Burning Time

28

At exactly eight o’clock in the morning, Sanchez dropped the envelope with the five letters April had given him the night before on her desk. He smiled. “Guess where they come from?”

“New York,” April said promptly. She bet it was the husband. He looked just like a Kennedy. She didn’t like the way he came in by himself, talking about his wife’s problem. Maybe it was his problem.

Sanchez shook his head. “Guess again.”

“What is this, a guessing game?”

Sanchez raised a shoulder slightly. He was wearing a gray shirt, a darker gray jacket, and a black tie. April couldn’t decide whether she liked the combination or not. Wednesday and Thursday she worked the eight-to-four shift. So did Sanchez. They were on the same schedule. She was forced to think about that half the night because her mother had a lot of questions about the red Camaro.

“Why don’t Jimmy drive you home in white Baron?” Sai asked.

“LeBaron,” April said. Her mother knew very well he was at work in Brooklyn and couldn’t possibly get to Astoria at that hour. But she was wondering about a lot of things herself. Why didn’t Jimmy care about her enough to give her her car back? If Jimmy had returned her car, she could have driven to the range herself. No, wait a minute. Why did he have to take her car in the first place? She loved that car, really loved it. She frowned. Apparently he loved it, too.

“You want to know or not?” Sanchez asked, noting the frown.

“Sure I do.” She forced herself to look at him square in the face. What was it about that face that was so compelling? The man was nice, gentle? How could a man be nice? That just didn’t make any sense.

“Well, they’ve been handled too much to get even any partials, but they come from San Diego,” Sanchez said with a note of triumph.

“What?” She must have been distracted by the thought of her mother or the subway ride or something.

“I said San Diego,” Sanchez enunciated elaborately.

“No!” April’s breath caught. In six years on the force that name had never crossed her lips. Now she had two cases with a link there.

Sanchez stood beside her desk, a hand on his hip and a smile under his mustache. “Oh, yeah, why not?”

“That’s where that girl dead-ended. Ellen Roane. That’s where they’re trying to make a match with her on a girl’s body that turned up yesterday. I’m waiting for her medical data right now.”

“No kidding.”

April shook her head. The letters couldn’t be from there. It was too weird.

“Are you sure?” she asked.

“Of course I’m sure. I took it to this buddy of mine in the lab at Jay. He popped it under the microscope, and a few minutes later he had a reconstruction. High resolution microscopy. Most of the letters were there. You just can’t see them with the naked eye. Canceling without enough ink,” he added. “The post office out there must be going broke like everybody else.”

April’s eyes widened with amazement. Sanchez went back into the city for her last night? Why did he do that? She shook her head again. San Diego. What did that mean?

“Piece of cake to trace the machine,” Sanchez said helpfully.

“Thank you.” She knew very well how to trace the machine, but who was going to send her to San Diego to do it?

He didn’t move away from the corner of her desk. She could smell the soap and the after-shave he used. Okay, so he got a piece of information for her. Why didn’t he go and do something of his own?

Her temper flared, but it didn’t show because she lowered her eyes demurely. “I can take it from here,” she said.

“Sure.” He sat down at his desk, swiveled away from her, and played with his stack of case folders. Then he swiveled back.

“That drawing he’s got on the bottom. It looks Chinese, doesn’t it?”

“It’s not Chinese,” April said flatly.

“I know. It’s a Harley symbol,” he said.

April took one out and studied it. “It doesn’t look like it.” A biker? Couldn’t be. Bikers didn’t sit around writing weird, menacing letters to women three thousand miles away. It didn’t make sense.

“Yeah, inside the fire part is a wing and a wheel. See it?” Sanchez said.

April nodded doubtfully. “Sort of.”

“The eagle is the Harley-Davidson symbol, and there’s its wing.”

“Maybe,” April said noncommittally.

“I’d bet anything on it,” Sanchez said.

“Well, you don’t have to. It’s my case.”

“True,” he said. He swiveled around so he was facing his desk again. “Just thought it might help.”

It did help. It helped a lot, but she didn’t want him in her head so much. It was hard enough as it was. She switched her attention to the two cases, both from the same place far away but with no connection to each other. She probably wouldn’t have another one that connected with California for the next six years. She checked her watch. It would be hours before she could start trying to reach Sergeant Grove in San Diego to ask if anyone out there was getting letters with a Chinese-looking Harley-Davidson symbol on them. Then he would tell her he was in Missing Persons and didn’t do letters. He’d tell her to check the post office; he’d ask her about the weather again and laugh.