Stealing Time

CHAPTER 8

A

t half past one on Wednesday morning, the squad room of Midtown North was still jammed, noisy, and hot. April and Woody returned to the collection of small, windowless rooms on the precinct's second floor after talking with Anton Popescu and checking on the progress of the dozens of officers searching for the missing baby in the park. Before they went in she told Woody to go write up his notes and not to talk to anybody about what they'd learned.

The information they'd uncovered about the baby's parentage was for Lieutenant Iriarte's ears only. It was up to him to pass it on. Although Anton had not given them anything specific on the birth mother, he was beginning to crack in the first twelve hours, and would probably give it all up in the next twenty-four if they kept the pressure on. April hoped the child was still alive.

Feeling encouraged, she went into her very first office with actual walls and a door that gave her a little privacy and indicated her status in the department. At the moment it was occupied by a middle-aged detective she'd never seen before. He was wearing a black toupee, was wiry, and wired. He was talking on the phone, gesturing with his hands, smoking and scattering ashes all over her desk.

"This your seat?" he queried, putting his hand over the mouthpiece.

"Sergeant Woo," she murmured politely, indicating the nameplate in front of him.

"I was just leaving." He hung up without saying good-bye and went out to join his buddies squatting at other people's desks in the main squad room.

April put her purse down, fell into her desk chair with a sigh, and called Iriarte at home in Westchester. He was most interested in her report and said he'd call Hagedorn to start searching for the birth mother. After she hung up, April placed the difficult call to Heather Rose's parents in San Francisco, where the time was now a little after 10:30

P.M

. A woman picked up after the third ring.

"Wei."

April could hear Chinese TV on loud in the background. It was Mandarin, so she spoke Mandarin. "I'm Detective Sergeant April Woo, calling from New York. I'm sorry to bother you at this late hour, but I need to talk to you about your daughter, Heather Rose."

"Aieeeyeeee!" The woman started to scream before April could say another word. She screamed at someone in the room with her that Heather Rose was dead, she was dead in New York.

"She's not dead," April said into the receiver, but the woman was yelling, not listening. The TV was on, and April heard a man in the background trying to calm her down. It was just like home.

"She's dead, dead in New York!" Mrs. Kwan was screaming. "We have to go to New York. Call the airline. I have to go now."

The man took the phone. "Who is this?"

April had to start all over. She told him she was a detective in New York City and their daughter was

not dead. But Heather Rose was injured and in the hospital.

"Ah." He conveyed that in Chinese to his wife. She continued screaming.

"What happened?" Heather's father finally asked.

April hesitated. "It's not entirely clear at the moment. Your daughter was assaulted in her apartment."

"Assaulted? By who—her husband?"

"Has it happened before?" she asked quickly.

Silence.

"She's unconscious. She needs your help," April told him.

"What can we do?" It was not a question. It was what people said when their children were involved in something they thought was stupid, but they loved them all the same. "What can you do?" they say with their shoulders climbing up to their ears.

"Their baby is missing," she added.

"Baby missing?" Now there was real pandemonium in the background.

"Hello, hello." April tried to get a word in, but the screaming in Chinese didn't stop.

"Baby missing?" This was more than Heather's father could deal with. He passed the phone back to his wife.

"Baby missing?" she cried.

"Mrs. Kwan, your daughter can't talk to me right now, and I need information about her and the baby. Can you tell me how the adoption was arranged?"

"Adoption?"

"Yes, didn't you know it was an adopted baby?"

"No, can't be. Baby is Heather's baby, my grandson."

"Certainly, but maybe not her birth child."

"Why are you saying this? He's her child, I know."

"How do you know? Did you see her pregnant, were you with her when she gave birth?" These were

hard questions for a mother far away and in the dark about many things to answer. A pained silence followed.

"She sent me pictures," she answered after a long pause.

"Of the baby?"

"Yes, of course pictures of baby. But also pictures of herself pregnant."

It was clear Mrs. Kwan couldn't accept that her daughter was not the birth mother of her grandson and further that Heather Rose had tried to hide the fact by faking her pregnancy in photos. April felt sorry to be the one to pass on such dreadful news, sorry for the mother whose daughter had lied to her and cheated her of a grandchild she claimed as her own. And also sorry for herself because she was no closer to finding the baby's real mother than she'd been before.

"Tell me about your daughter, Mrs. Kwan," April went on as gently as she could.

"What is there to tell? She's good girl, beautiful girl. Smart girl. Went to best college, full scholarship. Marry very smart man, very rich man. She send many presents. Call me every week. Best-quality girl." She began to weep. What else was there to know?

April pressed on. Was Heather a sad person? Did she ever hurt herself? Was she upset when things didn't go well? How about her level of patience? Did she get impatient easily? Was she happy in New York? Did she ever set a fire when she was a little girl, ever hurt an animal? Did she ever get burned, or burn anybody?

"What kind of questions are these?" the mother demanded.

Routine, April assured her. She couldn't completely abandon the possibility that Heather might have found out her baby was her husband's with another woman and killed him in revenge. Such things were not completely unknown in history.

Mrs. Kwan knew what April was getting at, but insisted Heather wasn't that kind of child. Good child. Too independent, maybe, but good.

"How many months ago did your daughter tell you she was having a baby?"

Silence.

"Was she excited about it?"

"She's a good girl."

"When you talked to her after she got the baby, what did she say? How did those weeks go? Did she enjoy having a baby?"

"What kind of questions are these?" Mrs. Kwan asked again but this time in a way that indicated she knew very well what kind of questions they were. "Heather Rose good girl," she assured April again. "Best daughter in whole world. She call me every week. Never complain. Never." But Soo Ling Kwan must have heard something in her daughter's voice during those weekly calls.

She insisted Heather Rose had suffered no injuries, no accidents, had never hurt or starved herself. But she had also immediately jumped to the conclusion that any call from the police had to mean her daughter was dead. It might not be an unusual reaction, but still April wondered if a part of Mrs. Kwan had been expecting such an end for her daughter. She learned nothing else.

If it had been a quiet night, April would have been heading out about now. But this was the kind of case that made everybody nuts. Even if Iriarte hadn't told her to keep on it, she wouldn't have been in a hurry to leave. Nobody liked abuse and missing babies. They weren't the kind of thing you could go home and forget: have a nice night. Losing a kid was the worst. It was more than a career maker or breaker. It was personal. She glanced at the stack of pink message slips on her desk. Then her phone rang.

"Midtown North detective squad, Sergeant Woo," she said in nice even tones.

"Hola, querida, que tal?"

She smiled into the receiver. "Hey, Mike."

"Miss me?"

"Yeah," she admitted in spite of herself. Then she wanted to bite her tongue for revealing her feelings.

"Yo tambien."

"How's the case going?" she asked, playing with a pencil. Mike had gotten a homicide two days ago, a real mess in a hotel on Lexington Avenue. All she'd heard were rumors that State Department, intelligence, and Israeli consulate people were working on it. For some reason he'd been holding out on giving her the details. Now he grunted.

"Victim was an Israeli. His business partner claims he had ten thousand dollars in cash and a sack of diamonds worth a quarter of a million when he was iced. ME's report says he was tortured and his crown jewels were hacked off while he was still alive. Poor bastard bled to death."

She knew Mike had attended the autopsy; now she knew the reason for his silence. Ugly, ugly case. She made a sympathetic noise, didn't envy him.

His voice brightened. "I hear you caught a big one, too."

"What do you hear?"

"Nothing—just you caught a big one. Need help?"

"No, thanks. You didn't ask for mine." April bristled; she wasn't good at inequality.

"You don't want to know about this one."

"Sure I do. And you just hate being left out of anything."

"Give me a break. Is it a sin to be supportive? I thought that's what every woman wants."

"Sorry. I'm a little touchy about this one. It's weird."

"Not as weird as mine," he shot back.

"Fine, it's not as weird as yours, but still it's weird." She gave him the gist of it, relieved to get it off her chest.

"Ransom note or call?"

"No."

"Anything on the phone tap?"

"Nothing yet, but I'd be real surprised if we get a ransom demand on this one," she said. "It's not her baby. But don't pass that around."

"No kidding."

"Get this: the husband of the victim says his mistress is the mother of the baby. She's married to someone in the military and has taken off for parts unknown.—Oh, and the victim is Chinese," she added suddenly. "The father's white. The whole thing makes me queasy."

"It has nothing to do with us," Mike said quickly, catching the subtext even before it came into focus in April's mind. Then he moved on. "I had a case once, man faked an abduction of his own baby. His motive was he didn't want a custody battle when he divorced his wife. Poor woman went around the bend when her baby disappeared. That's when he filed for divorce."

"What did he do with the baby?"

"Oh, he'd given it to his girlfriend in New Jersey the first day. He'd set up an apartment for her, everything. They wanted to get married and have a family right away."

Another girlfriend. And Heather Rose had no idea, her husband had said. April thought of the duck defrosting in the sink. People were out looking for a dead infant. She wanted to clear Heather Rose of any suspicion that she'd killed her rival's baby. "You voting for the husband as the kidnapper, then?" she murmured.

"Not yet. Remember those girls in New Jersey? One gave birth in the girls' bathroom during her high school prom, suffocated the baby, then went back to the dance. The other gave birth in a motel, killed her baby, and was back in her college dorm in time for her next class. Then there's the girl in Ohio gave birth and killed the baby while her mother was out to dinner. When the mother got back, they sat and watched TV for the rest of the evening—"

There went the duck-proves-innocence theory. "Those were young, unmarried teenagers, terrified of their parents. This is a mature—"

"Hell hath no fury . . ." he reminded her.

April had a stomachache. It had been bothering her for hours. She wanted baby Paul found alive and well, didn't want Heather Rose to be a killer or the father to be a kidnapper with a girlfriend in New Jersey.

Mike changed the subject. "You want to come over to my place? I'll make it worth your while."

"Can't, I'm staying with it," she said, and felt a guilty pang. Skinny was going to freak if she didn't come home two nights in a row—even if she had a good excuse. Then she thought if things quieted down, she might go home for a few hours, after all.

"Call me when you can."

"Sure." April hung up. Depression settled on her as she cleaned up her desk, picked up her jacket, and headed out into the field to see if the baby had turned up in the last fifteen minutes. He hadn't.

Three hours later, with no break in the case, April parked in front of the brick house she shared with her parents in Astoria, Queens, not far from Hoyt Avenue and the entrance to the Triborough Bridge. She got out of the car, locked up slowly, then stretched, feeling the space around her like a blind person picking out obstacles in the dark. All she wanted was to see her mom and have a quick nap before changing her clothes and heading back to work.

The street was quiet, but cop habits made her check for signs of trouble. Only a few lights in the surrounding houses were on this late. Some of the people who lived around here were old and had trouble sleeping. April knew everybody's routine. On this block all the houses were attached, single-family homes. A lot of Greeks and Italians, Brazilians and Indians, not that many Chinese. April's father, Ja Fa Woo, had chosen the place with the help of an almost-relative, the owner of Chen Realty in Long Island City. He'd chosen the location in spite of the ethnic makeup of the neighborhood because he was a commuter to Manhattan early and late and didn't want to travel too far at night when he was tired.

April's survey finished at her own house, and that was the only place something was wrong. The front light was off. She started up the cement walk. Though it was May, the air was still quite cold at night. Tonight it was in the mid-forties. She shivered in her spring jacket. A three-quarter moon hung in the sky, just above the block of houses, lending them an exotic touch. April figured the bulb must have burned out and her mother didn't have a spare one in the house to change it. She couldn't reach the socket anyway. For the ten thousandth time April told herself it wasn't easy having a mother who couldn't drive and didn't like going to an American store by herself. Sai knew the prices of things but couldn't read labels or signs. She also didn't like being in the dark. April thought it wasn't so easy being her, either.

She put "Get lightbulbs" on her mental list of things to do for her mother, then stood for a moment, drinking in the night, before going into the house. Sometimes she did this as a kind of restorative after getting home from a difficult tour of duty. Out in Queens, with no towering buildings nearby, there was open sky over her head, and the moon and stars felt like close friends. By their light alone she could see the hot-pink flowers on the azalea bushes that her mother had nagged her father so relentlessly to get. She had been right about them, at least. The shrubs lined the walk like runway lights, inviting her in.

April realized something else was wrong. No lights were on inside the house, either. She frowned and suddenly felt afraid. Her mother didn't drive. Her father didn't drive. Skinny always waited up for April no matter how late she was. This was a common cause of complaint, for April's hours were erratic at best. Skinny didn't care that crime didn't punch a time clock—she thought her daughter was inconsiderate. So where were they?

April opened the door with her key and went inside. No light shone from the kitchen where Skinny sat out her days and nights watching TV, waiting for her husband and daughter to return from their jobs. No light was on in the living room or the big bedroom downstairs that her parents had taken for themselves. Their door was closed. All was quiet. April frowned some more. What was this about? She'd never come home before without her mother there to nag her, plague her with ten thousand questions, or try to feed her a Chinese banquet in the middle of the night. The sudden freedom to climb the stairs to her own apartment and go to sleep in peace should have made her happy. Instead she climbed the stairs to her apartment confused and upset.

April's parents had always told her the Chinese treasured their children more than any other kind of people did. Heather Rose's parents had certainly been distraught at the news of their daughter's trouble, but they hadn't known she'd been injured before. They hadn't known she had not given birth. That meant Heather Rose had kept many secrets from them. She must have felt she couldn't turn to them for help. Tonight of all nights, April had wanted to talk with her own mother about her feelings for Mike and why he was a good man. And she'd wanted to ask Skinny Dragon, the authority on all things Chinese, if there was anything in the world that would make a young mother with a rich husband abandon or kill a baby, no matter where it came from.

On the other hand, parents could turn on a dime when they were thwarted. Maybe Heather's parents had turned on her when she married Anton. Maybe her own parents were turning on her because she was spending her nights with Mike. April figured her mother knew about this the way Skinny Dragon knew about all things, and she guessed by her parents' absence that the punishment was going to be severe. She reached the last step and unlocked the door that did not keep her mother out. She prayed that tomorrow Heather Rose would wake up and talk to her and that she'd find the missing baby alive and well in the appropriate maternal arms.

April got undressed and curled up in her single bed, certain she was too wired by Heather's situation and her own to ever fall asleep. She fell asleep within minutes, however, not with any insight into whether a wife might kill the product of her husband's betrayal, but with a certain sympathy for a grown child who might wish to kill its parent.