by Leslie Glass
Ducci was a man who hadn’t gone outside for the last twenty years. He had a slide collection of every kind of dirt, asphalt, stone, fiber, head hair, pubic hair, leaf, pine cone, bird feather, tree bark, grass he’d ever come across. He’d analyzed so many things from so many cases, working over the years in so many departments in the labs, he now believed he could tell what park a grass stain on a pair of pants came from, and what activity the wearer was engaged in when he got it. Some people said he had a bit of an ego problem.
Before Mike tossed the box on it, Ducci’s desk had already been piled high with folders, odds and ends, boxes of slides, relics of various sorts. Now it was definitely overburdened. Ducci looked around for another place to dump the box, debated putting it on Bryan’s desk for a little while just to piss him off when he came in. Right next to his in the long, narrow room with windows across the other side, Bryan’s desk was clear.
Ducci thought Bryan was a real asshole, kept everything so goddamned neat, no one could ever find anything he worked on. Ducci was the brilliant one, and Bryan was always complaining, saying he couldn’t work in the same room with such a pig. Judy, who was a scientist and not a cop, was the mediating agent on the hair and fiber team. But she wasn’t there. She was on vacation in a canoe somewhere in Wisconsin.
Mike pointed at Ducci’s other chair. It had a pile of papers with a skull on top of it. Some of the teeth in the skull were missing. The ones remaining indicated quite a lot of tooth decay and no visits to an orthodontist.
“Mind if I sit down?” he asked.
“Hey, no problem.”
Ducci stepped around some debris from another case he was working and removed the pile of stuff from the chair. He placed it on the empty chair in front of Bryan’s desk. Bryan used the phone in there, but most of the time he worked in another lab. Hair and Fiber had three desks and three sets of shelves in it, all facing the wall opposite the windows. The tile walls and floor were sea green.
In the old days, when there were fewer people in the police labs, there had been just one desk to an office. Now with three, it was hard to get around, hard to make calls, hard to think. And even with three, they didn’t have anywhere near enough people for the workload.
Ducci had a whole lot of complaints about the system. Every case in the city that had hair and fiber evidence came through this lab. Coordination between detectives and the scientists was not so great. A lot of things got messed up. Ducci had fantasies of a different setup, police labs with only scientists and absolutely no police at all.
He himself was a cop who had found his calling by accident in college. After six years of writing parking tickets and getting two degrees at night, he discovered he liked science. When he was asked if he wanted to go into the labs, he jumped at the chance. Though of exactly the same mold, his office mate, Francis X. Bryan, was not, Ducci believed, cut of the same high-quality cloth as himself. Bryan wore his gun all the time and was still more cop than scientist. Ducci had fantasies of forcing him back to the streets, where he had started as a foot patrolman. Now he scowled at Sanchez, thinking of Francis.
“Want some coffee? Tastes like shit, but it’s better than nothing.”
“No thanks, I’ve tasted it.” Sanchez sank into the cleared chair.
“So?” Ducci rubbed his stomach as if he were some kind of Buddha, or had acid indigestion. “So tell me about this little present. What is it?”
“Take a guess. You got everything from the scene yesterday. This is the stuff from the body. You should thank me. Not everybody would go over there first thing in the morning and bring it to you.”
“True.” Many detectives didn’t have the time or temperament to collect evidence and take it through the obstacle course correctly so that when the time came to go to court the case would hold. Sanchez did. So did his girlfriend, April Woo. “Stick around.”
Ducci opened the flaps on the box. A printed dress with wild purple and red flowers all over it, not even bagged, spilled out.
“Shit, what’d they do, toss it around the table, guessin’ what mighta happened?” He noted the label, size fourteen, and shook his head. “How many people touch this?”
Mike shrugged. “Can’t tell you that. Four, maybe five.”
Ducci sifted through the rest of the stuff, all paper bags meticulously labeled. He looked at some of the labels—Long red hair found on skirt of dress. Makeup from victim’s face. Fiber taken from bruise marks on victim’s neck. Victim’s ring, with fibers caught on prongs.
Very, very occasionally Ducci personally went to a crime scene if it was really important, or the morgue, to check out the marks and bruises on a body for himself. But he never dealt with the wet stuff. That was for the serology people.
“You got a cause of death yet?”
“The report’s coming later today.”
“Okay, so what’ve we got here?”
Sanchez filled him in on what they had on the case so far. Not much.
“I’d like to see the autopsy report and the crime-scene sketches and photos,” Ducci said, happy to be in on the ground floor for once. Most detectives didn’t even tell him what the case involved or what he was looking for. “Don’t keep me in the dark.”
“Fine.”
Ducci sat back, satisfied, and patted his stomach some more. Pleased as he was, this was about as far as he wanted to go with the case at this point. He examined Sanchez and frowned. “Where you been anyway? You look fried.”
“Mexico. Went for a week.”
“No kidding.”
“Yeah, lots of sun. What about you? You look like you haven’t seen the light of day all summer.”
In the last weeks of August, Ducci’s unlined face was still winter pale. His shiny black hair, untainted with gray, sat like a burnished crown on his head. He shrugged. He didn’t like more of the light of day than came through the window. “You go with your girlfriend?”
“Who might that be?” Sanchez’s frown appeared crooked because not all of his right eyebrow had grown back where the scar was. It made him look more quizzical than he had before. Ducci knew the plastic doctor had told Sanchez he could fix it, but Sanchez didn’t seem eager to buy.
“Hey, I thought you and pretty one were a known quantity,” Ducci said.
“No way, man. You know the Chinese.”
Ducci shook his head. There were lots of Asians of all kinds as well as Indians in the labs. But no, he really didn’t know the Chinese.
“Inscrutable,” Mike said.
“What’s that, some kinda disease?” He laughed, holding his stomach.
“Yeah, maybe.”
“So, what did you go for?” Ducci changed the subject. He had a minute before getting back to the microscope. He was working on twelve pubic hairs from twelve different people found on the bedspread of a well-known hotel where a guest had raped a maid. Serology said they had identified almost as many different semen stains. Seemed like a lot of people were in too much of a hurry to turn back the covers.
“Hey, why all the questions?” Mike demanded.
“Just being friendly. You’re pretty inscrutable yourself.” Ducci was sure Mike and April had something going. So what was the big deal? “You don’t want to tell me about Mexico, that’s fine.”
“I went to see my ex-wife, happy now?”
Mike looked so unhappy about that, Ducci didn’t think he should let it go. “Want to tell me about it?”
“No,” Mike burst out angrily. He glanced at the skull on the chair, shaking his head. “She wanted to say good-bye, okay? She’s dying. Cancer. You happy now?”
“Oh.” Ducci’s face softened. Lot of times he went too far and felt like a real jerk. “Sorry,” he murmured. “I always ask people a lot of questions, guess it goes with the territory.”
He pulled a Snickers bar out of the center drawer of his desk, held it out to Mike as a peace offering.
Mike looked at it as if it were a dead animal he wouldn’t touch under any circumsta
nces. “No thanks. Can’t afford the calories.”
“So? Neither can I. Never stopped me, never will.”
“Yeah, well, sign for this, will you, and I’ll get that other stuff to you as soon as I can.” Mike shifted the papers with the skull on top back to Ducci’s chair while Ducci signed for the box and its contents.
As Mike went out the door, Duke shrugged and opened the candy wrapper.
20
Sergeant Joyce had made the day’s assignments first thing after roll call. Five of the eight detectives on the day shift were working the Maggie Wheeler homicide. Healy and Aspirante were out in the field looking for witnesses in the neighboring shops on Columbus Avenue who might have seen something Saturday night they didn’t at the time know they were seeing. Detective Stevens, a tough young black man pretty new to the squad, was working the phone, checking the boutique’s Saturday receipts. With the help of MasterCard and Visa, he was putting together a list of the names and addresses of the seven people who had made charges that day. The store didn’t take American Express, so that narrowed it down. They were out of luck with the people who had paid cash, but you never knew who might turn up with information later. Mike had gone to the police lab.
April got back from questioning Hadgens just around noon. Downstairs, three scraggly members of the press loitered on the metal chairs, their knapsacks and coffee cups on the floor around them, looking like homeless waiting for a meal. If there wasn’t a break in the case by that night or the next morning, they’d give up on the meal there and move on to something hotter. As she passed the two eager-looking young men and hawk-faced woman on her way to the stairs, April ignored them, and they ignored her.
In the squad room Mike was on the phone. He raised his hand in a small wave. “Yeah, I want a printout of all the calls coming in and out of that number. Yeah. Thanks.” He hung up. “Maggie Wheeler’s home number,” he said.
April dropped her bag in the bottom desk drawer. “What’s new?”
He looked her over. “Not a whole lot. What about you?”
His way of examining her as if she were a storm front on a weather map made her nervous. Today his gaze was so intense, she could feel herself beginning to sweat, suddenly anxious that she had done something terribly wrong, or something was inappropriate about her makeup or outfit. That day she was wearing hardly any makeup, a pale blue cotton jacket over a white blouse and khaki slacks. Her outfit was very conservative. Not even the top button of the blouse was ever open. She didn’t want anyone looking at her with monkey business in mind.
Mike knew everything. He was studying her so intently, she thought maybe he’d already heard about Dr. George Dong. It occurred to April that she’d forgotten to ask what kind of doctor Dong was. She frowned, thinking about Skinny Dragon Mother’s treachery, then hauled herself back to the moment. This case was a whole lot of blanks.
“I talked to one guy in Maggie’s phone book. Possible abuser of some kind. He knew what I was calling about, but said he didn’t know anything more about it than what he saw on the news.” She brushed at some stray ashes on the seat of her chair before sitting down. “He says he didn’t call her this weekend and hasn’t spoken to her in years.”
Mike picked up on her doubt right away. “But you think it’s possible he knows more than he’s saying.”
“Yeah. Maggie’s boss said she’s been here for only six months. How come she had his number if he hasn’t spoken to her in years? Doesn’t add up. What have you been up to?” She narrowed her eyes at him, preparing for a lie.
“I went down to the M.E.’s office to pick up the crime-scene stuff and took it over to Duke. Now he’s got everything.”
“Did you look in on the autopsy?”
“Sure. And stayed for breakfast.”
“It was scheduled for this morning.” Was that a lie? She looked at her watch.
“I know.”
“You seem to know everything,” April muttered. “Duke say anything?” Her desk was behind Mike’s. He had to swivel around to face her. Now his feet were up on an open drawer and he was facing out at the pen, the holding cell in the middle of the squad room. It was empty at the moment.
Except for Maggie, it was a pretty quiet day.
“Yeah, he misses you. Wondered why you weren’t the one to come and see him. It’s not my job to carry evidence around.”
“I didn’t know the stuff was ready.”
“You sore?”
April swiveled around the other way so she was looking toward Sergeant Joyce’s office. The doorway was just outside the squad room, down the hall so no one could see in. No way to know what Joyce was up to. Yeah, she was sore. Second day back on the job and already Mike and Sergeant Joyce were being secretive. What did Mike know that she didn’t? Hey, if she was investigating and he was supervising her investigation, he had to share whatever information he had.
“Well, it should be done by now,” April said. “I’ll give them an hour or so and go down and pick it up.”
“What’s the matter?”
April swiveled back. “I asked you if Duke had come up with anything and your response was he missed me. You holding out on me, Sanchez?”
Mike spread his hands. “What’s the matter with you? I think you got a lot of potential. Why would I hold out on you?”
April chewed on her lip. There were a lot of reasons. He was a man. He had monkey business on the brain all the time. He was her superior and maybe wanted to keep it that way. And maybe he just had some reasons of his own she didn’t know about.
“Lighten up,” he said.
“I will not lighten up until I have some answers.”
“Well, there aren’t any answers. Duke hadn’t even looked at what I gave him yesterday. He hasn’t had time.”
Still didn’t have an answer. Why did Mike go to the M.E.’s office first thing this morning? It was on Thirtieth Street and First Avenue, sort of an adjunct to Bellevue. Thirty-fourth to Twentieth, then up here to Eighty-second and Columbus. Back and forth. She shrugged. Maybe there was nothing in it. Most police work was just running from one place to another—getting warrants, moving evidence from one place to another, trying to reach people who weren’t home. Mike’s phone rang. He swung his feet down and picked up.
April looked at her watch, then punched out the number of one of the other male names in Maggie’s book. Still no answer there. She tried Maggie’s mother. Yesterday Mrs. Wheeler had told the sheriff who came to her house that she’d do anything she could to help the detectives in New York. Maybe the mother was ready to answer a few questions.
21
The rusting yellow taxi came to a screeching halt sideways in the middle of Second Avenue, barely avoiding a nasty collision with the bicycle messenger who had cut it off without warning. Skidding into a pothole, the bike tipped over and the skinny, kinky-haired messenger with a number of gold earrings in both ears fell off it. Cars squealed to a stop around him as he got up, shaking his fist.
Out of the battered taxi lunged an Indian of some sort. He was wearing a turban on his head and making angry noises in a language that in no way approximated English. Frustrated drivers in blocked cars started honking their horns.
Milicia leaned forward across the table. “Camille, can you hear me? I can’t take this.”
Camille stared out of the coffee shop window at the two men arguing on the street. It reminded her of Bouck and the gun. One day Bouck was out with Puppy at night, just around here, on Fifty-fifth Street. A guy in a car cut another guy off. The guy cut off was so mad, he jumped out of his car, pulled a gun, and blew the other man away before either of them had a chance to exchange a word. Bouck said there was blood all over the street. Camille smiled, thinking about it, trying to get away from Milicia’s big mouth.
Finally, she was having a good day and Milicia had to turn up again, find her out on the street, and capture her.
Milicia was spying on her, watching everything she did, just like she used to. Camil
le stared out the window. When did Milicia have time to build those buildings of hers? There was a new one on Third Avenue, with colored panels on the outside. Milicia took her to see it last spring and told her it was hers.
Camille thought it was ugly. Bouck had offered to get the light fixtures for the whole building, but Milicia said someone had already gotten the bid for that. The bag moved. Camille put her hand on it.
Puppy was in the bag. Bouck had bought her a fancy carrier from Louis Vuitton that looked like a shoulder bag so Camille could take Puppy with her everywhere. Nobody in the coffee shop knew there was a dog on the seat beside her. Her mind shifted to that but her face didn’t smile. She could feel her face freezing as she tried to ignore her sister opposite her in the booth.
“What were you doing in that boutique?” For the last ten minutes Milicia kept asking her the same thing. The tuna salad Milicia had ordered didn’t meet her specifications, too much mayonnaise. Two scoops of it sat untouched on a sheaf of pale green iceberg lettuce.
Camille’s hands twitched in her lap. She didn’t answer. She wanted to eat the toasted cheese sandwich on her plate but couldn’t reach for it with Milicia there. She was thinking that Milicia probably poisoned it. Even if Milicia left, she couldn’t eat it now.
“I saw you, Camille. I saw you in the window. Camille, I know you’re crazy. I know you think this boutique thing is a way to get back at me, but you’ll be punished. Do you understand? Look at me.” Milicia’s voice dropped to a furious whisper. “You’ll be punished worse than ever before.”
Camille turned her head. Now she could see Milicia’s red mouth moving again. She wanted to put a stop to it.
“Why don’t you leave me alone?” Camille finally formed the words. She found the words and her lips moved.
“You know why.”
Camille shook her head. She didn’t know why. She was trying on a dress. Just trying on a dress. She liked to go shopping when she could. Today she could. The sun was burning a hole in the deep blue sky. There was not a single cloud anywhere. No possibility of rain. Camille didn’t like to sit in the sun or let it touch her too deeply, but she could walk in it. She had been having a good day. She’d moved from Bouck’s building out into the sun. A hat with a big brim hid her face from the dangerous rays. It was the hat Bouck liked best, straw with a lavender ribbon around the brim.
