Judging Time awm-3

by Leslie Glass

  "Police! Open that door! Now!"

  His heart continued to throttle up as the pounding on the door continued. The tightness in his chest made him wonder how Tor had felt when he knew he was dying. That son of a bitch had been so helpful, had saved Liberty's life years ago only to destroy it now. Liberty let the anguish of Tor's betrayal grow and intensify in his chest until the treachery itself took over. It felt as if double-bladed knives were slashing him open from the inside. Liberty felt dizzy from the image of the knives slicing his arteries, dizzy from the iron smell of blood and the sense that he and Merrill might have been one, after all. It occurred to him that the greatest irony of all would be that his life was over with hers. The tightness and pain in his chest made him fear he was dying. It also made him think that dying of a heart attack in Harlem might well be the best outcome he could hope for.

  "Police, open up."

  Chains rattled outside the apartment as a door was unlocked. Then a melodious voice sang out, "Praise the Lord." The voice sank to a whisper.

  Liberty's eyes drifted back to his computer. He clicked "Send Now" on his E-mail to Jason. Then he began to pull himself together. He had things to do.

  24

  April finished telling Jason's answering machine she urgently needed his profile of Liberty, hung up, and stared out the window in the top half of her office door. All she could see was the wall above the desks opposite her. The ancient off-white paint, mottled with dirt and cracked in a thousand places, had probably yellowed with disgust long before she was born. In the corner of the ceiling nearest Iriarte's office, craters had formed in the cracks from a water leak that must have recurred numerous times in the last several decades. The next leak would certainly bring that section of the ceiling down on the desk below it, which was Skye's. April couldn't help feeling deeply hurt by the way Iriarte had spoken to her. She wondered if she'd still be assigned in the precinct when the ceiling collapsed.

  She had closed the door to recover from the humiliating scene in the lieutenant's office and to study the desk-sized sheet she'd made on Monday to fill in the twenty-four hours before and after the deaths of Merrill Liberty and Tor Petersen. Three days later there still were far too many blanks about the victims' backgrounds and the three suspects they had. The goal was always to have a game plan for an investigation and follow it in as orderly a fashion as possible. But with constantly shifting circumstances, the race against time, and the many variables in the personalities of those workmg the case, chaos nearly always prevailed. It was often luck more than anything else that determined the outcome. Of the three suspects, it was Liberty who was cracking first. As Mike said, it might mean a break in the case and it might not.

  From where April sat she could not see Hagedorn on the phone, but she could just hear his plaintive voice.

  "That's all you can come up with? What about Motor Vehicle, anything there? Come on, give me a break. You mean the guy never had a speeding ticket?" His voice perked up. "Yeah, car theft, that's more like it. When?"

  He burst out, "The fifth of January! You telling me our man boosted a car on January fifth? How come we don't know about it . .. ? Getouttahere, he reported his car stolen?"

  April pushed some air through her nose. What a jerk. They already knew that. She couldn't stop thinking about Mike. She wanted to talk to him about yesterday morning, try to explain how she felt, knew she couldn't. Sometimes you had to do the right thing and let go. She flipped the pages of her notebook to get her thoughts back on track. On top of everything else Hagedorn was beginning to seriously irritate her. He'd just get hold of an idea and push it around on his plate until he could find the right position for it, then look for facts to back up his theory. She'd heard that scientists did that, too, so you could never believe the conclusions of any scientific study. Sometimes April thought there was no one in the world who told the truth.

  She sighed. A pertinent item had been left out of that morning's temper tantrum in Iriarte's office. A woman jogger had been beaten almost to death during an attempted rape in Central Park last night at around seven. She was the second victim in six months. The first had died of her massive head injuries. This second attack had occurred in the 20th Precinct, behind the playground at Eighty-first Street and Central Park West. A highly populated area even in winter because dog walkers went into the park there. If April were still in the Two-O, she'd be working that case instead of the Merrill Liberty case.

  On the other side of her door Hagedorn was still whining on the phone. It made her wonder why Iriarte hadn't given him the jogger case. There was good reason for him to be on it. The victim in the case last summer, by the oddest coincidence, had lived in the Park Century, the building where Liberty lived. That investigation had been handled out of Midtown North. The killer was still out there somewhere, and the detectives in the Two-O wanted the files on that case to see if there was a link to this one. With Margaret Mary Joyce now a lieutenant, Sergeant Sanchez and herself all gone from the squad, April figured the Two-O would now need help for almost anything. But Iriarte had assigned two detectives who'd been questioning street people in the Liberty case and not Hagedorn, probably because Hagedorn was good with computers. April's gaze returned to the crater in the ceiling. She told herself to focus on what had gone wrong with her and Mike's investigation of Liberty yesterday instead of what had gone wrong with them personally.

  It had been the day of Merrill Liberty's funeral, and they were surprised to find Liberty at home. He was wearing the same clothes he'd worn on the night of the murders. He was unshaven and seemed dazed. After opening his apartment door to her and Mike, Liberty turned his back on them to return to the area in the great open space that served as the dining room, where he must have been seated alone at his long and gleaming ebony dining table. April had been fascinated by that table. It was a graceful oval large enough for twelve. The surface was as shiny as new Chinese black lacquer. Eight matching ebony chairs with shiny white satin seats were placed at wide intervals around it. Four more were positioned against the wall. Liberty sat at the head of the table like a chairman of the board, a man of expensive black and white tastes. There was nothing to eat or drink on the table, and

  there were no board members around him now. A solitary laptop computer, sitting in the end curve of the oval, was keeping him company. He had hurried back to it.

  When the two detectives followed him through the arch designating the room change from entrance hall to dining room, he punched a button, removing a document from the screen; then he shut down the computer for good measure. April took a position on one side of him. She unbuttoned her coat and glanced at Mike, who stood on the other side. They could see each other, but Liberty could see only one of them at a time. He was vague. He ran his fingers over the keyboard of the computer. The keys made a clicking sound, as if he were typing the answers to their questions. Without looking at them, he'd told them they could search the apartment and do whatever they had to do. He told them what he'd worn to Chicago. The coat was in the closet, the suit was on the chair in the bedroom. The shoes were in the closet. He said he hadn't been watching the clock so he didn't know exactly what time he got home, went to bed. He said he didn't go out after he returned home. He talked about the stolen car and Wally Jefferson. He was convinced there was a tie-in between him and the murders. He couldn't be specific about why.

  April didn't know much about football, but she'd seen Liberty on TV once or twice. On TV he was striking, a big, handsome man with black hair, the kind of jawline Jason Frank and the Kennedys had, and a powerfully focused gaze that made the viewer feel he was completely at ease in front of the camera.

  Yesterday, he'd looked gray, internally soft, as if the structure of his body were no longer sound and inside he'd melted down to nothing. Still, he'd been annoyed by their running the route from the apartment to the restaurant a number of times. He said it was a futile exercise, since there was a camera in every elevator and cameras in the stairways. If he'd left
his apartment on the night of the murder—if he'd gone

  out either way—the person manning the cameras in the security room would have seen him. He seemed very sure that could not have happened.

  And then Liberty's eyes had become very sharp. "Why are you doing this to me?" he demanded.

  "There's nothing personal about it," Mike replied. "We do it to everybody."

  Liberty tried to stare Mike down with his sharp, intelligent eyes. "Do you believe I could have killed my own wife?"

  "You mean, did you have the means and opportunity?" Mike shifted his mouth around in his face as he inhaled and slowly exhaled a few times. Finally the shoulder with the gun under it jerked in a half shrug. "All we're missing here is the motive." And a witness, he didn't say.

  "Why do you think Daphne Petersen is accusing me on TV?" Liberty's voice became harsh.

  "Why do you think?" Mike replied.

  "You don't have to go any further than her for a motive. She had a reason to kill Tor. I don't have a reason to hurt anyone."

  "She certainly appears to have a lot to gain with her husband dead. Be assured that we're investigating her movements on the night of the murder, as well as yours," Mike had told him.

  "She may not have done it directly."

  "We're aware of that."

  "So, you don't take the TV appearance at face value." He looked from one to the other.

  "Frankly, I don't watch TV. What about you, April?"

  April shook her head. "If Daphne did kill her husband, it was a dumb move to point her finger at you. But I don't see why she would have killed your wife, do you?"

  "No." He said no, but he looked uneasy.

  "Did you ever hit your wife, Mr. Liberty?" Mike asked.

  "No." Still uneasy.

  "Your neighbors say you fought a lot."

  "My wife was very volatile. She was going through a bad period. It happens to the best people."

  "You want to tell us about that?"

  Liberty's eyes had filled with tears. He shook his head. April made a note to check with Emma again, talk to Merrill's doctor. Mike did not press him on the point.

  "She couldn't have children," April said softly.

  "How do you know?" He looked surprised.

  "Just a guess." No reason to tell him she knew the autopsy report. It had not been the time to ask Liberty about the couple's sexual difficulties. Merrill's doctor might be able to answer that.

  The phone rang in April's office. She picked up. It was Ducci, telling her to find her boyfriend and get over to the lab right away. She didn't have the energy to tell him she had a new one now.

  April wanted to get to the lab and hear what Ducci had to say, but along with everything else, she had a domestic case on the burner and had to send out a team to make an arrest. Early morning was not when husbands usually got drunk and beat up their wives, but it was a good time to make an arrest. The couple in question had been in trouble before. This time when the wife got out of the hospital, she decided to press charges. There was no way the guy couid avoid going down today. Ducci's information had to wait.

  April went downstairs to meet Carmella Perez, the officer assigned to domestic cases. Perez was probably a few years older than April but looked about fifteen because she didn't have a lot of beef on her body. She was almost razor-sharp all over except for smoothly rounded cheeks that set off a delicate nose and mouth and soft brown eyes. Clearly her favorite feature, though, was the thick, curly black hair that hung halfway down her back in a shiny curtain.

  Since the time last summer when an officer had died trying to arrest a guy in a domestic dispute, nobody was allowed to go in alone on a domestic. Last summer a guy on a rampage had thrown a large mirror across the room at the officer trying to subdue him. A shard hit him, severed an artery in his groin, and the young cop, father of two, had bled to death before he reached the hospital.

  It was unusually quiet by the front desk where April and Carmella waited for two uniforms. All the news vans that had been stationed there for several days after the Liberty murder had now moved up to the Two-O to cover the jogger case. So had a number of officers and detectives. Except for Hagedorn, who was stuck to his computer, all the other detectives were out in the field. The dozens of other cases they had were on the back burner, except for Jocelyn Kohlbe, who, in her latest beating at the hands of her husband, had sustained four broken ribs, a broken arm, numerous bruises about the head and neck, and a shattered eardrum.

  April looked Carmella over, always more worried about the females in bad situations than the men. April figured her fear for other female cops had to come from really old prejudices little girls were taught about not being able to take care of themselves. Or maybe she had some semblance of a maternal instinct, after all. It pissed off the female uniforms when she screwed up her face to assess their equipment and moods before they went out, just as Skinny Dragon Mother did each time she went out.

  There were a lot of supposed-tos and not-supposed-tos in the department. You were absolutely not supposed to go out on the street or on an arrest without a bulletproof vest on. Occasionally they had a problem with a female officer—usually one of the young ones— who didn't want to wear her vest because she thought it made her look fat. It wasn't April's job to make sure they were wearing their vests, had all their equipment, and the batteries worked in their flashlights, but when females were working her cases, she couldn't help looking for violations. When one jumped out at her, she screamed the way a mother did at a kid running out the back door into the rain without a coat on. She didn't like to think she had a maternal instinct, so she assumed she just didn't want to feel guilty for the rest of her life if something happened to one of them on her watch.

  Carmella Perez. Too skinny. Possibly didn't eat meat, or anything else. April noticed four or five holes, but no earrings in her ears, no rings on her fingers. So far so good. The watch with a large round dial looked too heavy for her slender wrist. It read 9:07. Carmella wore a red-and-black-plaid flannel shirt with a black turtleneck, her vest and her gun under it. April knew that even if it got really cold Carmella would keep her jacket unzipped so she could get at her gun. They'd talked guns at lunch once, so April knew Carmella still carried the old .38 Chief's Special and took good care of it. She told April she'd tried a automatic at the range once and couldn't get over how light and easy it was to grip. But then the gun jammed when she pulled the trigger and that was it for her. In the department you still had to buy your own gun, and she wasn't taking any chances laying down big money for a weapon that might fail her when she needed it. She was taking some chances with the hair, though. April wrinkled her nose.

  Carmella's eyes flashed. "What chu looking at?" She took the attitude position with one foot splayed and a hand on the opposite hip.

  She was an inch or two taller than April, maybe five eight. The extra inches she got with her heavy winter boots put her at about five ten. April jerked her chin up at the hair.

  "Anybody ever tell you you could get your scalp ripped off?"

  "With Bobby here to protect me?" Carmella laughed as a white uniform about five five with his shoes on chugged up grinning and raised a hand to pet her hair as if it were a friendly animal he hadn't seen in a while. She slapped the hand away.

  April ignored the horseplay. "Make me happy. Put the hair up. Our lady may be in a loving mood this morning and feel the need to protect her man."

  "Shit happens," Bobby agreed, hitching at his belt as if the rise was too short in his uniform trousers.

  "Nah, this one's my buddy. She won't give me no trouble." Now Carmella was grinning.

  Still struggling with his balls, Bobby did a quick knee bend and hitched at his pants some more.

  Carmella watched, speculating. "You all twisted up again, Bobby?"

  "Yeah, you want to help me out?"

  Now April was getting annoyed. These two were pushing al her buttons and knew it. Sometimes when you went to arrest a batterer, it was the
wife who went berserk pulling a cop's hair, hitting him with a frying pan, biting. Horseplay might calm these two down, but it was dangerous.

  Bobby's partner, a guy they called DodQ, showed up. "Ready?"

  "Put up the hair," April said.

  "Sure." Carmella wrapped a scarf around her neck.

  "She says 'sure,' but she'll only take it down later in the car." Bobby grabbed a handful and tweaked the hair.

  Carmella punched his arm.

  "It's trouble all around. Put it up, and keep it up," April warned.

  Carmella's cheerful expression soured, and April knew she'd made an enemy. A perfect Chinese person knew how to get her way without giving offense. A perfect American didn't give a shit. April wasn't perfect in either culture. She turned away, suddenly depressed. "Go on, safe landing," she muttered.

  The elevator door opened and Mike swaggered out with his leather jacket on. "I hear you're looking for me."

  Where did he hear that? April swung around, irritated that she'd waited too long to get out to the lab without him.

  * * *

  They took an unmarked gray unit, and April was glad to let Mike drive slowly through the dirty slush. He was thoughtful, didn't offer his opinion of her boss, Iriarte, or the surveillance officer who'd lost their suspect, or anything else about the failures in the precinct where she worked. She was grateful for that. Then he spoke.

  "Look, April, I know how you feel about me. I see how it is with your boss. Now I guess it was stupid to think I could charge into your new house, into a big case like this, and there'd be no repercussions for you."

  She was touched by his sensitivity, didn't trust her voice to reply.

  "Pretty dumb, huh?"

  "Hey, it's not your fault. You didn't know."

  "Wasn't a hard one. We never liked strangers in our cases."