of the car, a woman in a pale purple suit, carrying a mike torch with the letters ABC on it, ran across the sidewalk to talk to her. The woman thrust the microphone in April's face before she reached the cover of the precinct.
'Hey, look, it's Sergeant Woo. How are you, Sergeant? I'm Grace Faye. I was on the Liberty case. Great job you did there. I hear you were in the hospital for two months.'
April grimaced at the exaggeration. 'I was in the hospital overnight.' Well, for a few nights. 'Excuse me.
'Hey, wait, what's your hurry?'
A second woman reporter April didn't know tried to push in front of Faye. 'What can you tell us about the missing baby? What about the baby's mother? We had a tip she died on the way to the hospital. Is that true?' Faye pushed the other reporter back, and they had a bit of a shoving match.
April cocked her head for Baum to walk in front of her. 'You're supposed to walk behind me except in instances where you have to clear the way for me,' she muttered in his ear when he edged ahead.
Baum opened his mouth. 'Clear the way,' he said, using his elbows. 'A spokesman will talk to you as soon as we have something.'
'And I'll remember you at Christmas,' the first reporter promised, cynically.
April didn't look at them as she went inside. What were they thinking? They knew she couldn't talk to them. She gave the desk lieutenant a little smile, then climbed the stairs to the detective squad room. Inside was the mob scene she'd expected. The phones were hogged by strangers, and the limited space was crammed with easels and flip charts. The noise and tension levels were high, and the room was filled with smoke. Lieutenant Iriarte was in his office with his three ugly henchmen. He gestured for her, but not Baum, to come in. April saw Baum flush with anger as he turned away to find someone else sitting at his desk.
She opened the door of the office. Creaker, Hage-dorn, and Skye filed out. Iriarte pointed at a chair.
