A Clean Kill

Twelve

By the time April emerged from the Wilson house, the number of Department vehicles had diminished and the number of eager reporters had grown. It took her a few seconds to locate Woody in the crowd. He was buried in a clot of bystanders across the street, talking with a pretty, dark-haired girl in charge of a heavily laden stroller. The stroller was stuffed with a wild-haired toddler eating raisins out of a plastic bag, a plastic tricycle, and a net sack filled with sand toys. April hurried toward them.

Questions barraged her from all sides as she dodged through the crowd of reporters.

"Do you have any leads on the killer?"

"Is Mr. Wilson a suspect?"

"Was the house broken into?"

April didn't let anyone catch her eye. It wasn't her case, and she wanted to avoid attention.

"I'm not the go-to person here. Try DCPI," was all she said.

"They never say anything," someone grumbled.

"April, what are you doing over here?" A female voice screamed over all the others.

April grimaced and turned her head away. It was someone she knew. Lily Eng, a Chinese TV reporter who'd done a story on her last year, was elbowing through the crowd. "Out of the way, she's my sister," she cried. "April, April."

Woody raised his head at the sound of her name and quickly ended his conversation with the young woman.

April couldn't avoid her. She paused in the street just long enough for Lily to charge. Lily's hair was longer than April's, cut in a shag. But they were both about the same size with delicate oval faces, almond eyes, and bee-stung lips. They were also wearing the same purple pantsuit and did indeed look like sisters.

"Hey, cutie, nice suit," April said, walking quickly to the car.

Lily grabbed her arm to slow her down. "Can you give me some background on the case?"

"No."

"Nothing confidential," she wheedled. "Please. Just background. I won't quote you."

April shook her head. "I don't know a thing about it, sis."

"Fine, I get it. I'll call you later. Hi—Woody Baum, right?" Lily's voice turned to honey.

"Hi, yourself," he said, dead meat for the second time that day. He was an easy mark.

"Woody!" April barked.

He jumped to open the passenger door, shut her safely in, then ran around to the driver's side.

"Was that work or play?" April asked about the girl with the stroller.

"Work. She's the next-door nanny, knows that Wilson babysitter well. There's a gang of them that hangs out at the Boar Park together to complain about their lives. I have some names and addresses." He fired up the engine and backed out.

"Good going. She have anything useful to say?"

"Six months ago the babysitter was hired to be a cook in a restaurant, but Wayne put her on house detail instead. She's pretty pissed off about that."

Interesting. That was not the story Remy had given her. Maybe she didn't tell the truth to anybody. "Anything else?"

"She's worried that a psycho's loose in the neighborhood. Apparently there have been some rapes around here."

"Really?" Mike hadn't mentioned that.

"Uh-huh, do you have a hypo yet?"

"No." April did not have a hypothetical on what had come down here. She turned away from the vultures huddled around the door of the deceased. They were part of the territory, but she never got used to them.

"Well, do you have any ideas?" Woody pressed.

"Uh-huh." But she wasn't going to share them.

"Where to?"

"Five six between five and six. A studio called Workout. Maddy Wilson's trainer owns it."

"Nice address."

"Very nice." The location of Derek Meke's studio happened to be in the very heart of midtown, on the west side of Fifth Avenue, so it was in their precinct. She gave him the number on Fifty-sixth Street, and within fifteen minutes they were driving along the block she called Restaurant Row. Fifty-sixth Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues consisted mainly of not-very-high old buildings with restaurants and stores on the first floors and small businesses—hair salons, couture dressmakers, shirt-makers, used-book dealers, galleries, and the like— on the upper floors. Workout turned out to be on the second floor of a rundown four-story building in the middle of the block.

At six minutes after one p.m. Woody left the car in a no-parking zone. By then April had filled him in on a few key details of the case, and he was good to go.

"You think we need backup?" Woody asked as they entered the building and pushed the button of a very sorry-looking elevator.

April didn't reply. Two of their prime suspects were already being questioned. If it was a boyfriend/girlfriend thing, as Mike seemed to think, most likely the killer would be Wayne or Remy— or possibly a combination of the two. Maybe it was a love triangle. Babysitter/wife/husband, or even love square: Babysitter/husband, wife/trainer. But never in her memory had a square resulted in a murder, nor could she think of an instance in which a trainer had offed a customer. Why kill a golden goose?

"I think we're good," April assured him.

They had rules about risk-taking. Derek might have been the last person to see Maddy Wilson alive, but different kinds of suspects required diferent methods of approach. The armed and dangerous, crazy-rabbit killers without much organization or control had to be approached with extreme caution. The careful killers, who took their time at the scene of a crime, then walked away in broad daylight, were likely to return to their lives as if nothing had occurred. Those sociopaths killed without shame or remorse and lied, thinking they were telling the truth. Their mistake was in believing they could get away with it. If Derek was their suspect, he wasn't going to be waiting for them with a carving knife.

The elevator showed no signs of movement, so she tilted her head toward the stairs; they started up. At the top, the only door on the second floor was open to a gym that looked like dozens of others all over the city. April had even trained in a few. A couple of people who'd taken a few courses somewhere and called themselves trainers got together, rented out a place, and set up shop, charging a hundred an hour to people who didn't know any better.

Far from the big trendy exercise facilities with dozens of treadmills and TVs, along with saunas and juice bars, each of these little gyms had its own specialty and loyal following. Interactive stretching, massage, second-stage physical therapy, Pilates, hot yoga, aerobics. There was a long list. April had been a martial-arts practitioner herself in the past. Now that she had the rank to get her way, however, she no longer felt the pressing need to throw large people to the ground.

Workout was a loft space with two massage tables, pulleys attached to the wall, and three area for mat work. The equipment was limited to one Precor, one treadmill, a StairMaster, and some Pilates equipment similar to what April had seen in Maddy Wilson's gym. None of the machines were in use at the moment. The massage tables were occupied by a tall woman with huge breasts, and a tiny brunette with only slightly smaller breasts. Both were having their limbs yanked in all directions. From the description given of him by Remy, April guessed that the bulked-up blond male stretching the brunette's leg way past her ear was Derek.

He paused to look them over. "Can I help you?"

April hauled her gold shield out of her purse. "I'm Lieutenant April Woo Sanchez," she said, rattling out the whole mouthful this time. "And this is Detective Woody Baum."

Woody nodded his hello. "We're looking for Derek Meke," he said.

"That would be me," the trainer said easily. He didn't pause from his task of pulling the leg of the brunette on the table high enough to make her squeak. "What can I do you for?"

"Is there a private place where we can talk?" April asked.

"I'm in the middle of a session here. I have a break at three. How about then?" he said with a smooth smile.

"It won't wait. This is about the murder of Madeleine Wilson," Woody blurted.

"What!" The brunette wrenched herself out of Derek's grasp, and sat up.

Derek looked skeptical. "I saw Maddy a little while ago. She was fine."

The brunette lost it. "Oh, my God. She never returned my calls this morning. Oh, God. She wasn't putting me off. " She coughed and started choking. "Oh, my God. I feel sick." She jumped off the table and ran to the bathroom.

"She's like that," Derek explained. "You're putting us on, right? You two don't look like cops."

April didn't ask what cops were supposed to look like.

He made a face. "Come on. You really upset Alison. She's Maddy's best friend. What's going on?"

"Mrs. Wilson was murdered in her gym sometime between seven forty-five and nine fifteen," April told him.

"What?" His mouth dropped open.

"Did you kill Maddy Wilson?" she asked.

"What?"

He didn't seem to have much of a vocabulary. He moved toward the window, where the sun slanted in from the west, and collapsed in one of the three hammock chairs circling a glass table littered with fitness magazines.

"Jesus. I can't believe it." He shook his head. "She was fine when I left."

Woody hunkered down in a second chair. April took the third. "Where do you live, Derek?"

"In Queens." He licked his plump lips. "Is this the third degree?" He looked from one to the other as if he couldn't decide which one to address.

"I don't know what the third degree is," April replied.

"You were the last person to see Mrs. Wilson alive. That makes you very important," Woody interjected. He knew what the third degree was.

"Oh, Jesus." Derek paused to consider that, then said, "How do you know I was the last one? Maybe someone came in after me. They might have a security camera. They talked about getting one," he said hopefully.

That was a pretty good return from a guy who looked like a meathead. Unfortunately, Wayne had already told them he hadn't gotten around to getting a security camera. "How long have you known Maddy?" April asked.

He was still shaking his head in disbelief. "I don't know, a long time. Three or four years. Sometime after her second baby she had a bad ski accident and needed rehab. She's a champion skier, you know."

April whipped out her notebook and wrote down Champion skier, bad fall. "Did she come here for her rehab?"

"No, I didn't have this place then." Emotion finally flooded Derek's handsome face. Tears welled up in his eyes, and his shoulders shook with sobs.

April didn't give him long to grieve. "Where did you meet?"

"Crunch. I was there at that time. Everybody went there. Alison, Maddy, all the girls." He pulled himself together.

"Is that where Alison and Maddy met?" April asked.

"I don't know. I think they've known each other longer."

"What was your arrangement with Mrs. Wilson?" Woody broke in.

Derek found a handkerchief in his pocket and blew his nose. "My arrangement?"

"What did you do with her?" Woody asked.

"I helped her set up her gym, did her nutrition, advised her on spiritual matters."

"Really." Woody snickered.

Derek glared at him. "The body animates the spirit. A healthy person needs both body and spirit to function well. 1 went to her house three times a week for an hour in the momng."

"Was Mrs. Wilson a healthy person?"

"Yes."

"Did you have an intimate relationship with her?" Still Woody.

Derek was unfazed by the question. "Of course."

"Did anything out of the ordinary happen this morning?" April asked.

He turned to her, blowing air out of his mouth noisily. "Maddy was in a bad mood."

"Was that unusual for her?"

"She has a temper. Today the babysitter pushed her over the edge, so she fired her. It happened just before 1 got there at eight."

"You were on time?' '

"To the second."

"Okay, now, what's this about Remy?"

"Maddy told her to be out by noon. It was about the fourth babysitter in a year, so she was really ticked. 1 got her feeling better by the end of the session, though."

"Then what happened?" April asked.

"I left," he said simply. "Maddy wanted to oversee Remy's packing to make sure she didn't take anything when she left. Some of them do, you know." Tears pooled up in his eyes again. "How did she die?" he almost whimpered.

"She was attacked in her shower," April said.

"Oh, shit." Reflexively his hands shot up to protect himself from Maddy's attacker. "Wayne finally got her," he sobbed. "He must have come back after 1 was gone, the jealous bastard!"

April glanced at Woody. You. He nodded and

started firing off questions while she kept her eye on the bathroom door. She figured that between the trainer and the best friend, they might actually get the whole story.