Hanging Time

45

The folding metal gate across the front of the chandelier shop was locked with a heavy padlock, but somewhere deep inside the store a light was on. Lieutenant Braun reached his hand through a diamond formed by the steel grate and pressed the doorbell. Sergeant Roberts, one of Braun’s people, waited beside him. Like Braun, Roberts was wiry, with gray skin and lackluster, thinning brown hair. His beaky, humorless features suggested a poor digestion.

After a short wait they tried again, then walked the few steps to the entrance of the residence located above the shop. Braun rang the bell there. Then he leaned backward and looked up. The lights were off on the second and third floors of the building. Roberts stepped back and copied Braun’s action. Now they both knew the lights were off. But that didn’t necessarily mean no one was home. Twilight was only just beginning. The two men took a step closer to each other, put their heads together, and conferred.

In the maroon unmarked car on the corner, Mike’s stomach gurgled. He coughed to cover the sound. “This really sucks.”

April hadn’t heard him use the term before. She couldn’t stop the confirming laugh from jumping out of her mouth. “Yeah.”

In fact, the situation with Braun and his people sucked so much that in the last few days Captain Higgins and Sergeant Joyce had started looking pretty good to her. Not until that afternoon had it occurred to her to think well of Sergeant Joyce. Then Dr. Frank called. It wasn’t often that a civilian from an old case came back with a lead on an unrelated new case. But then, a lot of things happened out there on the streets all the time that weren’t supposed to happen. Having to sit in a car and watch two homicide people from downtown follow a lead in their case was just one.

April didn’t like to remember that Sergeant Joyce had not opposed her investigating her first big case. And there was one other little thing April didn’t like thinking about. After Sergeant Joyce had her picture in the paper and took all the credit for the Chapman case that April had solved with Dr. Frank’s help, she had suggested April start thinking about taking the Sergeant’s test.

Sergeant Joyce had stood over April’s desk, scowling, and spat out, “You’re ready,” as if all along April had been nothing more than some turkey roasting in the oven.

At the time April didn’t know what to think of it. Was the Sergeant pulling rank, mocking her? Was she hoping April would take the test and fail? Failing would cause April to lose face. Succeeding would get her reassigned.

But now April considered another alternative. What if her superior acted like a shit all the time just to challenge the people around her to do things they didn’t think they could do?

Braun and Roberts were taking a long time deciding no one was home.

April sighed. She didn’t want to reassess her opinion of Sergeant Joyce. It put a new spin on the Sergeant’s exam. What if Sergeant Joyce actually wanted April to succeed and April let her down?

Braun and Roberts hit the bell for about the tenth time. By now they were developing the defeated look that forecast some ominous new action.

“What will they think of now?” April muttered. It was after seven-thirty. Both she and Sanchez were on duty until midnight. Both of them had better things to do than follow Lieutenant Braun on their lead, not to be of help in any way, but so they couldn’t come up with anything else in his absence.

Mike shook his head. “What a day.” He paused for a beat, then asked, “He ever call you back?”

“Who?”

“Your lunch date.” Sanchez kept his eyes on the homicide detectives.

“What?”

“Sunday,” he prompted. “You had a date on Sunday. Braun called us in on the McLellan thing. Remember?”

“You know, I hate to get in the car with you. What is it with you? Get in a car, and you get personal.” April’s face flushed with fury. “What is it with you and cars?”

“It’s the only time we’re alone,” Mike murmured.

“So?”

“So, I know guys who get turned on in elevators. Can’t control themselves.”

“So?”

“So, with me it’s cars. We may have to sit here for hours. Might as well, you know, communicate. Talk. You’ve heard of that, haven’t you?”

“No,” she said flatly.

“No what? You haven’t heard of it, or you don’t want to?”

“I don’t want to talk about my personal life. It’s not a good idea. You want to talk about the case, we’ll talk about the case.”

“So it was a date,” Mike said triumphantly. “I knew it was a date.”

“What it was is none of your business.” April groaned. Braun and Roberts were still ringing the damn doorbell.

“I can be interested, can’t I? It’s not so easy to have a relationship in this business.” Mike checked his watch. “Take it from me.”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“So, you agree.”

“It wasn’t a damn date.”

April glanced at him quickly to see if he bought it. He nodded.

“Yeah? He was a cousin?”

“No, he wasn’t a cousin. He’s the son of a sister-cousin.”

“What’s a sister-cousin?”

“Guess you don’t know as much as you think you know.”

“Never heard of it. You’re either a sister or a cousin. Can’t be both,” Mike insisted.

“Oh, yes. In Chinese you can be both.”

“How? You got some family lines nobody else in the world has?” Mike drummed his fingers on the wheel. Hah, got her.

“Yes. In old China the families were really big. I mean really.”

“Yeah, so families are big in Mexico, too. Lots of children. Same kind of culture.”

The sky turned midnight blue as the light slowly faded. The two dicks still stood ringing the doorbell. The smell of fall was in the air.

“Unh-unh. In China lots of wives for one husband. We’re talking dozens of children, with complicated combinations of relatives you can’t even imagine. Uncles and part uncles one-tenth the age of their part nieces and nephews. All living in huge compounds. Unbelievable.”

“Let me figure this out. Your mother is a multiple wife and this guy Dong is your brother.”

April gasped. “How’d you know his name?”

“You told me his name.”

“I never told you his name,” April fumed. “I never mentioned him at all. I can’t stand this. You’re spying on me again. I thought we talked about this. I don’t ask about your life. I don’t care what you do. I don’t care,” she insisted.

Mike regarded her with delight. “You know, we should do this more often. I love it when you get excited.”

“You can’t spy on me like this.” April was almost choking on her fury. “And my mother wasn’t—isn’t—a multiple wife. There’s no such thing as a multiple wife.”

“I thought you said—”

“Forget it. Sister-cousin used to mean part of the family even if there was no real blood tie. But now it means closer than a friend. A relationship that’s like a friend but has some tie that makes it more than a friend. Okay? Got it?”

Mike nodded again. “So, how did it go?”

Braun and Roberts gave up on the doorbell and approached the unmarked car with identical determined strides.

“Uh-oh. Here they come.”

All the windows were rolled down. The car was facing downtown. Mike was driving. Lieutenant Braun approached April’s side.

“Look, she must be out for dinner or something.” He made a quick check of his watch. “We’re going to go out for a bite. You stay here.”

“Yessir,” April said.

“If she comes back, don’t approach her,” Braun ordered. “I want to do this.”

Neither one in the car said anything.

“Got it?” Braun demanded.

“Don’t approach her,” April repeated.

“Right.” Braun turned away, headed downtown toward the Irish bars.

After a minute Mike said, “You know, none of this plays.”

“I know.”

“I mean none of it, from the beginning.”

“Maybe we’ve just been going at it from the wrong direction.”

“How about now?”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t see a woman strangling women, do you?”

April shook her head. “Not in general, but there’s the makeup and dressing the body up. And did you see the size of the sister?”

Mike shrugged. “Big.”

“Big and redheaded.” April was silent for a minute. “I’ve seen women who could kill.”

Mike laughed. “Their husbands, maybe.”

“Other women, too. Ever see a fight in a women’s prison?”

“I saw a skinny girl try to give her rival an unscheduled mastectomy with a carving knife once.”

They sat watching the building as the sky darkened. After a few minutes a light went on in an upstairs window.

“Well, look at that.” April opened the car door and got out.

“Where do you think you’re going?” Mike demanded.

“He only said not to approach her if she came outside. He didn’t say we couldn’t go in if she opened the door.”

“Right.” Mike closed the windows, then got out and locked the car.