Judging Time

30

Hey, pretty one. What are you doing here again?"

Ducci hastily filed some slides in a box and stowed it away in his desk. Then he swiveled his chair around to Nanci, making nice all around. "Hey, Nance, you know April Woo."

Nanci looked April over, raking a hand through her good dye job. "How you doin', Woo. I hear you made sergeant."

"I'm in Midtown North now," April said wearily. She shook some raindrops off her coat and glanced at the two guest chairs in the room. They were occupied by files, a skull, and some labeled objects the two dust and fiber experts must be studying.

"Yeah, I heard, detective squad. That idiot Hagedorn still there?" Nanci pushed back her chair, stretching out a pair of faultless legs in black tights.

April nodded. "Still there. How're you doing, Nanci?"

"Oh, overworked and underpaid. And I have to sit next to an egomaniac. I guess it's raining out." Nanci reached into a desk drawer for her purse and a grungy-looking red sweater.

"Better than snow," April remarked.

"I guess."

"Oh, come on. You love every second you spend with me. I taught you everything you know," Ducci said, peeved.

"Oh, sure I do. I have boxes of stuff on this Central Park case, people breathing down my neck on it, and suddenly he's got this bee in his bonnet about Petersen's autopsy and T-shirt lint." Nanci rolled her eyes.

"Well, he doesn't get to see many autopsies these days," April said.

"And, he shouldn't." Nanci sniffed. "Wet stuff's not his area."

Ducci still had Tor Petersen's cashmere sweater on his desk with the severed fibers in the chest carefully cut out for his slides. A sleeve hung over the edge. Ducci played with the cuff like a cat with a tassel.

"I was doing blood before you were born. I know fuckups when I see them." Ducci turned to April. "Where's your boyfriend?"

What boyfriend? "If you're referring to Sanchez, who isn't my boyfriend, I haven't seen him since this morning. The car Liberty claimed was stolen turned up in Staten Island with a bloody interior."

"No kidding."

"Might be a drug buy gone wrong. I think Sanchez planned to look at it, then go out to New Jersey to talk to Petersen's driver."

"In this weather?"

"Yes. Mind if I put my coat here?"

"No, no, go ahead, sit down. You want some coffee or something?" Ducci grinned, playing the host.

"Uh-uh, yours is worse than ours." April slung her coat over the back of Ducci's guest chair and moved the skull over to the filing cabinet.

"Couldn't you get the guy to come into the station?"

"We talked to him once. He held back on us." She sat down and let out a sigh. "Now he's gone elusive on us and we've got two suspects we can't keep track of. Makes us look pretty careless, doesn't it?"

"We all have bad days."

"This is more than a bad day."

Ducci pointed to the plastic bag April had dropped at her feet. "You got something new for me?"

She glanced down, startled. "Oh, God, I'm so tired I don't know what I'm doing." She tossed the bag to Ducci. He caught it and looked inside.

"Nice sweater, a belated Christmas gift for me, pretty one?"

"Nah, it's another of Petersen's sweaters."

Ducci pulled the maroon cashmere out of the bag and grimaced at the heady aroma emanating from it. "Vanilla," he said decisively.

April looked surprised. "How can you guys identify smells like that? I could never have put a flavor to that stink."

Ducci laughed, creasing his round choirboy's cheeks. "I know most things," he murmured. "I know your perfume, know your boyfriend's."

"No kidding. What is it?" she asked about Mike's perfume.

Ducci didn't answer. He seemed stunned by the white T-shirt folded into the sweater. "What are you telling me with this?"

April smiled at Nanci. "You know most things, Duke. You figure it out for me."

"Okay, a T-shirt," Nanci said flatly. "So now we know Petersen wore T-shirts—sometimes. I'm going home."

"His widow told me he never went without one, and she was very upset that I asked," April said. "Apparently Petersen thought it was unhealthy to have cashmere next to his skin."

Preoccupied, Ducci pulled a Snickers bar out of his desk drawer. For once he was too absorbed to tear it open. He scratched the corner of his small mouth as he studied the sweater. "Too bad it's too big for me," he murmured.

"Keep eating those candy bars and it won't be for long." Nanci laughed.

"This is for you, Ducci, nobody else. And you, Nanci, if you care to listen. Daphne Petersen called to speak to Rosa Washington the day after the murder. I was there when she called. Rosa wasn't there so she left a message. Today, Daphne was the first person to get her husband's tox report. And then there's the fact that Petersen's body was cremated in record time. She almost lost her cookies when I told her her husband's undershirt was not on him at the time of his autopsy."

"Who arc you suspecting, the Petersen woman or our good doctor of maybe more than just sloppy work?"

April shook her head. "I did a little checking on Daphne Petersen. She came to this country twelve years ago, when she was eighteen, worked as a manicurist in several upscale beauty salons, sang in a cocktail bar at night. No priors, no driver's license. She met Petersen when she did his nails. He married her. She was number three and a step down from his usual style of wife. She might have killed him if she lhought the fairy tale was over."

Ducci scratched the side of his face. "We still don't have a homicide on her husband, and if we don't have a homicide, we don't have a case against the Petersen woman, you following me?"

"Of course, I know that," April groaned.

"So if you want to pursue this line—and I'm not saying you should or you shouldn't—you have to prove there was a homicide on a body whose death report says otherwise and that is no longer with us for further examination."

"Well, Ducci, you brought it up. I'm having trouble letting it go now."

"I didn't say you should or shouldn't. Just be careful. It's the kind of thing that can backfire." He pointed to the sweater. "Was this just for background or do you want me to do something with it?"

The black hair that Daphne Petersen had insisted belonged to Petersen's girlfriend, but actually looked to April just like Daphne's, was stuck to the ribbing of the sweater. April picked it off and handed it to Ducci, shaking her head. "Probably unconnected."

"What's your hypothesis?" Ducci rummaged around his desk for a plastic envelope.

"The widow claims it's the hair of Petersen's girlfriend. Didn't you find a similar one on his body?" April asked. _.

"Oh, yeah, it's around here somewhere. Yeah, interesting hair. It was relaxed and straightened." Ducci squinted at the hair April had given him. "Yeah, remarkably like this. You have any more? I'll need to make some slides of it."

"No more at the moment. Why so interesting?"

"Remember that case with the Jane Doe prostitutes?" Ducci found an envelope for the hair, labeled it, and sat back in his chair.

Nanci nodded vigorously. "We did a big study on hair products. Those girls were well kept. Best makeup, hair products. You name it. Turned out they were Russian. We were able to identify them through their hair."

"Their hair was colored," Ducci went on, "then moisturized with Goldwell products. They're German, and so expensive only a few salons in the city use them. The madam of our three dead tarts had made sure her girls had the very best of everything—that is, until they ran into a little trouble with one of their diplomat customers."

"I remember." April took the next step. "So the hair on Petersen's body was colored with a Goldwell product?"

Ducci nodded.

"Are we looking for a Russian tart?"

"Ha-ha. No, models use them. Actresses. Singers."

"People who might once have worked in a beauty salon."

"Right. Get me a few strands of the widow's hair."

"I don't have probable cause to get a warrant for that."

"Then do it carefully. Going home now?"

"I wish I were." April was way off the chart now. Hours past go-home time. Iriarte had hoped they would clear the case in forty-eight hours. By Wednesday they'd failed that deadline. Now the lieutenant wanted it cleared in a week. It was Friday night. April figured she had two days to go before total disgrace.

Impatiently she waited for Ducci to give her the list of hairdresser salons that used Goldwell products. She bet that the name of the salon where Daphne Petersen had once worked was on it. She checked her watch; it was time to get going.