'Any leads?'
Mike shook his head. 'The father insists his daughter never dated anyone else,' Mike said. 'So it's not a boyfriend/girlfriend thing.'
'No date? Ever?' April was surprised.
'They're Orthodox. The boys and girls don't mingle. They don't even sit together. Men and women have separate sections here. The father also said no one outside the community knew her. She never left the four corners.'
'The what?'
'That's what they call their neighborhood. I thought you knew Jews.'
April rolled her eyes. What she knew about Jews could fill a teacup. A Chinese teacup. 'What about the parents?' she asked.
'Wealthy. Very.'
'I mean, do they leave the four corners?'
'It's a very tight group. I gather they don't mix socially outside, but Schoenfeld, the bride's father, has his business in Manhattan. He claims he has no enemies. He doesn't believe his daughter could be a target. He thinks the shooting was just an attempt to get everybody running to their cars so they'd be blown up in the parking lot.'
'Imaginative theory. Is that why they're all in the parking lot now?'
Mike shrugged. Everybody knew by now that terrorists didn't do two-stage operations in a single site. They always made one hit with the hope of getting as many people as possible. They wouldn't shoot one female in a large crowd and leave all the men sitting there. What sense was there in that? Also, shooting and bombing were two different activities, involving different planning, psychology, and equipment. The shooting of a bride at a wedding had to be a personal thing. Somebody wanted her, and only her, not living happily ever after. April shivered.
Since Skinny Dragon Mother had told April in no uncertain terms that she'd rather see her only child dead on her wedding day than married to a non-
Chinese, that sort of thing felt quite reasonable to her in a totally crazy kind of way.
Police were everywhere now, moving people out of the parking lot, taking down names and statements, and starting to check the cars. Forty minutes from the 911 call, the CSU pulled up in two blue-and-white station wagons, and the investigation team was in place. It was a very high-profile case.
Four
L
ooks like we have all the big guns here. How ya doin', April, Mike.' Captain Dan D'Amato, commander of the CSU unit, looked a lot like an actor playing a cop. Handsome guy, six feet tall, slim build. Styled hair, blue eyes that didn't miss a thing.
He strode up with Detective Vic Walters, known as the architect because he had a degree in the field and was their structure specialist. Not that any of the forty-two CSU detectives considered themselves specialists in only one area. They were evidence collectors, supposed to know everything. Some of them were accredited scientists, like Vic, who analyzed the items they found and drew the pictures for the DA and the juries. Others photographed, sketched, collected thousands of bits and pieces of paint and soil and fiber and dust and markings of all kinds, handwriting, impressions like footprints, tire marks—everything imaginable for the scientists to match.
'Dan, Vic.' Mike held out his hand, and the three men shook. Vic greeted April in a similar fashion.
'Sergeant. Long time.'
'Good to see you,' April replied.
Handsome Dan looked her over. 'Always good to work with the best,' he said curtly. 'Nice outfit,' he added, awarding her a quick smile.
By the time April smiled back, he was already past the small-talk stage. 'What do we got?' he asked.
Mike answered. 'One homicide, two injuries, and a nightmare scene. Did you know it was a wedding party?' Mike pointed at the building. 'A hundred and fifty people were seated in there. The wedding march was playing. Never been any trouble here, so there was no security—' He shrugged to shake off some tension.
'How many people went in? You?' Dan interrupted before he could go on.
Mike held his hands out, palms up. 'Not me. I'm just relaying the pertinent here. Girl was shot in the back. First officers on the scene went in. Chaos in there. Panic. EMS went in to work on her. A lot of people were moving around, trying to get out....'
'Okay, been there, done this.' He was impatient to go in and look.
'You want to take a minute to hear, or not?'
'Yeah, yeah, I'll hear.'
'It's better to have the picture.' Mike combed the ends of his mustache.
'Okay, I know. Go ahead, give me the picture.'
'The shooter must have come in after everybody was inside. But who knows, maybe he was one of them and ducked out. The lobby is a closed space. Our guess is he stood there for some time, several minutes at least, waiting for the bride to walk down the aisle. She was late.' Mike glanced at April. It was all news to her. She had nothing to add.
'As I said, he shot her just before she reached the altar. Maybe you'll get something off the doors.'
Captain D'Amato nodded seriously. 'Definitely. We could get lucky. Magic is coming. Vic will stay. Who knows?' Now he shrugged. They were all big shruggers.
April stood on the bottom step and let her thoughts wander over to the parking lot. Hundreds of people to interview in this case. She liked that. Somebody was going to know, and that individual who knew would tell her. Somebody always knew. A brother, a sister, a drinking buddy, a friend. There were very few killers who didn't scratch the itch to brag.
This crowd in the parking lot was a particular windfall. A hundred and fifty guests well acquainted with the bride and groom. It wasn't going to be a mystery, she assured herself. They'd nail the killer fast, and the community would heal.
April was absorbed in the bubble of her own thoughts. It was clear to her that this was no random killing, a child caught in the cross fire of a political act. More likely the shooter was someone close to the bride and her family, not a stranger. It had to be someone, unlike herself, who would fit in, not be noticeable. Someone who knew the way in and out, what moment to strike. Someone very, very close to her.
Lost in her speculations, April suddenly realized that she was staring at a woman about her age wearing a pink-and-light-blue, large flower-print dress with long sleeves, many tiny tucks in the bodice, and a skirt that fell to her ankles. Around her neck was a thick collar of gold, and her hair was as black and thick as April's. The hair looked like a lacquered helmet, hard against the soft flesh of her face and the soft colors of the dress. There was something a little perplexing about it. The hair got April's attention.
Skinny Dragon Mother was always complaining about her hair getting thinner and thinner, losing weight with the years as she was. Skinny's white scalp showed through; she hated that. Soon she would have only three, four hairs on her head, Skinny grumbled. It seemed like every week she bought more herbal medicine from a fake doctor to make her hair grow thicker.
April slowly realized the hair of the woman in the parking lot was a wig, and one that happened to be not so different from the wigs strippers wore in bare bars. A big and brassy wig. Short but wide and high, and definitely sassy. April was further astonished that this woman's wig wasn't the only one. Lots of women were wearing them. She wondered if there was some cancer epidemic among them, and they'd all had chemotherapy.
The woman's chin jutted defensively at April's scrutiny. April turned away, sorry that curiosity and surprise had shown in her face. She didn't want to be disrespectful. Forget the wigs. She had a job to do. She made a big show of searching in her purse for her notebook. She had long been in the habit of taking extensive notes. Every stage, every interview in an investigation, required reports called DD-5s. Some people found the writing a chore, but April was addicted to correctly documenting information so that later she could recover her process accurately. This was a requirement of the job, but she was even more thorough than most. She had private notebooks for her own private thoughts.
On the operative level she worked for the DA and the court case that came down the road. Her particular
