Hanging Time

by Glass, Leslie

  Mike looked at April, but no one said anything. Sergeant Joyce had deep horizontal furrows between her eyes that made her look like a mole blinded in the daylight.

  Sure, they knew what she meant.

  “So when the first girl got killed—that poor girl.” Milicia sniffed. “I knew it was a warning for me. It was me she wanted to kill. So I had to tell somebody. I had to do something about Camille … I didn’t want this.” She looked at them, one at a time, tears welling in her eyes.

  “I didn’t want this. I thought it could be taken care of quietly. But he wouldn’t listen to me.” She shook her head. “He just wouldn’t listen.”

  Milicia’s composure finally cracked. Her tears fell unchecked. April got up to find some tissues. When she returned, Milicia was still crying.

  On the other side of the table Sergeants Joyce and Sanchez sat as still as they could, bursting with unasked questions. They waited while Milicia dabbed at her eyes.

  “What are you going to do?” she asked finally.

  “Check it out,” April said softly. “We’re going to ask you a few more questions, and then we’re going to check it out.”

  “Would you like a sandwich? Some coffee, tea?” Sanchez asked, looking like he could use some himself.

  “What?” Milicia blew her nose delicately, pulling herself together.

  “Something to eat or drink?” Sergeant Joyce said.

  Milicia slung her bag over her shoulder, taking a deep breath as if she’d gotten a tough job over with. “Oh, no. I’ve got to go. I have to be someplace.”

  Sergeant Joyce shook her bulldog head. Not a chance, baby. In a homicide investigation, you don’t have to be anywhere else until we say so. She turned to April, cocking her head. You tell her.

  April nodded at her supervisor, getting the message. “Well, just one or two more things,” she murmured. “We’re not quite through yet.”

  Mike checked the reel. Nearly finished. He switched off the recorder and turned the cassette over, then punched the play button and told the machine who was in the room, the day, date, and time. The way they played it, it was his turn to ask the questions.

  44

  Braun’s face was pinched with anger. The Lieutenant took an aggressive stance in front of Captain Higgins’s desk, even though the Captain had offered him a seat when he’d slammed in moments earlier. “They were going out on a new lead without me.” His voice had the whiny quality of a kid who hadn’t been picked for the team.

  Higgins checked his watch. He grimaced. “You’ve got two minutes to tell me what you’ve got, and then I have to meet the press. It better be something.”

  “Well, I don’t know if it’s something or not.” Braun glanced over at Mike, who never appeared fazed by much of anything. “Your people hold out on me. We don’t like that.”

  “Is that the royal ‘we,’ or do you have some special meaning?” Higgins carefully smoothed his tie. “Look, as far as we’re concerned, our people are your people. We’re all the same people.” He inclined his head to Sanchez. “Are you holding out on Lieutenant Braun, Sergeant?”

  “No, sir.” Mike’s mustache closed over his lips.

  “I don’t ever want to hear that you’re holding out on the Lieutenant. We’re all the same team.”

  “Sergeant Joyce?” Captain Higgins tilted his head the other way.

  “Yes, sir.” Sergeant Joyce stood one step behind Sanchez and Braun. It was clear she had combed her hair and tried to repair her face for this meeting. Apparently she knew that without a little makeup, she tended to resemble a codfish fillet.

  April watched her supervisor struggle to maintain a strict air of neutrality, her hope for support from her C.O. revealed only in the shiny pink lip gloss on her mouth. The rest of her fire-hydrant-shaped body, packed into a forest-green jacket and skirt, was rigid with hate.

  “Are you holding out on Lieutenant Braun in any way?”

  Sergeant Joyce took a step forward. She was the supervisor of the squad. April could read her thought that she should have been standing ahead of Sanchez, not behind him.

  “No, sir.”

  Higgins glanced quickly at April. Her lips twitched in a small smile at the triumph of her being in this exalted place for the very first time. The Captain nodded, but didn’t say anything. Apparently he didn’t consider her high enough in the hierarchy to hold out on Braun. She lowered her eyes in the classic gesture of submission, unable to resist the reflex action. Ten thousand thoughts juggled for position in her brain.

  April couldn’t help thinking that ambition, like the sucker-covered tentacles of an octopus, encircled them all, clouding every issue. And she wasn’t immune in the least. Her own ambition had her slated to spend the first ten hours of the day studying for her Sergeant’s exam. And the next eight hours on the job. The discovery of Rachel Stark’s decomposing body had cost her precious study time. Unless somebody else was found dead at the exact moment her exam was scheduled, she’d have to take it anyway, prepared or not. And if she failed, she wouldn’t get another chance at it for a long, long time.

  The other four had their own careers to worry about. And there they were, jockeying for position. Three of them had spent the day very close to a former human being, someone who had a mother and a father, two brothers—way out on Long Island. Somebody who had had a life and hadn’t wanted to lose it. The stench of the former Rachel Stark would stay with them for quite a while no matter how hard they tried to wash it off and ignore it. And yet they were not exactly willing to unite to find her killer.

  “Okay, so what have you got?” Higgins asked.

  Braun scowled at Sergeant Joyce because he couldn’t attack Captain Higgins. “You tell me.”

  “So far we have found no connection between the suspects in the Wheeler case and Rachel Stark—”

  “And this new lead?”

  Sergeant Joyce hesitated. “Some kind of mental case. Female, lives across the street from European Imports; name’s in the guest book of The Last Mango. It’s just a lead.”

  “And the informant’s the sister. A redhead, I heard,” Braun said angrily. “I didn’t get a chance to question her.”

  “Uh-huh,” Higgins said. “Where does that get us?”

  He directed his question at April. After a moment she realized the Captain expected her to answer. She wasn’t sure exactly what he meant.

  “Two long red hairs were found on the body of Maggie Wheeler, sir.” She articulated carefully, didn’t want him to think she had an accent or anything.

  “Yes, yes,” he said, impatient now. “I know that. So work it out. You got twenty-four hours to put it together. Two is too many.”

  “I can’t work under these conditions,” Braun protested. “I don’t want my people undercut like this. We get a lead, I follow it up. I ask the questions.”

  “I don’t have a problem with that. Do you have a problem? Sergeants?” Higgins searched the faces of Joyce and Sanchez.

  Yeah, they had a big problem. They thought Braun was an asshole. He had handled that preppy McLellan with all the skill of a pile driver, had the analytical skills of an un-programmed computer. It was their case. They didn’t want any assistance from Homicide to solve it.

  Mike’s mustache twitched. “No, sir,” he said.

  Sergeant Joyce chewed off her lip gloss. It was clear to April that Joyce couldn’t tell whether her team had won the skirmish or not.

  45

  The folding metal gate across the front of the chandelier shop was locked with a heavy padlock, but somewhere deep inside the store a light was on. Lieutenant Braun reached his hand through a diamond formed by the steel grate and pressed the doorbell. Sergeant Roberts, one of Braun’s people, waited beside him. Like Braun, Roberts was wiry, with gray skin and lackluster, thinning brown hair. His beaky, humorless features suggested a poor digestion.

  After a short wait they tried again, then walked the few steps to the entrance of the residence located above the shop. Br
aun rang the bell there. Then he leaned backward and looked up. The lights were off on the second and third floors of the building. Roberts stepped back and copied Braun’s action. Now they both knew the lights were off. But that didn’t necessarily mean no one was home. Twilight was only just beginning. The two men took a step closer to each other, put their heads together, and conferred.

  In the maroon unmarked car on the corner, Mike’s stomach gurgled. He coughed to cover the sound. “This really sucks.”

  April hadn’t heard him use the term before. She couldn’t stop the confirming laugh from jumping out of her mouth. “Yeah.”

  In fact, the situation with Braun and his people sucked so much that in the last few days Captain Higgins and Sergeant Joyce had started looking pretty good to her. Not until that afternoon had it occurred to her to think well of Sergeant Joyce. Then Dr. Frank called. It wasn’t often that a civilian from an old case came back with a lead on an unrelated new case. But then, a lot of things happened out there on the streets all the time that weren’t supposed to happen. Having to sit in a car and watch two homicide people from downtown follow a lead in their case was just one.

  April didn’t like to remember that Sergeant Joyce had not opposed her investigating her first big case. And there was one other little thing April didn’t like thinking about. After Sergeant Joyce had her picture in the paper and took all the credit for the Chapman case that April had solved with Dr. Frank’s help, she had suggested April start thinking about taking the Sergeant’s test.

  Sergeant Joyce had stood over April’s desk, scowling, and spat out, “You’re ready,” as if all along April had been nothing more than some turkey roasting in the oven.

  At the time April didn’t know what to think of it. Was the Sergeant pulling rank, mocking her? Was she hoping April would take the test and fail? Failing would cause April to lose face. Succeeding would get her reassigned.

  But now April considered another alternative. What if her superior acted like a shit all the time just to challenge the people around her to do things they didn’t think they could do?

  Braun and Roberts were taking a long time deciding no one was home.

  April sighed. She didn’t want to reassess her opinion of Sergeant Joyce. It put a new spin on the Sergeant’s exam. What if Sergeant Joyce actually wanted April to succeed and April let her down?

  Braun and Roberts hit the bell for about the tenth time. By now they were developing the defeated look that forecast some ominous new action.

  “What will they think of now?” April muttered. It was after seven-thirty. Both she and Sanchez were on duty until midnight. Both of them had better things to do than follow Lieutenant Braun on their lead, not to be of help in any way, but so they couldn’t come up with anything else in his absence.

  Mike shook his head. “What a day.” He paused for a beat, then asked, “He ever call you back?”

  “Who?”

  “Your lunch date.” Sanchez kept his eyes on the homicide detectives.

  “What?”

  “Sunday,” he prompted. “You had a date on Sunday. Braun called us in on the McLellan thing. Remember?”

  “You know, I hate to get in the car with you. What is it with you? Get in a car, and you get personal.” April’s face flushed with fury. “What is it with you and cars?”

  “It’s the only time we’re alone,” Mike murmured.

  “So?”

  “So, I know guys who get turned on in elevators. Can’t control themselves.”

  “So?”

  “So, with me it’s cars. We may have to sit here for hours. Might as well, you know, communicate. Talk. You’ve heard of that, haven’t you?”

  “No,” she said flatly.

  “No what? You haven’t heard of it, or you don’t want to?”

  “I don’t want to talk about my personal life. It’s not a good idea. You want to talk about the case, we’ll talk about the case.”

  “So it was a date,” Mike said triumphantly. “I knew it was a date.”

  “What it was is none of your business.” April groaned. Braun and Roberts were still ringing the damn doorbell.

  “I can be interested, can’t I? It’s not so easy to have a relationship in this business.” Mike checked his watch. “Take it from me.”

  “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “So, you agree.”

  “It wasn’t a damn date.”

  April glanced at him quickly to see if he bought it. He nodded.

  “Yeah? He was a cousin?”

  “No, he wasn’t a cousin. He’s the son of a sister-cousin.”

  “What’s a sister-cousin?”

  “Guess you don’t know as much as you think you know.”

  “Never heard of it. You’re either a sister or a cousin. Can’t be both,” Mike insisted.

  “Oh, yes. In Chinese you can be both.”

  “How? You got some family lines nobody else in the world has?” Mike drummed his fingers on the wheel. Hah, got her.

  “Yes. In old China the families were really big. I mean really.”

  “Yeah, so families are big in Mexico, too. Lots of children. Same kind of culture.”

  The sky turned midnight blue as the light slowly faded. The two dicks still stood ringing the doorbell. The smell of fall was in the air.

  “Unh-unh. In China lots of wives for one husband. We’re talking dozens of children, with complicated combinations of relatives you can’t even imagine. Uncles and part uncles one-tenth the age of their part nieces and nephews. All living in huge compounds. Unbelievable.”

  “Let me figure this out. Your mother is a multiple wife and this guy Dong is your brother.”

  April gasped. “How’d you know his name?”

  “You told me his name.”

  “I never told you his name,” April fumed. “I never mentioned him at all. I can’t stand this. You’re spying on me again. I thought we talked about this. I don’t ask about your life. I don’t care what you do. I don’t care,” she insisted.

  Mike regarded her with delight. “You know, we should do this more often. I love it when you get excited.”

  “You can’t spy on me like this.” April was almost choking on her fury. “And my mother wasn’t—isn’t—a multiple wife. There’s no such thing as a multiple wife.”

  “I thought you said—”

  “Forget it. Sister-cousin used to mean part of the family even if there was no real blood tie. But now it means closer than a friend. A relationship that’s like a friend but has some tie that makes it more than a friend. Okay? Got it?”

  Mike nodded again. “So, how did it go?”

  Braun and Roberts gave up on the doorbell and approached the unmarked car with identical determined strides.

  “Uh-oh. Here they come.”

  All the windows were rolled down. The car was facing downtown. Mike was driving. Lieutenant Braun approached April’s side.

  “Look, she must be out for dinner or something.” He made a quick check of his watch. “We’re going to go out for a bite. You stay here.”

  “Yessir,” April said.

  “If she comes back, don’t approach her,” Braun ordered. “I want to do this.”

  Neither one in the car said anything.

  “Got it?” Braun demanded.

  “Don’t approach her,” April repeated.

  “Right.” Braun turned away, headed downtown toward the Irish bars.

  After a minute Mike said, “You know, none of this plays.”

  “I know.”

  “I mean none of it, from the beginning.”

  “Maybe we’ve just been going at it from the wrong direction.”

  “How about now?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t see a woman strangling women, do you?”

  April shook her head. “Not in general, but there’s the makeup and dressing the body up. And did you see the size of the sister?”

  Mike shrugged. “Big.”r />
  “Big and redheaded.” April was silent for a minute. “I’ve seen women who could kill.”

  Mike laughed. “Their husbands, maybe.”

  “Other women, too. Ever see a fight in a women’s prison?”

  “I saw a skinny girl try to give her rival an unscheduled mastectomy with a carving knife once.”

  They sat watching the building as the sky darkened. After a few minutes a light went on in an upstairs window.

  “Well, look at that.” April opened the car door and got out.

  “Where do you think you’re going?” Mike demanded.

  “He only said not to approach her if she came outside. He didn’t say we couldn’t go in if she opened the door.”

  “Right.” Mike closed the windows, then got out and locked the car.

  46

  An intercom was set into the plaster next to the doorbell on the short piece of putty-colored wall that turned the corner into the doorway. The whole building was dilapidated and sad-looking, the black paint on the doorframe cracked and gray with city grit. A faint odor of urine rose from the corners of the worn stone threshold. The door looked as if the top half had once sported a glass insert of some kind. Now it was crudely paneled and painted over and had a peephole in the middle. The lightbulb over the door was blackened with age.

  No nameplate indicated who lived there.

  April pushed the bell, then stepped back to look up at the windows, as Lieutenant Braun had half an hour before. A few feet away, Mike leaned against a streetlamp, peering up. He shook his head. Nothing.

  April rang the bell again. Then a third time, and a fourth. After the second ring she thought she heard a yelp way in the back of the house.

  “Come here. I think there’s a dog in there.”

  “No kidding.” Mike let go of the lamppost and approached the door.

  April hit the button again. They listened and were rewarded by more excited barking.

  After a short pause the intercom crackled.

  “Bouck?”

  April glanced at Mike.

  “Bouck?”