Burning Time

73

A man appeared briefly at the corner of the Bartello garage door. He kept himself low, angled out of view. April choked back her fear. For a second she thought it might be Grebs, returning on foot from the corner store or something. Then the familiar crouch-and-dodge moves betrayed a cop. She hoped some clown wouldn’t come in and blow the whole thing. She stayed put.

It was cool and damp in the garage. From where she was crouched behind the back wheel of the blue Ford Tempo, April could see the pink felt slipper she had dropped in her haste to duck out of sight. Her Aunt Mei Ling Lily Chen had slippers just like it. Most older Chinese women liked to wear the same black canvas shoes, made in China, that their ancestors had worn for centuries. But Mei Ling Lily Chen said, felt was more comfortable on feet, easier to get off.

Yeah, they came off real easy if you were dead. The severed toe was still on the floor near the lawn mower. Only a few brown spots led to it on the cement floor. If the stains were blood, the person was dead when the toe was chopped off. All was quiet upstairs.

April thought of Dr. Frank, stuck on the bridge with the rest of her team. She knew it was a highly irregular thing for her to call him like that, but he had broken the case for her. She figured she owed him. She prayed that his wife Emma Chapman, whose features were so different and superior to April’s, was not already dead, too. She shivered, her sweat now chilled and icy under her arms. She wondered where the old lady’s body was.

Suddenly the overhead light went off. April looked up, startled. The light was attached to the garage door. Must be one of those automatic gizmos that came on when the door opened, and then went off after two minutes. The neighbors next door to her parents had one. The gloom settled instantly. Still no sound from outside or the apartment upstairs. In the dim light, the smell of mold seemed to grow stronger. It assaulted April’s heightened senses. The bushes rustled. April held her breath.

An elbow edged around the corner of the garage door. April recognized the shiny gray fabric of Sanchez’s sharkskin jacket.

“April?” It was barely a whisper.

She let out her breath with relief, then stood, her finger to her lips. He gestured for her to get out of there. She inched toward him, down the wall farthest from the stairs. She reached the door, and they moved away from the building, out of sight of the upstairs windows.

She wanted to say something, but Chinese were unsentimental, undemonstrative. Cops, too.

“You all right?” Sanchez asked.

“Yeah, sure.” She didn’t ask what took so long. It was a stupid question. Everything took so long.

“Looks quiet. What’s going on?” Sanchez asked.

“The car’s a rental.”

“Yeah, I saw that.”

“I think he’s up there. I don’t know about the Chapman woman. If she’s alive, she sure isn’t making any noise.…” April changed the subject. “There’s only one way in, up the stairs in the back of the garage. You can get to the backyard through the house. I have someone out there.”

Sanchez nodded. “Pac filled me in. What about the old woman?”

April shook her head. “She’s not in the house. She left the front door open. She may be dead.… I think I found one of her toes.”

“No shit, where?”

“On the floor in the garage.” She looked away, didn’t want him to criticize her for going in there alone.

“We need more people,” was all he said.

“I know. I already called.”

“I heard the dispatch.” Now he looked away. “Go cover the backyard. We’ll wait till they get here.”

April shook her head. “Unless he jumps out the window, there’s no way out.”

“Go cover it, anyway, Detective,” Sanchez snapped.

“What? Are you pulling rank on me? You’re not my supervisor,” April protested angrily. “I’ve taken it this far. I’m not covering the back now.”

Sanchez bristled at the outburst, then relented. “All right, then cover me.”

“No, you cover me,” April insisted. Hadn’t he seen her shoot?

“Look, you want to get this done, or do you want to stand here arguing about it?”

“I thought you wanted to wait for backup.”

He nodded toward the garage. “We’ll go in there and wait.”

A car backfired on the street. As Sanchez walked over to check it out, April slipped back inside the garage.