Hanging Time (25 page)

He drank down half the beer and looked at her appraisingly. “What made you become a cop?”

She tasted hers, considering an answer. She didn’t want him to think badly of her parents for not insisting she go to Columbia. Didn’t want to insult her parents by implying poverty. She put her glass down. The beer was warm. “There seemed to be a need.”

In response to that, her beeper sounded from inside her lucky red blazer.

George looked surprised. “What’s that?”

“My beeper. Something must have come up. I’m sorry. I have to call in.”

She pushed her chair back and made her way through the crush to the front of the restaurant, where a pay phone hung prominently behind the cash register. She dialed the squad number.

“What’s going on?” she asked when Sanchez came on the line.

“Where are you?”

“Doyers Street.”

“Chinatown. What’re you doing down there?”

“It’s lunchtime, my day off. I’m having lunch.” April tried not to sound impatient. “What’s coming down?”

“Braun wants you in here now. Third floor, examination room.”

“Yeah, what for?” Adrenaline and alarm shot through her in equal measures.

“He’s got Maggie’s boyfriend.”

“No kidding.” April’s heart thudded. How did he do that, when she and Sanchez had missed him? Son of a bitch. This wasn’t going to go down well with Sergeant Joyce or Captain Higgins.

“No kidding. And get this. Braun wants his team there with him.”

Oh, now they were a team, great. April looked at her watch. She’d been with George Dong all of twenty-three minutes. So much for dating. “Twenty minutes max,” she promised.

Sanchez hung up without comment.

April pushed her way back to the table through an even larger crowd than had been there earlier. George Dong, the doctor, was smiling at her. She noticed he was not so very ordinary-looking when his mouth turned up at the edges. As she approached the table, she had a minute to wonder if he really played tennis or if he just carried the racquet around for show. Lot of people were sneaky like that.

“You have to go, right.” It wasn’t even a question. He knew.

“Sometimes it happens. I’m really sorry. The case I’m working—something’s come up.”

“It’s okay. I know how it is,” he said magnanimously.

But she knew it wasn’t okay. All the way uptown, she had a really sick feeling about the whole thing. She didn’t know if there was any way to make it all right with him. She figured the worst case was he’d bad-mouth her to his mother. His mother would bad-mouth her to her mother and her mother would kill her. Best case he wouldn’t say anything.

L
ieutenant Braun was still wearing his powder-blue jacket. April spotted it across the squad room when she arrived. Braun was crowding Mike’s desk, talking fast, and poking a finger at the air. He turned around at Mike’s welcoming smile.

“Ah. Detective Woo,” Braun said. A hint of sarcasm edged into his voice.

“Lieutenant Braun.”

April’s desk appeared to be unoccupied by anyone on the Sunday shift. She put her bag down on it. “What’s happening?”

Mike raised a crooked eyebrow, jerking his head at the farthest desk down the line. A preppy-looking young man in a seersucker sport jacket seemed to have tied his body in a knot around a telephone, and was relating to it intimately.

April took him in. Light brown hair, blue eyes, a spattering of freckles across the nose. Medium build. Looked not unlike Dan Quayle, the former vice president. Five eleven to six foot. Where did Braun dig him up?

Braun nodded. “I’m pretty hot shit” was written all over him. He smirked and folded a fresh stick of gum into his mouth. “Name’s Roger McLellan. Says he left town a week ago Friday. That’s the day
before
Maggie got hit. Easy enough to check out. Claims he has no idea what this is all about, none at all. He consented to come down here to help us out with whatever our problem is. But lo and behold, the second he gets here he changes his mind and decides he better not say anything without his lawyer present. Hey,
does that look like a guy who doesn’t know what this is all about?”

“What kind of guy that young knows a lawyer? He knew the number by heart, didn’t even have to look it up. I’m running a sheet on him,” Mike added.

“Maybe they’re friends,” April murmured.

McLellan’s body was still wrapped around the telephone receiver as he whispered into it heatedly.

“Who?” Braun looked at her.

“Him and the lawyer.”

“Yeah, sure. Who’s friends with a lawyer?”

They watched McLellan reluctantly put the receiver back on the phone and straighten up, visibly pulling himself together. When he approached the three detectives, it was with an air of nervous belligerence.

“My attorney is on his way. He told me to tell you I have nothing to say until he gets here. Where would you like me to wait?” McLellan glanced at the barred enclosure opposite the line of desks.

Braun shook his head at the holding cell. Not so fast. “We’ll go downstairs. You want something? Cup of coffee?” he asked. Real friendly.

McLellan said no. They all trudged downstairs to the same questioning room April and Mike had used to interrogate Albert Block five days earlier. April guessed Braun still wasn’t thrilled with his accommodations next to the men’s room.

Peter Langworth, a near-twin of Roger McLellan’s right down to the seersucker jacket, appeared forty-five minutes later.

“Okay, what’s this all about?” the attorney demanded.

What a pair of tough guys. April glanced at Mike, who had one of his sudden coughs.

Braun introduced himself, then nodded at the chairs. “Why don’t you gentlemen take a seat. Mike, go check on the sheet you were talking about.” Braun turned his back on Sanchez.

Stunned, April caught Mike’s eye. What was that little power-play all about? First he gets Sanchez down there on his day off and then he sends him out of the room. She
watched Sanchez’s retreating back. Not one to show his frustration, Mike closed the door quietly as he left.

“Sit down, Detective.” Braun pointed to a chair, then waited for the sitting and scraping to stop. Finally he addressed Roger McLellan. “You know Maggie Wheeler?”

“She’s not in the movement,” McLellan said. “It’s my thing. She has nothing to do with it.”

Braun furrowed his brow at April. What movement?

“Why don’t you tell us about it,” he suggested.

“Maggie has nothing to do with it. She doesn’t want to be involved—”

His lawyer leaned forward. “You don’t have to say anything else, Roger. Lieutenant—”

“Braun.”

“Lieutenant Braun. Why don’t
you
tell
us
what this is about.”

“Fine. Maggie Wheeler was murdered last Saturday night—”

The gasp was audible. “What?” McLellan croaked.

April’s heart plunged. Shit. The guy didn’t know.

Braun went on, unperturbed. “So we’re looking into who killed her.”

“Maggie’s dead?” The lawyer paled. So he knew Maggie Wheeler, too.

“Yes, she’s been dead for a week.” Braun shot them a get-real look. “If you didn’t know that, how come the lawyer?”

“I’ve been out of town. I didn’t know,” McLellan protested. He suddenly got interested in his bitten cuticles, examined one finger after another. “Jesus, all I wanted was to save it,” he muttered. “… So that’s why she never called me back.”

“What?”

“You want to establish Mr. McLellan’s whereabouts on the Saturday Maggie died, is that correct?” Langworth demanded.

“We want to know Mr. McLellan’s relationship to the deceased as well as his whereabouts.” Braun had not spit his gum out. April could see it wadded in his cheek.

“I was in Albany. We had an agreement. She promised me she would wait.”

“Wait for what?” Braun’s face did a little dance. It was clear neither patience nor tact was one of the Lieutenant’s virtues.

“Just wait a second, Roger. You were in Albany. You don’t have to say anything. Lieutenant—uh—”

“Braun. Like the coffeemaker.”

“Maggie had a botched abortion, right?” McLellan looked angry.

“Unh-unh. Someone strung her up on the chandelier in the boutique where she worked.”

“Oh, God. My baby,” Roger McLellan cried. “She killed my baby.” He shook his head back and forth, horrified. “How could she do it?”

“Who’s she?”

“Maggie. You said she hung herself. Oh, God, that stupid bitch—”

“No, Mr. McLellan. She didn’t kill herself. Somebody killed her.”

McLellan slammed his hand on the table. “That’s not possible.”

“Okay, Roger.” Braun dropped the “mister.” “Why don’t you tell us about your relationship with Maggie and why she might want to kill herself?”

The young man shook his head, as if he didn’t want to, then started hesitantly. “We were friends. I don’t know why she’d want to kill herself.… Well, she got pregnant. I don’t know how it happened.”

“You don’t know how it happened.” Braun jerked his head at April to underline that particular remark in her notebook. The man had the mental and emotional awareness of a tree. He didn’t know how it happened. “Got that?”

April, the secretary, nodded, repeating, “He doesn’t know how it happened.”

The door opened. Sanchez handed a folder to Braun. Braun opened it, looked inside briefly, then passed it to April. Sanchez took a chair and made a silent drumbeat on the edge of it with his fingers while April looked over Roger
McLellan’s priors. Guy had over two dozen arrests for obstructing entrances to abortion clinics, harassing clients of abortion clinics, various types of vandalism to abortion clinics, demonstrations. One B and E.

“She wanted to kill my baby, and it looks like she did.”

April finished reading and looked up. McLellan had hidden his face in his hands. His shoulders were shaking with some emotion or other. It wasn’t clear exactly what his regrets were. He seemed more upset about the baby than Maggie. Langworth put his hand on Roger’s arm to comfort—or restrain—him. It struck April that neither of them cared what had happened to Maggie Wheeler.

“Come on, Roger, I’ll take you home.”

“Not so fast. We’re not finished here,” Braun broke in.

“Look at him. He’s in no shape to answer any more questions. In any case, he was out of town when Maggie, uh, died. You can see he doesn’t know anything about it.
When
he feels better—
if
he feels better—you may come interview him in my office, but only subject to a specific written request.”

“You want a subpoena, fine. We’ll get a subpoena.”

“Do that, but don’t forget: If you try to harass a prominent leader of the right-to-life movement, we’ll have the press all over you.” Langworth stood up. So did his client.

The demure Asian lowered her eyes to hide her reaction of total disgust. Way to go, Braun. Well handled. Tactful. Now the possible suspect will walk out of the precinct, get his lawyer pal to rip his shirt and mess his hair, then call the press and scream police brutality. She shook her head, not daring to look at Mike. The two of them would have done a lot better.

J
ason stood on the patio, watching the fog dissipate from the trees below, listening to the nine new messages on his machine since the previous day. He checked his watch. Eight Sunday morning made it eleven on the East Coast. Odd. Three calls from Milicia.

“What is it?” Emma came out of the glass doors holding a glass of orange juice.

He frowned, shaking his head. “Nothing.”

“That’s what you always say.” She turned around and headed back into the house. “It’s always something, and you always say it’s nothing.”

“Hey, don’t go away mad.”

“I know. Just go away.”

“I didn’t mean that.” He followed her through the doors, still holding the phone. A Dr. Wilbur Munchin from Austria was speaking to him on tape, asking about having some meaningful correspondence about his latest paper on listening. Herr Docktor Munchin was in New York and wanted to meet. Then Charles was telling him he was in Manhattan on his own for the weekend and wondered if Jason was free for dinner. Then the fourth call from Milicia, breathless, saying she was desperately worried about her sister. It seemed that she was always desperately worried about her sister. Maybe worrying about her sister was her thing. Milicia rang off, and his patient Douglas started telling him he was having a panic attack over flying to Chicago to his father’s funeral. “Do I really have to go?” came the plaintive cry. Jason pushed the button to save the calls.

“Was that for me?” he asked, watching Emma drink the orange juice he’d watched her squeeze only moments before.

“No.”

“You know I have to call in.”

“You have only two speeds, Jason. On and on.”

“I’m off now. Look.” He put the phone back in its cradle. But he felt bad about Douglas, torn between the funeral and his terror of the skies.
Go
, he said silently.
Go for it, Douglas
.

“I guess I’d feel better if I knew who they were,” Emma murmured. “All these unseen rivals for your love and attention.”

“The whole point is that no one knows who they are,” he replied mildly. It was better not to get defensive with Emma over old grievances. He refrained from adding no one was supposed to know who she was either. And her film career had changed all that.

Emma swallowed the last of the orange juice without offering him a single sip. She would never have done that in the past. He sighed. “I miss you,” he said.

She went back into the kitchen without answering. After a minute or two he looked up Milicia’s number in his telephone book and dialed it. In spite of Milicia’s desperate eagerness to talk to him, she wasn’t waiting for his call. He got her answering machine and spoke to her on tape. Same with Douglas.

He heard the sound of the juicer and perked up. He and Emma still had a whole day and night.

Sometime between five and five-thirty on Monday morning, Jason watched the dawn slowly suffuse Emma’s room with a soft gray light from the skylight over the bed. A thick blanket of fog did not descend low enough to hide the branches of the eucalyptus tree that towered over the house on the side of the back patio.