them.'
'On what subject?' Now Mike was interested.
'Something about a promise.'
'What kind of a promise?'
'Jack told me they have an unlisted number, so it has to be someone who knows them. So let's get started on the phone numbers right away.'
'We're working Bernardino's phone, too. How about you? Anybody funny calling you?' he asked, draining the last of his coffee.
'No. You're unlisted.' April finished her tea. 'And Jack did remember one other thing. He told me the killer smelled like Icy Hot.'
'What?' Mike let the mug clatter on the coffee table.
'It's like Tiger Balm, you know, that liniment for sore muscles. Watch that mug; it's going to go over.'
Mike clapped his hands. 'Oh, boy.' He jumped up, almost knocking the mug over a second time. 'Oh, boy. Get dressed. We're going to the labs.'
'What about the viewing?' They'd planned to waylay Bill Bernardino at the funeral home.
Mike brushed it aside. 'When I talked to Gloss, he told me that Bernardino's body smelled like spearmint. So we've been looking for a chewing-gum connection. We checked his house, everywhere. We needed to nail that odor down, see how it fit. Way to go,
'Why didn't you ask me? I could have told you that Bernardino didn't chew gum.' Bernardino used to stick an unlit cigarette in his mouth and suck on the filter for hours at a time. A disgusting habit.
'Icy Hot is eucalyptus, camphor, that sort of smell. Spearmint is something else,' she said slowly. She didn't want him distracted. He promised they'd take aim at Bill and Kathy at the viewing, try to get on the money trail.
'He's a medical examiner. His sniffer's probably all messed up,' Mike said.
April lifted a shoulder. Bernardino's body smelled of spearmint. The killer smelled of Icy Hot. Were they the same? She herself remembered camphor emanating from the skin of an old opponent over twenty years ago, when she was a little girl and regularly got slammed to the mat. That odor mixed with the intense feeling of shame at being knocked down again and again became her symbol of resolve: one punch, one kill. Memory of the karate mantra prickled the back of her neck.
'This may be our break,' Mike urged.
'Okay.' Even in the cleanest crime scene the killer nearly always left something of himself behind. It was worth a try. She took the mugs into the kitchen and dumped them in the sink, reminding herself to tell him they had to do a lot more to find that mastiff walker. And they had to start checking the dojos for people who liked to hurt. They had to get on it right away.
Twenty-three
They settled for April's aging white Chrysler Le Baron because the muffler of Mike's even more ancient red Camaro was making too much noise in the quiet Queens neighborhoods even for him. His pained surrender to the girlie car was not appeased even when she put the top down and insisted that he drive. Behind the wheel Mike looked like a movie star with his shiny black hair and dark sunglasses. They both needed new cars, but neither thought about it now. They were saving for a house of their own like Bernardino's in Westchester, also for a big wedding and maybe a baby. For months, on weekend days off they'd been house hunting. They were looking for just the right area, just the right place. But things came up, and lately they hadn't had the time they needed to finish the job. They didn't mention this lost weekend. The sun shone down on their heads and the air was sweet in their faces. They were detectives first. Murder took precedence over everything else.
April sat in the passenger seat, brooding about Bernardino's children. Her gut feeling was that Bill had taken, or been given, the missing money, and Kathy didn't know anything about it. The niggling certainty that the brother was cheating a trusting sister wouldn't go away. This kind of playing favorites happened in Chinese families, in Irish families, in Jewish families. In all families. Relatives ganged up against each other-and the IRS. Every time April thought of the way her own parents had tricked her into a thirty-year mortgage debt on their own house, her adrenaline spiked with rage. And she didn't even have a sibling to worry about. But was Bill a killer, too? Was he?
It was not a long trip from Forest Hills to Kew Gardens, where the state-of-the-art police labs were located in an unmarked brick building on the back side of a commercial street. At eleven on this balmy Saturday morning the facility that handled all the physical evidence from crimes in the five boroughs was not exactly abuzz with activity. Except for the CSU unit, which was open for business around the clock, it was always pretty quiet here on a weekend. These post-9/11 days, however, personnel was down to a skeleton crew. Retirement of specialists who hadn't yet been replaced had taken its toll.
April and Mike exchanged pleasantries with the sergeant on duty in the cage that kept people from wandering in and out with unauthorized materials. They submitted to a routine search, signed in, and were admitted. Inside, they threaded their way to the back of the building, where they knew Bernardino's car was in the loading bay.
'Anybody home?' Mike called out when they got there.
No answer, but the victim was a sorry sight. The late-model navy Ford Taurus was dirty and smudged from various fingerprinting and other tests. The trunk was open and the inside of it dismantled. The glove compartment was open and disassembled, too. The backseat was out of the car on the floor, and some car parts were missing altogether. Even the owner wouldn't have recognized his vehicle now.
The car had been parked several blocks away from the murder and was possibly unconnected to it, but it was being analyzed as part of the crime scene. Unfortunately, no one was around to enlighten them as to what clues, if any, it had given up.
Disappointed, April circled the wreck as if a visual tour alone could yield some useful information. 'Let's go see if Duke is here.'
'He's here,' Mike said. 'I called while you were in the shower.'
She didn't say, 'Thanks for sharing.' She'd been afraid the trip was a waste of time. On their way back to the elevators they heard a familiar voice droning out a familiar lecture. They detoured down a long hallway to a classroom. There, Mike cracked open the door and saw Lieutenant Loeff of CSU doing his number with grisly crime- scene photos. He was challenging a roomful of people in plainclothes to guess how a bloody body in a kitchen told an exact story of how the victim had died. The audience could be anybody- uniforms who'd been promoted to detective, people from other agencies. A number of them turned around as Loeff pointed a finger at Mike.
'Yes, you over there. Thanks for stopping in. Catch you later.'
Rebuked for interrupting, Mike nodded and closed the door.
'He's still using the same case,' April remarked as they took the elevator up to Fernando Ducci's dust and fiber lab, with the million-dollar equipment that could help identify particles of just about anything except the wet stuff.
The elevator stopped and the doors slid open. Mike touched April's hand and they moved out. As they started down the wide deserted hall, a deep voice thundered out at them.
'Fee fi fo fum, I hear steps of the pretty one.'
'Oh, Jesus,' April muttered.
'Fee fi fo fum!' The disembodied voice came again, sounding like a cross between the Wizard of Oz and the giant in
April glanced at Mike. Fernando Ducci was not amusing even in small doses. He believed with complete certainty that he was at the very top of the food chain: the king of forensic magic, a true giant among men, maybe the most important man in the entire department. In fact he was small, shorter than April, and beefy from too many years of consuming half a dozen candy bars a day in addition to three sizable squares. Despite the weight, he was always dapper with his full, round choirboy cheeks, his fancy dress shirts in myriad combinations of blue and white, and his full head of slicked-down silver hair. If he wasn't already sixty, he was close to it.
'Pretty one, get in here and give me a kiss to brighten my day.'
