Hanging Time

59

April Woo looked through the glass viewing panel and mouthed “Come out.”

Leisurely, Jason got up, stretched, said something to Camille April couldn’t hear, then moved to the door. April opened it.

He gave her a piercing look. “What’s going on?”

April didn’t answer. She was deeply aware of the brown stains on her shirt and the blood spatters from the gunshot wounds of Lieutenant Braun and Bouck on her shoes and trousers. There had been quite a bit of blood on the floor. She’d waded through it. There was a lot of other trace evidence all over her, too. From the upstairs, from the basement. Crime Scene would have a hell of a time putting together the last few hours of her day. Just a routine day that started with a dead girl on one side of Second Avenue, then segued right into a shootout among five officers and a suspect on the other side of Second Avenue.

Upstairs they were saying the bureau got their perp within twenty-four hours. Great work. They were heroes. There were only a few crucial things wrong with that though. They got him in the wrong twenty-four-hour period. After he killed Maggie Wheeler, they’d been looking for someone who knew her, not a stranger. So he had time to kill again. They’d been meticulously working the wrong angle. April felt kind of queasy. A lot queasy, in fact. Like everything about this case from beginning to end was all messed up.

Once in a while in social situations she’d indulge and have a beer. She hadn’t had one since Sunday, when she ate part of a lunch with Dr. Dong, but now she felt as if she’d been drinking steadily ever since the case began just over a week ago. She was tired, thick-headed, and a little nauseated.

And now Jason Frank’s eyes were boring into her, increasing her uneasiness. This was a guy who didn’t just look at people. He looked into them. She’d seen this before in him. His gaze made her wonder if he could tell what she was thinking. It used to throw her off balance until she got to know him. Then she decided he was all right, couldn’t read her mind after all.

“What’s going on?” he asked again.

“End of shift is all.” She answered his question evenly, but her face was stiff with strain.

Mike was in Sergeant Joyce’s office, on the phone with the Captain. For some reason, the people downtown didn’t think it was as great work as Captain Higgins did. They weren’t happy. They were talking about an internal investigation of the shooting. That made Captain Higgins nervous. He knew his people could be made to take the fall somehow just because they were on the scene and it would look better. Wouldn’t look better for the Two-O though.

“Thank God, we’re clean” had been April’s first words when they got in their car to return to the precinct.

She said things like that because thinking the American thing was a reflex action with her. At the same time as she thanked the generic American God that actually had no meaning to her, she had another thought. She worried about which of the many Chinese gods that Sai Woo claimed were hovering around in the air all the time, waiting to decide which moments to make danger and which to protect from danger, was appropriate to thank on an occasion like this.

“Not so fast,” Mike replied. “They’ll check our guns to make sure we’re clean, and then what they find will show maybe we’re not so clean after all.” He rolled his window down.

“Better pray they find you clean,” he added.

April was driving. She had the keys, and it was her turn. She saw Mike’s hand drift up to the knot on his tie and knew he was reaching for the cross around his neck. She could tell he believed in God, and might even be praying to Him right now. She found that kind of puzzling, because it was clear when people believed that kind of stuff, they got in a lot of trouble.

She couldn’t get over the fact that Mike’s wife hung on to him for years, even though she didn’t want him anymore. That wasn’t like the Chinese. But the Chinese were different in lots of ways. Each had his own name, different from anyone else’s. The Spanish all had generic names, like the generic God they worshiped. The men were all José or Alfonso, Jesus or Juan. The women were Maria or Maria Rosario or Maria Elena, or Maria Magdalena. It got confusing sometimes. All the women in Sanchez’s life seemed to be just plain Maria. His mother, sister, cousins, the Maria who didn’t want him.

The thought of Mike’s Maria who didn’t want him sliced through April’s stomach like a knife through a bitter melon. She felt the mix: the bitterness of the melon and the sharpness of the knife. She didn’t understand her feelings about Mike. Everybody else she thought about with her head. She felt Mike with her body. That was boo hao. No good at all.

She thought about her reaction when she realized Bouck had a weapon. She had broken into a cold sweat, her first thought of Mike, up on the stairs, unprepared and in the middle of everything.

After the shots were fired, she had wanted to rush into the melee and make sure he was okay. That was not good. A cop couldn’t think with the heart, or any other part of the body. A cop could think only with his head. Anything else was dangerous.

And the way she reacted to Mike was all physical. Sometimes when she was close to him she got a sharp pain in the stomach. And it wasn’t because she missed lunch. Sometimes it was a piercing pain behind the eyes. Other times, sweat. It occurred to her maybe Skinny Dragon Mother was right and some Chinese god had gotten to America after all, had personally homed in on her, and was making mischief.

One day in the car Mike told April his mother Maria wrote a letter every day to his dead father up in heaven to keep him informed of what was going on with his family down on earth.

April didn’t have to ask how much postage it was to heaven. Postage to heaven was free, but apparently getting there wasn’t always so easy. An unhappy wife stayed married because she was afraid a divorced woman wouldn’t get in. April felt bad that she had known Mike for a year and it took Ducci to find that out.

Skinny Dragon Mother would say April wasn’t much of a detective. And it was true she didn’t know what to make of Spanish women. One writing letters to her husband in heaven because she didn’t want to keep him waiting for the news. One thinking she could get there on a technicality, pretending she hadn’t violated her sacred vows by leaving her husband. What kind of God would put up with tricks like that?

In trouble, though, Mike’s hand moved up to his neck, where the small gold cross hung on a chain. She had seen it once after they had a scuffle with two thirteen-year-olds who’d robbed a corner store, shot the owner in the chest, and then led them on a chase down a crowded play street, through an open fire hydrant. By the time they and three uniforms stopped the kids, the gun was long gone, people were shrieking on the street, and everyone was soaked. Mike had shoved his wet tie in a pocket and opened his collar.

It was then that April saw for the first time a small portion of dark and hairy, barbarian chest and the cross. She had thought it must be easier with only one God to worry about, because she didn’t want to think about the hair on Mike’s chest and how sexy she thought it was.

The whole thing had made her sweat—the cross, the chest. The chase, the stinging cold water from the fire hydrant.

Jason didn’t buy shift change as the cause of her tension. “Where’ve you been?”

April turned to take him upstairs to the squad room. “Out in the field,” she said vaguely.

“Something must have happened. You don’t look so, ah, great.”

“Yeah, I’ll tell you about it. How are you doing with Camille?”

“Oh, I’m about finished for now. I’ve sent the officer back in with her while we talk.”

Jason followed her upstairs to the squad room. He’d been there before.

It was after midnight. No one was around. April glanced at Sergeant Joyce’s closed door. She wondered if Mike was still in there with her, giving his statement. If that was the case, hers would be next.

She sat down at her desk, trying not to think about it. She had been working six different cases when the Maggie Wheeler thing came up. All of them had been put aside. They were sitting there on her desk, the folders untouched in a week. Everybody cared about his own case and wanted it dealt with right away. Quite a few message slips had accumulated. The pile looked a little messy, as though someone had gone through it.

April took a sidelong glance at it. The name on the top pink slip jumped up and startled her. George Dong had called at nine o’clock. Hastily, she shoved the slips under a folder.

Jason lowered himself into the visitor’s chair beside her desk, grimacing as if everything hurt. “I’m really hungry, and I’m really tired, and there’s blood on your shirt. What happened?”

“It’s mole,” she replied quickly, closing her jacket around the stains. She couldn’t decide what to tell him, so she hedged. “You want food first or the story first?”

Jason smiled bleakly. “Why don’t you tell me the story while we’re waiting for the food?”