Burning Time

55

April had arranged to meet Dr. Frank in his office as soon after eight o’clock as she could get there. She had that in her mind as she spent several precious minutes placating her angry mother.

But even after she got away from Skinny Dragon Mother late at night, April didn’t sleep. She spent nearly an hour writing up her notes on the Chapman case. As she worked, she tried to put out of her mind the unrelated incidents her mother insisted on telling her as tit for tat about jealous lovers and humiliated husbands in long-ago China. April hadn’t wanted to hear about it. It was after two in the morning, and had nothing to do with now.

“That’s what you think,” Sai said huffily, blocking the stairs. “People crazy like fox everywhere.”

Her mother was offended, but April had to sleep. What did a kidnapped young noblewoman locked up in a farmer’s cave in a mountain because she was pregnant and his only wife was barren—ninety years ago—have to do with anything?

Still, April kept thinking about the young woman in the cave for a long time before she could fall asleep. What was the meaning of the story? There was no way to know if it was true, or the myth of anxious mothers-in-law, made up to prevent unhappy young wives from straying far from home. Women had to be obedient or suffer terrible consequences in China.

It came to April later, in her troubled sleep, that her mother might be telling her the actress was a runaway. The same thing April herself once told the parents of the missing girl, Ellen Roane. She forgot to tell her mother missing girls and wives in America don’t leave their credit cards behind on the bed. There had to be another meaning.

It seemed like only five minutes passed before the alarm went off and April was up again, pulling herself together and heading back into the city. Luckily, in the morning her mother was too busy with her father to come upstairs and knock on her door.

Luckily, too, Sergeant Joyce was already in when April got into the precinct a full ten minutes early. April went into her office to fill her in on what had happened, except for the part about how she and Sanchez went out for dinner. She was a little uneasy about that.

Sergeant Joyce made a lot of listening faces and frowned when April asked if she could go out to take Dr. Frank’s statement on his missing wife. Nothing was happening right then, and no one else was around yet, so Sergeant Joyce reluctantly said okay.

“But we’ll have to review the case when you get back,” she said ominously.

It was April’s turn to frown. She knew that meant her coming back might be the end of the case for her. Sergeant Joyce would reassign it to someone with more experience, maybe even take it for herself. And April would be stuck doing foot-soldier work in the wrong part of town. She might even have to learn Spanish. That was a horrible thought. She stopped at her desk for a minute. Sanchez wasn’t in yet. Humph. So much for his being an early riser.

She took a Missing Person form from the color-coded stacks of forms on top of a filing cabinet. Then she checked her bag for the notebook with the long list of questions she had prepared last night, for the investigation she probably wouldn’t be allowed to finish. Finally she drove the few blocks over to Riverside Drive and parked by the same hydrant she and Mike had parked in front of the night before.

In the building, as she waited for the elevator that was like a cage, she stood looking up at the stained-glass skylight which was brilliant with color in the morning light. More than once she felt in her bag for the hard shape of her gun to reassure herself that she was meant to be here and knew what she was doing. Her confidence fell apart when Dr. Frank opened the door.

“She’s been abducted. She’s been kidnapped,” he cried wildly, hustling her inside his office.

“What?”

Waiting room, empty of everything except a few chairs and some bookcases, all filled with books and periodicals. Brown rug on the floor. Two floor lamps gave off a lot of fairly harsh light. His office was much more crowded with objects and furniture, the desk cluttered with papers and notebooks. There were three clocks in the room, all ticking away. Like the ones in his apartment, they looked pretty old.

April tried to take everything in all at once, the way she was taught. How he looked. How the room looked. What he was saying. Most important, what he was saying. She was aware from her first second on the scene that above all she had to keep her wits about her and find the real story.

“My wife’s been kidnapped,” he cried. “What are you going to do about it? It’s been a whole night. We’ve got to find her right away. We don’t have much time. It may be too late already. Grebs threatened to kill her. He will kill her. We have to hurry.”

He stood in the middle of the room talking rapidly, as if he thought he could propel her right into action without going through any of the preliminaries first. His appearance was alarming. He was large and pale, and so shaky April was terrified he might topple like a tree from the stress.

She’d seen Chinese do that. Before the questioning even got underway, they’d fall right over. And then April had to pick them up and calm them down. But very rarely did Asians kill the people they kidnapped. Kidnapping was just business. She thought of that as she asked herself for the thirtieth time what mistake had brought her to the upper West Side where people were movie stars and psychiatrists, not immigrants from Asia.

“Sit down,” she said quietly, trying to calm her own hysteria as well as his. The voice inside said, I can’t do this. All I know is caves in mountains. Another voice told her it was all the same thing. She did know what to do.

“Take a minute.” She put her hand on the doctor’s arm. “I know how it is. Sit down for a minute, Doctor. What makes you think she was abducted?”

She thought quickly. It couldn’t have happened up here. There was no way to get in or out without the doorman seeing. Maybe the day doorman saw something, or knew something.

“I’ve been calling every hospital. Nothing on her,” he said, looking at April as if he already knew she was useless.

“It took me hours to come in here. I didn’t think of it until just now, when I came in to meet you. I just didn’t think of it.” Furious, he hit his forehead with his palm. “Oh, God. I can’t tell you how serious this is.”

What was he talking about? April wished he’d get organized and tell her what was going on.

“Did you get a ransom call?”

He shook his head miserably. “Worse than that.”

“Why don’t you sit down and let me ask you some questions,” she suggested.

She had to get him organized. No different from Chinese. Except he didn’t take directions. He had to do everything his own way. Went to California, found his own suspect. What kind of person would do that?

He was shaking all over. “Listen to this,” he commanded. He went to his desk and pushed the button on his answering machine.

The voice of Emma Chapman jumped out, crying for help.

April’s face didn’t change, but inside every part of her started screaming, too. He was right. The shrink had been right all along, and she hadn’t been paying the right kind of attention. Here was the voice of the person she was supposed to protect, and hadn’t. She should have contacted Emma Chapman a week ago. Never mind if the woman didn’t return the call. Why so shy? Why so afraid to come and check it out for herself? Now look what happened.

My fault, she told herself. She let him scare her into staying away from the wife. My fault. The others weren’t her fault. Not her case until after they were gone. She’d heard a few pleading voices on the phone. They had all scared her, but this voice was on her head. It was slurred in places. The woman sounded hurt as well as terrified. It was horrible. Horrible to listen to. He played it four times, while they concentrated in silence. By the second time April had already begun taking notes.

Finally he switched the machine off and looked at her hard. April knew he was trying to see inside of her. Trying to determine what she might know. She was very aware that he was a head doctor. Head doctors knew what people were thinking before they said anything. Her pen was poised above the pad. She did not let her hand tremble with fear.

She was not a head doctor, but she knew what he was thinking, too. She knew he was thinking what can this Asian woman do, nothing. But she could do something. She could make sure he wasn’t right at her expense any more.

His office answering machine clocked the call from his wife at just before midnight. April was in the apartment next door about then, but not just then. If the woman had called the apartment only a few minutes earlier, April would have picked up and talked to her. They might have found her by now.

“She was alone at midnight,” April said.

“That was eight hours ago. What are you going to do?”

He kept demanding the same thing. She was going to do her job. What did he think she was going to do?

“She was able to make the call. She was by a window, looking out,” April said. “That means she wasn’t restrained.”

“What are you getting at?”

“It’s possible she got away.”

Dr. Frank looked at her like she was stupid. “Then we would have heard from her.”

“Maybe not yet.”

“She says the guy’s going to kill her. What are you going to do to find her?”

The way he demanded this sounded like he really thought she was going to drag her feet on the matter. April was determined not to bristle.

“I’m going to ask you a lot of questions, Dr. Frank. And when I leave here, I’m going to make a report to my supervisor. Then there will be many people in this neighborhood asking questions.”

“Why this neighborhood? She said it was the Bronx or Brooklyn.”

“It’s going to take a while. Why don’t you sit down,” April said firmly.

She could see he wanted to do it his way. He had been standing all this time by the machine. He seemed to have to think it over for a minute before sitting down at his desk.

“The doorman last night didn’t see her leave. That means she left before eleven,” April said patiently. “We’ll talk to the day doorman. We’ll try to find someone who saw her leave the building, set a time. If she met anybody, or someone stopped her on the street. If she got in a car. This is a busy neighborhood. Someone must have seen her. We’ll get a description.”

“But I know who it is, and he’s not going to keep her around while you’re busy setting times,” Jason said bitterly. “We’re talking about my wife and a man with a violent history. He’s going to kill her or rape her, or burn her.” His voice caught on the words. “Look, I’ll find her if I have to do it myself.”

April couldn’t help being impressed by him. He loved his wife, and he was professional. Like her, he was thinking all the time. He had been thinking from the beginning. He wasn’t completely helpless like everybody else. She watched him pull himself together. It took only a few seconds.

“Can you trace her call?” he asked more gently.

“From the tape?” April shook her head. “The phone company does have the technology to print out the number a call is coming from, but it isn’t available to the police yet.”

“He’s from a lower-class neighborhood,” Jason said suddenly.

“What is the significance of that, Dr. Frank?”

“People tend to gravitate to what they’re used to.”

“Yes,” April said, still not getting what he meant.

“I’ve seen where he comes from. He’s very compulsive. That means he does the same things over and over.”

April nodded. How did that help? She raised a delicate eyebrow, afraid to seem stupid by asking the question.

“He’s quite regressed right now. He’s likely to be in a place that looks to him like the place he came from.”

“And you know what that place might be?”

Jason nodded. “The Bronx or Brooklyn sound right, where the houses are small and right next to each other.”

“Does your wife know the Bronx and Brooklyn at all?”

“No.”

“Well, it’s more likely to be Queens or maybe New Jersey,” she said.

Jason’s face fell. “New Jersey? What makes you think so?”

“Because of the sounds on the tape. She’s near an airport. She might see a bridge and hear an airplane in Newark. Or Queens. Not the Bronx or Brooklyn.”

“Jesus. Of course. He works at an airport. Lindbergh Field in San Diego. Yes, he’d be near an airport, but which one? There are at least three.”

April sighed. He was not going to follow her line of questioning. She decided to let him do it his own way.

“Why don’t you tell me about what you found out in San Diego, and we’ll take it from there.”

It was nearly two hours before April met with Sergeant Joyce again. She had the tape and a recent photo of Emma Chapman, as well as some yearbook pictures and a mug shot of Troland Grebs. She’d gotten the rap sheet of Grebs the day before and already knew what was on it: two convictions for arson and three arrests for assault. One was a bar fight and two were battery cases against prostitutes. It occurred to April that she might check to see if any prostitutes had been beaten up in the last few days.