Hanging Time (11 page)

She liked to buy good pieces and then cram them in so that they formed an obstacle course, hard to get through. She liked how Bouck let her do whatever she wanted. She hadn’t finished the place. It was still in the colors of green Bouck had it painted years earlier. She couldn’t have the walls glazed the way she liked them because she couldn’t stand men working in the apartment. The kitchen was still primitive, always would be. She never went in there.

The bell rang again. It was a harsh, grating sound, not like a bell at all. Camille didn’t know why Milicia kept buzzing. All it did was make Puppy dash down the stairs and paw at the door, barking wildly.

“Shh, Puppy,” Camille cajoled. She got to the door and rested her head against it, forgetting for a moment why she was there.

“Camille.” Milicia’s voice came at her through the door. “Open up. It’s me.”

Slowly Camille’s breath began to even out. She opened the door. Milicia rushed in before she could close it again.

“Are you all right? What took you so long? I got scared.” Milicia’s red skirt and blouse clashed with her hair. Her makeup looked to Camille as if it had been spread on her face with a trowel. She reached out, but Camille backed away. The dog was at Milicia’s feet, jumping all over her and nipping at her ankles.

“Hi, cutie.” Milicia hunkered down to pet her.

“Don’t—” Camille screamed. “Don’t touch my baby.”

Milicia stood up, frowning. “You kept me waiting out there for twenty minutes. You scare me to death, Camille. I almost never get to see you. I worry about you all the time, living with that”—she dropped her voice to a whisper—”madman. I call you. No one answers the phone. When he answers the phone, I know he doesn’t tell you I called.” She paused. “I didn’t touch your damn dog.”

Her face changed again when she registered what Camille was wearing. Camille’s see-through dress hung open
all the way down, revealing the black lace bra and panties, the black garter belt and white stockings. No shoes on her feet.

“Oh, God, Camille, what are you into now?” Milicia looked around. “Where is he?”

Camille shook her head. She was feeling tired. Milicia’s voice came from a long way away.

“Where is he?”

Camille shrugged. Who was she talking about?

“Oh, baby—it’s so dark in here.” Milicia reached for the light. “Can I turn on the light?”

Camille shrugged again. Milicia hit the light switch with her palm. The chandelier in the center of the ceiling blazed into a fireworks of glittering light. Camille flinched.

“What’s the matter?” Milicia moved toward her, making a gesture toward the dress. “Let me button you up.”

Camille shook her head. “No.” She and her sister were almost the same size, but Milicia still seemed huge to her. She’d start screaming if Milicia touched her.

“Camille.” Milicia studied her. “What did you take?”

Camille shook her head back and forth. Forth and back.

“I want to help you.”

Back and forth, forth and back.

“What’s going on? Can you speak?” Milicia moved another step forward. “This is not the place for you. You’re getting worse, can’t you tell? Can’t you feel it?”

Camille picked up her puppy and held it tight. Milicia wouldn’t take this puppy from her. No way.

“Don’t touch my puppy,” she whispered.

“I don’t want to touch your puppy. Camille, you can’t go on like this. You have to get some help. Don’t you want to get better?”

Camille saw the words come marching out of Milicia’s mouth like little soldiers on a parade ground. Milicia was looking around nervously as she spoke. Looking for Bouck, who said he’d kill her. Camille let out a little giggle. Bouck was in the chair upstairs. He could come down if he wanted to.

They stood by the door on the edge of the living room.
Camille giggled again. For the first time in her life she lived in a place where Milicia was afraid to come in.

“I met someone who can help you get better. Camille, can you hear me?”

Camille shook her head. Couldn’t hear a thing. She saw Milicia’s big red mouth moving, saw the words marching out, wanted to stop them once and for all.

“Will you come with me and meet this man? He knows how to help people like you. Please, Camille. I have a bad feeling. I have this really bad feeling something’s going to happen that can’t be fixed. You don’t want anything to happen, do you?”

Camille looked at Milicia and backed away. “What?”

“What? What?”

“What?”

“You mean, what’s going to happen—I don’t know, Camille. Only you can know,” Milicia said wildly.

Camille saw the tears in Milicia’s eyes, shook her head, holding the puppy tight. Don’t touch.

“You
know. Please, I can’t deal with this by myself. You have to help me.”

The stairs creaked. Milicia started. “Oh, God, this place is so creepy. I don’t know how you can stand it.”

Camille had flinched, too.

“I know you’ve taken something. I can see it in your eyes. He gives it to you, doesn’t he? You’re scared of him, aren’t you? You can’t help it. I know it’s not your fault, Camille. Whatever is happening with you, I know it’s not your fault.”

Camille stopped seeing the words come out of Milicia’s big red mouth. Her eyes felt very heavy. She was holding Puppy, leaning against the back of a chair. Stiffly, she moved around to the other side of it and crumpled into the chair, closing her eyes. Puppy stretched out across Camille’s lap and put her head down.

T
he phone rang. It was seven in the morning. A thick fog blanketed the street and Jason’s head. It always took him a half hour to wake up, and he wasn’t there yet. His second cup of coffee sat on the counter in front of him, black as ink. He had forgotten to buy milk for the third straight day.

He yawned and picked up on the second ring. “Dr. Frank.”

“Hi, it’s Charles. Sorry I didn’t get back to you last night. I was out late. What’s up?”

Jason snapped into focus. “Just wanted to thank you for Sunday. Great day. Congratulations on the house, it’s really something.”

“Glad you like it. We hope you’ll come out often. You know Brenda thinks the world of you.”

“I think the world of her, too. Listen, ah, about your architect, Milicia.”

Charles laughed. “So that’s what’s up, you old rogue. I should have known.”

“Just wanted to know what your take on her is,” Jason said.

“Since when do you need that?”

“She’s building a house for you, Charles. You’ve been working closely with her for some time.…”

“Over a year.”

Could have fooled me, Jason thought. He hadn’t heard a word about it until the house was half up.

“So?” Jason prompted.

“So she’s a beautiful and talented girl. Go for it, you old dog.”

“That’s what you always say.” The last thing Jason was was a dog, but he didn’t want to explore the subject with Charles. “Aside from looks and talent, what do you think of her?”

“I don’t really know her that well.” Charles paused. “She’s certainly powerful. Gets what she wants … There is something about her that’s—”

“What?”

“I don’t know, a little offputting. Something that doesn’t quite fit.”

“Oh?” That was interesting. “Like the way she dresses, the way she acts?”

“No, not the way she dresses. She is one of those phallic women though. Go for it.”

“Same old Charles. So what doesn’t fit?”

“Hmmm, research, old pal? Or something bothering you about her?”

“Call it research, Charles. What about the way she thinks?”

“No, it’s not her behavior, and not the way she thinks. I can’t put my finger on it. It’s just a feeling.”

“Thanks.”

“Have I helped you?” Charles sounded doubtful.

“Oh, yeah, you’ve helped me.”

“Well, good luck, and let’s get together soon.” Charles rang off.

The inky coffee was cold. Jason poured it down the sink and tightened the knot on his tie. It was a nice deep blue with red French horns on it, the first tie Jason’s fingers had touched when he reached in the closet for his tie rack that morning.

He rinsed out the coffee cup and left it in the sink. His stomach growled. He ignored it. He was thinking that Charles always knew what was off about somebody. His not being sure about Milicia might mean simply that Charles couldn’t relate to the powerful aspect of her. But the
concept of falseness might come from the woman herself. It was something to think about. The carriage clock on the hall table chimed the hour. It was fifteen minutes late. Jason sighed. He didn’t have time to go out and get milk before his first patient showed up at seven-thirty.

T
he alarm didn’t have to scream at April for her to know it was time to wake up. She always heard the click before the alarm sounded. Sometimes she was up before the click. Last night she had fallen asleep studying her notes, and now their contents were the first thing she thought of as she pulled herself out of bed.

No one was allowed to take anything home from a case. All evidence had to be carefully labeled and locked up. Only thing you could take home was your notes. April took a lot of notes. She studied them at night, working on questions, angles, speculations, hypotheses. Every case to her was like being in training for the police Olympics. Every morning she started thinking before she could see. That morning she was thinking, who killed Maggie Wheeler? Was it a random thing—some crazy off the street—or somebody involved with the girl herself?

April drank some water, pulled on her tights, and started exercising. Last night she’d had Maggie’s address book copied, took the photocopy home with her, and made a few calls. She was rewarded for that bit of ingenuity by not being able to get through to anybody. She tried always to do things right. There was a rule of procedure and a reason for everything the department did. But doing everything right took a lot of extra time and wasn’t always so easy to do.

Not everything happened the way it was supposed to. For one thing, no one was supposed to go into a crime scene but the cops who caught the run and the two crime-scene
people. The catching cops were supposed to rope off the area and keep everyone out, but it didn’t work that way. Call came in on a homicide like this, and twenty, maybe thirty people from the bureau wandered through, wanting to see the corpses and check out the murder scene. Problem was thirty cops and detectives wandering through a murder scene couldn’t help but contaminate the evidence quite a bit.

No way could anyone keep the bureau out.

In the Wheeler case ten squad cars rolled up before Crime Scene got there. The new Captain of the precinct, an uptight Irishman of the old school who wore blue shirts with white collars, and half a dozen ranking officers from the Two-O were among those “having a look.”

The hordes of Europe tramping around didn’t make too much difference in a gore-spattered scene where the murder weapon was visible and a picture of what happened was pretty clear by the marks on the body, the way it was lying, the pooling and spatters of blood around it. But here, where there was nothing, it was a different story.

“How many?” was the first question Igor had asked when he and his partner, Mako, named for the shark, entered The Last Mango.

“Many,” Mike said.

“Shit. When are you people going to learn?”

Old gripe of the science people. They said the whole story of every murder was right there on the spot, even if the dumb cops couldn’t see it. It was there in traces of dust and fiber and hair and grease and stains. All they had to do was collect, identify, and match. But ninety-five percent of trace evidence was contaminated or left behind. Five percent was collected, and maybe one percent used to nail the suspect. April was taking a course on this and knew how to look at things through a microscope.

“Hey, what’s that?” Skinny Dragon Mother opened the door to April’s apartment with her own key, not bothering to warn her with a polite knock. Right away she started in on her in Chinese.

“What’s that?” she demanded again in case April hadn’t heard her the first time.

“Hi, Mom. What are you doing up so early?” April was
on her hands and knees on the floor, doing leg lifts with a book open in front of her.

“Have to be early bird catch this worm,” she said in Chinese.

This was the time of day that showed Sai Woo was not so new-style Chinese as she claimed. She was wearing black pants and black canvas shoes with absolutely no embroidery on them, a plain blue peasant jacket. Summer version, not padded. Very skinny woman, eyes narrowed with deep suspicion at the book on the floor. April knew her mother dressed like a peasant in her own home to fool the gods into thinking she wasn’t so well off and fortunate. Clearly there was something on her mind.

“What worm is that?” April asked, lowering herself to her elbows for the next set, which was a lot harder.

“Worm daughter.”

Great, she had a big new case, her Sergeant’s test in less than two weeks, and exams in the summer courses she was taking at John Jay. She couldn’t qualify for Sergeant without two years of college, but she already had three and a half and was hoping to graduate this year. And now her mother was calling her a worm.

“Why am I a worm, Mom?” April tried to concentrate on the leg.

“What’s
that?”
Sai demanded, pointing at the book.

April sighed. So it was the Sanchez thing again. Ever since Mike had driven her home in the red Camaro that first time, her mother had been thinking the worst. “It’s Spanish, Mom.”

“Ayeiiii, I knew it,” Sai cried, still in Chinese. “I knew it.”

“You don’t know it, Mom. The department wants everybody to speak Spanish. It’s a new thing. You want to get ahead, want to get a degree, you have to speak another language.”

Sai Woo switched suddenly to English to show she was bilingual, too. “You speak other ranguage. You speak Chinese.”

“Doesn’t count. Have to speak Spanish.”

“This New York. Not Miami, not Rrr.A. Not so Spanish here, every kind people in New York.”