Tracking Time

by Leslie Glass

  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."

  Forty-six

  Around noon Jerry Atkins appeared in Grace's doorway for a minute. He wiggled his finger at her, then walked away. Grace glanced at Craig. He was eating a calzone at his desk and drinking one of those huge containers of Coke, careful not to drip on his work. He didn't notice her leave.

  Grace and Jerry had a method for meeting during the day. He would go downstairs to the newspaper stand in the building, and she would meet him there. He always said if anyone saw them together it would look like a coincidence. She thought it was pretty silly, so what if people saw them together? They'd worked in the same office for almost twenty-three years, longer than anyone else.

  In the beginning of the relationship he used to call her into his office several times a day. They spent hours discussing all her problems, her life plan and options, and of course his distress about his empty marriage. She'd sit on his sofa, and they'd talk as if there was nothing else in the world to do. He was a wealthy man. He took her out to lunch and to dinner and promised to help her in her career. No one had ever paid that much attention to her in her entire life. At twenty-one she'd enjoyed his pleasure in her prettiness and never for a moment thought forty-four was old. Now, because he was paranoid about the telephone, he would E-mail her to meet him at the newspaper stand, and the only time she saw him socially was at the firm Christmas party.

  She got downstairs first and was busy reading tabloid scandals in the private lives of the rich and famous, and predictions of the end of the world before 2002, when Jerry turned up. He motioned toward the door, and they went outside. It was a gorgeous day, but neither was in the mood to notice. Jerry turned south on Third Avenue. It was lunch hour and the sidewalk was jammed.

  "Any word from Dylan?" he asked.

  "No. Have you spoken to the police?"

  "Yes, I had a telephone call from the Mayor. I also had a call from the Police Commissioner's office, too. Everybody's working on this."

  "The Police Commissioner called you?"

  "His office called." Jerry spoke with obvious pride. "A deputy commissioner assured me they were doing everything they could to find my son. He sounded like a very nice man. I also spoke to some detectives. They didn't seem very competent. I hate to break this to you, but there's been a murder in the park. Not Maslow. I was right that this has nothing to do with Dylan."

  "A murder?" Grace was horrified. "Who was murdered?"

  "Just a homeless man. A mental patient."

  "Did you tell them about Dylan?"

  "No, I didn't, Grace. I didn't think that would help the situation. It would only confuse things."

  He didn't tell the police his daughter was missing? Grace was overwhelmed by anger. They walked downtown, moving with the crowd. She hadn't eaten anything for nearly two days. Somehow, she wished that Jerry would ease her suffering and offer to take her to lunch so she could talk about the daughter she'd loved and nurtured for so many years, pour her heart out, and receive some comfort that she was not alone in caring about what happened to her.

  "I went to see Maslow's supervisor, Dr. Frank," he went on.

  "Oh?" What good would that do?

  "I told him about Dylan."

  "Was he surprised?" she asked. What about me, Grace thought. "What did you say about me?"

  Jerry shook his head. "He asked some questions about her life, our life together. I told him the information was confidential. We don't want the police to know about this."

  "Why not?"

  "My hope is that he will try to contact Dylan himself."

  "I told you Dylan is not at home."

  "I know, but don't upset yourself, Grace. She always comes home. She has nowhere else to go."

  Grace felt her frustration spiral. Sometimes she wanted to kill Jerry. So many things about him were infuriating. He collected their receipts, even from the drugstore and Starbucks. He knew every purchase. That irked her and Dylan so much. He went over their credit card expenses as if he were the one who was responsible for them. But the truth was he didn't pay his own share of their life together. She even paid his cleaning bills, and she was poor. She had nothing of her own. He'd always insisted on being the head of her family without taking any of the responsibility a husband would take. Now the Mayor of New York City was in touch with him about Maslow, and no one cared at all about her. For the first time she knew how his wife must feel.

  "Who is this person who's supposed to get in touch with Dylan?" she asked.

  "I told you. He's a psychiatrist. He'll talk to her, find out what's going on with her. If she knows something about Maslow's disappearance, I know he'll tell us."

  "I thought you were so against psychiatrists."

  "But you were so worried, my sweetheart, my darling." He stopped and gave her a tender look. "I did it for you. You said you wanted all the children safe. Well, I have the appropriate people working on it. Whatever you want I do for you." He took her hand and squeezed it.

  She knew how his mind worked. As far as he was concerned, the situation with her was now under control.

  "Now be patient. I think we'll have this taken care of soon and then we'll get back to normal," he told her.

  She gave him a look. Get back to normal? They'd never get back to normal. They'd never been normal.

  "Don't look at me like that. When everything settles down, I'll marry you and adopt Dylan, I promise." He brought her hand to his lips and kissed her fingers in the middle of a whirling crowd.

  Grace couldn't bring herself to say she'd heard all this before. After the kiss to her fingertips, Jerry left her without offering lunch, and she went back upstairs to her office. In the kitchen she poured herself some very old coffee and tossed in two packets of hazelnut nondairy creamer. Lunch. She took the cup and returned to her office. Craig wasn't there. But she knew his habits. He'd gone off to sneak a few cigarettes and have a piece of cheesecake. In the quiet moment she called the police and asked for the detectives handling the Maslow Atkins case. The man on the phone asked her name. She told him who she was. She was put on hold for a long time. Finally the man came back on the line, gave her a
name, and told her where to go. The address was across town on West Fifty-fourth Street. She took a taxi.

  Forty-seven

  As the black of night gave way to gray, Maslow knew he was not in a tomb limited to the size of his own body. Beyond his feet was an open space large enough for at least four people to move around. That was comforting. He was stuck in the back of a cave and needed to get to the front, the mouth, the opening. Out. And he had to get out soon. He had more than himself to think of now; he had to get Allegra out.

  Hours after the attack her cries still tormented him. He replayed the horrific moments over and over and tried to calculate from her screams what had happened and how badly hurt she might be. Had she been stabbed by the knife the girl had waved at him? Was she slowly bleeding to death? Who were that boy and girl? What did they think they were doing and why? Were they stoned on something? Would they return? How soon? Never? The questions kept coming. And the big one- what could he do to get help?

  Through the long night hours Maslow heard Allegra moaning, struggling to breathe, and he talked to her, kept talking. He had no idea what he was saying. All he knew was that the girl was injured, and she was crying. He wanted her to get up, move closer, and help him get out of there. Then he wanted her to talk to him, but he knew from the sounds she made that she was gagged- she couldn't talk. Then all he wanted was for her to stop crying. And now she had stopped. For an hour or more, there had been no sound from her but the ragged pull of her breath. He could hear the rats scuffling around her.

  "Allegra, hang in there, kid," he told her.

  Then through a solid wall of pain in his back, Maslow heard the whine of chopper blades and the wailing ambulance sirens. He heard a helicopter come, and he heard it go. It seemed to happen in only seconds. Too fast it was gone. His voice was hoarse from calling. Somewhere outside there was activity. Someone was getting help. But no help came to them.

  "Allegra! Hey, Allegra."

  No sound now.

  A new panic seized him, not that he would die, but that she was dying. She was being eaten by rats as he lay there, doing nothing. They went for the soft tissue, for the eyes first. He was terrified, kept talking to her and calling for help. And when she stopped whimpering, he began clawing at the crumbling ceiling over his head, no longer afraid of the dirt falling into his face. He braced his hands against the earth above and dragged himself forward with his heels and bottom. He was not paralyzed, not helpless. He had only inches, hardly enough room to raise his knees and force his burning calf muscles to grab hold. He forced himself to move.

  Again came the memory of childhood when he'd hid under the bed with the springs in his face, how he'd crawled in and out. That had been a safe place. This one could be a grave for two. His arms and shoulders were stronger now, his feet full of the bee stings of reviving life. By centimeters he snaked himself across the sharp rocks of the cave floor, tearing skin off his back and legs and bringing down sand and gravel on his face.

  Agonizingly, he shoved himself along, a few inches at a time. Searing pain nagged at the muscles in his buttocks. He kept going. Two more feet, and the solid rock was much higher above his hands. A sudden shifting of a rock over his head made him scramble. He rolled over and inched backward on his hands and knees. He was in open space when a rock gave way and fell on the place where his head and shoulders had been only moments ago. The shelf had collapsed like a sand castle on the beach. The cave was narrower now, the air was foul with thick clouds of sand. His heart raced as he tried to catch his breath. Two rats scuttled over his bleeding hands. He smacked them away and sat up. Ahead of him he could see Allegra's motionless body.

  Maslow reached his arms over his head and stretched his back, then he flexed his knees and feet. He was dizzy and disoriented. A lump on the side of his head felt as big as a tennis ball. A gash in his forehead hurt like hell. His stomach growled, but he felt no obvious break in his legs.

  "Shhh. It's okay. It's okay," he mumbled. He had no idea he was making the sounds or to whom he was talking. His back still hurt, but his legs were moving. He was muttering, moving along the cave floor, feeling the rough stones with his hands. In the dim light he could see the form of Allegra. A lump, not a very big one. It looked as if her head was half buried in sand. Beyond that, bars and dim light.

  "Allegra." He crawled toward her.

  His knee snagged a jagged rock. He collapsed forward. His hand slipped into a puddle of stagnant water. Furious movement from the water. A ball-sized slimy something jumped out and hit him in the face with a splat.

  "Frog," he told himself.

  He covered the last feet and crouched over Allegra's body. She lay half on her side. Her hands were tied behind her back. The side of her face was covered with blood. Her eyes were closed, but her skin was warm. Maslow found the carotid pulse in her neck. One of her own socks was stuffed in her mouth. He pulled the sock out. She was groaning when he tried to untie her hands. Then he saw that her foot was caught under the gate.

  He reached under her head and shoulders to get her face out of the dirt, and was shocked when her hair fell off in his hand.

  Forty-eight

  Mike had worked the Special Case unit out of Mid-town North before. On the last case he'd used the tiny office located outside the detective squad rooms. He didn't want to go there now. April had not yet returned from the park so he decided to use the desk she shared with the other supervisor of the squad, Sergeant Teeter. Today was Teeter's day for the desk, but Teeter was out in the field. The department was going nuts on the homicide.

  Mike was aware of the meeting of commanders in the park, but it had nothing to do with him. He got his assignments from downtown, and precinct politics didn't affect him one way or the other.

  His job was to find Maslow Atkins. When he arrived at Midtown North at half past one, Lieutenant Iriarte was downtown at a press conference, and the squad was packed with detectives from several units, working the time lines to trace Pee Wee's last hours and the people who had been in contact with him.

  The roundup of street people had already begun. In the holding cell four bedraggled males were cursing and spitting, muttering to themselves, protesting their innocence of whatever crime had come to the attention of the police. They didn't know that they were a gathering of Pee Wee James's known associates and that the police were looking for his killer. Several were too drunk to process anything. Mike made a quick survey of them. He didn't know any.

  Several detectives were smoking. Toxic fumes filled the room. Mike hadn't had a cigarette in nearly two years. Sometimes the smell of smoke bothered him, but he longed for a cigarette now. He couldn't help feeling Pee Wee's life had ended because of his need to show April who was boss. He felt bad about that. She'd stayed behind with the criminalists. It made him think he was in trouble with her again.

  Because he had neglected the situation with Pee Wee James last night, he went to interview the last detective to see him alive. He found Detective George Maas typing at the computer on his desk, a number of people crowded around him. George was short and wiry, had kinky hair and a big nose with an ugly red spot developing into a pimple on the tip of it. The man looked unhappy. His mustard yellow tie had a massive coffee stain streaking the front. Under his arms and all around his shoulder holster, he was sweating profusely in his khaki shirt. He appeared to be thinking hard and ignoring the talk around him. Mike had never heard April mention his name. Either the man was new or a nonentity.

  "Hey, George, I'm Lieutenant Mike Sanchez, Special Case Squad." He held out his hand to be friendly. The crowd made room.

  George examined the hand to see if a demotion was lurking there. "IAB?" he asked suspiciously.

  Mike shook his head. He had nothing to do with Internal Affairs. "Special Case," he repeated.

  "Everything I know is going in here." He tapped his fingers on the computer board. "It wasn't my call to release the guy."

  "What happened?" Mike asked, taking a seat on the corner of
the desk and edging out the listeners.

  "The lieutenant told me to interview James, then to report what he said. I did. After that, he told me to give him a fiver and let him go." Maas shrugged. "That's what I did."

  "Is that usual?"

  "What, sir?"

  "The fiver."

  "Not exactly usual. We do it sometimes." He didn't look happy with this.

  "Why this time?"

  Maas shrugged. "No idea. I just do what I'm told."

  "Did you drive him anywhere?"

  "Are you kidding?"

  "So you gave him a fiver but didn't drive him anywhere."

  "That's right."

  "So what did you and James talk about?"

  "The guy was a hard-core wino. We've had him in here before. A big troublemaker. Whenever he could stand up, he was fighting."

  "What about yesterday?"

  "Yesterday he couldn't stand up. He had the DTs. He was shaking all over, thought the sky was raining with insects." George shrugged again. "He couldn't tell a tree from an elephant."

  "What did he tell you about the incident on Tuesday night?"

  "By the time I saw him, he'd forgotten all about it. All he told me was there was some kind of fairy godmother who was going to give him a twenty every day for the rest of his life. That's about it. At the time he was in here we had a situation with some South American tourists…"

  "Oh yeah, what was that about?"

  "They were upset a homeless person was sharing the planet with them." Maas smiled.

  "What was their complaint?"

  "Oh, I'm not sure what they came in about. I didn't handle the complaint. But the lieutenant didn't like it when Sergeant Woo brought the wino in. When she left, the lieutenant told me to get rid of him. So I gave him the five dollars and told him to get going." George seemed pretty stressed. He lit up an unfiltered Camel.