A Killing Gift

by Leslie Glass

  Ten

  As far as catastrophes for April went, second only to not witnessing what went down between Bernardino and his killer and not being able to save him was not being able to ask any questions about it. She'd recovered quickly enough from her exhaustion to tackle Bill Bernardino with a pad and pen. He wasn't answering her questions any better than she'd answered his.

  Bill, what had your father been working on these last weeks? she wrote and passed over for him to read. As with the earlier questions she'd posed to him, this one sat heavily on the page, giving Bill ample opportunity to twist his mouth into any number of disgusted shapes while he pretended to decipher her perfectly legible handwriting.

  There was no nuance to the written word, no tone of voice to temper her line of questioning. The questions looked like something out of a survey, not a personal exchange between two people who'd lost a loved one. With April's side written down, the interview was between Bill and the page, not between her and him. So he was having an easy time avoiding her.

  His eyes looked down, away from her, when he tossed back, "How would I know what he was working on?"

  He might have said something. You two talked, didn't you? There was a time lag while she wrote this. There was another time lag while he read the reply.

  Worse than using sign language, this was like instant messaging with both people in the room. And one of them was determined not to help. April knew that Bill's mind was still on the blame track, but she wasn't going to stop trying to engage him in a dialogue.

  Her expression was neutral as she strung her questions out like beads on a necklace she would never get to wear. Several times she exchanged glances with Mike. April could read in his face that, like her, he was annoyed and hiding it well. Whether or not Bill had meant his threat of a scandal, it was on the table, putting the cops and prosecutor on different teams. It was clear that neither Mike nor Bill was going to share information, so she had to do the talking, because she was the one who'd been close to Bernardino. Too bad. Now the investigation might have to go needlessly deep into the grieving family's private affairs. Unless they found the killer soon, Bill was going to get less happy as the days went on. He certainly wasn't making it easy on himself now by dismissing her queries.

  "Yeah, we talked, but not about business. Look, I have to go." He tapped his watch and got to his feet, looking at them angrily as if one or both of them might try to keep him there. But neither Mike nor April made a move to delay him. He had come to them, after all. He could go when he pleased.

  "Look, we're going to have to go through his things at the house," Mike said as he opened the door.

  "Fine. The place is a fucking mess, though. He was getting ready to move." Bill paused long enough to shake his head. Then he made a point of checking his watch again. "Kathy will be here in a few hours."

  "I'm really sorry," Mike murmured.

  Anger flashed in Bill's face. "Yeah, well, something's wrong here. To get through thirty-eight years on the job and die like this." He shook his head. "It shouldn't happen."

  April agreed with him. It shouldn't have happened. She gripped the pen in her hand, wanting to add something, but Bill glared at her, triggering a guilt she didn't want to feel. It wasn't her fault that his father left the party alone. It wasn't her fault that she'd followed him too late. It wasn't her fault that he was dead, and she was still alive.

  She didn't want to feel it, but the guilt was there. Bernardino had been her boss, her friend. A part of her couldn't help believing that the timing of the events tonight and her position in them had some special meaning. And without her being aware of it, somehow the fault really was hers. Chinese guilt made for an extensive menu, and numbers one through a hundred were weighing her down at the moment.

  Her cell phone rang almost immediately after Bill left, and she forgot that she couldn't speak. She punched talk, but only the sound of air came out of her mouth when she tried to say hello.

  "What the hell happened to you?" It was her boss at Midtown North, Lieutenant Iriarte.

  "Hahhhh," she answered.

  "What? Where are you?"

  "Pshhhh."

  "For Christ's sake, speak up; I can't hear you." Iriarte's usual irritation sounded in his voice.

  April rolled her eyes at Mike. Iriarte, she mouthed at him.

  "April, I know you're there," the lieutenant said crossly. "What the hell is going on? When are you coming in?"

  April passed the phone to Mike. "Hey, Arturo, it's Mike Sanchez. How ya doin'?"

  "Mike. I heard about Bernardino. Terrible thing. What's with April?"

  "Ah, she got into a little fight trying to apprehend the suspect."

  "What! Nobody told me that. Where are you?"

  "Well, she bolted from the hospital a while ago. Didn't anybody tell you she wasn't coming in?"

  "She's supposed to call in. Let me talk to her, will you?" He barreled right ahead as if he hadn't heard the words hospital, fight, and suspect.

  "Really sorry about that, Arturo, but I told you some asshole tried to wipe her last night and she's lost her freaking voice."

  "Huh?" For a second April's boss was speechless himself, not sure whether or not Sanchez was pranking him to get April a day off. Pranking was not uncommon. Finally he said, "No kidding."

  "No kidding. She's lucky he just knocked her voice out. It's a woman's nightmare, right?" Mike winked at April.

  "Jeez," Iriarte said. "Anything I can do?"

  Thanks, April mouthed at him. Thanks a lot.

  The rest of April's day was just as frustrating. Bernardino's daughter, Kathy, arrived in the afternoon, but April was not able to call with her condolences, to inform her that she and Mike would be out to talk to her and to look at the house soon. Mike had to make that call, and it was a tough one. In less than two months Kathy and Bill had lost both their mother and father. Bill needed someone to blame. So heaven only knew what ideas the prosecutor would pour into the ear of his sister the FBI agent over dinner tonight. Both were trained investigators. It was almost enough to make a person paranoid. April didn't want to be paranoid, and she didn't want the Department to be blamed.

  Chinese philosophy for health called for the consumption of no less than twenty cups of tea a day. For once April was following it. Hot water and Lipton's tea bags were all she had, but she downed some every twenty minutes. She was wired with all the caffeine and desperate for the return of her voice.

  In her early years as a cop, April had followed orders and kept her thoughts to herself. Silence had been a choice she'd made to stay out of trouble. Now all her thoughts were trapped inside, but it wasn't like the old days, when silence was her comfort zone. She wanted to talk to Mike, but she had no voice and she could tell he was shutting her out.

  And sure enough, just before two p.m. Mike glanced at the clock on his wall. "Ready to go home now, querida?" he asked, trying hard to sound neutral.

  April shook her head. She wasn't going home. She had things to do. She wanted to see Marcus Beame, who'd been standing next to Bernardino at the bar before he left, probably the last person to speak to Bernardino. Beame had the same job in the Fifth Precinct that April had in Midtown North. He was second in command in the detective unit. He'd know what Bernardino had been working on.

  "Querida," Mike said slowly. "I want you to go home now, rest up." He said it suavemente, con cariño, but there was steel behind the sweetness.

  She shook her head.

  "I know you want to stay on this, but you know you can't."

  She shook her head some more. She didn't know why she couldn't. Anger flashed in her eyes.

  "You've got to move over," he said softly.

  Victims didn't investigate their own cases. It was clear that was what he meant. She wasn't being asked to the dance.

  April's anger came and went quickly as she considered her options. For every rule deemed unbreakable in the Department, there was always an exception. Long history had proved that nothing was
set in stone.

  Homicide investigations were like construction sites. In the beginning there was the body and the physical evidence that included everything the perpetrator left behind of himself-fibers from his clothes, hair from his head, saliva from a cigarette butt or a piece of gum. A footprint, a fingerprint. A weapon. The shape of his hand on the victim's body. And everything he took away from the scene that could later prove he'd been there, had had contact with the victim. The cause of death itself could be a signature. The principal investigator on the case was the architect who had to construct the murder from the crime scene backward to precipitating events that might have been set in motion days, weeks, or even years before.

  In easy cases the plan of the house could be read right in a crime scene that told the whole story almost from beginning to end. Man came home, surprised his wife/lover/girlfriend in bed with another man, shot them both, then himself. The lovers were naked. The perpetrator was clothed. Double homicide/suicide. Case solved in a matter of hours. In hard ones the physical evidence didn't lead to the perpetrator. They called the hard cases mysteries. April moved over to Mike's desk and nudged him out of his chair.

  "I knew the day would come when you'd try to take my place." He laughed, but a little uneasily. April was nothing if not hard to manage.

  "Look, querida, I got people waiting for me," he told her.

  She blew air out of her mouth and started typing on his computer. Is IA investigating?

  Mike read the words as they came up on his screen and nodded. Of course. So?

  Are they going to talk to me? She typed some more.

  "Probably." So?

  Who's on it?

  "I don't know," Mike said. "What's your thought?"

  Just thinking dirty, she wrote.

  "Any particular reason?" Reflexively, he lowered his voice.

  Bill jumped on it, she typed.

  "That doesn't mean anything." But Mike shook himself like a dog shaking off a hurt. Then combed his mustache with his fingers. "One of us?" He said it softly, doubtfully.

  April took a few seconds to go through the list of people who'd been there at Baci's last night. People they'd known for years. People Bernardino had known for decades. Friends. But that wasn't where she was going with it. She was thinking about all the posters that had been up on every floor of the puzzle palace. Must have been hundreds of people who knew about that party and didn't go. People on the job, but also people coming in and out of the building for dozens of reasons. Civilians could read, too. Everybody who could read knew about it. Everybody who'd ever worked with Bernardino knew about it. It hadn't been private. And probably a poster had been up at the Fifth Precinct, too.

  I'm not suggesting it's one of us. It was just an odd time and place to make a hit, she typed.

  "Yeah." So, they already knew that.

  Anybody talk to Beame yet? April changed tack.

  "I'm sure. Why, do you want to talk to him?"

  All this time he'd been standing next to her reading the screen. She swung around in his chair and looked at him. Yeah, I want to talk to him.

  Shit. He sighed, shaking his head.

  April turned back to the keyboard and typed some more. Well, what do you think?

  He put his arms around her and breathed into her hair.

  "I feel lucky, querida. I could have lost you." He said this seriously. He didn't go so far as to blame her for what she did. But it was in the air. For a second she felt a deep chill.

  "Look, April, even if you can't remember what he looked like, he knows you. He has an advantage. You don't know him, but he knows you. He knows Devereaux, too. Are you listening to me?"

  Her face had become like stone. She was listening. He pulled over another chair so they both were facing the computer.

  "Do you know who Devereaux is?"

  Yeah, they'd told her who he was. April typed, My hero turns out to be one of the richest men in America. What do you get a guy like that for a thank-you gift?

  A little joke to make Mike laugh. He didn't laugh.

  What was he doing out there anyway? she tapped out.

  "Walking his dog. You asked me what I think. Well, it doesn't have the look of a robbery gone bad."

  April touched his hand. No, it didn't. And it didn't have the look of a stranger murder.

  Mike echoed her thought. "If it's a stranger murder, what would be the motive?" He ticked off a list of possible motives. "Jealousy? Revenge? Money?" He scratched his chin. "That's about it."

  Fear of discovery? April typed. Maybe Bernardino knew something.

  "Or maybe he just did something to tick the guy off. A spur-of-the-moment thing."

  April shook her head. The perpetrator hadn't run away. He'd attacked her, too. / knew Bernardino, she typed, then wondered.

  Jealousy? Or had Bernardino just pissed someone off big-time, someone who felt this was his chance to get even. Someone he'd put in jail. Somebody he'd demoted. Somebody he'd hurt in some other way. Or was it about money? That led to the question, Who else stood to gain by his death? Anybody other than his kids?

  "Sorry, querida. It's time for you to go home." Mike had already arranged for a car to take her home. April had her own plan. She didn't resist.

  Eleven

  Bernardino's autopsy took place between two and six p.m. that day. Dr. Gloss, the medical examiner, liked to boast that he could do an autopsy in two hours if he was pressed. But in this case, he'd taken his time.

  Mike got him on the phone at six forty-five.

  "Sad thing," was the first thing the ME said.

  "Yeah. What do you have?" Mike cut to the chase.

  "Believe it or not, the guy was in pretty good shape. He had some shrapnel wounds that healed pretty good. Was he in ' Nam?"

  "I don't know," Mike said. But he'd check. In cases like this, surprisingly often Vietnam was a factor.

  "Three pieces of metal were still in his back, one in his left leg. Did he walk okay?" Gloss asked.

  "Bernardino walked fine," Mike assured him. He wouldn't have been accepted in the Department if he couldn't run. Mike did a quick calculation. Thirty-eight years ago was what? 'Sixty-five. Early sixties, anyway. That was before the big action in ' Nam, but it would work as a time frame. Plenty of special forces in there back then. Gloss interrupted his note taking: Check out military service.

  "And he must have snored like a horse. What a schnoz," Gloss went on. "He had a deviated septum. Let's see; it's an interesting case. His arteries were not too bad considering his weight and what he must have eaten in his lifetime. You cops. But… he had the heart of a thirty-year-old."

  That didn't help. "What else?" Mike asked.

  "He was missing a few teeth. He had two hernias that he'd probably been ignoring for a long time. A common enough thing."

  "The COD?"

  "He had no defense wounds. No bruises on his fists or palms. No foreign tissue or skin under his fingernails. We didn't get lucky there. Looks like he didn't have time to put up a fight. It must have happened very fast. I'm thinking maybe he knew the guy. He wasn't expecting it."

  "COD?"

  "Asphyxia. Not strangled. Looks like he was yoked, probably by a forearm. He couldn't breathe, but the spinal cord was…" Gloss paused to slurp up some drink out of a straw.

  "Yeah, yeah, yeah. Spare me the medical terms. I saw him. His neck was broken." Mike inhaled and exhaled to let out some tension.

  "By you, his neck was broken," Gloss agreed. "Bernardino was a hefty guy. He weighed one ninety-eight," Gloss went on. "It's not so easy to yoke someone his size. Forty-eight inches around. He was like a tank, not tall but big. You're looking for someone with arms like a gorilla. I'll have the preliminary by tomorrow, maybe the next day."

  "Thanks. We'll talk again."

  "One other thing." Gloss hesitated.

  "Yeah?"

  "Did Bernardino chew gum?"

  Mike drew a blank on that. "I have no idea. Did you find gum on him, or in him?"
/>
  "Well, he'd eaten within the last two hours. Must have been some party. Lasagne, ziti, eggplant, baked clams. Cannolis. He'd pretty much stuffed himself. And he'd probably had quite a bit to drink, too."

  "I'm sure. A couple of beers, maybe some wine. Where are you going with this?" Mike asked.

  "I don't have his alcohol levels yet so I don't have that piece…"

  "But you're suggesting Bernardino was impaired at the time of his death." Mike tried to remember how intoxicated Bernardino had been. He certainly hadn't had that manic affect, talking too much or too loudly. He hadn't looked or sounded drunk. He hadn't stumbled around or anything like that. But Mike didn't know how much he could hold. Maybe April or Marcus Beame would know. They'd both worked with him.

  "Maybe drunk. He'd reeked of garlic, of course," Gloss went on, unperturbed in his musings.

  "I'm sure he did, but how does it play?"

  "You know, we smell them first."

  The corpses. Yes, Mike knew the medical examiner sniffed his customers like a dog for the presence of drugs and poison and powder in the case of gunshot wounds.

  "Yes, and?"

  "He smelled of spearmint."

  "As in spearmint gum?"

  "Yes."

  "The body or his clothes?"

  "Both."

  Mike pulled on his mustache. Hmmm. "Gum wouldn't make his clothes smell," he murmured.

  "Well, it would if there was an open packet in his pocket. I just didn't see one. Did you find any gum or gum wrappers at the scene or remove them from his pockets?"

  "Not that I know of. But I'll check. Any other ideas about what might have caused the odor?" Mike asked.