The Silent Bride

been separated to prevent them from talking to each other and influencing one another's memories. Also to keep them as far as possible from specialists arriving on the scene. There were always complaints about the callous- sounding greetings and gallows humor of police arriving on grisly scenes. April heard there had been complaints about it from Tovah's family.

Click. No wedding guests were milling around outside. They couldn't be gone already, so the officers must have closed the front doors of the cathedral to keep the entire wedding party contained inside. April's first thought pertained to meaning. Tovah had died surrounded by family and friends. This girl hadn't made it inside. Different message, different shooter?

Click. The girl's body lying there in plain view, right between St. Patrick's and Rockefeller Center. Sometimes victims were left in the open like that while family members stood by, helpless and numb. No matter how mutilated or disturbing the dead looked, they could not be moved until the obligatory forensic work was done. Loved ones— children, mothers, wives, husbands—were left just the way they'd been in the last seconds of their lives, after all hope of sustaining them was gone.

Click. A sheet from one of the EMS vehicles had been thrown over the body. The sheet was not big enough to cover the long swath of bloodied, lacy wedding gown train that hid the girl's feet. The train puddled out from under the operating-room-blue drape like an unchecked milk stain.

They moved closer, walking at a normal speed, fighting the instinct to run. Run and stop it. Save the girl. Chase the perp. April stumbled on the high curb on the other side. Mike reached out and touched her arm. Going into situations, partners had many forms of communication. This wasn't a

watch out.

It wasn't a

slow down.

It wasn't even a

Cuidado, careful now.

He touched her arm in a different way, almost as if to make sure she was still with him. Still alive, and still his.

'Contigo.' I'm with you,

she murmured.

He squeezed her upper arm, then let go.

Okay.

A few more steps across the sidewalk. Then, click, she saw the blood, almost black on the red carpet. Blood everywhere. Cops everywhere. Mike headed through rain puddles to the people in the know.

'Captain Coulter, Chief.' Precinct captain. Chief of detectives, Avise. Present on a Saturday. They must have been gathered together for some event that was interrupted, April thought.

The two men looked grim. 'Mike, glad you're here,' the chief said. Today they didn't shake hands.

'You know Sergeant Woo.'

'Sergeant.' The chief nodded at her.

'Sir.'

Two minutes later, Inspector Bellaqua turned up with wild hair. She shook her head when she saw that April and Mike had gotten there first. Her hotshot pilot wasn't such a hotshot after all. Humiliating for her. Then she saw the body.

'Who is it?' were her first words. She shot Mike and April a glance full of meaning neither understood, then listened as the chief answered.

'Prudence Hay. Her father's a big shot on Wall Street. Her husband-to-be is from Pittsburgh. Big money on both sides.'

'Jesus. What's the story?'

The chief gestured. 'The killer was waiting for her out here.' He pointed to the cathedral door on the Saks side.

'We had two uniforms over there in front of Saks. Two more up there.' He pointed toward Fifty-first.

They followed his finger as it swept in opposite directions.

'It was sheeting rain. None of them had a clear view. The shooter nailed her as she came toward him. In the face and neck. Ugly. She bled out in seconds.'

'Any other witnesses?' Bellaqua appeared to be making some calculations. The body was half-off the sodden red carpet under the dripping canopy about thirty feet from the door. Close enough for both the limo drivers and her father to see something if they'd been looking.

Avise glanced back at the limos with their obscured windows. 'It's like a steam room in those cars. None of them saw him.'

'What about the father?'

'He was trying to keep his daughter dry. He didn't look up.'

Bellaqua nodded. Then, smug as a cat, she took stock of each of them and dropped her bomb. 'We have a break in the Tovah case.'

April frowned at Mike. They did? When did that happen? He seemed as startled by the news as she was.

'You know that partial thumbprint on one of the shell casings they found at the scene? It took so much time because there was so little minutiae that the match couldn't be made by computer. The partial had to be eyeballed against the prints of every person connected with Tovah's wedding. But we do now have a possible match,' Bellaqua reported. 'I just heard from FAS.'

'Anyone we know?' Mike asked.

Bellaqua paused, holding the moment. She looked at April with a slight shake of her head. That caused

Chief Avise to look at April. Mike looked at April.

What?

April felt the chill of the query, even though directly above them the sun finally pierced through the gloom of a gray, gray day. It shot down from an opening patch of blue with such intensity that the last flurry of rain droplets, hanging wherever they could take purchase, were suddenly transformed into strings of sparkling diamonds. Diamonds hung all around the church, the canopy, and trees in front of it.

April saw the shimmering diamonds of light reflected all around her and got it in an instant. She'd known it on Wednesday. She should have been all over it. She had been thinking backward, not forward. Prudence Hay had been next on Wendy Lotte's party list. But they had cooled on Wendy by then, were hot on Ubu.

'Wendy Lotte,' April said with a sinking heart. The print was Wendy's. 'Is she here?'

'You tell us. You wanted to be her contact,' the chief accused.

So she had. 'She's the wedding planner. She should be here,' April said faintly.

'Bring her in,' he said.

'Yes, sir,' April said. Why were they all looking at her? She wasn't the primary here. Both Bellaqua and Mike outranked her. April was sweating heavily. Her mouth filled with water. Nausea made her head spin. Already she was taking the fall.

'Let's get this resolved today,' the chief said quietly.

'Yessir,' the three detectives chorused.

Thirty-eight

T

he brides rose up in the air like ducks over a pond, like clay pigeons in a skeet shoot. Just as they were about to take their vows, those brides took flight. They lifted up, and as they ascended into the heavens, instead of getting smaller they got bigger and bigger until they were as pregnant as clouds. Beyond pregnant, they filled the whole sky, growing as vast as continents on a globe. Looking up, no one could miss those expanding girls. They lifted up into the sights of the waiting hunters, and the guns exploded. Boom, boom, boom. The bride balloons fell down to earth, and one by one deflated into tiny dead babies in christening gowns.

Wendy huddled in a back pew, having her visions again. Prudence was gone just like Tovah, and the people she was supposed to be tending so carefully— moving from ceremony to celebration—had become a bunch of miserable hostages. Even as a calming voice spoke to them over the microphones, telling them what happened and what they had to do, they were getting rebellious. There was no food, no water. How should she deal with this? For