Stealing Time (12 page)

Johnson seemed to like the idea. It would be better for them if they could find the baby alive. However, he knew it would be a poor idea to slow down the search in case the baby's corpse was in the garbage somewhere and they lost it forever. It would be next to impossible to prosecute later without a body. He wasn't sure what the best policy was here. He didn't want anyone to think he wasn't proactive enough or, on the other hand, that he was too dependent on the judgment of his squad detectives. In cases like this the squad detectives were supposed to direct the investigation and advise him of what they needed. He was supposed to get the manpower and technical support together, either from his precinct or from others in the area. It had been his patrol officer, McMan, who'd called for special units yesterday. Major Cases had already overrun the detective squad and now that the case was looking a lot more like a kidnapping, the FBI wanted in, too. That meant even more people hanging around, getting in the way, and confusing the investigation. Iriarte was not a happy camper. Captain Johnson, with only a few months in this job, was clearly nervous. He addressed the more experienced Captain McCarthy.

"The mayor's office just called. He wants to know what we're doing to resolve this."

"Yes, sir." McCarthy smiled. It was an election year.

Johnson struggled to figure out his position. Would it look bad to abandon the search in the park, if they were careful to assure the public they had promising leads in other directions? Or would it look better if they kept a visible presence in place to show how hard they were working on the case? Finally he returned to April.

"The mother's Chinese. You talk Chinese?" he asked her.

"Yes." April's eyes dropped to her hands as if the change of subject meant the still-missing infant was her fault and hers alone. Then she wanted to smack herself for tipping over to meek.

"She speak Chinese?" Captain Johnson again.

"She's American-born, went to college," April said, trying not to flush.

"What's the culture on this? Didn't a Chinese couple kill their twelve-year-old daughter down in the Fifth recently? This a common thing among the Chinese?"

"This is not a Chinese thing, sir. The baby's father is Caucasian. The birth mother may well be, too." April knew he was pushing her buttons.

"So maybe having to take care of a white baby set her off," Johnson said, still going for the mother.

April became aware of Iriarte scowling beside her. His matchstick mustache twitched with anger. It was
his
privilege to torture his people. "I remember the case you're referring to," he said smoothly. "I believe it turned out there was no evidence that the Chinese family was involved in their daughter's death."

"I was talking to the sergeant." Johnson's eyes narrowed.

And he certainly had made his point. The culture question kept nagging at April. An ache in the pit of her stomach reminded her that when she'd checked the light outside the front door last night, she'd found the bulb had been unscrewed. Her parents had taken off without telling her. She felt anxious about what they were up to.

"So what do you want to do, Sergeant? It's your case." Iriarte slapped her hard with the responsibility.

"I think we have to look for Popescu's girlfriend and the missing stroller."

"You want to slow down the search in the park?"

April nodded. She'd be dead in the water if she was wrong and three days from now someone found the abandoned stroller in a playground uptown and the baby's body floating among the rowboats in the Central Park Lake. "And hope Heather will wake up and tell us something."

"Fine, get going."

"Yes, sir." April exited the commander's office and climbed slowly up the stairs to the squad room.

In a dark mood, she opened the door to her office— it was empty at the moment—and saw a document was back on her desk unchanged that she hadn't approved a half-hour ago. She picked it up and marched into the squad room, still under siege and noisy, to find Detective Rudner.

His skinny butt was planted on the edge of Hage-dorn's desk because his own was occupied, and he was calmly chewing the fat with the computer expert as if the last thing he'd ever do was try to pull a fast one. April jerked her chin at him.

"Hey, Charlie," Rudner said to Hagedorn, then shoved off the desk and followed her.

April shook her head and closed her office door. "Bertie, you try to use this in court, and they'll sentence
you."
She handed the form back to him. "I need to be able to visualize what happened here. What'd the guy do? Where was he positioned when he threatened you with a knife? Which hand held the knife? What size was the knife? Who was with him? The whole thing." The piece of crap he'd given her looked as if it had been written by a first-grader. Rudner was a detective with enough experience to know better.

"Aw come on, it's fine." He was a tall, lean blond with a red nose. The nose looked suspicious to her. Guy had red eyes, too. He was probably acting out because he was pissed at getting the scut work instead of the major case.

"Have a big night last night?" She glanced out the window in the door at Baum, who'd just come into the squad room and was watching her with his antennae vibrating.

Rudner shook his head. "Allergy. All those trees and bushes in flower . . . man, it's really killing me." He sneezed to demonstrate how miserable he was.

"You taking anything for that?" Anything alcoholic? She was his supervisor. It was her job to be suspicious.

He shook his head again. "Nah, none of that stuff works."

"You sure that guy last night had a knife?" April was back on the arrest form. If it was a proper arrest, she didn't want to risk having the charges dropped because a lazy detective messed up the forms.

"Oh, yeah, we got it downstairs."

"Then fix this so it's crystal clear."

"I said everything; it's all right there."

"Yeah, for people who can read between the lines. Come on, fix it, Bertie. Make me happy."

"I'd have to do the whole thing over. And they're waiting to take the guy downtown." Rudner kept complaining as if he really thought she'd give up. He sneezed again for good measure.

"God bless," April said automatically. A hangover from her former supervisor, Sergeant Joyce, a Catholic. She wasn't going to give it up. She went to the door and opened it. "Do it again and show it to the lieutenant before you take the suspect downtown. You'll thank me later."

He certainly didn't thank her now.

Then, with her heavy purse swinging from her shoulder, she marched out into the squad room. "Come on, Woody, let's take a ride."

Baum jumped at the command.

CHAPTER
12

A
nton Popescu's office was in an architecturally uninteresting glass and steel tower on Fifty-sixth Street and Broadway, within easy walking distance of his apartment. The law offices of Pfumf, Anderson and Schmidt were on the tenth floor, around the corner from the elevator bank. Imposing eight-foot mahogany doors separated it from a nondescript hall with gray stone floors and white walls. Anton's office had an Oriental rug in bright reds and blues and an expansive view of the building across Broadway.

On Wednesday morning he was a desperate and brooding man. His baby was missing and his wife was still unconscious in the hospital, where he could not bear to look at her through the window in her door, battered and out of it. After trying to get in to visit with her in the early morning with no success, he went to work as usual.

There, no one could take pictures of him. No reporter's voice could get through to him. He hid in his window office with the door closed and orders to the staff not to disturb him. But quiet was not to be his. Almost immediately his secretary Angela's Brooklyn voice came up on the phone. "Anton, you have some visitas."

He punched the speaker phone to reprimand her. "I told you no calls, no visitors!"

"They're from the police. What am I supposed to do?"

"I don't care where they're from."

"They say they won't take much of your time."

Anton made an impatient noise. "For Christ's sake, Angela. I've spent all night talking to the police. What more do they want?"

"The woman told me if you don't want to talk here, you can go to the station with them." Angela sounded as if she'd like to see that.

"Jesus Christ!" Anton's heart pounded. He let injustice envelop him with all its familiar incitements: fury's roaring heart, rockets of fire. Yesterday his whole life had fallen apart. The shock of betrayal was profound. The air around him seemed to stink of his vulnerability. He could feel the profound treachery reach deep into the core of his being to destroy his dignity, his love, everything that he'd held sacred. He could not look in the mirror without seeing the open wounds of his hurt and humiliation bleeding out of his eyes, drooling from the corners of his mouth. He could feel his ruin coming.

Anton was at his worst. He had not slept at all. Strangers were camping in his living room, waiting for a call that would never come. Now he was supposed to be preparing to take depositions in a very important case. He had people to talk to, the research of associates to supervise. He had a firm luncheon and meetings to run. He was a prominent lawyer. Look at the settlements and judgments he got in his cases, the hours he billed, the kind of money he pulled down. His hand curled into a fist around his fat Montblanc pen, one of the many indicators of his importance. The police had to go away. He could not bear the questions. Angela interrupted his thoughts.

"What do you want me to tell them?" she asked.

"Okay, bring them in here." He smacked the desk, a wide expanse of fine burled wood. The pen jumped out of his hand. He picked it up and stabbed the blotter. The point of the pen skidded, making a jagged line. Shit. Now he needed a new blotter. To hell with the blotter. It was not good to get excited like this. He blinked a few times to calm down.

The Chinese woman came in first. Anton could see by her walk she had the rank. He had trouble understanding how that could be. Her empty expression immediately gave him the feeling she was out to get him. The male, who seemed to be her lackey, followed her into the room and carefully closed the door. Popescu gave his attention to the lackey, with his conservative haircut and well-cut blue blazer. It was clear to him the buttons were real brass, so he knew the guy was no street cop. Maybe Baum was really the ranking guy, and they were trying to confuse him. That felt more correct to him. He scowled at the possibility of more treachery.

"Good morning, Mr. Popescu; you remember Detective Baum," the Chinese said, then closed her mouth.

"Yeah, what do you want?"

"We're real sorry to bother you."

"Well, you should be, coming here to my office and humiliating me like this." He stared at them belligerently, sure of his position.

"Excuse me, sir, humiliating you?" The cop swerved off the road, onto a tangent.

Anton eagerly followed him there. "You heard me, humiliating. Intimidating. Call it what you want."

"I apologize if you've gotten that impression." The young man gave him a chastened nod, which gratified Anton. He glanced at the woman. Her blank Chinese face stared back, cold as stone.

Baum nodded again and continued. "It was not at all our intention to give that impression, sir. Your wife and baby are our highest priority. The mayor is on it. The commissioner is on it. The whole city wants him found as much as you do." The detective spread his hands out, palms up.

Anton stabbed the air with his pen. "Okay, I accept your apology. But I told you everything I know last night. I have nothing more to say to you."

Detective Baum scratched his ear. "That's not how it works."

"Okay, I'll tell you how it works. You assholes had the chance, but you didn't get the job done. You didn't find my baby and you don't know who hurt my wife," Anton raged.

"Excuse me, sir." Baum cocked his head in the direction of the woman. "Are you calling the sergeant here an asshole again?"

Another curve ball. Anton made a disgusted noise. "Don't give me this shit. If you don't have something positive to report, I have work to do."

"Well, there's no need to be rude and insulting to the lady."

Anton recoiled in his chair as if he'd been smacked in the face. Rude and insulting! Weren't they the ones who'd barged in here, humiliating him in front of his whole office? His lip bunched. "I've never been rude to anyone in my entire life. Get out of here before I lose my temper."

"Is that a threat, sir?"

Anton half rose and smacked the desk again, stinging his hand with the impact. "Are you deaf? I told you if you don't have something to report, please exit this office."

"Well, the thing is, you came to a conclusion too soon about getting the job done. It's still early days, and we do have something to report."