Burning Time

71

In the booth on the corner, April hung up and turned to the detective with the beard. He was huge, probably six five.

“Anything?” he asked softly. His name was Paccio, but he had introduced himself in the squad room as Pac.

April shook her head. “Not yet.” She checked her watch. It was nearly five o’clock and beginning to cloud up.

Where was Mike? The Queensborough Bridge traffic was very heavy. That’s where Mike was. She was getting more anxious as the minutes passed. There was no sign of life in the Bartello house. What if Emma was in there, already dead? What if Grebs had taken off, and she was too late?

On the other hand, what if the old Bartello woman had overstated the case, as O’Brien had initially believed, and there was no woman in the garage apartment with blood on her head? O’Brien said Mrs. Bartello was old and upset about the sex. He didn’t take it too seriously when she told him the naked woman may have been beaten. It never occurred to him that maybe she was locked in, too. April looked at her watch again. If she was wrong about all this, Joyce would have her head.

April decided to show the photos to the old lady without waiting for Sanchez. Just see if she could make the guy. That’s all.

“Tell my partner I went to talk to the old lady. You’ll know him by the mustache and gray jacket.”

“It’s your call,” Pac said, taking the receiver off the hook.

April headed down the street. It was oddly quiet. Except for Renear, with his backward baseball cap ducked deep under the hood of the dented and rusting Chevy, there was nobody out. No dogs, no children on tricycles, nobody returning from the store carrying plastic bags of groceries. April passed the house and looked up at the windows over the garage where O’Brien said the woman’s tenant lived. The shades on those windows were still pulled all the way down. April frowned, as she searched for a door into the space. She didn’t see one.

Upstairs in the main house the blinds were open, but there were no lights on. There were no signs of anybody being home in either place, but that didn’t mean anything.

Three shallow steps led to the front door, April went up the steps. Here the smell of wisteria was as sweet as anything she had ever smelled. It was almost impossible to imagine anything wrong in this sweet-smelling house. But she’d had that thought going into places before. The flap of her purse was open. She reached in and rested her hand on her off-duty pistol. Her other one was strapped to her waist. She rang the bell.

There was no answer. April rang the bell again. Maybe the old lady was hard of hearing. Still no sign of life. She rang the bell a third time and turned the doorknob. The door was unlocked. April’s hands were sweaty as she stepped inside.

The hallway was empty. To one side, she could see the living room. Wow. Ornate, heavy furniture like the kind she used to gape at in the windows of the furniture store next to Ferrara’s in Little Italy. The dining room table was absolutely unbelievable. The four chairs around it were carved swans. The room she stood in smelled of old garlic, fried to the burning point.

“Hello, anybody home?”

No answer. She drew her gun and walked inside. I’m just looking for the old lady, she told herself. She moved down the hallway, hugging the wall. Don’t make a target of yourself. Shit. She had walked through the open door and entered the premises. Maybe that wasn’t so smart.

Nothing in the kitchen. Nothing in the living room. The door to the next room was closed. She stood on one side of the door and nudged it open with her foot. Nothing jumped out at her waving a gun. The room looked like a sitting room. Bookshelves, armchair, daybed, TV. It was empty. April climbed the stairs. Cautiously, she searched the bedrooms one by one, looking for the old woman and a door to the apartment over the garage. She found neither.

Where was the door? And what about the old lady? Did she always go out leaving her front door unlocked? April closed the door on her way out and slipped the gun back in her bag.

Outside nothing had changed but the clouds in the sky, moving in for the showers predicted later that night. The street was quiet, and there was still no sign of Sanchez. April checked her watch. Ten minutes had passed. What the hell was going on? He should be here by now. She was annoyed. Where was the old lady? She went around to the garage again. The entrance to the upstairs apartment must be in the garage. That meant there was no other way out. She didn’t like this waiting.

She turned the handle on the garage door. It swung open with hardly any effort, and a light came on. She could see a car, a dark blue Ford Tempo, late model, rental. It was cool and dank in the garage. She shivered. Several pieces of old lawn furniture were folded up and stacked against one wall. An umbrella. A lawn mower. She crouched low and inched toward the stairs, careful to use the car as a shield. The cement floor was gritty under her feet.

At the back of the garage, she almost tripped on something soft. She looked down. It was a pink felt slipper, worn and gray at the edges. She bent to examine the slipper. There were three small red droplets on the floor, and some brownish spots on several of the blades of the lawn mower that stood nearby. She crouched down. What the hell—? Underneath the mower was a lot of dust, spider webs and dead flies, and something white. What the hell was it? April examined it curiously. What was that?

It had a toenail on it. It was a human toe. The toe was old and gnarled, the nail yellow and deeply ingrown. It looked not so very different from the dried sea slugs in large jars in Chinatown. The Chinese prized them as a delicacy, served them only on special occasions. But this was no sea slug. April’s thinking was automatic, deeply ingrained with years of studying unpleasant things. She knew instantly the toe on the dusty floor did not come from Emma Chapman. Emma Chapman was young and beautiful, well cared for.

A footstep sounded outside. April pulled her gun out of her bag a second time.