Hanging Time

17

The alarm didn’t have to scream at April for her to know it was time to wake up. She always heard the click before the alarm sounded. Sometimes she was up before the click. Last night she had fallen asleep studying her notes, and now their contents were the first thing she thought of as she pulled herself out of bed.

No one was allowed to take anything home from a case. All evidence had to be carefully labeled and locked up. Only thing you could take home was your notes. April took a lot of notes. She studied them at night, working on questions, angles, speculations, hypotheses. Every case to her was like being in training for the police Olympics. Every morning she started thinking before she could see. That morning she was thinking, who killed Maggie Wheeler? Was it a random thing—some crazy off the street—or somebody involved with the girl herself?

April drank some water, pulled on her tights, and started exercising. Last night she’d had Maggie’s address book copied, took the photocopy home with her, and made a few calls. She was rewarded for that bit of ingenuity by not being able to get through to anybody. She tried always to do things right. There was a rule of procedure and a reason for everything the department did. But doing everything right took a lot of extra time and wasn’t always so easy to do.

Not everything happened the way it was supposed to. For one thing, no one was supposed to go into a crime scene but the cops who caught the run and the two crime-scene people. The catching cops were supposed to rope off the area and keep everyone out, but it didn’t work that way. Call came in on a homicide like this, and twenty, maybe thirty people from the bureau wandered through, wanting to see the corpses and check out the murder scene. Problem was thirty cops and detectives wandering through a murder scene couldn’t help but contaminate the evidence quite a bit.

No way could anyone keep the bureau out.

In the Wheeler case ten squad cars rolled up before Crime Scene got there. The new Captain of the precinct, an uptight Irishman of the old school who wore blue shirts with white collars, and half a dozen ranking officers from the Two-O were among those “having a look.”

The hordes of Europe tramping around didn’t make too much difference in a gore-spattered scene where the murder weapon was visible and a picture of what happened was pretty clear by the marks on the body, the way it was lying, the pooling and spatters of blood around it. But here, where there was nothing, it was a different story.

“How many?” was the first question Igor had asked when he and his partner, Mako, named for the shark, entered The Last Mango.

“Many,” Mike said.

“Shit. When are you people going to learn?”

Old gripe of the science people. They said the whole story of every murder was right there on the spot, even if the dumb cops couldn’t see it. It was there in traces of dust and fiber and hair and grease and stains. All they had to do was collect, identify, and match. But ninety-five percent of trace evidence was contaminated or left behind. Five percent was collected, and maybe one percent used to nail the suspect. April was taking a course on this and knew how to look at things through a microscope.

“Hey, what’s that?” Skinny Dragon Mother opened the door to April’s apartment with her own key, not bothering to warn her with a polite knock. Right away she started in on her in Chinese.

“What’s that?” she demanded again in case April hadn’t heard her the first time.

“Hi, Mom. What are you doing up so early?” April was on her hands and knees on the floor, doing leg lifts with a book open in front of her.

“Have to be early bird catch this worm,” she said in Chinese.

This was the time of day that showed Sai Woo was not so new-style Chinese as she claimed. She was wearing black pants and black canvas shoes with absolutely no embroidery on them, a plain blue peasant jacket. Summer version, not padded. Very skinny woman, eyes narrowed with deep suspicion at the book on the floor. April knew her mother dressed like a peasant in her own home to fool the gods into thinking she wasn’t so well off and fortunate. Clearly there was something on her mind.

“What worm is that?” April asked, lowering herself to her elbows for the next set, which was a lot harder.

“Worm daughter.”

Great, she had a big new case, her Sergeant’s test in less than two weeks, and exams in the summer courses she was taking at John Jay. She couldn’t qualify for Sergeant without two years of college, but she already had three and a half and was hoping to graduate this year. And now her mother was calling her a worm.

“Why am I a worm, Mom?” April tried to concentrate on the leg.

“What’s that?” Sai demanded, pointing at the book.

April sighed. So it was the Sanchez thing again. Ever since Mike had driven her home in the red Camaro that first time, her mother had been thinking the worst. “It’s Spanish, Mom.”

“Ayeiiii, I knew it,” Sai cried, still in Chinese. “I knew it.”

“You don’t know it, Mom. The department wants everybody to speak Spanish. It’s a new thing. You want to get ahead, want to get a degree, you have to speak another language.”

Sai Woo switched suddenly to English to show she was bilingual, too. “You speak other ranguage. You speak Chinese.”

“Doesn’t count. Have to speak Spanish.”

“This New York. Not Miami, not Rrr.A. Not so Spanish here, every kind people in New York.”

“That’s true,” April agreed, finally rolling over and sitting up. A lot of people thought like her mother, didn’t like this new Spanish thing, thought the Spanish should learn English.

“Not Spanish lestlant on every brock. Chinese lestlant on every brock. Chinese best food, best people.” Sai pounded her tiny fists on her flat chest to indicate her pride.

April smiled. “That may be, Mom. But the department still wants everyone to speak Spanish.”

“Humph.” Sai turned her back and touched the little table beside the couch. It slanted a bit on the floor.

“What’s bugging you, Mom?” April closed the book guiltily because her mother was right about one thing. This, of all mornings, she didn’t have to be studying Spanish during her exercises. She could be doing management styles, or preparing the oral answer to such questions as: Crime analysis is an important tool for the police supervisor. Please explain to this board the purpose of crime analysis and how you would use this information as a police sergeant.

“Taber no good. Maybe taber bad spilit in your rife.”

All her hope and confidence fled in an instant. April frowned, the dread of bad luck in her exams, her life itself, descending like a pall over a wedding. “I don’t have a bad spirit in my life.”

“Yes. Dr. George Dong says he’ll meet you—no promises—you no rant meet him. Must be bad spilit in this house.”

“Maybe the bad spirit is downstairs. I never heard of the guy,” April protested.

“He no guy. He docta.”

“That’s great, Mom. But I never heard of him.”

“Now heard of him.” Sai picked up the table and moved it to the other side of the room. “There, taber frat. Now spilit happy. You two can meet, mally, have many babies. Some boys, some girrs.”

April nodded. Great, now her mother was a feminist. She must really be desperate, never used to pray for girls.

“Mom, I have a new case. Want to hear about it?”

Sai nodded, padded across the room to April’s kitchen, and started rattling around. Feng Shui over, match made. Now she would make worm daughter’s breakfast and solve the case. April sighed and headed for the bathroom to take her shower.

She arrived at the precinct before seven-thirty. The Desk Sergeant who’d been on night duty was still there. He nodded at her. Upstairs the squad room was empty. It still smelled of old smoke. The evening shift were all smokers. The day shift were all trying to quit. It smelled disgusting. April had never tried smoking. She dusted the piles of cigarette ash off her desk, sat down, and punched out the number of the M.E.’s office to see if the autopsy report was coming in today.

No one answered, so she took out the copy of Maggie’s address book and dialed one of the numbers she’d tried the night before. The phone rang a bunch of times before a grumpy voice answered.

“Yeah.”

“Is this Bill Hadgens?”

“Yeah.”

“This is Detective Woo from the New York Police Department.”

“Yeah, well, I didn’t do it.”

“Didn’t do what, Mr. Hadgens?”

“I didn’t kill old Maggie. That’s what you’re calling about, isn’t it—hey, is this for real?”

“Yes, this is for real. Where are you located? I’d like to talk to you.”

No reply for quite a while. “How did you get my number?”

“It was in her telephone book.”

“So that doesn’t mean anything. We come from the same town is all.”

“I didn’t say it meant anything. I’m just trying to locate people who knew Maggie. Trying to find out what happened to her.”

Bill Hadgens thought it over for a while, then spoke. “I saw it on the news last night. Eleven o’clock. Really weird.”

“What was weird?”

“I don’t even watch the news. Last night I watch the news, and someone I know got killed. Weird.”

It wouldn’t be so weird to watch the news if he already knew what would be on it. She took Hadgens’s address, then called the M.E.’s office again. This time someone with a friendly voice picked up the phone, listened to April’s identification and questions, said, “Just a minute, please,” and put her on hold for five minutes.

Then a less friendly voice came on that seemed to come from a different department. April repeated the same things about being the detective on the Maggie Wheeler case and needing the autopsy yesterday afternoon. She got put on hold again. Finally someone came on who knew something. The Wheeler autopsy was scheduled for right about now, and they should have the report by early afternoon. April offered to go over and pick it up and was told that wasn’t necessary. She decided not to argue.

April looked at her watch. Eight-fifteen. The place was filling up. Sergeant Joyce, in a black skirt and apple-green blazer, her hair sticking straight up in a style that defied description, stopped by April’s desk and peered at the pile of papers she had laid out.

“Early afternoon for the autopsy report,” April said. She resisted the impulse to cover her notes with her hand.

“Bastards,” Joyce said. “Anything else?”

Sure. “I’m checking out the boyfriends. Where’s Sanchez?”

“Twentieth Street.”

“What’s he doing there?”

Sergeant Joyce shrugged and walked away, either didn’t know or wouldn’t say. Maybe Sergeant Joyce was the bad spirit in her life. Muttering under her breath, April picked up her bag and headed out to meet Bill Hadgens on Fiftieth and Second.