A Clean Kill

by Glass, Leslie

  "Derek has no record of violence, not even a speeding ticket." Mike put his hand over the receiver and spoke to someone, then came back on the line. "You were saying there's a coke connection."

  "Woody searched the gym pretty well. He came up with a lot of vitamins and stuff but no illegal substances. But he didn't take the place apart, of course. Alison said Wayne had blow around and she admitted she had some in her gym bag. I could see her killing Maddy out of jealousy—she certainly has the rage. But she's very small, less than a hundred pounds. Anything on Maddy's finances yet?"

  "Minnow has someone working on the bank statements. Looks like Maddy used her ATM with unusual frequency. The lady dispensed a lot of cash."

  "I can see a justification for that. It would prevent her husband from knowing how she spent her money. I guess you're following the case pretty closely," April remarked.

  Mike was quiet for a moment. He didn't need to say that homicide was his area of expertise, and never mind the protocol of the situation. He was going to work the case his own way, and she was going to work it with him because that was how he wanted it. Since he'd chewed her out pretty fiercely in the past for similar independent action of her own, she almost had to laugh. As they say, "What goes around, comes around."

  "What about the incoming and outgoing calls this morning?" Mike asked.

  "We have the outgoing numbers. One was to Alison Perkins. One was to Jo Ellen Anderson. That's the employment agency," April told him.

  "I know. There were messages from both of them as well. Jo Ellen Anderson, at five to nine, confirmed an interview at her office at two p.m., a new girl to replace Remy. Message from Alison, at nine thirty-two, wondering where she was. Maddy was probably dead by then."

  That meant Remy lied about making up with Maddy. Maddy had already fired her. Or else Wayne had underestimated his wife's resolve in the matter; April thought it through.

  "So, where did you talk to Derek and Alison?" Mike asked, breaking into her review.

  "I took them to my place," she said after a beat.

  "You better share, querida," he warned.

  "Oh yeah," she promised.

  "What's going on with the senator's kid?" He changed the subject.

  "I guess you've seen it on TV. His mother got him out of the hospital. No one's saying anything about it. The senator is flying in tonight."

  "How's your sergeant doing?"

  "She and Hagedorn are working on it," April murmured.

  "How do you feel about it?" he asked.

  Oh, he knew her so well. April sipped from her latest mug of cold tea and took a second to think about it. When she was coming up, her boss was one Sergeant Margaret Mary Joyce. At the time, Sergeant Joyce was fat as a sausage, wore her suits too tight, and had coffee stains down the front of her blouse almost every day. The woman was as mean as a whip and took the credit for every case April and Mike solved. "Get out of the way" was her motto. April had been a detective second grade and Mike a sergeant. Both had chafed under her rule and conspired to work around her.

  Now they were the ones who had to delegate. Captains didn't investigate homicides. Unit COs weren't the legs on even their most important cases. They were supposed to bully other people into doing the work, then take the credit. But assigning Gelo the Peret case was like Mike's allowing Fish to do his job on the Wilson homicide without interference. It wasn't so easy to let go.

  "I feel fine. What's the latest on Remy and Wayne?"

  "They're standing behind each other. Wayne says there's no way Remy could have hurt his wife. He's keeping her on to take care of the children. He's moved the family to a hotel."

  "What's on your plate tonight? Do you feel like having a good dinner in town before heading home?"

  "Oh, God, I don't know, querida, I've got a lot to do."

  "How about a really good dinner at Soleil? I happen to know it's open," April wheedled. "We can ask a few questions."

  "Ab, querida, now you're cooking with gas."

  They set a time and hung up.

  Sixteen

  Swallowing down sixteen cups of China tea a day was a firm requirement for Chinese good health. April got her seventh cup at six p.m., and reviewed her conversation with Mike.

  He seemed to think Derek could be the killer, and if the ME set Maddy's time of death to some time between eight and nine a.m., he would certainly have had plenty of time to commit the murder and go out for a Snapple before meeting his next customer half a mile away at nine thirty. But what would be his motive? Even if, in an amazing coincidence, Maddy had told Derek to get lost the same morning as she'd fired Remy, too many things didn't fit. Unlike Remy, he wasn't into butcher knives as toys, and his place was hardly spotless. April believed that cleanliness was a factor here, part of a bigger picture. Call it intuition, whatever.

  Outside of her office, the second tour in the unit had replaced the first tour and begun their tasks. Some detectives were at their desks; a few had already gone out. April was aware of Alison's perfume, still lingering in her office, and recognized it as Beautiful. She put her finger to her lips, mulling over everything she'd seen and heard that day.

  Every case started in the same fog. Above, the air was thick with possibilities. Below, a swamp of deadly quicksand. Sometimes the fog cleared quickly, and sometimes it didn't. April's mother, Skinny Dragon, was terrified of that journey to the dead and back again. Ghosts didn't always depart their human bodies right away. Sometimes they became attached to the person most interested in them. And ghosts meant bad luck. Each of April's cases brought the possibility that a ghost might make her sterile, give her cancer. Maybe both. Ghosts ruled the world and could do anything they wanted.

  Although her mother believed this, April didn't. For nearly fifteen years she'd wanted nothing more than to succeed in the Department. That meant being closer sometimes to dead people than to living ones. She'd never had much faith in the other facets of life. For her there had been no glitter— no sparkling diamonds, no weekend getaways with ardent boyfriends, no bubbling champagne. For pleasure she'd run her legs off around the neighborhood in Astoria, Queens, where she'd lived in her parents' house until she was way over thirty. She'd knocked people down on sparring mats. She'd kept to herself. It was only after she fell in love with Mike and married him that life began to take on a rosier aspect.

  Now she liked driving north on the Hutchinson Parkway, home to her brick house with its pleasant leafy trees and backyard barbeque in Westchester County. She'd enjoyed choosing curtains and bathroom accessories and linens. Curling up on the soft sofa with Mike in front of a real fire on all those frigid nights the winter before had been a major highlight of her life. She liked cooking in her almost-new kitchen with its very nice GE appliances, and even a washer and dryer in their own tiny laundry room. She'd never had the best of everything. In the Woo house, there had been only a human dishwasher.

  In fact, April Woo had become so intrigued by the unexpected pleasures of her home life that sometimes when she was at work she wished that domesticity would reach out somehow, and intervene to give her a break from death and the other miseries caused by crime. What would happen to her, she asked herself, if she let ambition go for a while?

  Sometimes Skinny Dragon was right. A cop could not avoid being touched by evil. Death did get in the way of living. There was no way to wall it off, take a weekend and forget about it. Each time April walked into someone's murder, the killer grabbed hold of her, too, and wouldn't let her go. Even after the puzzle was solved. and the perpetrator was nailed, she played the murders over and over in her head—every single piece, every little fact she uncovered. Every sad particle of chaos that murder created stayed with her. When the cases went to trial, she had to live them again—what she'd done, what she'd seen, what she'd learned. She could write a book.

  And the crime scene always told what happened. What had gone wrong, how the perpetrator and the victim had come together, how the victim had responded, whether the body
was hidden or flaunted. Even the span of time that passed before the victim was discovered told a story. The killer sent a message whether he meant to or not. The message in the act was more than "I hate you," or "I'm going to annihilate you." The way it went down told a whole narrative in code, each one like a Rosetta stone that had to be interpreted. The story only lacked the who and the why, and sometimes it was simple enough to point right at the who as well.

  In any case, Maddy Wilson didn't go out to lunch and disappear, only to be found days later floating in the East River. She wasn't pushed out a window, run over, or shot in the head. She was murdered in her shower and discovered within minutes by a woman who had reason to hate her. Her trainer had been with her just before she was attacked, and maybe her husband, too. But Remy was the one who "discovered" the body and called 911. With all those people so close to the victim in the time frame, it could not be murder by a stranger. The killer knew what Maddy's window of vulnerability had been.

  Images from the crime scene kept replaying in April's head. Something had been going on when Maddy was discovered that no police officer had seen. And that might be the most important element of all. No one saw the jets in the shower shooting water at Maddy Wilson's body. Remy said they had been on when she got there. But the shower had been turned off by the time the police arrived. How many jets had been on? Only Remy knew that. Only Remy knew whether the water had been on at all, and although April had asked her those questions, she wasn't yet fully satisfied with the answers. If the shower had kept the body warm for an hour or more, would the ME still be able to ascertain the time of death? She didn't know.

  April was not a religious person, not religious in the usual way. She did not go to church, or light incense sticks for her ancestors, or keep a shrine to Buddha. Her parents held deep beliefs and ancient superstitions, but she did not. How could she, in the twenty-first century, still interpret the wishes of people who had died a hundred years ago in a very faraway place, she asked herself. She tried to explain her reluctance to follow the ancient traditions of ancestor worship by the passage of time. But still, she felt guilty for letting the traditions go.

  Although sin, as such, was not a part of her own belief system, no one in America could fail to be aware of Christian dogma on sin—original and otherwise—and redemption. She didn't know why, but the thought of baptism and the lamb kept running through her head. The killer washed Maddy's blood down the drain, but maybe there was a message in the water left running after all the blood was gone. Maybe Maddy's sins were being washed away.

  She shook her head at the confusing picture. Derek, Remy, Wayne, Alison. They were all closely connected. What bothered her the most was that Maddy's killing looked like a man's murder, but not a man's crime scene. She had some time to brood about that and enter her notes into her laptop before hurrying to meet Mike at the Seventeenth Precinct.

  Seventeen

  A lison didn't go right into the house after the police car dropped her off. She stopped on the sidewalk and called Derek. His phone was off, and she didn't want to leave a message. Then, still lingering outside the modern renovated brownstone with its circular staircase and entrances on two levels, she called her husband on his private line. "Have you heard about Maddy Wilson?" she asked as soon as he answered.

  "Where the hell have you been?" he yelled into the receiver. "I've been calling you all day. Oh, Jesus, Alison. Why didn't you call me?"

  "They took me to the police station," she told him meekly.

  "Why, are you hurt?" He sounded frantic.

  She yanked the cell away from her ear. When he ignored her, she was miserable. But when he spoke to her, he was always yelling, or screaming. He didn't have a soft tone in his entire voice repertoire. She could imagine him pacing around his office with a headset on. Wherever he was, he had that phone pasted to his head, and he yelled at everyone. She had to take a pill whenever he yelled at her.

  "No, I'm not hurt. If I were hurt, they wouldn't have taken me to the police station," she replied impatiently. "That's the hospital." He knew nothing about real life.

  "Oh, stop. Maddy Wilson was murdered and you're always with her. ... I thought ... I was afraid ... I didn't know what to think. Why didn't you call me?"

  "They were asking me questions, honey. I couldn't get to a phone."

  "That's a crock. What do you know about it?" he demanded.

  "Shh. Don't yell, Andy. I don't know anything about it. I was at the gym, and they came for Derek."

  "Who the fuck is Derek?"

  "My trainer."

  "Oh, yeah, him." Reference to his wife's trainer stopped him, but only for a second. "Don't tell me that guy who steals your money killed Maddy!" he shrieked. "Jesus, Alison. Now you've done it."

  "No, he didn't kill anybody. You're not listening. He was Maddy's trainer, too. They had a session together this morning. And he doesn't steal my money." This offended her. She leaned against a tree, which was missing its little iron fence to keep the dogs away, in front of her house. She was still reeling from the news that Derek had been unfaithful to her.

  "You two did everything together. I'm freaked out by this, I really am."

  "He doesn't steal my money," she protested again.

  "Oh, I forgot, you just give it to him. You know what? I don't want you seeing that guy anymore."

  Alison flushed angrily. Why were they arguing about Derek again? "I'm not seeing him, Andy. He's my trainer. He's done wonderful things for me. I'm completely straight now."

  "Then why did you end up at the police station?" Andrew demanded.

  Alison didn't answer the question right away. She was thinking of Maddy. She and Andy lived only two blocks away from the Wilsons. Their houses both had southern exposures and the same address. They'd thought it was such a wonderful coincidence, to be so close in such a safe neighborhood. Very little crime, and the United Nations was not far away. A lovely, lovely neighborhood. They had pretty views of the East River where the sunrises were amazing every morning. And Saks Fifth Avenue was nearby. They could walk there every day if they wanted to. The two women had been in each other's kitchens daily and drunk their afternoon white wines in each other's bedrooms. And they'd shared the same lover. Alison wanted to cry.

  In fact, they'd shared everything except the gym where Maddy died. Maddy hadn't allowed Alison in there. That was the reason Alison had helped Derek set up his own studio. Crunch had been too crowded and noisy for her. If Maddy hadn't been so selfish, Alison wouldn't have had to give Derek so much money and gotten Andrew angry. But now she knew that Maddy had betrayed her in a bigger way than that.

  "For Christ's sake, Alison, are you there?" Andy screamed into her thoughts.

  "I'm upset," she said in a little-girl voice.

  "Fuck that. What did the police ask you?"

  "They wanted to know about Maddy's life," she whimpered, wishing he'd stop yelling at her.

  "Jesus Christ. What did you tell them?" Andy demanded.

  "Nothing. Why are you so angry about it? I didn't do anything wrong. I lost my best friend."

  "Wayne called me. He's very upset."

  "Well, I'm upset, too," she whimpered. "I was so upset I threw up."

  "I know, Al, but you can't just blab off to the police."

  "I wasn't blabbing," Alison protested. Why was he making this her fault?

  "Honey, the police get things all mixed up. You can get seriously embroiled."

  "I don't know what you're talking about. My friend was murdered."

  "What did you tell them? Wayne wants to know."

  "I told you. Nothing. We talked about shopping and the girls who .work for us. That's all. We also talked about Derek. They're interested in Derek."

  "Really." Derek's name stopped hUn every time.

  "When are you coming home? I'm so scared," she said.

  "Oh, for Christ's sake, Al, I'm very stressed right now. I have things to do. Are you going to call on Wayne?" he replied impatiently.


  Alison hesitated. That sounded like a terrible idea. Why would she want to call on Wayne? He'd be stressed, too. "I think they kicked him out of the house," she said slowly. She didn't feel up to calling on anybody.

  "Well, of course, they kicked him out of the house. He couldn't stay there. He's at the Plaza."

  She shuddered at the thought of Wayne and the two boys at the Plaza. It wasn't a low-key place at all. She knew she should help Wayne with the boys. Maddy would want her to take care of things. That was a new stress. Bertie and Angus needed a new nanny, and Wayne couldn't hire one himself. And he certainly couldn't look after the boys on his own. She had to call Jo Ellen about a new girl. Better than taking them herself, she thought. She couldn't handle that. "Why did he go to the Plaza?" she asked.

  "I don't know. Look, stay home. Don't go out. Don't call all your friends. Be discreet for once. Do you hear me?"

  "How could I avoid it with you yelling in my ear?"

  "Don't start with me, okay? I'm trying to earn a living here. I'm doing the best I can."

  "But you told me to go see Wayne. I can't go see him. I have to get him a new nanny for the boys."

  "Keep out of it. Remy's staying on."

  "Remy's staying on?" Alison screamed. "Oh, Jesus, Andy. No!"

  "She's with them at the Plaza. She's staying. Now, I have to go."

  He hung up, and Alison leaned over to gag in the little plot of unprotected earth around her one lonely tree. She didn't like throwing up anymore, but sometimes life made her sick. The horror of the situation washed over her. Remy had killed her friend, and now the woman was ensconced in the