Hanging Time

30

There was surveillance on Albert Block when April called him on Thursday with the PD’s request for a blood test. Word was he hadn’t left his apartment since his questioning at the precinct. He picked up the phone on the first ring. April told him who she was and what she wanted. His amazement at the request further convinced her that he had not done Maggie Wheeler.

“Blood? Was there blood?” he asked on the phone, clearly astounded. “Did I draw blood?”

Like they’d been in a duel or something. April didn’t reply for a second and let his panic come pouring out of the receiver. Albert Block was in way over his head.

“What do you need my blood for?” He couldn’t figure it out. “Where was blood? I didn’t see any blood.”

And then. “Yeah, maybe I hit her. Oh, I couldn’t have hit her. Did I hit her? But—why do you want my blood? I didn’t bleed. Jesus, what is this—a setup?” he demanded accusingly as if he hadn’t come in himself and confessed.

“No, it’s no setup, Mr. Block,” April told him. “We just need your blood type.”

“What for?” he wanted to know.

There was a long silence. April let him think it over to see if he could come up with any ideas. Why else would they need a blood type? Finally he got an idea.

“Oh, God,” he cried. “Was she raped?”

“He didn’t know,” April told Sanchez when she hung up. “He didn’t know anything.”

She gathered up her stuff, then wasted several hours escorting Block to his blood test. She took a female officer assigned to the case, a woman more muscular than the suspect, name of Goldie, with her to drive. April sat in the back seat with Block, hoping he might tell her something she didn’t already know. But he sat there in his jeans and green lizard boots and didn’t have a thing to say. He had shut down at the prospect of the needle.

It was still August hot. It hadn’t cooled down at all. The windows were rolled down, but the air that blew in gave no relief. Block was trembling all over.

“You all right?” she asked.

“I don’t like needles,” he muttered.

“No one does.”

“Yeah, but I really don’t. I don’t get this at all.”

Goldie stopped the car with a jerk that April wouldn’t forget. This wasn’t the time to tell him Maggie had been pregnant.

“We get out here.”

“I don’t get it,” Block muttered again. “Why the blood test? You can look at me. No cuts or bruises.”

Oh, so now he didn’t want to be the suspect. April shook her head. They already knew he didn’t have any cuts or bruises. Maggie had plenty of bruises, but her nails had been short. She either didn’t have an opportunity to use them, or they were too short to do any good. Still, Block was the wrong size to overpower her. Unless she had been totally out of it, Maggie could have done him some damage.

“You’re not going to tell me, are you?” It was a fact he accepted.

Block didn’t know why the police were doing what they were doing, but even though he was really scared, it didn’t seem to occur to him that he could object. April concluded from his passivity that he must have some sort of problem with authority. Lot of suspects objected to everything, their jailhouse lawyers forcing a new court order at every step of the way to an indictment. Block complied with everything, but he was so nervous, April thought he might wet his pants when the needle hit his vein. Some killer.

In the waiting room of the lab he wrinkled his nose at the smell of the place, the bite of ammonia cleaner with the undercurrent of iron from the metal chairs scattered around and, he insisted, from the faint smell of blood. He was afraid of getting AIDS.

His eyes darted around. “Are we in the morgue?” He was obviously under a lot of stress.

“Nowhere near.”

During his long questioning he had hinted darkly that he had other information about the case. He said it again now.

“I’ve got the stuff.”

“What stuff?” Maggie’s missing clothes? The keys to the store? They were waiting on a worn plastic-covered sofa in the reception area of the lab, surrounded by a lot of people who apparently didn’t believe in soap and water. Block had said he had the stuff before and had come up with nothing. He turned toward the wall, did his usual, and clammed up.

Forty-five minutes went by before he was taken into a treatment room. At one point April saw that tears had formed big puddles in his eyes and threatened to spill out down his cheeks. The man was actually crying. He turned away and dabbed at his cheeks with a checkered handkerchief he dragged out of a pocket.

Later she took him back to his apartment, then returned to the precinct. She was certain little would come of the exercise.