A Killing Gift

between Bernardino and his killer and not being able to save him was not being able to ask any questions about it. She'd recovered quickly enough from her exhaustion to tackle Bill Bernardino with a pad and pen. He wasn't answering her questions any better than she'd answered his.

Bill, what had your father been working on these last weeks? she wrote and passed over for him to read. As with the earlier questions she'd posed to him, this one sat heavily on the page, giving Bill ample opportunity to twist his mouth into any number of disgusted shapes while he pretended to decipher her perfectly legible handwriting.

There was no nuance to the written word, no tone of voice to temper her line of questioning. The questions looked like something out of a survey, not a personal exchange between two people who'd lost a loved one. With April's side written down, the interview was between Bill and the page, not between her and him. So he was having an easy time avoiding her.

His eyes looked down, away from her, when he tossed back, 'How would I know what he was working on?'

He might have said something. You two talked, didn't you? There was a time lag while she wrote this. There was another time lag while he read the reply.

Worse than using sign language, this was like instant messaging with both people in the room. And one of them was determined not to help. April knew that Bill's mind was still on the blame track, but she wasn't going to stop trying to engage him in a dialogue.

Her expression was neutral as she strung her questions out like beads on a necklace she would never get to wear. Several times she exchanged glances with Mike. April could read in his face that, like her, he was annoyed and hiding it well. Whether or not Bill had meant his threat of a scandal, it was on the table, putting the cops and prosecutor on different teams. It was clear that neither Mike nor Bill was going to share information, so she had to do the talking, because she was the one who'd been close to Bernardino. Too bad. Now the investigation might have to go needlessly deep into the grieving family's private affairs. Unless they found the killer soon, Bill was going to get less happy as the days went on. He certainly wasn't making it easy on himself now by dismissing her queries.

'Yeah, we talked, but not about business. Look, I have to go.' He tapped his watch and got to his feet, looking at them angrily as if one or both of them might try to keep him there. But neither Mike nor April made a move to delay him. He had come to them, after all. He could go when he pleased.

'Look, we're going to have to go through his things at the house,' Mike said as he opened the door.

'Fine. The place is a fucking mess, though. He was getting ready to move.' Bill paused long enough to shake his head. Then he made a point of checking his watch again. 'Kathy will be here in a few hours.'

'I'm really sorry,' Mike murmured.

Anger flashed in Bill's face. 'Yeah, well, something's wrong here. To get through thirty-eight years on the job and die like this.' He shook his head. 'It shouldn't happen.'

April agreed with him. It shouldn't have happened. She gripped the pen in her hand, wanting to add something, but Bill glared at her, triggering a guilt she didn't want to feel. It wasn't her fault that his father left the party alone. It wasn't her fault that she'd followed him too late. It wasn't her fault that he was dead, and she was still alive.

She didn't want to feel it, but the guilt was there. Bernardino had been her boss, her friend. A part of her couldn't help believing that the timing of the events tonight and her position in them had some special meaning. And without her being aware of it, somehow the fault really was hers. Chinese guilt made for an extensive menu, and numbers one through a hundred were weighing her down at the moment.

Her cell phone rang almost immediately after Bill left, and she forgot that she couldn't speak. She punched talk, but only the sound of air came out of her mouth when she tried to say hello.

'What the hell happened to you?' It was her boss at Midtown North, Lieutenant Iriarte.

'Hahhhh,' she answered.

'What? Where are you?'

'Pshhhh.'

'For Christ's sake, speak up; I can't hear you.' Iriarte's usual irritation sounded in his voice.

April rolled her eyes at Mike. Iriarte, she mouthed at him.

'April, I know you're there,' the lieutenant said crossly. 'What the hell is going on? When are you coming in?'

April passed the phone to Mike. 'Hey, Arturo, it's Mike Sanchez. How ya doin'?'

'Mike. I heard about Bernardino. Terrible thing. What's with April?'

'Ah, she got into a little fight trying to apprehend the suspect.'

'What! Nobody told me that. Where are you?'

'Well, she bolted from the hospital a while ago. Didn't anybody tell you she wasn't coming in?'

'She's supposed to call in. Let me talk to her, will you?' He barreled right ahead as if he hadn't heard the words hospital, fight, and suspect.

'Really sorry about that, Arturo, but I told you some asshole tried to wipe her last night and she's lost her freaking voice.'

'Huh?' For a second April's boss was speechless himself, not sure whether or not Sanchez was pranking him to get April a day off. Pranking was not uncommon. Finally he said, 'No kidding.'

'No kidding. She's lucky he just knocked her voice out. It's a woman's nightmare, right?' Mike winked at April.

'Jeez,' Iriarte said. 'Anything I can do?'

Thanks, April mouthed at him. Thanks a lot.

The rest of April's day was just as frustrating. Bernardino's daughter, Kathy, arrived in the afternoon, but April was not able to call with her condolences, to inform her that she and Mike would be out to talk to her and to look at the house soon. Mike had to make that call, and it was a tough one. In less than two months Kathy and Bill had lost both their mother and father. Bill needed someone to blame. So heaven only knew what ideas the prosecutor would pour into the ear of his sister the FBI agent over dinner tonight. Both were trained investigators. It was almost enough to make a person paranoid. April didn't want to be paranoid, and she didn't want the Department to be blamed.

Chinese philosophy for health called for the consumption of no less than twenty cups of tea a day. For once April was following it. Hot water and Lipton's tea bags were all she had, but she downed some every twenty minutes. She was wired with all the caffeine and desperate for the return of her voice.

In her early years as a cop, April had followed orders and kept her thoughts to herself. Silence had been a choice she'd made to stay out of trouble. Now all her thoughts were trapped inside, but it wasn't like the old days, when silence was her comfort zone. She wanted to talk to Mike, but she had no voice and she could tell he was shutting her out.

And sure enough, just before two p.m. Mike glanced at the clock on his wall. 'Ready to go home now, querida?' he asked, trying hard to sound neutral.

April shook her head. She wasn't going home. She had things to do. She wanted to see Marcus Beame, who'd been standing next to Bernardino at the bar before he left, probably the last person to speak to Bernardino. Beame had the same job in the Fifth Precinct that April had in Midtown North. He was second in command in the detective unit. He'd know what Bernardino had been working on.

'Querida,' Mike said slowly. 'I want you to go home now, rest up.' He said it suavemente, con carino, but there was steel behind the sweetness.

She shook her head.

'I know you want to stay on this, but you know you can't.'

She shook her head some more. She didn't know why she couldn't. Anger flashed in her eyes.

'You've got to move over,' he said softly.

Victims didn't investigate their own cases. It was clear that was what he meant. She wasn't being asked to the dance.

April's anger came and went quickly as she considered her options. For every rule deemed unbreakable in the Department, there was always an exception. Long history had proved that nothing was set in stone.

Homicide investigations were like construction sites. In the beginning there was the body and the physical