Hanging Time

54

Mike waved a piece of paper at her. “Got it. Did she say anything?” He picked up a paper bag from the desk that was his because they were now on duty until midnight.

“Who?” The suspect or Sergeant Joyce?

“The suspect.”

“Oh, not a lot. She was too busy eating her arm.”

“Whaa?”

“The woman is an alien. I’m not certain she can add two and two. Dr. Frank is in with her now.” April eyed the bag, hoping it contained food.

“I heard. How did you manage that?” They headed downstairs.

“I asked him. Didn’t want to spend the night at Bellevue and miss the fun. What’s in the bag?”

“What do you want it to be?”

April waved at the Desk Sergeant, and they stepped out into the night. It was about sixty degrees, bright and clear.

“I want it to be something really spicy and hard to eat, with lots of sauce. But I’d settle for a tuna sandwich.”

“Done.” He handed her the bag. “Tuna salad with lettuce on white toast.”

“Thanks. What did you get for yourself?”

“Something really spicy and hard to eat, with lots of sauce.”

She laughed, punched his arm as he headed for the driver’s side of the car. “That’s twice in one day. It’s my turn to drive.”

“Yeah, maybe. But wouldn’t you rather eat? I had mine after I met with the ADA.”

“Who’d you get?”

“Penelope Dunham, no problem at all. Know her?”

April shook her head. She’d never met this assistant district attorney. “Why are you such a nice guy?” she asked, settling in the passenger seat. Then she opened the bag. Shit. It was two chicken enchiladas with mole sauce.

Mike grinned. “Don’t ever say I don’t take care of you. And there’s no cheese on it anywhere. I know you don’t like cheese.”

“Thanks,” she said. “Really thanks. It’s great.”

She wrinkled her nose and dug into the enchiladas with the plastic fork thoughtfully provided, knowing the food would be all over her and the car by the time they got across town. Mike was trying to get her used to Mexican cooking. She had to admit she liked the green sauce made of tomatillos, but the mixture of chocolate and chilis in the mole tasted to her kind of like dirt.

“How is it?” Mike jerked to a stop at the red light on Central Park West.

A blob of mole splattered off her fork and hit the front of her white shirt.

“Great. Just great. How much do I owe you?”

“More than you’ll ever know.”

Yeah yeah. He accelerated through the park while she worked on the enchiladas.

Six minutes later, as Mike pulled into an empty spot on Second Avenue near Fifty-fifth Street, she crumpled everything back into the bag. The black sedan with Lieutenant Braun and Sergeant Roberts in it was parked in front of 1055 Second.

Mike killed the motor and the lights, tossed the keys to April. “You can drive home.”

Her attention had been on the brown spot on her blouse. She caught the keys, but only just. Nice.

Braun and Roberts were out of the car, heading toward them before they could move. “Got it?” Braun demanded.

Mike handed the search warrant over. “Any sign of him?”

“Man at the garage says the car’s in there and he hasn’t taken it out since Sunday.”

Braun stuffed the warrant in his pocket without looking at it. “Okay, let’s go in.”

All four headed toward the door with the crudely paneled top half. April prayed Braun wouldn’t make them stay outside as backup. Before the thought was complete, she saw he’d already thought of that. She saw him nod at his two other people, one at each corner, by the litter baskets. Oh, and there was somebody across the street leaning against the skinny tree in front of European Imports. The Lieutenant wasn’t taking any chances.

Roberts opened the downstairs door with no trouble. They trooped up the stairs with Braun in the lead. He had to move aside on the tiny landing at the top so Roberts could get at the door. There were four locks on it. Roberts worked on them for about thirty seconds. He got all four unlocked, and went inside.

For a second Mike and April stood outside on the landing while Braun and Roberts, stuck in the doorway, fumbled around for a light. A single pale bulb shone over their heads.

“Weird,” April murmured softly.

“Yeah what?”

“The whole setup. Guy owns a chandelier shop and look at what he’s got hanging here.” She pointed at the bare bulb. It flickered, as if in response.

“That’s not the only weird thing. Maggie Wheeler was hung on a chandelier,” Mike reminded her.

From inside the apartment came the sound of a crash as something was knocked over.

“Shit.” Braun’s voice sounded pained.

A light came on, the logjam was broken, and April quickly followed Mike through the door.

“Wow.” Mike whistled.

The four detectives huddled together for a confused instant, frozen with surprise. The place was not exactly what they had expected. It looked like some kind of warehouse. All kinds of furniture, a huge mirror, lamps, tables, settees, chairs, and sideboards were jumbled together, apparently at random, in the room fronting Second Avenue. There was so much of it, they could hardly get through it to the kitchen and the stairs. It almost seemed as if the furniture had been assembled that way to form a barricade to block entry to the living quarters.

The place smelled dusty and stale. Braun and Roberts began picking their way through it, turning on more lights as they went.

“This is going to take a while,” Braun muttered. “You could hide anything in here.”

April took another route, behind a sideboard, a desk, the mirror, and three chairs to the kitchen. Positioned behind the stairs between the front room and back rooms, it was a pretty sad affair. The walls hadn’t been painted in decades. The plaster of the ceiling was crumbling to a fine powder in several places. The refrigerator, sink, and stove were from another era. Dirty dishes filled the sink and covered every counter surface. April studied the dishes with interest. All fine china, several patterns. The glasses looked like crystal.

She pulled on a pair of gloves and opened the refrigerator. Inside was a loaf of moldy bread, a pizza box, two six-packs of Amstel light beer, five packages of film, and a little girl’s jewelry box of pale blue leather with faded gold tooling around the top. Carefully, she removed the jewelry box from the second shelf of the fridge, reminding herself where to return it later.

“What’s that?” Mike was peering over her shoulder.

She could feel him breathing on her neck again. She shivered.

The little box wasn’t locked. It swung open.

“What is it?”

There were only a few things inside. A broken necklace of American Indian beading, some crudely made enamel earrings with screwbacks. A cheap gold filigree bracelet with a cameo in the middle, and a gold pin of some sort with Greek letters on it. She picked up the gold pin and held it to the light.

“What is it?”

Mike shook his head.

“It’s a sorority pin,” Roberts said scornfully. He had pushed in behind Mike. “You two know what a sorority is?”

“Sure,” Mike said pleasantly. April could see the word Dickhead hanging there behind his smile. Sanchez moved out of the kitchen.

April put the jewelry box back in the fridge, then joined him in the back room. It was empty, looked as if it had been cleared for a renovation that never happened.

Braun looked around and had nothing to say. He cocked his head toward the stairs. Once again the four of them trooped up a flight of stairs in a line.

This time Braun had something to say. “Jesus H. Christ. Get a load of this.”

“Isn’t this fun.” Mike let April go in first.

She stopped suddenly, stunned. Nothing downstairs prepared them for what was up there. Unlike the mess on the floor below, this level had been very carefully decorated. The floor in the bedroom was pickled white, stenciled in a colorful pattern around the edges. An Oriental rug filled in the center. The walls were covered with fabric. April could tell it was high-quality silk, had a pattern of stripes and tiny flowers in pink and gold and green. The fabric was gathered at the ceiling and pulled up to a point at the top to look like a tent. From the center point hung an ornate chandelier with cherubs of painted porcelain.

A king-size four-poster against one wall was made up with a rich red brocade bedspread and topped with dozens of tapestry pillows, tassled and velvet-trimmed. The head- and baseboards were ornately carved, gilded wood.

There were only two other pieces of furniture in the room. A dressing table with a mirror attached, completely inlaid with ebony and mother-of-pearl, and a chair in the corner with faded and threadbare upholstery the same color as the jewelry box in the refrigerator.

Speechless, the four detectives studied the room. Then they moved to the bathroom, which had a Jacuzzi bathtub and black walls. In the closet they found only men’s clothes, and several shoe racks filled with cowboy boots of different colored leather—ostrich, alligator, snakeskin.

Up on the third floor they found a stark white room which held an old-fashioned cot and a painted chest of drawers. There were some rumpled sheets, an old quilt and one pillow on the bed, bars on the windows. The floor was bare except for a bowl of water with a dead cockroach floating in it, and a small white bathroom rug that was badly stained with a lot of little yellow circles of what April guessed was puppy urine.

“What’s that?”

Braun pointed to some soiled laundry in the corner. Roberts leaned over and picked it up. His forehead furrowed with alarm as he displayed the straitjacket, the straps showing quite a bit of wear.

April glanced at Mike. What did this picture tell?

Braun shook his head as if one ear were filled with water.

“Looks like he kept her up here in more ways than one.”

April took out her notebook and made a quick note. She wondered how Jason Frank was doing with the suspect.