Judging Time (34 page)

"Emma, do you know Wally Jefferson?"

Emma shook her head. "No. Who is he?"

"He's Petersen's driver."

"I told you last time you asked me that I didn't know Tor very well. Years ago, before I knew Jason, when Tor was between wives, Rick wanted to fix us up, but Merrill didn't think Tor would ever stay with anybody. She knew he wasn't for me. I heard about Rick's car and the cocaine on the news yesterday, what-?"

"Did you know that Merrill used cocaine?"

Emma nodded. "That's another thing they fought about."

"You held back a lot, didn't you? Thanks, Emma. You were a great help."

"I can't feel too guilty, April. You're very smart. I knew you'd find out. I didn't want it to come from me. Snorting is what Tor and Merrill did together. Rick didn't like drugs and neither did Tor's wife. For Tor and Merrill it was like going out drinking. I knew they were high when they came backstage."

"Emma, what happened when you left them at the restaurant? And don't hold back anything now."

Emma was quiet for a moment. She closed her eyes and seemed to go into another place. "I was in a hurry. There was a limo parked outside. The driver was a white man. Yes, he was—white, I'm sure of it. Was Tor's driver white or black?"

"Black. What kind of car?"

"I don't know. He offered me a ride, that's how I know he was white. They do that sometimes when they have more than an hour to kill, you know, to make money off the books. I turned to look at him. I thought about it, but I don't like negotiating with them over price. It's makes mc nervous. A taxi was coming down the street right then. There was snow on the street, but it wasn't snowing. A woman got out of the taxi. I got in. That's it."

"Do you know what Tor's wife looks like?"

"I've seen her picture in the papers."

"Could the woman getting out of the taxi have been her?"

"Oh, God, I hadn't thought of that. God, I don't know. Oh, God, April, I was in a hurry. I remember she had black tights on, and she was wearing a black mink coat. I remember it because it was just like Merrill's. God, Merrill had a gorgeous coat."

"What did the woman's coat look like?"

"I don't know—big, swing skirt. That's all I can rcmember."

"Could it have been Merrill's coat?"

Emma closed her eyes. "Merrill was wearing lier suede coat that night, wasn't she?"

"Yes."

She shook her head. "It wasn't Merrill's coat."

"What about her shoes?"

"I didn't see her shoes. I was looking at the coat."

"Could it have been Merrill's coat and a man's feet?"

"Don't ask me these things, April. I don't know." Emma was getting frantic.

"Would you recognize the woman if you saw her in the same coat again?"

"I don't know—maybe."

"Okay, what else did you see?"

"I saw another couple come out of the restaurant. It couldn't have been Rick getting out of the taxi. I'm sure I would have known if I'd seen Rick. I know his walk. I know how his body moves. I know his gestures. I know he wasn't there."

"You think you didn't see him. The eye sees what the mind is used to seeing. Could Rick fit into Merrill's coat?" April glanced down at her plate and realized she'd eaten more than half the tuna salad Emma had set out.

"Oh, God, don't put me in this position. I don't know who was in the mink coat. It could have been anyone. What about the murder in Rick's car? Could he have anything to do with that?"

"Another mystery, Emma. Look, I have to go. Does Jason know all of this?"

Emma shook her head. "Merrill was afraid of Jason. She thought if he knew how unhappy she was, he'd try to get her into therapy. And she was right, he would have."

Jason's face was stony cold as April came into his office and took a chair. "Any news?" he demanded.

Hello and how are you, too.
April looked around at the clocks that didn't chime. All that ticking every day would drive her nuts. It was exactly noon. Not even twenty-four hours had passed since she'd seen him last. Since then, however, she'd offended him and everybody else she knew. How many times did she have to say she was sorry for doing what she was paid to do. She cleared her throat, choking on repentance.

"Look, I'm sorry about what happened last night. I didn't know Iriarte would act that way," she began.

Jason didn't reply. His body was perfectly still.

"If you wanted an apology, that was it." April crossed her legs and swiveled back and forth in Jason's analyzing chair. She wondered what it was like to be a patient, having to tell some doctor every single thought that popped into her head. She used to think that by virtue of his profession Jason could read her mind, but now she knew he couldn't. He didn't know she'd just had lunch with his wife.

Jason didn't move. He was playing his waiting game. April knew how it worked because she often played it herself. Jason could make silence as deep and forbidding as the darkest tunnel full of scaly monsters. But April came from a culture that believed the tongue was the enemy of the neck. Better to keep mouth shut than say wrong thing and be hung from nearest tree.

"So, what's on your mind?" She broke first.

"A lot of things, April."

"Want to tell me?"

"Who can trust a cop?"

April blinked. "Who can trust a shrink?"

They sat in uncompanionable silence. Jason played with a piece of paper on his desk. The back of his hand brushed the desktop. "Why don't you fill me in."

April watched a clock pendulum move back and forth. "It looks like Petersen died first," she said.

"How do you know?"

"The bloodstains on his coat. Merrill Liberty bled to death on his back. That means he had to go down first."

Jason frowned. "What's the significance?"

"Petersen may have died of a heart attack, but not from seeing Merrill assaulted. Merrill was struck in the throat, probably from the front because there were no bruises on her body to show she'd been restrained or grabbed from behind. Another thing is she bled a lot, but the wound was very small, very neatly done. It probably took several minutes for her to die."

Jason coughed. "Why are you telling me this?"

"Your friend may be a very cruel killer. Why did you ask me over, Jason? I'm really pressed for time." April watched him play with a piece of paper, watched the pendulum of the clock on his desk. The minutes ticked by. He didn't answer so she went on. "The toxicology reports came in on Tor Petersen. Turns out he was a big cocaine user, so was Merrill—there was cocaine in the trunk of Rick's car."

"Do you know what kind of weapon killed Merrill?" Jason interrupted.

"Some kind of pointed object. I get all the catalogs of knives you can send away for in the mail, and some you can't. There's a whole arsenal of deadly blades out there. But I haven't seen anything that fits the description of this murder weapon."

"How about an ice pick?"

April shook her head. "The ME measured. We measured. Too big, believe it or not."

"Hmm. So you think Petersen died first. Was the cause of death related to complications of a drug overdose?"

"The report says no."

"They're still certain it was the heart?"

"Yes, they say it's the heart."

"But you're not sure."

April hesitated. "I'm not convinced it was a natural. But I don't know how it could have been murder yet."

"Okay. Was Merrill with him when he died?"

"No, she'd gone into the kitchen to say good-night to the chef. She left the restaurant after Petersen. We're not sure if he was still alive when she came out."

"So Merrill came out, possibly saw Tor die . . . then someone killed her with the only thing at hand."

April nodded. "That's my personal opinion."

"A double homicide, after al." Jason scratched his beard. "So, you don't think Merrill was killed in a jealous rage."

"No, I don't think she was killed in a rage, but that doesn't mean your friend didn't kill her. It just means her death may have been an afterthought."

Jason made some angry noises. "Rick Liberty would not have murdered his wife as an afterthought. That's just not sound psychological reasoning. I don't think he would have killed her for any reason—but to kill as an
afterthought,
that's outrageous."

"Jason, I may lose my job on this. The medical examiner found a natural cause of death, and I'm getting very unpopular with this line of—"

"You think Merrill Liberty saw something when she came out of the restaurant that made someone want to kill her?"

"Yes, and I need to talk to Liberty. I really need to find him."

"I don't know where he is." Jason's face was stony once more.

"You said that before."

"It's still true. By the way, did they x-ray Petersen's body?"

"Of course."

"And were the X rays negative for foreign objects?"

April started to sweat inside her sweater. "What are you getting at?"

"Didn't you tell me that Petersen's cause of death was a pericardial tamponade?"

"A what?"

"Perforated heart sac. That's when bleeding in the pericardium stops the heart from beating. In a massive heart attack, the heart loses its rhythm and runs amok, causing an appearance of perforation to the pericardial sac. If the perforation occurs first, the results can be the same."

April blinked. What?

"This reminds me of a case I had when I was a resident," Jason mused.

April watched the pendulum. Time was passing. She had to get moving. "Yeah?" she prompted, tapping her foot.

Jason frowned, remembering. "It was a very disturbed woman. She was brought into ER again and again, having to have objects removed from her body. Once she shoved a lightbulb up her anus, another time a broken Coke bottle up her vagina. She inserted pieces of broken glass in her breasts. We kept patching her up. Then she started weaving bent carpet needles into her skin. One day, she shoved a coat hanger up under her rib cage. We could see it in the X ray. The wire went behind her lung, so it didn't collapse her lung. But it went in so far and was so close to the pericardial sac around her heart that the surgeons were afraid they'd cause a pericardial tamponade and kill her in their attempt to get it out."

"Wow." April raised her hand to the place above her stomach where her rib cage flared out on both sides and there was a soft unprotected spot in the middle. It was the same place where Tor Petersen's corpse had a pimple. She felt a renewed respect for Jason. Even though he was an M.D., she had never thought of him as a real doctor.

"And did they kill her getting it out?" she demanded.

"No, they were first-rate surgeons."

"Jesus," she muttered. "A coat hanger. Look, I've got to go."

"Well, take this with you." Jason handed over the paper he'd been playing with. April read it. When she was finished, she swiveled back and forth, staring at the wall. "So Liberty's been corresponding with you on E-mail," she said finally.

"Only twice. This is the second time."

"What's this about giving Merrill's coat to Emma?"

"I don't know, it's odd."

It sure was. If he'd been wearing it and he was the killer, the coat would have traces of blood on it. April's scalp tingled. "Thanks." She hadn't thought of E-mail. She wasn't exactly sure how E-mail worked, but she figured with a warrant they could tap into the on-line system and trace the phone he was sending from. Jason probably didn't know that, though.

"What did you tell Liberty?" she asked quickly.

"I told him I'd talk to you."

"Thank you for showing me this," she said again.

"You said last night you don't have any evidence Liberty was the killer. No blood, no footprints. No witness who saw him on the scene. So you just want to talk to him, right?"

April nodded, even though the picture had changed a bit since then.

"What about your own suspicions, April? Why would anybody get in trouble for suspecting a double homicide instead of a single one in a very public case?"

April flinched at the attack. "All right, what's on your mind? Do you want to negotiate Liberty's return?" She waved the E-mail in the air. "Is that what this is about?"

Jason hesitated. "I'm not sure I trust the police."

"You can trust me. I'm the police. We need him back, Jason. We need to talk to him."

Jason looked down at the worn Oriental rug at his feet, then glanced at the clock. "Want to go out for a bite?"

"Thanks, I've already eaten." April smiled. With your wife. "But I could sit with you."

"Fine." He made a gesture with his hand for her to get up and get out of there. She did, figuring that for some reason of his own Jason had decided to forgive her.

37

A
t 3:31
P.M.,
Rosa Washington was alone in the women's room on the second floor. About twenty minutes earlier she'd finished doing the autopsy of a homeless woman who'd died of exposure in a doorway of a vacant building and gone unnoticed for some four days. Rosa had finished up, showered, and changed her clothes, but now she was on another floor, washing her hands again.

For her, the hardest thing about her job was the smell of the dead. She washed and washed, particularly her hands, but never felt cleansed of the stink. Nothing else about the dead traveled home with her. Not the colors—the greens and purples and blacks of skin stretched to the bursting point, the body fluids that streamed out like an endless polluted river, or the texture of tissue and fat so long dead it had turned into tallow. Neither was she much distressed by half-rotted corpses dressed in the rankest rags, or mummified babies. She attacked each former being with the same zeal, proud of what she could reveal about them from their remains.

She met the larva that was laid by flies in the eyes and mouths of corpses within minutes of death with particularly avid interest. She actually thought of the puffy maggots that emerged from the larval stage to begin feasting only a few hours later as her friends. The maggots reproduced rapidly. By calculating the number of generations thronging into the soft, wet, open places on a corpse, Rosa could count the hours and days since death occurred. The maggots were only one of many clues and signposts that helped pinpoint time of death. The hours since life stopped and the decomposition of body tissues began could also be estimated by the body's temperature falling to that of the surrounding environment, by the patterns of reds and purples on the skin that showed how the blood settled in the body, and many other ways.