Hanging Time

44

Braun’s face was pinched with anger. The Lieutenant took an aggressive stance in front of Captain Higgins’s desk, even though the Captain had offered him a seat when he’d slammed in moments earlier. “They were going out on a new lead without me.” His voice had the whiny quality of a kid who hadn’t been picked for the team.

Higgins checked his watch. He grimaced. “You’ve got two minutes to tell me what you’ve got, and then I have to meet the press. It better be something.”

“Well, I don’t know if it’s something or not.” Braun glanced over at Mike, who never appeared fazed by much of anything. “Your people hold out on me. We don’t like that.”

“Is that the royal ‘we,’ or do you have some special meaning?” Higgins carefully smoothed his tie. “Look, as far as we’re concerned, our people are your people. We’re all the same people.” He inclined his head to Sanchez. “Are you holding out on Lieutenant Braun, Sergeant?”

“No, sir.” Mike’s mustache closed over his lips.

“I don’t ever want to hear that you’re holding out on the Lieutenant. We’re all the same team.”

“Sergeant Joyce?” Captain Higgins tilted his head the other way.

“Yes, sir.” Sergeant Joyce stood one step behind Sanchez and Braun. It was clear she had combed her hair and tried to repair her face for this meeting. Apparently she knew that without a little makeup, she tended to resemble a codfish fillet.

April watched her supervisor struggle to maintain a strict air of neutrality, her hope for support from her C.O. revealed only in the shiny pink lip gloss on her mouth. The rest of her fire-hydrant-shaped body, packed into a forest-green jacket and skirt, was rigid with hate.

“Are you holding out on Lieutenant Braun in any way?”

Sergeant Joyce took a step forward. She was the supervisor of the squad. April could read her thought that she should have been standing ahead of Sanchez, not behind him.

“No, sir.”

Higgins glanced quickly at April. Her lips twitched in a small smile at the triumph of her being in this exalted place for the very first time. The Captain nodded, but didn’t say anything. Apparently he didn’t consider her high enough in the hierarchy to hold out on Braun. She lowered her eyes in the classic gesture of submission, unable to resist the reflex action. Ten thousand thoughts juggled for position in her brain.

April couldn’t help thinking that ambition, like the sucker-covered tentacles of an octopus, encircled them all, clouding every issue. And she wasn’t immune in the least. Her own ambition had her slated to spend the first ten hours of the day studying for her Sergeant’s exam. And the next eight hours on the job. The discovery of Rachel Stark’s decomposing body had cost her precious study time. Unless somebody else was found dead at the exact moment her exam was scheduled, she’d have to take it anyway, prepared or not. And if she failed, she wouldn’t get another chance at it for a long, long time.

The other four had their own careers to worry about. And there they were, jockeying for position. Three of them had spent the day very close to a former human being, someone who had a mother and a father, two brothers—way out on Long Island. Somebody who had had a life and hadn’t wanted to lose it. The stench of the former Rachel Stark would stay with them for quite a while no matter how hard they tried to wash it off and ignore it. And yet they were not exactly willing to unite to find her killer.

“Okay, so what have you got?” Higgins asked.

Braun scowled at Sergeant Joyce because he couldn’t attack Captain Higgins. “You tell me.”

“So far we have found no connection between the suspects in the Wheeler case and Rachel Stark—”

“And this new lead?”

Sergeant Joyce hesitated. “Some kind of mental case. Female, lives across the street from European Imports; name’s in the guest book of The Last Mango. It’s just a lead.”

“And the informant’s the sister. A redhead, I heard,” Braun said angrily. “I didn’t get a chance to question her.”

“Uh-huh,” Higgins said. “Where does that get us?”

He directed his question at April. After a moment she realized the Captain expected her to answer. She wasn’t sure exactly what he meant.

“Two long red hairs were found on the body of Maggie Wheeler, sir.” She articulated carefully, didn’t want him to think she had an accent or anything.

“Yes, yes,” he said, impatient now. “I know that. So work it out. You got twenty-four hours to put it together. Two is too many.”

“I can’t work under these conditions,” Braun protested. “I don’t want my people undercut like this. We get a lead, I follow it up. I ask the questions.”

“I don’t have a problem with that. Do you have a problem? Sergeants?” Higgins searched the faces of Joyce and Sanchez.

Yeah, they had a big problem. They thought Braun was an asshole. He had handled that preppy McLellan with all the skill of a pile driver, had the analytical skills of an un-programmed computer. It was their case. They didn’t want any assistance from Homicide to solve it.

Mike’s mustache twitched. “No, sir,” he said.

Sergeant Joyce chewed off her lip gloss. It was clear to April that Joyce couldn’t tell whether her team had won the skirmish or not.