Tracking Time

Forty-five

At twelve-thirty Igor Stanislovski, one of the criminalists from CSU, was just finishing his last sketch of the crime scene. The remains of Pee Wee James were bagged and ready to start their journey across town to the Medical Examiner's office for autopsy. More than two dozen uniforms from three precincts were keeping away the curious as April consulted with Charles Ding, a new investigator in the Medical Examiner's office.

Charles was a hail-fellow-well-met type with a wandering eye and distracting tic that got worse when he was nervous. He must have been pretty nervous right then because the whole time his head was bent to examine Pee Wee, his right eye winked steadily at April, giving him the appearance of a lecherous schoolboy. In fact, he was a serious guy.

"Typical drunk. Lots of scars, sores. Eczema on his hands and arms. Poor circulation in his legs. Look at those ankles. I wouldn't be surprised if he had gangrene in that foot. We'll know later, not that it matters. I'm not removing his shoes now. Bottom line, I'd say someone hit him on the side of the head, then attempted to bury him. Maybe he was interrupted. Looks like a pretty disorganized killer," Charles said.

"Probably the half-assed work of another drunk. He certainly appears to have died right here." Igor threw his own two cents in. "You notice there's not much disturbance in the ground. Who knows, maybe it was an accident."

Igor had some kind of Balkan accent, and a limp that was the result of a hollow-point bullet he'd taken in the calf several years back while attempting to stop a bank robbery one day when he went to deposit his paycheck. By now he'd finished bagging the potato chip bag, the Styrofoam cup, the shoe, three buttons, part of a sock, a crushed Coke can, an Alcoholics Anonymous key chain with its "God-grant-me-the-courage" credo deeply encrusted with dirt, and several gallons of earth, grass, and leaf samples. The ground had been tromped by the hordes. There were no clear shoe imprints from which to make plaster casts.

Igor was five-four, had the bluest eyes and the biggest head April had ever seen. These days he was wearing his thick blond hair in a ponytail. Of all the Crime Scene people, April thought Igor was the best. She respected his opinions, but he didn't know anything about Maslow's mystery patient. Pee Wee's murder could also be the work of a small female who couldn't possibly bury a body.

Ding's eye wandered over and winked at Igor. "We'll know more when we open him up." He removed his rubber gloves, bagged them, replaced them with a fresh pair, then trotted off to examine the soft tissue samples Peachy had found. "Bye now," were his parting words.

Igor frowned and circled the air with his finger. April shook her head at him. Don't make fun.

"Good to meet you, Charlie. Thanks," April called after him.

"De nada," the Chinese replied.

Spanish! April snorted and turned to Igor. Pee Wee was dead and it was all her fault. A Chinese saying fit his life well: "Loss upon loss until at last comes rest."

Last night she'd trusted Mike and followed the credo "By letting go, it all gets done." Her reward was Pee

Wee's eternal rest. Now she felt beaten by the mischief of unknown devils.

"I help out, don't I?" Pee Wee had said only yesterday.

Not enough, Pee Wee, not enough.

"Make your eyes bright enough from evil to lead you away" was another saying among the thousands April had learned. None of them fit in America 2000. In the thousand department the worst was "A thousand years is not enough to honor a parent."

Actually, April thought thirty years of parent honoring was an awful lot. Trying to brighten her eyes from the evil of Pee Wee's death, she turned to Igor with her ten thousand most pressing questions. Her cell phone rang and "Private" popped up on the screen.

"Sergeant Woo," she said.

"Yes, hello, April, it's Jason. Is this a better time? I really have to talk to you."

"Talk away, I have one minute."

"Have you found Maslow?"

"No, but we found someone else."

"Really?"

"Yes. It's getting spooky out here, Jason. We've got a head case for sure. Can we meet?"

"Someone's dead?"

"Yes, a homeless man."

"Oh, this is not my department."

"Well, that's not the weird thing, Jason. I need your help here. This isn't pick-and-choose time. You brought this situation to me."

"Did I?"

"Yes, you did."

Jason groaned. "You cops, always playing with the truth. I asked you about one of my students, only that. What's the weird thing, April?"

"We have some finds of soft tissue."

"You got me on that, April. Soft tissue from what?"

"Maybe human, maybe not. Our tracker found it buried, you know, near the body, but in different sites. The tissue didn't come from the homicide victim so it could be a whole other thing. What do you make of it?"

Jason groaned again. "April, I'm a psychoanalyst. I work with the living. And among the living. Look, it's weirder than you think."

It was her turn to be surprised. "Really, how's that?"

"I'd like you to treat this as confidential for the moment if you can. But, I just had a little visit from Maslow's father. He has another family. Maslow has a sister he doesn't know about."

"He has a sister?" April was excited.

"Yeah, twenty years old."

"Who's the mother? Where does she live?"

"She's a woman Maslow's father works with, an employee of his. Mother and daughter live in Long Island City. Where the hell is that?"

"In Queens. Jesus!" April was unnerved by the sight of Woody Baum, careening across the grass toward her in Iriarte's Lumina. He was driving the car like an off-road SUV with the lieutenant in the passenger seat and Lieutenant Margaret Mary Joyce, commander of the Detective Squad of the Two-O and April's former boss, in the backseat next to Captain Higgins, the CO of the precinct. From the other direction came the Jeep of Captain Reginald. Shit, what was this, turf war?

"What?" Jason asked.

"Look, Jason, something's come up. I have to go-"

"Wait, I have an address for you," Jason cried.

April turned the page of her notebook. "Okay, sure. Give me the address. I'll go see the sister, where does she live?"

Jason gave her the Long Island City address. She wrote it down quickly, then shoved her notebook into her purse, her eyes nervously on the Lumina that seemed to have her targeted for a hit. She stood there trying to be cool, and Woody stopped just short of crashing into her.

Then, still dressed for summer in a butter yellow suit, mango shirt, mint green tie, and straw hat, Lieutenant Iriarte jumped out of the car and slammed the door. "Woo, what the mother-fucking hell do you think you're doing?" he screamed.

The sudden loss of face like the bang of a popped balloon in front of her former bosses made April's head swim. Neither Captain Higgins, who didn't like girl cops, nor Lieutenant Joyce, who didn't like her, had ever spoken to her quite like that.

Joyce, a big swearer herself, looked pretty surprised by the attack. She got out of the car moving one plump leg at a time, a frown gathering on her pugnacious face. Higgins was out of the car. Baum jumped out. Captain Reginald, CO of the Central Park Precinct, was out of his Jeep, running toward them, too. April prayed for bloody turf war.

"Good morning, sir. Lieutenant Joyce, congratulations on your promotion. Good morning, Captain Higgins, Captain Reginald." April gave them all a second, covered all the bases except for Baum, who had seemed a little too happy with the opportunity to run her down.

"Yeah, and congratulations on yours. I always knew you'd make good." Lieutenant Joyce glanced at Iriarte and gave April a real smile. "And congratulations on your upcoming nuptials, too," she added.

"My nuptials?" April blushed some more.

"Yeah, I heard you and Mike are getting married. I like it when my best people get together. Mazeltov." This was for all the captains' benefit. A few courtesies before the ax fell.

Higgins guffawed at the Yiddish.

"We're just friends, Lieutenant-" April said. She was freaked by all the brass and saw her career careening toward a desk job in Housing for sure.

''Enough of the chitchat," Iriarte interrupted her peevishly. "I've had complaints about you, Woo." He eyed Captain Reginald.

Thousands of years of prescribed correct Chinese behavior for people of lower rank, including and especially females, had coded April's genes to make her bow to the ground, to smack her forehead on the earth, and beg for forgiveness for her lack of wisdom and any involuntary foolishness that she might wrongfully have committed. Correct Chinese behavior warned that the tongue was dangerous to the throat. In other words, shut up.

Being in a new country and new century altogether, however, a reasonable modification of forehead knocking might be to wither to half-self, cast her eyes down, and attempt to disappear. This self-effacement tactic to appease an irritated boss, though, was at odds with her more recent training from Lieutenant Joyce and Mike Sanchez, who were big stand-up-for-yourself people. For a second she was almost conflicted about which way to go.

"I'm with Lieutenant Sanchez," she said officiously. "He's working Special Case on the Atkins case. Last night he requested a second dog tracker, I suggested John Zumech. I worked with Zumech when I was in the Two-O. Do you know him, sir?" she asked Iriarte.

"He's worked in here before." Captain Reginald affirmed Zumech's credibility, then waited for the shit to hit.

"What does Zumech have to do with it?" With the comment from the CP CO, Iriarte's mood darkened further. His tongue worked its way around his mouth unhappily.

"It was his dog that found Pee Wee James." April glanced at Lieutenant Joyce. She nodded. Way to go, April.

"Is that the victim?" Baum blurted out.

April nodded at Captain Reginald. Now was not the time to mend fences with him. She turned to Iriarte again. "What happened, sir? I had the vic in an interview room yesterday morning. When I returned last night at 2100, I found out he'd been released at noon. Now he's dead. Unfortunate." Now she was stepping way out of line.

Iriarte didn't like it one bit. His tongue punched out the side of his cheek. Clearly whatever report he'd received on the homicide hadn't revealed the victim's identity. He didn't like hearing it from April.

"It's James?" he said unhappily.

"Yes, sir," she told him. Pee Wee was zipped up in the bag. The finger was packaged separately.

Iriarte watched the removal of the remains with the distress of someone about to lose a promotion.

"Hey, this was your investigation, April. As far as I'm concerned, you can take the homicide," Joyce said with a smile. "You'll solve it one, two, three, right, Captain?"

"Yeah, good plan," Higgins agreed. He didn't want the case in the Two-O. They hadn't caught it in the first place. Why take on a big problem?

The Central Park Precinct wasn't set up for homicide investigations. That meant that the closest precinct was Midtown North, just what Iriarte didn't want. No one wanted Special Case in it, either. Made them all look bad.

"April was the best detective I ever had, right, Captain?" Joyce said.

"No question," Higgins agreed.

Now April could see why the three of them had come together. They all wanted April to take the heat for the homicide. The dog barked, easing the tension. Looked like the search was over. Mike strolled toward them with Zumech. Peachy was at his side, heeling nicely. The two men were in serious conversation. No sign of Maslow.

"Fine, April is the primary. She set up the search, she gets the homicide." Iriarte gave her an evil smile.

"Thank you, sir, I need Woody here for a few hours, mind if I take him?" The little bastard.

As far as Iriarte was concerned the conversation was at an end. The homicide fuckup was on April's plate; that was all that mattered to him. He'd lose her when it was over.

"Yeah, he'll take us back and then you're welcome to him. He's a terrible driver."