Judging Time (47 page)

At the desk the harried-looking woman with permed red hair saw the shields, then returned to her computer screen.

"Where's the assault victim? Po-pes—"

"Popescu. It's Rumanian," the woman snapped. She kept typing and didn't look up.

"Thanks, that's the one. Where is she?" She didn't glance at Baum.

"She's in Treatment Room 3."

"I'd like to talk with her."

"She's unconscious."

"How about the doctor?"

"The doctor's with her."

"You have any idea when I could talk with him?"

"No." The woman returned to her typing, pleased to thwart April. She filled out her uniform and then some, had angry eyes, and a patch of fiery red pimples on each cheek. After a pause, she added, "They've finished with the X rays. Shouldn't be too long now."

"Thanks." April turned back to the rows of seats occupied by the motley bunch that formed a little pond of human misery in the waiting room. She didn't want to think about the bacteria and viruses circulating the room. She recognized the uniforms, Duffy and Prince. Both were white, five-ten or so, beefy, a few

years younger than she, and not much for taking initiative of any kind. Duffy worked a wad of gum around his mouth without actually chewing. The two cops flanked the victim's husband in an informal kind of way. The obviously upset, dark-haired man sat on a chair between them, wringing his hands. She noticed that his tie had alligators on it, his pink shirt had white collar and cuffs that were stained with blood, and his blue pinstriped suit looked expensive.

"Mr. Popescu?" she said.

His head twitched her way. "Yesi"

"I'm Detective Sergeant Woo, this is Detective Baum."

He looked from one to the other. "Who's in charge?"

"I am," April said.

He pulled himself to his feet with an effort. "How's my wife?"

"We don't have a report yet."

"Did she say who did it?" he asked.

"She's unconscious."

"Jesus." He shook his head. "Who could do this?"

"What happened?"

"I want to see my wife." Popescu had a wide mouth and wide-set eyes as black as April's. The voice was cold, the eyes were on fire. He looked about to blow.

April felt sorry for him. It wasn't uncommon for people to get crazy when someone they loved was hurt. "She's with the doctor."

"I told them I don't
want
doctors to touch her without my being in the room."

"That's not possible—"

"I won't have any emergency room doctor playing around with my wife." Popescu's panic screamed out of his voice. "I forbid them to do anything to her, working on her face—or, or . . ."

"Can you tell me what happened, sir?"

Popescu gave her a crazed look. "Somebody broke into my apartment and took my baby." His voice cracked. "He's only three weeks old. I came home.

Heather was on the floor. There was blood all over the place. At first, I thought the blood was the baby's. Then, I realized the baby wasn't
there
—
"
His hands flew to his face. "Oh God, you've got to let me in to see her. I need to be with her."

"They have to clean her up first. It's procedure."

"She's all right. I know she's all right. It's just a cut on her head. It bled a lot, that's all. These goons restrained me physically. That guy put me in a ham-merlock. I almost choked to death." Popescu pointed accusingly at the offender.

April glanced at Duffy. He stuck the wad of gum in his cheek and gave his head a barely perceptible shake.
No way.

"I don't want her to stay here. I want her to come home with me. I'm sure she's all right." Popescu was raving. April figured him for a lawyer.

"Let's hope so." She took some notes on her steno pad, and frowned at Baum to do the same. The first things people said were often important. The new kid . on the block, Baum dutifully followed her example.

Years ago, when she'd first joined the department and worked in Chinatown, she'd jotted some Chinese characters along with her notes in English on the steno pads the DAs called Rosarios. The DA on the case had gone nuts when he asked for her Rosario and saw the Chinese characters she'd written there. He told her nothing she wrote in Chinese counted and not to do it again. Now her notes were pretty much in English even though she missed the calligraphy practice.
Husband reports that when he got home, his wife was unconscious and the baby gone. The stains on his shirt are pr
o
bably his wife's blood.
He would have tried to revive her, of course. Unless he'd injured himself and some of the blood was his. She'd noticed a cut on his left palm.

April and Baum saw the red-haired lady signal them. She tried to distract Popescu. "You want some coffee or something, Mr. Popescu? Officer Duffy could get you something while you're waiting."

"Where are you going?" he demanded.

"Detective Baum and I will be right back," she told him.

Popescu tried to follow them, but Duffy and Prince blocked the way. Their size and the clanking police equipment hanging on their hips convinced him to stay where he was. April didn't wait to hear what he had to say to them.

Treatment Room 3 was guarded by another uniform. A woman with a clipboard and a white coat over a blue scrub suit came out before April could question the officer.
MARY KANE, M.D.,
the woman's name tag said. The plastic picture ID clipped to her uniform read the same. Dr. Mary Kane had a square jaw, blunt- cut," wheaty-brown hair, the kind of eyes April's mother called "devil eyes" (washed-out blue without lashes or much expression). Dr. Kane looked about twelve, but April couldn't complain about that because both she and Woody did, too.

April showed the doctor her own identification. "I'm Sergeant Woo, this is Detective Baum. What can you tell me about Mrs. Popescu?"

Dr. Kane shook her head. "She's unconscious." She glanced quickly at Baum, then looked April up and down. "Maybe you can help."

"How badly hurt is she?"

"She has contusions, couple of cracked ribs. He must have kicked her. Lump on her head. Her skull isn't fractured. But she's bruised al over. Weird."

"What's weird?" Baum asked.

April gave him a look.

"Some of the bruises are fresh. Others look like they're a few weeks old. And we have a chart on her. She's been here before."

"Did she have her baby here?' ' This was from April.

Blank-faced, Dr. Kane shook her head.

April pulled out her Rosario to write what the doctor said. "What was she here for on previous occasions?" April was blank faced back. Baum knew not to interfere this time.

The doctor checked the chart. "Third-degree burn, a cut—fifteen stitches on her arm. Sprained an ankle twice. She seems to fall down a lot." Still deadpan.

April wrote some more. "Anybody call the police to check it out?" Heather Rose Popescu wasn't so lucky; but maybe April Woo and Woody Baum would get lucky and there'd be no kidnapped baby in this case. Maybe the mother hadn't been feeling well, had given the baby to a relative for the afternoon and the assault came from the husband.

The doctor's square face took on a belligerent expression. "I couldn't say anything about the follow-up. The chart indicates they were localized injuries— one site each time, nothing major. Not the pattern we would associate with abuse. I'm not aware of any requirement for reporting a cooking burn, a sprained ankle, that kind of thing. There's a note from the husband that Mrs. Popescu has a neurological problem being dealt with by a private physician."

"Did you happen to check that out?"

"You're the detectives, we're ER. You want to try talking with her now?" It seemed as if Dr. Kane was one of those doctors who didn't like cops.

"In a minute. Is there anything else you can tell me?"

"I don't know." Finally she focused on April. "Maybe we've got a mental case here. If she's self-destructive, that would explain the previous injuries on her chart. She could have made up a story about a baby."

"Then her husband is a mental case, too. He says there was a baby this morning, and now it's gone."

"Maybe the baby was adopted," the doctor went on.

"They put it up for adoption? This morning?" April frowned.

"No, the woman here
adopted
the baby." The doctor was getting annoyed, as if April were really thick.

"Why do you say that?" Baum asked.

Dr. Kane pointedly consulted her watch, showing the two cops that she'd given them enough of her time. "She doesn't appear to have a postpartum body."

"Did you give her an internal exam?" April asked.

"For head injuries?"

April glanced at Baum. What was a postpartum body?

"There are other changes that occur in a woman's body after childbirth." The doctor gave April an amused look.

April flushed. "What are they?"

Dr. Kane slapped her clipboard against her hip impatiently. "The breasts become engorged with milk. The skin on the stomach is loose. The stomach itself is soft, enlarged. Not all of the excess weight would have come off yet—a lot of things." She glanced at Baum. He was writing it all down. Probably didn't know a thing about women. But apparently, neither did April.

"And Mrs. Popescu?" April asked.

Dr. Kane turned her attention to April. "No engorged breasts, no soft, distended belly. She didn't have a baby, or she sure got her figure back fast." Clearly the doc didn't think that was possible.

"Her body looks like yours," she added.

Baum smiled. April was a little over five foot, five inches, was well proportioned and willowy. She had an oval face with rosebud lips, and lovely almond eyes, a slender neck, but not with the hollows and protruding bones of a truly skinny person. She also had clearly discernible breasts, though not really ample ones by American standards. Her hair came down to the bottom of her earlobes. When she was away from her boss, Lieutenant Iriarte, she hooked her hair back around her ears so her lucky jade earrings would show. Mike Sanchez kept telling her she was more beautiful than Miss America, and the thought of an Asian Miss America always made her smile.

At the moment, though, she wasn't amused. She didn't see how Dr. Kane could tell anything by
her
body, since it was covered with loose nubby-weave slacks, a thin sweater, silk scarf, and a cropped whisky-colored jacket. Except maybe, if she was looking really hard, she could tell that April was carrying a 9mm at her waist.

"Maybe you can get something out of her," Dr. Kane said and walked away. April would not have liked to be one of her patients.

"Wait for me," she told Baum. Then she opened the treatment room door.

Heather Popescu was lying on a rolling hospital bed, covered up with a sheet so that only the shoulders of her blue-flowered hospital gown showed. The sides of the bed had been put up so she wouldn't fall off, but she wasn't going anywhere. One eye was covered with a cold pack. Her lip was split and already puffed. Her extremely long, inky hair spilled off the pillow. April was startled, then recovered fast. The unconscious woman, Heather Rose Popescu, was Chinese.

No wonder Iriarte had ordered April sent down here immediately. Iriarte hated her. He'd never voluntarily gave her a big case. He'd sent her here because the victim was Chinese and it would look better with a high-profile Chinese detective on it. April flashed to the husband standing out in the waiting room. A belligerent Caucasian. Oh man, she was in trouble. She didn't like this one bit. Skinny Dragon would think this was a warning just for her. She was going to shake her finger at April over this. "See what happens," she'd scream. "Mixed marriage, woman beaten to a pulp. That's what you can expect when you marry
laowai,"
(shit-faced foreigner).

Oh man. Suddenly April wished Mike, her mother's nightmare, was here with her now. He could take this case in hand. Woody was too inexperienced to be of any help, particularly with the husband. If the husband beat the wife, he wasn't going to like April as his interviewer. April needed the expert partner she'd had in Mike, then lost on purpose because she hadn't wanted to mix business and pleasure. So much for integrity and scruples. Now she was on her own. Thank you, Lieutenant Iriarte.

April studied Heather Rose's battered face. Where were her parents, her protectors? "Heather? Can you hear me?" she said softly. "I'm April Woo. I'm here to help you."

No answer came from the unconscious woman.

"Heather, we need to find the baby. Where's the baby?"

Heather did not stir. April felt the cold brick of fear in her belly. "Come on back, girl. We need your help here."

It was no use. Heather wasn't coming back.

April tried in Chinese.
"Wo shi, Siyue Woo. Ni neng bang wo ge mang ma?"

No response.

Finally, April turned to leave the room. "Whoever did this to you, I'll get him for this," she promised.

Back in the waiting room, Heather's husband was standing in front of his chair. Baum was talking to him and writing down what he said.

"How is she?"

April gave him a look. "She's unconscious."

"How long will she be like this?"

April studied him, didn't have an answer.

Popescu's cheeks were gray, like a dead man's. He glanced at the two cops who'd stuck by his side since he'd come in. Duffy and Prince lounged against a wall as if they were used to hanging around for long periods of time with nothing to do. A baby on someone's lap on the other side of the crowded waiting room started to wail.

Another brick hit April. If it wasn't Heather's baby, whose was it? Who was this man she'd married, and why was he lying? He said he wanted to go home and she had to let him. There wasn't anything they could do for Heather here.