April stared at Sergeant Hollis, knowing he'd held out on her. 'Lieutenant, could you put that in written form and fax it to Inspector Bellaqua?'
'Uh-huh, already working on it. You owe me big.' He hung up before she could ask him about Tang. Okay, looked like Wendy was it again.
April got Bellaqua on the line in her office at One PP.
'Hey, April, what's up?' she asked.
'Turns out Wendy Lotte is a sport shooter and she has priors. Shoplifting in college. Shot her boyfriend. No charges were pressed. Nothing for seventeen years. At the time of Tovah's shoobng, she was out of sight for twenty minutes.'
'Yeah, I know. What's her story?'
'She says she was outside having a cigarette. Then she went inside arid was in the ladies' room when she heard the screams.'
'Motive?'
'I don't know, jealousy? She's an unmarried woman. Apparently she shot her own fiance. I don't have the full story on that. It occurred in Massachusetts. I have the feeling she gets squirmy watching brides walk down the aisle.'
'Yeah, well, a lot of us get squirmy watching brides walk down the aisle, doesn't mean we shoot them.' Bellaqua snorted. 'Have you spoken to the DA about this?'
'Not yet. You're my first call. What about you, Inspector? Anything on the bias angle?' April asked, switching gears for a moment.
'Nothing. The Schoenfelds are highly respected, have no known enemies. Everyone loves them. Same with the synagogue. The Ribikoffs have an ongoing investigation on some of their relatives, but they weren't at the wedding, and there seems to be no connection to this. Same with the real estate issue. Both families are in real estate, but in different areas. That's about it.'
'Has the Riverdale canvass come up with anything?'
'One lady reported a flasher walking on Palisades Avenue. Could have been Saturday, could have been Sunday. She's not sure. According to her, he waved it at her as she drove by. She says she swerved and almost went off the road, down the bluff, and into the river. Mike is chasing down the missing African who works for Louis. I heard from him an hour ago.'
'Me, too. Anything else from Riverdale?'
'A number of people reported a parade of strange cars in the area that day. But there's always a lot of activity around the synagogue. Saturdays, people walk. But Sunday is wedding time. A lot of people from out of the area drive in. We do have the plates of every car in the lot. But the killer could have parked on the street, even down on Palisades Avenue.'
April flashed to Kim and his wife. They took off in a car; Louis had a truck. Wendy had a car, too. Lots of possibilities.
'Do you have anything on the weapon?' she asked.
'We're still looking for it.'
'What about a computer check on the shell casings?'
'They're working on it. Look, I'll get with the DA about Wendy.'
'Inspector, does anything strike you about this?'
'A lot of things. What's on your mind?'
'Psychologically, I mean. What's the message of the crime?'
'Strikes me as impersonal,' Bellaqua said promptly.
'Yeah, I didn't think so at first, but now it has the feel of a public execution. I don't know. Maybe I'm dreaming here.'
'Go on. You got a theory?'
'If it was a rage thing, wouldn't the killer have gotten up-close and personal? Done the thing in private so the victim could look in his face and know her killer? And they've been planning this wedding for, what—only two months? Isn't that kind of rushing things?' April mused. Matthew and Ching had been planning their wedding for eight months.
'So?'
'There were a hundred ways to do Tovah with a lot less risk. Where she lives is a cul de sac in a quiet neighborhood. She was a solitary girl, liked to sit on the back porch out of sight of the rest of her family and listen to her Walkman. Anybody who knew her knew that and could have picked her off anytime in her own backyard. We wouldn't have had a clue. What does that tell us about our killer?'
'Experienced sniper or maybe a country club shooter. Who knows? Whoever it was may not have known the girl, but knew all about the wedding. Wasn't afraid of crowds. Not a professional.'
'Yeah, that's what I'm thinking. Our shooter didn't know the girl. That's why I'm curious about the weapon. Might be another homicide with the gun in the computer that we don't know about yet. Could give us a link.'
'Yeah, get on them about the gun,' Bellaqua agreed.
Twenty-six
I
t's afternoon. He doesn't know what time it is.
Maybe dark. Maybe not. He's not moving. That's all he knows. He tells himself his story. He was a good boy, one of the good ones. He doesn't like it when people cheat, when they hurt each other. Ask Louis, he know. Ask anybody. Every day he help somebody. Somebody on the street. Tito. A little child. He say the prayers, and he don't do no bad things. This is what he tells himself when he's hiding.
He's hiding from Louis, from Tito, from all the policemen who could shoot him. He knows the policemen shoot Africans here. They told him that the first day. Don't get in no trouble in New York City. The policemen shoot black boys. Don't go for your wallet, passport. Whatever happens, don't start running.
He's hiding in the basement, afraid the police will shoot him. The men he shares the damp basement with know they're not supposed to open the door. Too many people live there, and they can't cook or wash. They all know the woman who lives upstairs and takes rent money from them can get in trouble. If they get caught living there, they can be sent back. None of them want to be sent back, so they never open the door.
He doesn't know what time it is when the woman from upstairs opens the door. He runs to hide behind the tank that makes the water hot for the apartment upstairs, squeezes himself in close to the crumbling wall, and prays no one will find him. Please, God, no one find him.
'Look, you can see for yourself no one's here,' the woman said.
But two men came in and found him right away.
'Jama, come out, I won't hurt you,' one of them says.
He starts to cry. He can't help crying. No one is with him now, no one to help him. No Louis, no Tito, no two brothers in Minnesota. The church people told him they only had room for two boys. So he had to stay here. And now he only does what Louis tells him. Then he comes back here. That's it. That's the life he has. He prays for the spirits of the dead. He drinks beer. Sometimes the stories in his head stop for a while and he falls asleep. Somedmes he wakes up sweating, crying. Other times he's screaming.
In the morning the noise is so loud in the subway. Too many people close together, pushing, looking at him. Laughing if he stumbles on the platform. He's still afraid the doors will close on him. Inside the train, he's scared the doors will open and someone will push him out on the tracks. He knows that happens, too. He's scared when the train stops in the tunnel and no one can get out. When that happens, he's sure they'll all be shot in the dark. Some of the people on the train look like people he used to know. The death soldiers.
Sometimes he's so scared in that shaking train he can hardly breathe. He's sure the death soldiers know him. Even in the store noises bother him. Little Tito coming up from behind when the hair dryer is on and he doesn't know he's there. He's afraid of planes attacking from the sky.
He puts the rose stems with the thorns in his pockets and takes them home. At night when he's in a panic, he pokes himself all over his arms and hands with the rose thorns until he's wearing a blanket of blood. Like the blankets of blood on the dead where he came from. He doesn't know why he pokes himself to bleed. He's not a walking dead. Not a boy with stumps where hands and feet should be. He's a whole boy, one of the lucky ones, one of the good ones.
