A Killing Gift

Twelve

"Jesus, April. I'm sorry about the mess." Kathy Bernardino was an attractive woman about April's age and size who didn't look her best as she confronted the chaos in the house where she'd grown up.

She was wearing jeans and a black turtleneck speckled with what appeared to be white towel lint. It was clear she'd made no effort to dress for the trip east, just grabbed her purse and come as she'd been when she heard the bad news. Her thick dark hair looked as if she'd pulled it back into a ponytail without brushing it first. Her nose and eyes were red.

April knew that Kathy had returned to New York several times during the year her mother had fought her cancer, and had been with her during the last week of her life. Now, only a few months later, she was back for another death, this one a total surprise. The chaos was unexpected, too. Kathy seemed mortified that she couldn't find a sofa or a chair to offer April that wasn't covered with the detritus of her late father's and mother's lives.

"What a fucking mess." She shook her head, the tears coming at the way her father had left the world and his house.

"He told me he was getting someone to help him. God knows, he could afford it. His sister, I don't know…" Her sentence trailed off.

April touched her shoulder. Don't worry about it.

"Fucking mess," Kathy repeated. She dragged a box filled with a hodgepodge of books and papers to the edge of the sofa and let it drop to the floor, then shoved it out of the way.

April scanned the living room that Lorna had decorated with such loving care. It truly was a mess, but not the kind of mess a burglar would leave, things tipped over and flung in all directions. Here it looked as if Bernardino had begun the process of moving but hadn't known how to go about it in an orderly fashion. The house seemed to be disgorging its contents from the inside, as if the disparate items had just tumbled from their cupboards, dressers, and closets all at once.

A whole lifetime's collection of stuff was out of the hiding places, covering every surface. Clothes, books, photos from every stage of their lives, a jumble of female house accessories in every category-statues, vases, needlepoint pillows with cute sayings on them. Kathy and Bill's artwork from years ago. Porcelain, colored glass, mugs. Decorative watering cans in graduated sizes. Linens. Artificial flower arrangements, dead and dying plants, housewares, lamps, long-ago-abandoned sports equipment. Maybe Bernardino had just begun the sorting process prior to packing and giving away. Maybe he'd just given up. It was hard to tell.

Kathy, it doesn't matter, April beamed at her. They could go outside into the backyard. The patio furniture was still covered from winter, but April could see a stone bench out there in the green lawn that needed cutting. She pointed at the bench. It was just six. The dense fog of yesterday had departed with the morning sun. At six p.m. it was still light and pretty out there, the sun dappling through the new leaves on the trees. An unseasonably warm evening.

Kathy followed her gaze. "No, I used to read there when I was little. My escape. I don't ever want to sit there again. We'll stay here." Kathy pointed to the space on the sofa she'd made, then pushed some more stuff onto the floor. The pile hit the rug with a muffled thump. "Sit here, okay?"

April nodded. Whatever. This was tough. The fact that Bernardino was gone was bad. Kathy's seeing her parents' house like this was bad. Bill lived in Brooklyn and was coming over to get Kathy in an hour or so. That was bad, too. April thought it through. The whole situation was rough.

Four hours ago she'd decided to leave Mike to his thing and obey his order to go home. She'd accepted a ride out to Queens from a uniform, but had stayed only long enough to get a neighbor who was always home with her baby to make a few calls for her.

Missy Yu had called Kathy Bernardino to tell her that Sergeant Woo was suffering from laryngitis, but wanted to offer her condolences today. At that time Kathy must not have heard Bill's suspicion. Her reply had been to come as soon as possible. So April had grabbed her laptop and zip drive, settled her bruised body into her car, and driven from Queens to Westchester.

Now she sat down on the red-and-blue flower-print sofa and looked around for a plug. Before she could locate one Kathy threw off her mantle of grief and went professional on her. She gave April the shrewd look of an FBI special agent, and April knew right away what was coming.

"I heard you got hurt. Is that why you can't talk?" Kathy asked.

From long habit, April shrouded her eyes and shrugged. I'm okay.

"You don't look so okay. What happened?"

April considered the question. She didn't want to be paranoid. Kathy was the daughter of a cop, after all. They'd known each other slightly and had always been friendly before Kathy became a Feeb. Right now they were supposed to be on the same side, but maybe Bill had shared his suspicions with her after all. April wondered how much trouble she could get into by sharing information. She hadn't spoken to Internal Affairs yet, but there was no question the unit was going to be all over this. April would certainly be called on the carpet and maybe have to clean it for almost getting herself killed last night. And Kathy was first and foremost an FBI special agent. It didn't really affect the situation except that NYPD liked to keep things in the family. Things were getting complicated.

April felt herself being sucked into the dangerous currents of Department politics. Could she trust Bernardino's daughter? Should she hint at the trouble Bill might be creating for himself by crying scandal? DAs could easily be investigated and disgraced. They got shunned. They got fired. She coughed to test her sore throat. A little sound came out but not much of one. The cough did produce a decision, though. April realized that she had only one story to tell and she would tell the same one to anyone who asked. She opened her laptop and typed the short version.

When she was finished, Kathy read it and sighed. "My father didn't like strangers crowding him even in bars. If anyone got close enough to take him, it would have to be someone he knew."

So Bill had talked to her. April lifted a shoulder and wrote, Any ideas?

Kathy covered the bottom of her nose and mouth with a hand as she thought about it. "You know, I could go way back on this. Dad was an MP in the army before he became a cop. Over in Vietnam. Before I was born. He's always been in law enforcement. He was a damn good cop, and good cops make enemies. You know that."

April guessed she did know. She had a few enemies herself. Did he have some special buddies from then that he kept up with?

"Yeah, I heard stories. I never met any of them, though."

Helpful. What about pictures? Do you have pictures?

"Oh, yes, there are a lot of pictures. Do you suspect one of them? Someone from then?"

I don't know. Just the way he was taken down suggests a military angle. Every killing tells a story; you know that. So what could it be here, revenge from an old gripe? A new one? Any ideas? she asked again. It took a while to type it all.

"No," Kathy broke in before she was done.

What about his cases. Did he ever talk to you about anything special? April tried something else.

"Oh, sure, all the time. Dad wasn't one of those guys who kept work and home separate. A lot of them do, you know. They pack up the gun and take off for work and you never know where they are or when they're coming back. And when they do get back, they give you that look that says, 'No questions, please.' That puts up a wall no one can get through."

Kathy seemed proud of the way her father had been. "Dad liked to talk about his cases. Not the gory stuff, but the puzzles, the personalities. He liked what he did. He must have, or Bill and I wouldn't do what we do." She paused for a minute, refocusing on April's question, then shook her head.

"Enemies… I just don't know." Then her expression hardened. "He had that money, that lottery money. What was it, fifteen million after taxes?"

Really? April had no idea it was that much. She'd never asked.

"It was all in the newspapers. His name, his profession. Pretty much everything but his phone number. What about that angle?" Kathy asked.

Yeah, we'll look into it for sure. Kathy, did he give you any of it? Did he promise it to you? How was he handling it?

"Oh, jeez. The truth is he wasn't much interested. Mom was the one who wanted to strike it rich and move to Florida, you know. She probably spent more on lottery tickets over the years than she did on food. It used to piss Dad off big-time." Kathy let out a short laugh at the old family conflict. Her father the cop. Her mother the gambler.

"After he got that money I'll bet a thousand people called him. Money managers, stockbrokers, bankers. Every neighbor. And the causes-oh, God! Cancer, heart fund, starving children. Police Foundation. Half of Chinatown. Maybe more than a thousand requests. There's a stack of grant requests in here somewhere. He was collecting them."

Did he have a plan?

"Yeah, get out of town. That was his plan."

A spending plan, I mean, April typed.

"Well, he was a shrewd guy. He wanted a simple life. A little room somewhere. Nothing special. We thought he'd get over it." Kathy gave April rueful smile. "And he thought it was our money because it was Mom's money. He wasn't going to give it away to strangers anytime soon."

But what about you? Didn't your mom give some of it to you before she died?

Kathy shook her head. "Too sick to care. She left it to Dad. He didn't want to deal with it. End of story."

April found this hard to believe. Bernardino won millions and was holding out on his kids? Why? And Kathy didn't seem upset about it. Wouldn't she be upset? Nobody couldn't use money. She and Mike could use it. They wanted to buy a house. Her stomach began to churn as the scope of the investigation needed began to sink in. Somebody had to trace every one of those thousand calls to Bernardino, check out who sent him emails, who sent him letters. What they all wanted and who got what. For indeed Bernardino must have promised or given away some of it. He must have. April thought back on all the times Bernardino had helped out his buddies one way or another when things got tough. Whatever Kathy said, Bernardino would take requests for money seriously. But she was right about one thing. Her father wasn't just a murdered cop. He was also a murdered lottery winner, a lottery winner who hadn't shared with his kids. Weird.

Are you going to keep working now? April typed. She meant at the agency, now that she stood to inherit half of that money.

"I'm going to work on this," Kathy said angrily.

Your dad was a friend of mine, April reminded her.

Kathy read the words on the screen. "I know. You risked your life for him."

April's chin moved from side to side. There hadn't been any heroism involved. Just reflex. He promoted me. He was my rabbi. He brought me along when other people wouldn't. Lot of people thought I was a wimp, a girl. A lesbo Chink.

April finished typing the last two words and flushed. There hadn't been many Chinese cops even in Chinatown a decade ago, but no one had thought very much of them. They were small of stature, insecure in the white culture, had a nerdy look. She'd never revealed her feelings about this to anyone before. Out loud she always said that people were fair, that the old guard was fair. You didn't have to be a guy, and a white guy at that, to get ahead in the Department. But when she was coming up it hadn't been true. Not at all.

"I know how much he admired you," Kathy murmured. "He might have pretended to be a chauvinist, but he wasn't really. He had his prejudices. He didn't like the agency, but he was proud when I was accepted."

April nodded. I'd like your help… . She typed in the dots, hinting without asking outright.

"I understand," Kathy said.

April typed some more. Her fingers were beginning to feel the strain. Look, I don't want anything to disappear from here. Who knows what's here. We need the materials, all of them. His old notebooks, whatever files he has, everything in the computer, in the e-mail file. We can zip it right out. The letters and requests he got. I need to go through everything. We don't want any problems down the line.

"I understand," Kathy repeated. April could see her considering her brother's take on it. There might be things he'd want to hide. But finally she said, "Okay, you have a good resolution record. A hundred percent. I'm glad you're working the case."

April flushed at the misconception. Not a hundred percent at all. Occasionally she didn't solve one.

Kathy sniffed and went on. "At least he wasn't a creep. He wasn't into porno or computer dating or anything like that," she said about her dad.

How do you know? April typed.

"I checked. He had no funny names for the chat rooms. His on-line buddies were all cops, retired cops. He had no girlie files. Probably the only man in America…" Her eyes teared up again.

Bernardino's on-line buddies were all cops. April shivered. She'd have to check them out, every single one of them. Every old army buddy. It was getting late. Bill would be arriving soon. She had a headache. The typing was getting her down.

Zip his computer now, okay? she typed. I'll be back for the written stuff. You could identify his regular contacts. I may need photos. Who knows… maybe we'll get lucky.

Kathy nodded and got up to lead the way. April followed with her laptop and the zip drive.

"He turned Bill's room into an office. You're welcome to it," Kathy said as she picked her way up stairs that were littered with piles of women's clothes and shoes, probably Lorna's. "I'm really sorry about this."

The upstairs hallway looked like an attic, but Bernardino's office was another story. All signs of Bill's adolescence were long gone except for the red-and-green-plaid curtains on the windows and a matching spread on the single sleigh bed. Everything else was perfectly neat. The large office-type desk showed that a tidy adult had worked here. The phone had a blinking message light and caller ID with eighty-three calls stored in it. April's heart thudded with excitement. His whole world was opening. The computer was a Micron with a flat screen. April punched the on button and Windows 98 came up.

Good old Bernardino. Everything on his desk was labeled and arranged just so, his notebooks, stacks of old files, the proposals Kathy had mentioned. Boxes of photos. It looked as if he'd trashed his home life, but had been carefully cataloging his work life. As if for some future reference. Amazing.

"He was a good guy, right?" Kathy said.

April sat down at the desk, cleared the screen, and typed, The best! Then she got to work.