by Leslie Glass
“What? Do I have bad breath or something?” Mike popped a Tic Tac in his mouth and offered April one.
She shook her head. “Get serious. We’re on a job.”
“I’m dead serious.” He smiled. “I don’t get more serious.”
“Fine, then let’s go in.”
The barking grew frenzied. Mike leaned back against the wall, scratching his chin. “Are you sure that’s the right thing to do, Detective? We don’t exactly have a warrant.”
“It’s too quiet in there. Open the door.”
“Unh-unh. What if nothing’s happening?”
“Come on, Mike. The dogs are going crazy.”
“Oh, what do you think is going on?”
“I have no idea. But there’s an old Chinese proverb—”
Mike rolled his eyes. “Yeah, what is it?”
“He who ignores barking dogs misses boat.”
“Sure.” He punched her in the arm. She punched him back harder. Inside, something had definitely unhinged the dogs. They were screaming like abandoned babies. Maybe one of the women was torturing the dogs. To April that constituted a call for help.
“Let’s go. If I’m wrong, you can say I needed to use the bathroom.”
“Wonderful.” Mike tried the door. The main lock offered no resistance to his key. None of the three additional locks were set. He clearly wasn’t happy with B & E because of a barking dog. “Do you really need the bathroom?”
She shrugged. “Another old Chinese proverb say: Never miss an opportunity to pee.”
Inside, one of the little dogs was running up and down the stairs in a barking frenzy. The other was not in sight. From somewhere above came the grunting and thrashing of several bodies in a savage, wordless brawl.
Mike took the stairs three at a time and got there first. But April was not too late to see Camille, with her big skirt and tangled mass of red hair billowing around her, sitting astride Milicia on the bed, grunting “Uh, Uh, Uh.”
Bouck’s beautiful room was in chaos. His elaborately fringed pillows were scattered all over the floor. The elegant silk brocade bedspread had been yanked off the bed. It was twisted around one of Milicia’s legs, binding it like a bandage. She was on her back, bucking and kicking her one free leg as Camille tried to strangle the life out of her. The other tiny poodle stood on its hind feet, scrabbling madly at the side of the high bed, trying to jump up, failing, and howling its frustration.
“Stop! Police!” Mike shouted just before he plowed through the pillows to separate the two battling women.
The small pillows flew up in the air when he dove on the bed. A white lace heart sailed across the room, landing with a soft thump on the other side. At his touch, Camille’s body went rigid. Falling abruptly silent, she released Milicia’s neck. She looked stunned as he dragged her to her feet and quickly cuffed her hands behind her back.
Milicia sat up sputtering and gasping, her hands on her throat. “Oh, God—she’s crazy. She—she just grabbed me. Just like that. We were—talking. She took me by surprise. She would have killed me.” She untangled her leg from the bedcover and pulled her skirt down. Inched over to the side of the bed, away from her sister. April crossed to help her.
“It’s okay. Stay where you are. I’ll call an ambulance.”
“No, no. I’m all right.” Milicia rubbed the angry red blotches on her neck, looking over at Camille with total surprise and horror. “Did you see that? She was going to kill me.… Just like the others.” She stroked her throat with both hands. “Something must have triggered it. I don’t know what … I can’t believe it. My own sister … I’m lucky to be alive.…”
Dazed and wobbly, Milicia pulled herself together and stood up. She took only a tiny second from her recovery to kick the whimpering dog out of her way. The dog yelped. Unsettled by the unexpected cruelty, April reached to scoop the puppy up in her arms. Instantly, it dropped its head to her shoulder and sighed. April was shocked by this sign of tenderness from an animal.
She turned to Sanchez. “Mike, you all set there?”
“Yeah. Call for an ambulance.” He was ashen under his Mexican tan. He had Camille by the elbow, but it wasn’t easy holding on to her. The woman’s body and face had become a mass of tics and jerks that were beyond her control. Her torso trembled; her mouth was slack. So their killer was the psycho sister, after all. It was the kind of thing cops pray for: They’d caught her in the act.
Still holding the puppy, April glanced down at her watch. It would be a long night before they got it wrapped up.
81
You aww light? No rook so good.”
Sai Woo held the door open for April and swiftly bundled her inside. As soon as the door was shut and locked and chained—as soon as the outside light was turned off—she began scolding in Chinese. “You have big test tomollow. Why home so late? You clazy? How pass test with no sreep?”
Skinny Dragon Mother was wearing black silk pants and a bright red shirt, had been waiting up for her husband and daughter as usual. Tonight wasn’t so late though. Only twelve-thirty. April knew her father wouldn’t be home for another hour. There was deep red lipstick on Sai’s thin lips, and her eyes were as shrewd as a Chinese gambler’s. She studied her wilted daughter.
“Hi, Ma.” April gave her a weak smile. “What’s up?”
Sai did a little two-step, heading toward the kitchen. “Maybe no pass test. Maybe get malleed instead.”
Maybe no pass test. No get married either.
“Uh-huh.” Whatever you say.
“How’s case?”
April frowned. “Case closed. Ma?”
“Yeah, who did it?” Sai realized April was still standing by the front door, eager to go back outside and up the stairs to her second floor apartment. Spiteful daughter was not respectfully following Wise and Helpful Mother into the kitchen. “Where you going?”
“I have a test tomorrow. I’m going to bed.… Ma, I have a question for you.”
“Whuh?” If possible, Sai’s eyes sharpened to an even greater degree of acuity.
“You remember how I always wanted a dog when I was little?”
Sai screwed her features into an angry scowl. “No rememba.”
April tried again. “Remember you had a dog?”
“Long ago, in China. Come, have lice. We talk.”
“The dog disappeared, and you thought the neighbors ate it.” April leaned against the door. She was bone tired, as tired and discouraged as she’d ever been. She had just witnessed one sister’s attempt to kill another. And even after seeing that—then going through all the paperwork, and the trip to Bellevue because the suspect appeared to be having a psychotic breakdown—she still couldn’t get over the little poodle’s curly head resting on her shoulder, the two poodles nestled together on the front seat of the squad car while a uniform sat with the assault victim in the back. At the moment the dogs were in cages in custody. Soon one might be without a home.
Sai nodded, the long-ago fury at her beloved pet’s terrible end burning in her eyes. “So?”
“We’re not in China anymore. No one will steal a dog and eat it here.”
“So?” Sai didn’t get it. What did that have to do with big test and getting married? Nothing.
“So I know a dog that maybe needs a good home. A very cute dog. A baby. You have a backyard already fenced in. Wouldn’t even have to walk it. No work. Just open the door.” April shrugged.
“You clazy?” Sai’s voice sank to an anxious whisper.
“Maybe.”
“Why want dog? Dogs nothing but troubber.”
“No one would eat it here, Mom. It’s a nice one, expensive. This kind of dog costs five, maybe six hundred dollars.”
“Huh.” Sai’s penciled eyebrows jumped up. Money always got her. Then the slyness returned. “You still getting married?” she demanded in Chinese.
“We have to go out again first,” April pointed out. “See if we like each other.”
Sai thought ab
out that, then conceded the point. “Who did it?” she asked at last, switching back to English.
April frowned. She didn’t like this case. “A very sick woman.” Didn’t like it at all.
“You got a probrem?”
“More than one.”
“You rant tell me? Mebbe herrp.” Sai moved a few feet and sat stiffly on the modern sofa—very hard, no soft cushions to sink into—in the tiny front living room, then patted the place beside her.
April sighed and checked her watch. Five minutes, no more. She might be able to squeeze another hour of studying into this ruined night. She sat next to her mother. “Okay, it’s like this: A crazy sister kills two young women who work in stores—”
“How?”
“Strangles them. Then sane sister comes in and reports her problem sister to the police. We investigate. Pretty quickly, we begin to think the crazy sister is too crazy to kill anybody. Then we find one murder victim’s clothes in the crazy sister’s house. We investigate more. We get the sisters in for handwriting samples. We test the bite marks of the crazy sister’s dog. We come up with nothing on the crazy sister. Now we’re wondering if maybe she’s been set up, so we follow both of them to see what they do. Few hours later we catch the crazy sister trying to strangle the sane one. Got it?”
Sai shook her head. “I don’t berieve.”
“What don’t you believe, Ma?”
“Tly not same as succeed.…”
“So, what do you think happened?”
“How I know? You detective … I just mother. Hey, Ni? You know stoly of ten thousand soldjuhs?” It seemed like a question, but it wasn’t a question.
“No, Mom. What’s the story?”
Sai settled back on the hard sofa to tell it. “Hundred, hundred years, peasants work rand. All lound rand good. One piece rand nothing can do. Clops no glow. No leason. All same rand. Peasants beg gods for leason, make many offerings. Give rand water, night soir. Nothing can do. Then mebbe hundred hundred years dig up bad rand to make city. Then find out what’s what.” Sai slapped April’s arm. “Ten thousand cray soldiers buried on horses. That’s what.”
Yeah. April nodded politely. So what did that have to do with the Honiger-Stanton sisters and the two dead salesgirls?
“You take Sergeant test tomorrow?”
Again April nodded. So?
“Bad spilits. Now sreep—hey Ni, you rant dog?”
“Yeah, Ma. If I can get it.”
Skinny Dragon Mother shook her head as if the spiteful daughter she had futilely named Happy Thinking so long ago had finally lost her mind.
April got up slowly. A lot of times her mother made her feel as if she were still three years old. Really small and not very smart. In fact, quite, quite stupid. She knew Skinny Dragon Mother had some important lesson in mind for her, but as usual she didn’t know what it was. Once again she headed upstairs.
“See what I mean?” Sai said to her back.
“Yeah, Ma. Look for the ghosts making mischief.”
“Hnngh.” Right through the nose was the triumphant sound that followed April up the stairs.
82
It was almost midnight. In the dark, Jason sat in his favorite armchair, listening to the nine carefully restored antique clocks prominently displayed on bookcases and tables around his living room. The clocks all ticked in a slightly different rhythm. No matter how many times he adjusted them, he could not get them to keep exactly the same time. It took a full ten minutes of bongs and dongs in nine different tones before they all got through striking the hour. He had no idea which one, if any, had the correct time. If he wanted the correct time, he had to consult his quartz watch.
At this moment, some five, ten, fifteen minutes before midnight, he didn’t give a damn about the correct time. He was waiting for the 108 strikes that would proclaim the end of his thirty-ninth birthday. He felt very alone.
One of the occupational hazards of being a psychiatrist was that very few of the people in his life, even those he’d seen regularly for many years, knew anything about him. Today not one of his patients had any idea it was his birthday. The day had passed with no office party, no congratulations, only a few cards, no cake. He did get a call from his parents bemoaning the fact that he had produced no children and never came to visit. It didn’t occur to them to ask him, or take him, to dinner. They sat on extension phones in different rooms of their Bronx apartment where they had lived for forty-three years, talking at the same time. They promised to send Jason a birthday card as soon as they found one they both liked.
But all of that he’d sorted out long ago. What really bothered him was that even though he had spoken to her twice that day, he desperately missed Emma. And his best friend Charles was furious at him. Further, he seemed to have misread the Honiger-Stanton case right from the beginning and all the way through. That was puzzling. He didn’t often get things wrong. He and April Woo had arranged to have dinner together the next night to talk the case over. He was looking forward to it.
Outside, it began to rain. Lightning snaked across the sky above the Hudson River, illuminating the New Jersey horizon for an instant. Thunder reverberated. Jason brooded about the case, about Camille under observation at Bellevue. Something worried him about the story April had told him when she called from the hospital two hours earlier. He didn’t see how the young woman he had diagnosed as gentle and nurturing just that morning—the woman who had told him she wanted to be like Doctor Dolittle—had made a very serious attempt at strangling her sister at five-thirty in the afternoon.
Camille had appeared frightened, vulnerable, fragile. How did he miss her rage? She must have lied. Well, all patients lied. Everybody he knew lied. Still, getting beyond the lies to the truth was his job.
Jason sat there in the dark, trying to work it out. Camille said she always did whatever Milicia told her to. Jason believed that was true. What if Milicia knew the police were outside and deliberately provoked Camille to violence? What if Milicia had threatened or attacked her in some way and Camille acted to protect herself? The thunder rumbled closer. Rain pelted down, drenching the city for the second time in a week. It was the storm season. Jason had the urge to call Emma, to thank her again for her gift. Find out how she was. Hear her voice again, no matter how much it hurt. The phone rang before he had a chance to decide if that was a good idea. He reached to answer it.
“Did I wake you?” Charles demanded.
“No.” Jason was disappointed. He’d been thinking about Emma, more than half hoped it was her.
“Are you alone?”
“Yeah, I’m alone. What’s up, Charles?”
There was a lengthy silence. “Look, I’m sorry I ripped into you today.” Charles sounded sorry.
“That’s okay. I’d probably have felt the same.”
“We’ve been friends for a long time.”
“Yes, we have. Thanks for calling.”
“That’s not the only reason I called.”
“Oh, what’s up?”
There was a short pause, then Charles spoke. His voice had a catch in it. “The shirt came back from the laundry.”
“The shirt? What shirt?” Jason searched his memory for a shirt.
“Milicia gave a shirt to Brenda in Southampton. The Saturday night before you got there. The night the first woman was murdered. It was a weekend gift, a big white shirt. I have it in my hand.”
“Was that the shirt Brenda was wearing the day I came?”
“Yes. Brenda must have worn it to appear appropriately grateful. It was way too big for her.”
Jason remembered. “Yes.”
“Look, I don’t know if it’s the one the police were looking for. It doesn’t have a store label in it. But I wanted you to know. And Jason—happy birthday.”
Jason closed his eyes. “Thanks, I appreciate it. I’ll call the detective on the case and let her know.”
The first clock began to strike the hour. Then the second. Suddenly the room went into its b
onging frenzy. Jason took the portable phone with him and shut the connecting doors. Now he couldn’t see the lightning, or the river, the trees on Riverside Drive shuddering in the wind, or the crooked horizon of New Jersey. He went into the kitchen and turned on the light. It was midnight, but Jason dialed April’s work number anyway. The polite voice that answered said Detective Woo was not there, was off tomorrow. He had no idea what her home number was.
83
April swallowed down some hot lemon water from the mug that said GOOD LUCK, LONG LIFE in gold Chinese characters on the side. The mug was a thank-you gift from the sister of a man who’d been kidnapped upon arrival at Kennedy Airport by the people who arranged for his immigration. The kidnappers demanded an additional thirty thousand dollars for his life. April had located the man in an abandoned warehouse in Newark. In addition to the mug, she was given a bag of oranges and a live eel.
This important and symbolic morning she sat at her tiny kitchen table in her underwear, drinking from her lucky mug, trying to calm down and stop sweating so she could put her clothes on. It was just before eight. Her exam began at ten.
After two weeks of working what she now called the sisters case, it was over. It didn’t matter if Camille Honiger-Stanton struck her as a victim, not a killer. This wasn’t the first time she was unsatisfied with the resolution of a case. Probably wouldn’t be the last. Anyway, the ghosts under the ground would surface sooner or later. There was still the evidence, the handwriting samples to match with the boutique guest book in the Maggie Wheeler homicide, the dog’s teeth marks to match the bite on Rachel Stark. And who knew, maybe Albert Block could give them a positive ID on the woman he saw leaving The Last Mango before he discovered Maggie’s body.
April couldn’t calm down. How could she be afraid of answering a few questions? What was the big deal here? She’d taken and passed a lot of exams in her life. She’d testified in court. She’d inspected putrifying corpses, tussled with muggers twice her size. She’d been shot at and burned. She had a father who was an expert at the silent treatment and a mother who demanded answers to more questions, of greater depth and complexity, than any prosecuting attorney she ever encountered. How could a mere written exam, followed by an oral one in front of no matter how stony-faced a board of examiners, be any worse than a thousand things she’d already experienced? And yet she had to admit she was scared to death. Didn’t want to fail and lose face in the squad. Didn’t want to endure the contempt of her mother, let down Sergeant Joyce.