Tracking Time

Fifty-four

A few minutes later April called the ME's office to find out if the autopsy on Pee Wee was done yet. As she hung on the phone in her office, she thought about Grace Rodriguez being in the dark about the activities of her own child, about Mike and how much she loved him. She thought about Skinny Dragon's wanting the best for her like any mother, and like many mothers, not getting it quite right. Skinny had spent many hours educating her about all the Pernicious Influences in the bodily landscape that led to trouble with men. Skinny had learned these things from the Chinese 'fake' doctors she consulted frequently in Chinatown.

Chinese medicine was complicated. It dictated that the precipitating factors in illness could be external, as in the case of attacking diseases, or they could be internal, arising from one of the seven emotions. Running from woman to woman was one of those disharmonies that was caused by emotion rather than germs. Mike told her she was the perfect woman. If he believed it, then happiness must be the cause of his problem.

According to Skinny Dragon, excess joy scatters the Shen Qi-heart energy. Skinny warned that men get reckless when feeling too good. The heart gets muddled and uncontrolled and can't be contained. Skinny herself worked on the principle that being mean to her husband and daughter was good for them. Happy, softhearted people were notorious for wasting their money and bodily Qi outside the house. The Dragon was dead set against that. April tapped her fingers impatiently, waiting for the ME.

After a long time, Dr. Gloss came on the line.

'This is Dr. Gloss.'

'Sergeant Woo, Midtown North.'

'Oh, hi there, April, interesting case.'

'Tell me.'

'I haven't got anything down on paper yet, but this guy James was a walking disaster.'

April had known Pee Wee for a year or two and wasn't surprised. 'What killed him?'

'Oh, he had lung cancer and cirrhosis of the liver, and a number of other things that must have made his life pretty uncomfortable, including gangrene in his left foot. Let's put it this way, the man didn't exactly have a bright future. But I'll give it to you in a nutshell. He has a number of bumps on his head, recent cuts and bruises on his face. Looks like he was beaten repeatedly with a branch. Tree bark and leaf particles in his wounds. Big hematomas on his chest. Looks like he'd been stomped and kicked in the side, too. A real brutal thing. He was lying down during the attack. There were no defense wounds on his hands…scalp lacerations on his forehead. The important head injury, however, was on the right side of his head. It put quite a dent in his squash and caused a subdural hematoma. Blood clot on the brain to you. Here's the interesting part. When the skull is cracked like an egg and begins to bleed inside, there's no place for the blood to go except down to the brain stem, and when it does that, the brain gets choked. Death comes fast. But this was a focal injury, in one spot, and it caused slow bleeding in his brain that occurred over a period of many hours. If he had been a healthy person in a car wreck, and been taken to a hospital promptly, we could have saved him.' Gloss paused.

Pee Wee had left the precinct at noon. When April last saw him, he'd just peed in his pants. He'd been drunk but had no head injury. 'What are you suggesting?' she asked.

'Well, depressed in the hair and scalp were fragments of cement and brick. You know what these homeless guys die of most frequently?' the ME asked.

'Exposure.'

'Exposure is not a cause of death, April. No, a lot of these guys die because they drink too much or take an overdose and fall down.'

'Dr. Gloss, the man was badly beaten and someone cut off his finger. You're not going to tell me he died of falling down.'

'Well, the cause of death is a subdural hematoma, but his skull depression was probably caused by a sidewalk.'

'You're telling me he fell down?' April was incredulous.

'Or he was pushed down. Anyway, he got up and maybe walked around for a while.'

'With his brain bleeding? Is that possible?' April asked.

'It's possible.'

'Then later somebody beat him with a tree branch. Was he alive when his finger was cut off?' April said.

'Yes, but probably unconscious. One hopes so.'

'Can you give me a time frame?'

'I'd say he died between eight to twelve hours ago. Some time between midnight and three.'

April thought about it. The sidewalk did it some time after noon. What did Pee Wee do after he left the precinct? When did he enter the park? He met someone there and was attacked, and sometime between midnight and three, he died. Ducci, the dust and fiber man, had his clothes and the bagged items they'd found in the area. The park bench had been dusted for fingerprints. If they were lucky something would come up.

The DA wasn't going to like it, but her boss would. There wouldn't be too much paperwork, and no one was going to blame the death on what might or might not have happened in the station house. No one beat him with a sidewalk there. No fodder for Internal Affairs in this.

Gloss was still talking. 'Another interesting thing. There were some small black flecks on the dead man's clothes. At first we thought it was car paint, but there were several little chips and one bigger one, and they were brittle but nowhere near as hard as the spray paint used on cars. Our guess is nail polish. Ducci will know.'

'Black nail polish? So there was a woman involved,' April said.

'That's right. My guess is that maybe he attacked her.'

'With a dent in his squash?'

'Head trauma victims can get pretty aggressive sometimes. As I said, they don't collapse right away.'

'So you think he got into an argument with a woman. She fought him off, chipped her nail polish, and hacked off his finger while he lay dying. I've heard of revenge, but this seems a little extreme. The amputation was pretty messy. What did she use, anyway? The nail clipper?'

'A knife. Obviously not a very big one, maybe a boning knife.'

'How about a razor?' April asked. Dylan used razor blades for her tummy cuts. But she wasn't wearing nail polish yesterday when April saw her.

'Uh-uh. Not sturdy enough. Maybe a pocketknife. Or a small Swiss Army knife. Would have been a struggle though, if he were awake.'

'Maybe that's how the nail polish got chipped.'

'Did I say he was lying down?'

'Yes, you mentioned it. Okay, I guess I'm getting a picture. It was a savage attack and he was already pretty out of it,' April said at last.

'Do you have anyone in mind for the assault?'

'Nothing solid yet. Thanks,' April said.

'We'll have a full report in a few days,' Gloss told her.

Few weeks would probably be more like it, April thought. Poor Pee Wee. She sat brooding at her desk. Now she knew some of the physical evidence they were looking for-the knife that had cut off Pee Wee's finger, black nail polish. Diaries, letters, anything to indicate state of mind. The problem was they had been looking in the wrong places. She peered out the window of her office at the swarm of detectives in the squad room. She knew Brandy Fabman had been one of Pee Wee's attackers. Now she was worried about Maslow, really worried.

She dialed John Zumech to give him the news.

He answered on the first ring.

'Hey, John,' April said.

'April, I was just going to call you. What happened to you this morning?' he demanded.

'I had to follow up a lead. Sorry, I didn't mean to run off. Anyway, we have a preliminary death report on James. Gloss says he fell, and the sidewalk hit his head. But he bled for hours and had plenty of time to get into a fight and have his finger cut off before he died.'

'Sounds complicated.'