Burning Time

46

“Hi, I’m Detective Woo, and this is Sergeant Sanchez from the police.” Usually when she said it, the sound of the two names together made her want to laugh. Tonight it didn’t.

April pulled out her badge, and Sanchez did, too.

The night doorman stubbed out his cigarette and looked at them dumbly. “What’s going on?”

“We’ve have a request from Dr. Frank to check his apartment,” she said. The name on the pocket of the man’s uniform was Francis. It was probably his first name.

“He’s away.” The man’s eyes looked dimly out at them from puffy lids. “Do you want me to ring his wife?”

“Is she here?” April asked.

“Could be,” the doorman said.

“What do you mean, she could be here?” April said.

“Well. She ain’t in the book, and I ain’t seen her since I come on. She could be out. She could be in.”

“What time do you come on?”

“Eleven.”

That was only forty-five minutes ago. So, Emma Chapman could be there or she could have left any time since yesterday. April nodded. “Please call her.”

“I’ll have to ring the apartment …” The doorman gestured at the old-fashioned intercom, one of those ancient telephone switchboards with the plugs and buzzers. There were no names by the holes, but there was a thick ledger on the table with a list of apartments and people who were out. April leaned over to look at it. Dr. Frank was listed as away. Emma Chapman wasn’t on that day’s list or the one for the previous two days.

“Well, go ahead. Ring up,” she said.

Sanchez moved out of the way. Francis stuck a plug into a hole and pushed the knob down. There was a faint hum as the connection was made.

No answer from upstairs.

“Where does it ring?” April asked.

“In the kitchen.”

“Is it loud enough to hear in the bedroom?”

“Depends.”

“Try again.”

He pushed the knob down a second time.

“What’s the procedure with the ledger?” Sanchez asked as the man rang over and over.

“Front or back?”

“You have two books?” April watched the board. Nothing. She hadn’t expected anything. God, she hoped the woman was at a friend’s house.

“Two doors, two elevators. Two books. Guess she must be out.” Francis gave up ringing and lit another cigarette. “What’re you looking for?”

“We’re looking for her,” April said. “Emma Chapman. Do you have a key to the apartment?”

“Well, yeah.” He frowned. “But I’m not supposed to give it to anybody.”

Everything always took forever. April took a deep breath. Everybody took persuading. Without a warrant, this guy might not let them in.

“You don’t have to give it to us. You can open the door and stay with us,” she suggested, keeping her voice casual.

“We’ll only be a minute,” Sanchez added.

“I can’t leave the door,” the man hedged.

“Oh, come on, not even to take a leak?”

Sanchez was good at making people do what he wanted. April’s face didn’t change when he took charge of the situation. She was a detective. He was a sergeant. She never forgot that.

Francis eyed them suspiciously. “The Doc is a real particular man. How do I know you’re really cops?”

Sanchez pointed out the glass door to the blue-and-white police car parked by the fire hydrant. It had their precinct number on it.

“By our squad car, Francis. You going to take us upstairs or what?”

Mike had left the lights flashing on top of the car. He did that sometimes, even though it ran down the battery. It did the job now.

Francis considered it only for a second. Then he moved away from the switchboard and locked the front door. “Okay, two minutes. But you better not touch anything.”

Sanchez held his hands up to show he had no intention of touching anything. As they headed to the elevator, April looked around. Twelve floors up at the top was a stained-glass skylight in the middle of the ceiling. The elevator was a big metal cage. The stairway went around the building in a square so you could walk all the way up if you had to. This place was … She didn’t know exactly what it was. She let out her breath in a little whistle.

They stopped on the fifth floor. April stepped back as the metal door accordioned closed. She wondered how many kids had gotten their fingers caught in it over the years.

They started around the square landing. There was a little indentation, not quite a vestibule, for every apartment.

“This is the Doc’s office. I don’t have a key to that.” Francis stopped at a vestibule with two doors. One had a table beside it piled with letters and packages.

“This is the apartment.”

Sanchez held his hand out for the keys. Francis handed them over, shaking his head. “The Doc won’t like this.”

“Stand back, will you,” Sanchez told him. His voice was very friendly.

Sanchez rang the bell repeatedly, then fiddled with the two keys, locking the top lock at first, and then unlocking it, while Francis muttered disapprovingly out on the landing.

April’s heart beat faster. She hated going through unknown doors. She looked at Mike and saw that he, too, noted this one hadn’t been double-locked. Without a word, they each took a side, moving away from the door as it swung open.

Inside the lights were on and there was the sound of voices. Someone was home. For a long moment neither of them moved. Then April stepped forward.

“Police,” she called. “Anybody home?”

No answer. She went into a square entry hall. A table on one side had a green marble clock with a gold cupid perched on top, and another huge stack of mail. To her right was a darkened room that April figured was the living room. Ahead was a long cream-colored hall with prints on the walls. She could see the frames of the prints. They were dark green. The noise was coming from the kitchen on her left. April headed through the door.

Her heart thudded and her mouth was dry. She just couldn’t get used to the fear of what she might find on the other side of an unknown door. She moved through this one quickly, on an angle, her body out of the frame before anybody could make it a target. Her hand was on her gun even though she was absolutely certain no one was in the old-fashioned kitchen. She saw at a glance the glass cabinets, wooden countertop, and new-looking appliances. It was well cared for and big enough to eat in.

On the counter was an empty cracker box with cracker crumbs around it and a half-filled glass. April sniffed at the glass without touching it. Water. A small TV by the window was tuned to CNN, which was airing a report on the stock market.

A salad bowl in the sink had a head of lettuce soaking in it. Mixing tools and a small jar of what looked like vinegar and oil sat beside it. She took a tissue out of the tissue box on the counter and turned off the TV. It looked like the woman had started a meal and left it.

April started at the faint dong of a clock in the other room, striking the quarter hour. She went out to take a look. Another struck with a different sound, and yet another. She switched on the lights and looked around with amazement. Every surface in the living room had some kind of working clock on it. It was like they were all alive, with their hearts ticking at different speeds. And there were books in neat stacks everywhere. There were so many books in the room April thought the clocks must be the Caucasian way to trick the Gods into getting more time to read them all.

She returned to the kitchen. Down the back hallway was a room with a washing machine, dryer, and treadmill. The ceiling light was on in here, too. A light on the panel of the treadmill showed it was on Pause at 3.5 miles.

Sanchez came out of the bedroom shaking his head as they met in the hall. “The tub and towels are wet in the bathroom, and her handbag is on the bed. Wallet, credit cards, fifty bucks. Everything but her keys.”

April followed him back into the bedroom, and did a double-take at the bed. It was a king-size bed with a pale blue-green brocade bedspread and a lot of pastel satin pillows on it. It looked like a film star’s bed. She sneaked a look at Mike to see what he thought of it. He caught her eye and raised his eyebrows. She turned away to check the closets.

They were both the walk-in kind. She walked in and looked all the way in the back. The doctor’s closet smelled a little musty, but there was nothing in either one that had ever been alive except the shoes. The wife had nice shoes, nice clothes, too, if you happened to like tans and beiges. Everything was understated, except the bed.

April was beginning to feel something for the woman. You couldn’t go through someone’s things and not have some feelings. This woman had the kind of taste you couldn’t really get without being born with it. Everything was rich and smooth, the colors subtle. Husband and wife both seemed to be neat almost to a fault. April wondered what it would be like to live in a place like this. Beautiful clothes. Beautiful kitchen. Monkey business every night. On the table by the bed were some pictures of her and him together, smiling. Both of them American good-looking, like people out of a magazine.

April picked one up with a sinking feeling. The photo was the first image she had of Emma Chapman, and it was disturbing. The picture showed another Caucasian beauty—a woman with long blond hair and clear blue eyes, the kind of well-formed lips models had, curved into a happy smile. She was on a beach somewhere, her arm around her husband, the man April had met, Jason Frank. People like this seemed always to be on vacation, wearing shorts. They always looked graceful and at ease with their long, suntanned legs hanging out. April felt hot all over and realized she had broken out into a sweat because Emma Chapman looked a whole lot like Ellen Roane.

She handed the photo to Mike. “See anything that bothers you?” she asked.

He studied it for a second, then put it back. “Yeah, there’s your connection.”

The two women looked alike. It was eerie, and somehow it didn’t feel like a coincidence. April’s attention shifted to a flashing light on the answering machine. There were messages. She pushed the play button. Francis came into the bedroom.

“Hurry up. I got to open the door for somebody. I can’t stand around here all night. People want to come in.”

“Just a second,” Mike said. The tape was rewinding.

“I got to go,” Francis insisted.

“Well, then, go. We’re cops, remember.”

“Yeah. Well, if you’re not out of here in five minutes I’ll call more cops. And don’t forget to lock the door.”

The machine clicked and started playing. No sound came out. April frowned. There was another click, and it reset itself with the message light still flashing. She did it again, and the same thing happened. Mike fiddled with it.

“It’s not recording,” he told her.

The solution always turned out to be the thing April hadn’t thought of. The woman wasn’t getting her messages because her machine was broken. She shook her head. How did that fit into the picture?

“Well, she went out for something,” Sanchez murmured; “some time before eleven, without turning the lights off or taking her purse with her. And she didn’t come back.”

“She intended to come back.” April cocked her head in the direction of the laundry room where the treadmill had been on Pause and the news still played in the kitchen.

Mike nodded. “Looks like it.”

April felt sick. Even though statistics showed most missing persons returned, the last two cases she had been assigned had turned up dead. Lily Dong came home from school and opened the door to a neighbor. Ellen Roane went to California for spring break. Now there was Emma Chapman. What did she do?

April could tell Mike desperately wanted a cigarette and couldn’t have one because he quit smoking two months ago.

“Let’s go,” she said.

He flicked off the lights with his elbow and headed for the door. “Let’s get something to eat and talk about it.”

April nodded, looking down at her feet. Didn’t want to show her face. She was a cop, wasn’t supposed to get freaked out by nasty surprises. She couldn’t imagine chewing something and swallowing right now, couldn’t imagine closing her eyes and getting any sleep in what was left of the night. But a lot of times there was nothing else to do before morning. All the way downstairs she tried not to think about where Emma Chapman was, concentrated instead on the car battery, praying it wasn’t dead.