Judging Time awm-3
Page 36
Husband reports that when he got home, his wife was unconscious and the baby gone. The stains on his shirt are probably his wife's blood.
He would have tried to revive her, of course. Unless he'd injured himself and some of the blood was his. She'd noticed a cut on his left palm.
April and Baum saw the red-haired lady signal them. She tried to distract Popescu. "You want some coffee or something, Mr. Popescu? Officer Duffy could get you something while you're waiting."
"Where are you going?" he demanded.
"Detective Baum and I will be right back," she told him.
Popescu tried to follow them, but Duffy and Prince blocked the way. Their size and the clanking police equipment hanging on their hips convinced him to stay where he was. April didn't wait to hear what he had to say to them.
Treatment Room 3 was guarded by another uniform. A woman with a clipboard and a white coat over a blue scrub suit came out before April could question the officer. MARY KANE, M.D., the woman's name tag said. The plastic picture ID clipped to her uniform read the same. Dr. Mary Kane had a square jaw, blunt- cut," wheaty-brown hair, the kind of eyes April's mother called "devil eyes" (washed-out blue without lashes or much expression). Dr. Kane looked about twelve, but April couldn't complain about that because both she and Woody did, too.
April showed the doctor her own identification. "I'm Sergeant Woo, this is Detective Baum. What can you tell me about Mrs. Popescu?"
Dr. Kane shook her head. "She's unconscious." She glanced quickly at Baum, then looked April up and down. "Maybe you can help."
"How badly hurt is she?"
"She has contusions, couple of cracked ribs. He must have kicked her. Lump on her head. Her skull isn't fractured. But she's bruised al over. Weird."
"What's weird?" Baum asked.
April gave him a look.
"Some of the bruises are fresh. Others look like they're a few weeks old. And we have a chart on her. She's been here before."
"Did she have her baby here?' ' This was from April.
Blank-faced, Dr. Kane shook her head.
April pulled out her Rosario to write what the doctor said. "What was she here for on previous occasions?" April was blank faced back. Baum knew not to interfere this time.
The doctor checked the chart. "Third-degree burn, a cut—fifteen stitches on her arm. Sprained an ankle twice. She seems to fall down a lot." Still deadpan.
April wrote some more. "Anybody call the police to check it out?" Heather Rose Popescu wasn't so lucky; but maybe April Woo and Woody Baum would get lucky and there'd be no kidnapped baby in this case. Maybe the mother hadn't been feeling well, had given the baby to a relative for the afternoon and the assault came from the husband.
The doctor's square face took on a belligerent expression. "I couldn't say anything about the follow-up. The chart indicates they were localized injuries— one site each time, nothing major. Not the pattern we would associate with abuse. I'm not aware of any requirement for reporting a cooking burn, a sprained ankle, that kind of thing. There's a note from the husband that Mrs. Popescu has a neurological problem being dealt with by a private physician."
"Did you happen to check that out?"
"You're the detectives, we're ER. You want to try talking with her now?" It seemed as if Dr. Kane was one of those doctors who didn't like cops.
"In a minute. Is there anything else you can tell me?"
"I don't know." Finally she focused on April. "Maybe we've got a mental case here. If she's self-destructive, that would explain the previous injuries on her chart. She could have made up a story about a baby."
"Then her husband is a mental case, too. He says there was a baby this morning, and now it's gone."
"Maybe the baby was adopted," the doctor went on.
"They put it up for adoption? This morning?" April frowned.
"No, the woman here adopted the baby." The doctor was getting annoyed, as if April were really thick.
"Why do you say that?" Baum asked.
Dr. Kane pointedly consulted her watch, showing the two cops that she'd given them enough of her time. "She doesn't appear to have a postpartum body."
"Did you give her an internal exam?" April asked.
"For head injuries?"
April glanced at Baum. What was a postpartum body?
"There are other changes that occur in a woman's body after childbirth." The doctor gave April an amused look.
April flushed. "What are they?"
Dr. Kane slapped her clipboard against her hip impatiently. "The breasts become engorged with milk. The skin on the stomach is loose. The stomach itself is soft, enlarged. Not all of the excess weight would have come off yet—a lot of things." She glanced at Baum. He was writing it all down. Probably didn't know a thing about women. But apparently, neither did April.
"And Mrs. Popescu?" April asked.
Dr. Kane turned her attention to April. "No engorged breasts, no soft, distended belly. She didn't have a baby, or she sure got her figure back fast." Clearly the doc didn't think that was possible.
"Her body looks like yours," she added.
Baum smiled. April was a little over five foot, five inches, was well proportioned and willowy. She had an oval face with rosebud lips, and lovely almond eyes, a slender neck, but not with the hollows and protruding bones of a truly skinny person. She also had clearly discernible breasts, though not really ample ones by American standards. Her hair came down to the bottom of her earlobes. When she was away from her boss, Lieutenant Iriarte, she hooked her hair back around her ears so her lucky jade earrings would show. Mike Sanchez kept telling her she was more beautiful than Miss America, and the thought of an Asian Miss America always made her smile.
At the moment, though, she wasn't amused. She didn't see how Dr. Kane could tell anything by her body, since it was covered with loose nubby-weave slacks, a thin sweater, silk scarf, and a cropped whisky-colored jacket. Except maybe, if she was looking really hard, she could tell that April was carrying a 9mm at her waist.
"Maybe you can get something out of her," Dr. Kane said and walked away. April would not have liked to be one of her patients.
"Wait for me," she told Baum. Then she opened the treatment room door.
Heather Popescu was lying on a rolling hospital bed, covered up with a sheet so that only the shoulders of her blue-flowered hospital gown showed. The sides of the bed had been put up so she wouldn't fall off, but she wasn't going anywhere. One eye was covered with a cold pack. Her lip was split and already puffed. Her extremely long, inky hair spilled off the pillow. April was startled, then recovered fast. The unconscious woman, Heather Rose Popescu, was Chinese.
No wonder Iriarte had ordered April sent down here immediately. Iriarte hated her. He'd never voluntarily gave her a big case. He'd sent her here because the victim was Chinese and it would look better with a high-profile Chinese detective on it. April flashed to the husband standing out in the waiting room. A belligerent Caucasian. Oh man, she was in trouble. She didn't like this one bit. Skinny Dragon would think this was a warning just for her. She was going to shake her finger at April over this. "See what happens," she'd scream. "Mixed marriage, woman beaten to a pulp. That's what you can expect when you marry laowai," (shit-faced foreigner).
Oh man. Suddenly April wished Mike, her mother's nightmare, was here with her now. He could take this case in hand. Woody was too inexperienced to be of any help, particularly with the husband. If the husband beat the wife, he wasn't going to like April as his interviewer. April needed the expert partner she'd had in Mike, then lost on purpose because she hadn't wanted to mix business and pleasure. So much for integrity and scruples. Now she was on her own. Thank you, Lieutenant Iriarte.
April studied Heather Rose's battered face. Where were her parents, her protectors? "Heather? Can you hear me?" she said softly. "I'm April Woo. I'm here to help you."
No answer came from the unconscious woman.
"Heather, we need to find the baby.
Where's the baby?"
Heather did not stir. April felt the cold brick of fear in her belly. "Come on back, girl. We need your help here."
It was no use. Heather wasn't coming back.
April tried in Chinese. "Wo shi, Siyue Woo. Ni neng bang wo ge mang ma?"
No response.
Finally, April turned to leave the room. "Whoever did this to you, I'll get him for this," she promised.
Back in the waiting room, Heather's husband was standing in front of his chair. Baum was talking to him and writing down what he said.
"How is she?"
April gave him a look. "She's unconscious."
"How long will she be like this?"
April studied him, didn't have an answer.
Popescu's cheeks were gray, like a dead man's. He glanced at the two cops who'd stuck by his side since he'd come in. Duffy and Prince lounged against a wall as if they were used to hanging around for long periods of time with nothing to do. A baby on someone's lap on the other side of the crowded waiting room started to wail.
Another brick hit April. If it wasn't Heather's baby, whose was it? Who was this man she'd married, and why was he lying? He said he wanted to go home and she had to let him. There wasn't anything they could do for Heather here.
LESLIE GLASS
grew up in New York City, where she worked in the publishing industry and at New York magazine before turning to writing fiction. She is the author of six previous novels, the last three of which have featured New York City Detective April Woo. Visit her web site at
http://www.leslieglass.net
.
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