Stealing Time (5 page)

Oh, man. Suddenly April wished Mike, her mother's nightmare, were here with her now. He could take this case in hand. Woody Baum was too inexperienced to be of any help, particularly with the husband. If Popescu beat his wife, he wasn't going to like having 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 with pleasure. So much for integrity and scruples. 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 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," 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.

"I want to see my wife."

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

"That's what you say. I want to evaluate her myself."

April studied him, this man who kept tabs on his wife and felt qualified to evaluate her himself. She made a note to herself to keep tabs on
him.

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. She was trained to think like a cop: when faced with a mystery, think dirty. She was thinking dirty about Anton Popescu.

Then another brick hit her. If the baby wasn't Heather's, whose was it? Who was this man Heather had married, and why was he lying about why he went home at the early hour of three-thirty?

He caved abruptly. "Fine. If I can't see my wife, I want to go home now."

"We'll take you," April said. There wasn't anything they could do for Heather here.

CHAPTER 5

O
n the return trip to the apartment, Baum and April sat in the front seat of the unmarked Buick. Popescu sat in the back. At Central Park South, two uniforms were out directing traffic. Roadblocks were up on Seventh Avenue, and only one lane was open to cars. The noise of honking horns and cursing New Yorkers was phenomenal. It was now 6:45, the height of the dinner and pre-theater hour. Thousands of people in taxis and limos were stuck on their way to Lincoln Center to the west and Carnegie Hall to the south.

"Oh Jesus!" Popescu cried when he saw the jam of police cars, emergency vehicles, and press vans parked in front of his building, clogging Seventh Avenue all the way down to Fifty-seventh Street. The uniform at the neck of the bottle opened traffic for the Buick and waved it through immediately. Woody sardined the car in the driveway and turned off the motor. As April got out, a strong perfume from the garden confused her senses.

Looking dazed, Popescu emerged from the car.

Somebody among the crowd of media hacks and gawkers shouted, "Who's that?" and the press with cameras was galvanized. People ran at the car with minicams and still cameras, yelling questions over the blasting horns. Several uniforms came forward to contain them. Baum took Popescu's arm and hurried him toward the building. The cameras rolled and clicked for the late news deadlines.

"Oh shit. Oh Jesus." The blood had returned to Popescu's cheeks and nose in a rush. Baum propelled him into the lobby. He stuck up his hand to hide his face, and that was how he appeared later on the eleven o'clock news, his arm raised as if warding off blows.

Looking terribly important, Lieutenant McMan was talking on his radio to uniforms and detectives and managing the crowd of disgruntled tenants who couldn't get home. He wagged a finger at April as soon as he saw her. She moved toward him, glancing at the doorman, who was now back at his post. The man's name tag read Carlos. Carlos was a skinny Latino who had greasy hair and a thin mustache. Even with his fancy red livery coat with gold braid and buttons, he had the sly look of a gambler. April knew that look. Her father, Ja Fa Woo, had it.

"How is Mrs. Popescu?" Carlos asked eagerly as he opened the door for them.

Popescu ignored the question. He looked stunned by the throng of vocalizing neighbors—suddenly quieted by his arrival—and so many armed men sporting bulletproof vests and carrying rifles into his lobby. Two of them had huge German shepherds on thick leads. "What the hell—" The dogs really seemed to spook him. Baum touched his arm to restrain him when April crossed the lobby to talk with Lieutenant McMan.

"What's happening?"

"Nothing yet. A lot of people have different stories of what went down here today. No sign of the baby," McMan told her, keeping his eyes on the men and women moving through the lobby. "There are cameras on the front elevator. A log is kept of visitors coming up and down the back elevator. No cameras." He snorted. "No access to the back elevator from the front hall. Fire stairs only."

The units were finishing up in the building and trickling in, grim-faced officers and detectives with their blue-and-yellow
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

T
he 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.