Stealing Time awm-5

by Leslie Glass

  POLICE

  vests. The Emergency Services people looked like the Airborne in their jumpsuits. April ignored the mounting tension. "How many building staff?" she asked.

  "Five."

  "Who's talking to them?"

  McMan gave her a funny smile. "Major Cases. The CO and your boss are upstairs. What about the mother?"

  "She's still unconscious." April glanced at Popescu, who appeared to be arguing with Baum.

  "You figure the husband for a killer?" McMan asked, following her gaze for the first time.

  "We're addressing the question," April said tersely. The elevators were operational again. She gestured to Woody. They were going up.

  There was no operator in the elevator when the doors slid open and they got in. Popescu was still holding one hand up to his face as if to keep himself together.

  "What's your baby's name?" April asked suddenly.

  "Paul. His name is Paul." Popescu said nothing further.

  When the elevator stopped without a jerk on the ninth floor, they were confronted by a group of impor-tant-looking men at the end of the hall.

  "Jesus, who are they?" Popescu cried.

  April saw the precinct commander, Bjork Johnson, and two other brass in uniforms, Lieutenant Iriarte and Detectives Skye and Creaker of the precinct squad. Her heart drummed in her chest as she hurried toward them down a hall that didn't seem to curve with the building.

  Until a few years ago, she had worked in the 5th Precinct in Chinatown and had never been in a building as luxurious as this. After working in the Two-O on the Upper West Side and Midtown North for the last two years, she no longer unconsciously held her breath when she entered a rich residence. Heather Rose's mother probably annoyed all her friends with her bragging about the castle her daughter lived in.

  The scene at the end of the hall was the usual. The people of importance were standing around waiting for something to break while the specialists tried to get their work done. Iriarte and the CO had on their angry-worried expressions, which meant they were unhappy that things had quickly moved beyond their control. Before April said a word, her supervisor's face told her he wanted her to clear this case immediately. He wanted the special units out of his territory. How did he expect her to pull that off? Iriarte didn't even know yet that the baby wasn't Heather's biological child. She introduced him to Popescu, left the men together, and went inside the apartment with Woody at her heels.

  Apartment 9E faced the park, but April didn't have time to admire the view. First, she saw the bloodstains on the white carpet in the foyer. Looked like tracks. The perp could have gotten blood on his shoes, or Anton, or the EMS unit, taking Heather out. They would have been working on the victim, not worrying about crime-scene contamination. Fingerprint powder covered every surface that could take it, in three unbecoming colors: white, black, and gray. She moved into the living room, where two detectives were working on the phones.

  "Anything?" she asked. They ignored her.

  She looked around. The furniture in the living room was slick, shiny, and new, now messy with fingerprint powder. Here a Chinese influence was evident. Differ-ent-sized antique lacquer boxes were displayed on the tables. Silk brocade pillows with themes of old China were neatly arranged on the chairs and sofas. A green-and-white bamboo-patterned fabric covered the sofas. In the middle of the black lacquer coffee table sat a large bowl filled with real pink peonies. The smell of the peonies was strong enough to cover even the powerful odor of police sweat.

  April realized with a start that the flowers had just recently been put there: only a few of the blossoms were fully open. A rack by the sofa looked as if it had been hastily stuffed with magazines. She could see no Asian ones. Heather Rose stocked up on

  Vogue, Bazaar, House Beautiful, Bon Appetit.

  They were current and didn't have address stickers. That meant she'd bought them on the stand within the last three weeks. Did brand-new mothers usually care so much about fashion and food? There were no magazines about babies.

  "Guess she's not the

  Good Housekeeping

  kind of woman," Baum remarked. He'd noticed, too.

  April caught sight of a wedding photo in a highly polished silver frame. Though not a classic Chinese beauty, the bride looked stunning in an off-the-shoulder, slim-fitting satin wedding gown with a long train. The groom, standing behind her, was not much taller than she. He was hidden from the waist down by the train on her dress. In the photo their cheeks were touching, and they had dreamy expressions on their faces, as if they were stoned.

  April found the first signs of a baby in a room that looked like an office that had been halfheartedly turned into a nursery. A desk with a computer and papers (now gritty with fingerprint powder) sat against one wall, a swiveling leather desk chair in front of it.

  Beside it, a bookcase filled with books for adults was covered with more powder. The white crib was placed by the window overlooking the park. The curtains on the window were office tweed; they hadn't been changed for the baby. Maybe she hadn't known it was coming.

  The elaborate crib was new and clearly expensive. There was a changing table nearby, but nothing much was on it—an empty box of diapers, a container of baby powder. April opened the diaper pail. A strong odor of a poopy diaper jumped out at her. April felt the hairs rise on the back of her neck. She was all keyed up, the way she got when there was a homicide and all her emotions and adrenaline were charging up at once. Fear that she'd mess up and ruin her career and thus her whole life, anger at what had been done to the victim, passion for justice, for revenge against the perpetrator; the sight of a crime scene did that to her.

  Heather Rose's being a victim didn't go down well with her at all. Chinese were good mothers, were famous for adoring their children except in certain circumstances—like extreme poverty, or if the babies happened to be girls—when they killed them. Paul Popescu, however, wasn't a girl, and the family was rich, not poor. And they weren't in China. And quite possibly the baby was adopted. There was no reason for a woman like Heather Rose to have killed him.

  Suddenly April was aware of a small ghost in the room with her. April did not believe in ghosts the way her mother and other old-style Chinese—and even Mike's Mexican mother—did. She knew that ghosts were just an invention to scare people and make them honor their ancestors. All the same, something that felt like a ghost flew by her ear. Then it circled around and flew back, hovering in one place and beating at the air around her head to get her attention. April shivered as the ghost kept the hair raised on the back of her neck. It was telling her not to be intimidated by any of the bosses, not to be pushed into the background by the special units so someone else's career could get a lift. She was sure there was a ghost in the room, and the ghost was telling her that baby Paul had gone missing in her precinct on her watch. And further, since they didn't know who his biological parents were, she and the rookie detective, Woody Baum, who was all she had in the way of support, had better find Paul very soon.

  CHAPTER 6

  The hall was empty when April and Woody came out of the Popescus' apartment. "What do you see here, Detective?" April asked him.

  Baum looked worried. "What do I see?"

  "Yeah, what's going on here?" A hint of impatience crept into her voice. If Baum wanted to be useful and go somewhere, he couldn't answer a question with a question. He had to answer a question, period.

  "Is this a test?" Baum was a preppy-looking guy; he wore a blue blazer and kept a second gun strapped to his ankle. His brown hair was so short it was hard to tell whether it curled. He rubbed at it with a free hand, as if trying to make it grow.

  "Everything in this life is a test," she told him.

  He walked along, chafing the stubble till they reached the elevator, where he punched the Down button. "The beating happened in the kitchen," he said finally. "This looks like a domestic case to me. Maybe they'll find some of the husband's blood in or around one of the puddles on the floor.
Then we could nail him for beating his wife." He looked hopeful.

  "What about the baby?"

  Baum frowned at the second part of the equation.

  "If he battered the wife, what do you think he did with the baby?" she elaborated.

  "He didn't seem to know where the baby was."

  "He could be lying, though. What else?"

  "Isn't it your turn yet?" Baum hit the elevator button again.

  "Are you some kind of smart aleck, Detective?" April wasn't amused.

  "Nah, just a Jew," he cracked.

  "Well, keep it in check, will you?"

  "Yes, ma'am." Baum saluted.

  "You have a problem with a supervisor who's going to run you over hot coals every day to teach you something?"

  The way my supervisor did to me,

  she didn't add.

  "No, ma'am. It's just what my mother does."

  "Good. So what about the baby?"

  "The doc said it's not hers."

  "So what do we do about that, Woody?"

  "We question Popescu."

  "Right. Now you just saw a crime scene where all the violence occurred in the kitchen. Was there blood on the back door?"

  "No."

  "Blood on the back doorknob?"

  "No."

  "Blood on the outside of the back door, or on the walls in the back hall, on the fire-stairs door, or on the fire stairs?"

  Baum shook his head.

  "There was blood in the front of the apartment. So what does that tell us?"

  "The perp didn't go out the back way."

  "What if he washed up first?" April demanded.

  "He didn't wash up in the kitchen sink. There's a duck in a bowl of water in the sink, and there's no blood in or around the bowl of water. How long does it take to defrost a duck?" Baum wondered.

  "Where I come from we buy the duck already

  roasted. Would a frozen duck begin to soften in about two hours? It's fully defrosted now. We'll have to ask CSU how hard it was when they got here at what, four-fifteen? Might help with the time frame."

  The elevator door slid silently open. They got in with a woman in a pink halter and purple pedal pushers who had a toddler in a stroller. The toddler was busy gnawing on a bagel.

  "They talked to me already. The detective said it was okay to go out now," she said, looking at the badges on April and Baum's jackets. "Terrible thing. Terrible." She put her hand on her blond baby's head.

  "Cute baby," April murmured.

  On the main floor, the woman pushed ahead of them and exited the elevator first, pushing the stroller out into the lobby, then on out into the crush of cameras.

  April wondered where the woman was taking her baby at this hour. Then it occurred to her that anybody could wheel a baby out, and no one would ask if it was hers. Everyone assumed that babies belonged to the people they were with. She turned to Baum. "You notice anything missing from that apartment?"

  Baum watched the woman wheel the baby outside, then stop to talk to the reporters. "Wouldn't they have had a stroller?'-' he said.

  "Yes. What else?"

  "What, more twenty questions?"

  "More like twenty thousand questions. What's the answer?" April clicked her tongue at his silence. "All right: when my cousins have babies, they have showers."

  "So where's the stuff, right?"

  "Exactly." She watched McMan signing off on the first of the teams. There was no sniper on the roof, no baby in the garbage, the incinerator, the elevator shaft. EMS was cutting out.

  "So there was remarkably little baby stuff in there. Almost nothing in fact," Baum said.

  "Right. Either Heather wasn't expecting a baby, or she didn't intend to keep it long."

  They watched the young woman in the halter finish talking to the press and turn toward the park.

  By 8:35 P.M., there was press activity at the precinct, too. The reporters were spreading like bacteria, and April didn't want to catch anything. When she arrived at Fifty-fourth Street and got out of the car, a woman in a pale purple suit, carrying a mike torch with the letters ABC on it, ran across the sidewalk to talk to her. The woman thrust the microphone in April's face before she reached the cover of the precinct.

  "Hey, look, it's Sergeant Woo. How are you, Sergeant? I'm Grace Faye. I was on the Liberty case. Great job you did there. I hear you were in the hospital for two months."

  April grimaced at the exaggeration. "I was in the hospital overnight." Well, for a few nights. "Excuse me.

  "Hey, wait, what's your hurry?"

  A second woman reporter April didn't know tried to push in front of Faye. "What can you tell us about the missing baby? What about the baby's mother? We had a tip she died on the way to the hospital. Is that true?" Faye pushed the other reporter back, and they had a bit of a shoving match.

  April cocked her head for Baum to walk in front of her. "You're supposed to walk behind me except in instances where you have to clear the way for me," she muttered in his ear when he edged ahead.

  Baum opened his mouth. "Clear the way," he said, using his elbows. "A spokesman will talk to you as soon as we have something."

  "And I'll remember you at Christmas," the first reporter promised, cynically.

  April didn't look at them as she went inside. What were they thinking? They knew she couldn't talk to them. She gave the desk lieutenant a little smile, then climbed the stairs to the detective squad room. Inside was the mob scene she'd expected. The phones were hogged by strangers, and the limited space was crammed with easels and flip charts. The noise and tension levels were high, and the room was filled with smoke. Lieutenant Iriarte was in his office with his three ugly henchmen. He gestured for her, but not Baum, to come in. April saw Baum flush with anger as he turned away to find someone else sitting at his desk.

  She opened the door of the office. Creaker, Hage-dorn, and Skye filed out. Iriarte pointed at a chair.

  "Baum's not a bad guy. Who knows, he may even turn out to have some talent," she murmured, not wanting to let the insult go.

  Iriarte had a really skinny mustache that came nowhere near his mouth. He squeezed his thin lips into a moue, then made them into a line. Working his mouth was how he thought. "I wouldn't bet on it," he muttered. "Why'd you pick him?"

  "Baum's new. He could use some breaking in," April replied, neutral. And he didn't have any loyalties yet. She needed someone like that on her team.

  "Look, April, don't take this opportunity to make a flaming mess of things." Iriarte blew air out of his mouth. April could tell he was unhappy.

  "No sir, I won't," she promised him.

  "I want our best people on this." He punched the air with his pen. "We got to stay in it all the way, you hear what I'm saying?"

  "I hear you, sir. Do you have Hagedorn on the background stuff?"

  "Yes, but four guys from Major Cases are on it, too. Let's see who scores first," he said fiercely. He stopped, shook his head at the intruders, then turned to his second whip. "And I want you out there until something breaks. All night, all day, as long as it takes."

  "Yes sir, and Baum can drive me," she said after a moment. It was suicide. She didn't know why she'd said it. But without Mike she had no one. Creaker and Skye were Iriarte's boys; she didn't trust them. Baum was no detective, that was clear, but he was no worse than anybody else.

  "Jesus, April, are you telling me you want

  him?"

  Iriarte exploded. Face turned red, the whole bit. He looked as if he were about to keel over on the spot. April hated getting him into such a state when he was already so upset.

  Did she want Baum? Of course she didn't want him. The guy had no legs. He was a tadpole, but maybe he'd turn out all right.

  "Getting the new ones up to speed is part of my job, as I understand it." She kept her face impassive. Even in bad times, when the pressure was on. Like this.

  Iriarte smacked his desk with the palm of his hand. "Look here, I'm getting calls, a lot of calls about thi
s."

  "Yes, sir."

  "So what do you have that I don't know already?"

  "Baum and I talked to the doorman. He said Mrs. Popescu had a dicey pregnancy and wasn't seen very much before the birth of the baby."

  Iriarte rolled his tongue around in his mouth. "Is that significant?"

  "It sure is. At the hospital the doctor told us Heather Popescu had not given birth to a baby."

  "What?

  But there is a baby, right?"

  "Oh, yeah, there's a baby. Doorman said Mr.

  Popescu left at eight-thirty

  A.M

  ., as usual; the man's like clockwork. Mrs. Popescu took the baby out soon after that, a little after nine—"

  "Did he see the baby?"

  "No. He said he heard the baby crying. He knew it was the baby because newborns sound like kittens."

  Iriarte rolled his eyes. "So—either the baby was alive this morning, or the baby was dead and the woman went out with a kitten. And, by the way, it wasn't her baby."

  "Yes," April said.

  "What about when she returned? Was there a baby or a kitten with her then?"

  "No one remembers seeing her return."

  "Did you talk to the relief doorman?"

  "Yes. He didn't see her."

  "What about the service entrance?"

  "Security in the building is pretty tight. What I'm wondering about is the stroller. The doorman says it was more like a carriage, not one of those little fold-up jobs. She went out with it. It wasn't in the apartment when we got there. Where is it?"

  Iriarte sat back and made a steeple with his fingers. "This whole thing sounds fishy to me. Let me see a picture of the baby." He held out his hand, wiggling his fingers as if he knew she had one.

  Indeed, April had gotten a photo from Popescu before she left his apartment. She dug around in her purse and pulled it out. She glanced at it before handing it over to Iriarte. Baby Paul had a full head of dark hair and blue eyes. He was wrapped up in a blue blanket, caught by the camera with a serious expression.

  Iriarte shook his head. "Cute. This baby doesn't look Chinese. The so-called mother, who is also the last person seen with it, is Chinese." He gave April a piercing look. "You're the primary on this case and I want you to clear it tonight."