Judging Time

27

April hurried down the hall to the prosecutor's office, her scarf flapping. She checked her watch: 12:33. She had hoped to catch Dean Kiang at his desk, but now hesitated. His door was three-quarters closed. What if he was with someone, or out to lunch? Suddenly she was unsure that she'd done the right thing by driving all the way down here to see him in person without taking the time to call him first and say she was coming. An hour ago she'd been certain that the great sage, the judge of proper feelings and behavior (in whom Skinny Dragon Mother believed, but April did not) would say there was no fault in her actions. So why the sudden attack of nerves that caused her coat and jacket to feel like a sauna set on high?

April had talked to prosecutors dozens, maybe hundreds, of times. And this particular prosecutor had already called and missed her twice today. Why then did she find it easier to handle a bloody homicide than to be a fragrant flower for an interested Chinese bee? April thrust her gloves in her pocket and tugged at her coat, sweating freely now. God, she hated winter.

A cop was supposed to be professional at all times, wasn't supposed to be attracted to anyone. April had the deepest contempt for the constant flirting, teasing, and fooling around that was a permanent fixture of precinct life. She fluffed at her hair with nervous fingers, then knocked on the door. No answer. She was double stupid, should have called first.

Kiang must be across the street in court. No, the judges always adjourned for lunch. He could be anywhere, could have gone to a crime scene or a precinct on another case. She knocked again, telling herself she shouldn't be disappointed, then poked her head in Kiang's tiny, cluttered office. It was empty.

She stood in the doorway for a second, her heart pounding. What now? Should she go to the medical examiner on her own and ask a few hard questions, as Mike had told her not to do? Should she leave Kiang a note, telling him she'd been there? She debated with herself for a moment, staring at the messy piles of papers on Kiang's desk.

Suddenly an arm draped across April's back. She flashed to a sergeant in the tactics house. The sergeant had played a bad guy acting like a good guy, who happened to have a Glock in his handshake. In an instant that sergeant had shot April dead to demonstrate how you never knew who had a razor blade between his teeth or a gun under his chin. Now, she whirled around, her hand instinctively reaching for the gun in her waistband.

"Well, hello, gorgeous," Kiang said, squeezing the arm going for the gun.

"Dean." An embarrassed flush flared across April's cheeks as she let her hand drop.

Kiang grinned. "Thanks for coming, babe. Can't do lunch, though, I have . . ." He checked his watch. "Ten minutes." Smoothly, he led her into his office and closed the door.

April took a seat, still blushing. People had called her a lot of things in her life, but no one had ever called her "babe," or thought she was looking for a date. The sage says a perfect person does not show anger or hurt. A perfect person is like the earth, accepting of fire and thunder, earthquake and flood, uncomplaining. Surviving all. She did not protest being ' called "babe," which she believed was the name of a pig in a movie. Remembering Skinny Dragon's advice, she gave him a weak smile back.

Kiang sat down at his desk and put his feet up. He was extremely good-looking even with his feet in her

face. Taken for an idiot, April felt her heart banging away in her chest a lot faster than it had to. She wished she hadn't come.

"What can I do for you, sweetheart?" He made a telescope of his fingers and took a look at her through it.

Was it a Chinese thing for him not to admit he'd called her that morning? Or was it a male thing? April had come all the way downtown, past Chinatown, to the courts and prosecutor's office to talk to him. Kiang was the person with the greatest knowledge of the law, a higher authority than Ducci, than Mike, or Iriarte—even the CO of her precinct, whoever the new person was. But now that April was here, she didn't know where to start telling him her concerns. She'd met him over a dead body less than a week ago. Was she his sweetheart already? With men, sometimes it was hard to tell.

Suddenly Kiang put down the telescope and came down to earth. "I hear Liberty's taken off. What's going on?" he said seriously.

"Yes, he shook his surveillance sometime last night. We're trying to locate him." Ashamed of a failure that wasn't hers, April looked down at her hands. "But I didn't come about him."

"What then?"

"Sanchez and I had a meeting with Ducci this morning."

"So?" Kiang's face went blank at the mention of Sanchez.

April took a deep breath. "He's concerned about some irregularities coming out of the medical examiner's office."

"Yeah, like what?" Kiang twirled a pencil around two fingers.

"Someone from the ME's office called Mrs. Petersen and told her the tox reports on her husband."

"How do you know it was the ME's office?"

"The widow had the report before we did."

"What do they say?"

"I haven't seen them yet. They haven't come in. But somebody told Daphne Petersen that her husband had high enough levels of alcohol and cocaine in his body to cause his heart attack." April hesitated.

"Okay, I'll get someone to talk to Dr. Washington about the dripping faucet." Kiang glanced at his watch again, then dropped his feet to the floor.

"That's not the only thing," April murmured. "Dr. Washington didn't use the ultraviolets during Pet-ersen's autopsy."

"So—?" Kiang shrugged and began shoving files into his briefcase.

"Well, Ducci says the victims' clothing indicates that Petersen died first. Petersen collapsed, and Merrill bled on his back. Also, there's a tiny hole and traces of blood on the inside of Petersen's sweater."

Kiang dropped the briefcase with a thud. "What are you telling me, that Ducci thinks Petersen was a homicide?"

April inhaled sharply, thinking of Daphne Petersen and her bronze-headed stud. "It's not impossible that the killer made Petersen look as if he'd died of a drug-induced heart attack, and Dr. Washington missed—"

"Oh, give me a break, April. The killer made a bloody mess of Merrill Liberty. I saw the photos of Petersen. No wounds, no blood. Unless the labs come up with two DNA samples from what they've got . .." He glanced at his watch a third time.

April made a face at Dean's hurry to get out of there, wondering why he wasn't interested in the fact that Petersen had fallen first. She doubted this was a moment to bring up the question of the lint in the cashmere sweater from a T-shirt that wasn't on the body. Somehow, in this context, it might appear weak.

Kiang gave April a quick smile. "Hey, relax, baby. MEs make mistakes. You make mistakes. We all make mistakes. That doesn't mean we should complicate things unnecessarily by pointing them out. Frankly, this is the kind of conjecture that leads nowhere. It would confuse a jury and quite possibly lead to reasonable doubt in a cut-and-dried case."

"What if it isn't a cut-and-dried case?" With her index finger April worried a hangnail on her thumb.

Kiang started packing again. "Did you know I have an ulcer?"

"No. And frankly, I can't rule Petersen's wife out as the killer. She admitted he was planning to divorce her. He had another woman. She had a lot to gain."

Kiang nodded. "I saw the will, but we don't have a cause of death consistent with your theory."

April was silent as he clicked his briefcase closed.

"Look, this is the case of your life, baby. If you do this right, maybe you could get assigned down here, be a prosecutor's investigator. How about that? We could work together al the time." He reached out and patted her arm before leading the way out of the office.

"Show me your stuff. Bring in Liberty, huh, and then we'll have something to talk about."

They went downstairs in the elevator together. Then Kiang went off to court.

"Call me later, will you? Maybe we'll have dinner."

The wind was sharp and the air bitter cold as April turned to walk the two blocks south to One Police Plaza and the brick monolith that was police headquarters, where she'd left her car. Even in the cold, it was a long time before her sweat dried and her face stopped burning.