Stealing Time (8 page)

Anton's jaw tightened. He didn't say anything. He stood in the small vestibule and waited for the bomb to drop.

"We need a birth certificate."

"What?" He genuinely looked surprised. "Why?"

"For identification."

"I thought you said you haven't found him."

"We'll need it when we do find him, and we believe it might help us locate him."

Anton stopped breathing. "What do you mean?"

"Mr. Popescu. The doctor told us that your wife has not given birth to a baby, so we know she's not the birth mother. We need to establish—"

"Oh, my God," Anton blurted out in an anguished voice. "Oh, God. I told you I didn't want them all over her. Oh, this is outrageous."

Sergeant Woo did not seem moved. "We have to have the facts of the situation."

Anton looked at the men in the living room and lowered his voice. "I don't want this to get around."

Detective Baum shifted his weight from one foot to the other, but Anton didn't continue.

"If the baby's adopted, we'll need to see the papers," the sergeant said.

"Oh, God." Anton rolled his eyes.

"We have to see the adoption papers," she repeated.

"I don't see what this has to do with it. It's our child, period."

"Well, that can easily be established." She kept at it.

"You're out of your territory here. It has nothing to do with getting my son back."

The two detectives exchanged glances again. "That's what we need to establish. Maybe the birth parents have abducted their own baby." The woman again.

Anton clutched his chest. "Oh, Jesus, that can't be."

"Why not?" she asked.

"I'm the baby's father."

"Who's the mother?" Deadpan Chinese face.

"She lives in another state." Anton gulped for air.

"We'll need to talk to her."

"I don't know where she is now."

"We know how to find people. Where did she give birth?"

"She had a home birth." He gulped again. "Look, this is complicated. I had an affair, okay? The woman was married. Let's leave it at that." Sweat was pouring down his face. He wiped it with his starched white shirtsleeve.

"Maybe she changed her mind and wanted the baby, after all," Sergeant Woo wasn't letting up. She didn't seem to be buying the home-delivery bit.

"No." It was an agonized cry.

"Did you beat up your wife, Mr. Popescu?" This from Detective Baum.

"No!" Anton was reeling.

"Somebody beat her up," Baum said.

"I know, I know. It wasn't me."

"Mr. Popescu, you could save yourself a lot of trouble if you told us where the baby is," Sergeant Woo said.

"I told you I don't know. Do you think I would have called you assholes if I knew where he was?"

"Are you calling the sergeant here an asshole?" the detective demanded.

"That's okay," the sergeant said smoothly. "I'll let it go. Mr. Popescu, we're going to have to locate the baby's mother. This is not optional. We have to do it. We have to have the birth certificate. We can't investigate without it."

"It's not her. I know it isn't. She isn't even in the country. I couldn't do it to her. Her husband would kill her. He's a military man. And I just can't. My poor Roe. You don't know what this would do to her."

"And I need the phone number of your wife's parents," Sergeant Woo said suddenly.

That really stopped him short. "They don't know anything about this," he said, almost meekly now.

"They may know more about their daughter than you think."

"Oh Jesus. I don't want them in this. They're— emotional."

"It's procedure," the detective said flatly.

"I don't want them here, understand? I can't put up with wailing parents in my house. . . ."

"No one's bringing them here."

"They'll come here, believe me."

Anton couldn't help it. The weight of the situation broke him. He began to sputter and cry in front of them. Once he started crying, he couldn't stop. It was a whole big mess. There was no way he could contain it. He cried as if his fragile heart would break over the terrible things that were happening to him, and then he gave the two cops part of what they wanted. He gave them Heather's parents' telephone number in San Francisco. They stayed for a while longer, and then the detectives left. But the cops manning the phone stayed put. He could watch from the windows as the search in the park widened and went on. He couldn't leave the apartment. He couldn't communicate with anyone on the outside. And he had no idea what the police had found out.

CHAPTER
8

A
t half past one on Wednesday morning, the squad room of Midtown North was still jammed, noisy, and hot. April and Woody returned to the collection of small, windowless rooms on the precinct's second floor after talking with Anton Popescu and checking on the progress of the dozens of officers searching for the missing baby in the park. Before they went in she told Woody to go write up his notes and not to talk to anybody about what they'd learned.

The information they'd uncovered about the baby's parentage was for Lieutenant Iriarte's ears only. It was up to him to pass it on. Although Anton had not given them anything specific on the birth mother, he was beginning to crack in the first twelve hours, and would probably give it all up in the next twenty-four if they kept the pressure on. April hoped the child was still alive.

Feeling encouraged, she went into her very first office with actual walls and a door that gave her a little privacy and indicated her status in the department. At the moment it was occupied by a middle-aged detective she'd never seen before. He was wearing a black toupee, was wiry, and wired. He was talking on the phone, gesturing with his hands, smoking and scattering ashes all over her desk.

"This your seat?" he queried, putting his hand over the mouthpiece.

"Sergeant Woo," she murmured politely, indicating the nameplate in front of him.

"I was just leaving." He hung up without saying good-bye and went out to join his buddies squatting at other people's desks in the main squad room.

April put her purse down, fell into her desk chair with a sigh, and called Iriarte at home in Westchester. He was most interested in her report and said he'd call Hagedorn to start searching for the birth mother. After she hung up, April placed the difficult call to Heather Rose's parents in San Francisco, where the time was now a little after 10:30
P.M
. A woman picked up after the third ring.

"Wei."

April could hear Chinese TV on loud in the background. It was Mandarin, so she spoke Mandarin. "I'm Detective Sergeant April Woo, calling from New York. I'm sorry to bother you at this late hour, but I need to talk to you about your daughter, Heather Rose."

"Aieeeyeeee!" The woman started to scream before April could say another word. She screamed at someone in the room with her that Heather Rose was dead, she was dead in New York.

"She's not dead," April said into the receiver, but the woman was yelling, not listening. The TV was on, and April heard a man in the background trying to calm her down. It was just like home.

"She's dead, dead in New York!" Mrs. Kwan was screaming. "We have to go to New York. Call the airline. I have to go now."

The man took the phone. "Who is this?"

April had to start all over. She told him she was a detective in New York City and their daughter was

not dead. But Heather Rose was injured and in the hospital.

"Ah." He conveyed that in Chinese to his wife. She continued screaming.

"What happened?" Heather's father finally asked.

April hesitated. "It's not entirely clear at the moment. Your daughter was assaulted in her apartment."

"Assaulted? By who—her husband?"

"Has it happened before?" she asked quickly.

Silence.

"She's unconscious. She needs your help," April told him.

"What can we do?" It was not a question. It was what people said when their children were involved in something they thought was stupid, but they loved them all the same. "What can you do?" they say with their shoulders climbing up to their ears.

"Their baby is missing," she added.

"Baby missing?" Now there was real pandemonium in the background.

"Hello, hello." April tried to get a word in, but the screaming in Chinese didn't stop.

"Baby missing?" This was more than Heather's father could deal with. He passed the phone back to his wife.

"Baby missing?" she cried.

"Mrs. Kwan, your daughter can't talk to me right now, and I need information about her and the baby. Can you tell me how the adoption was arranged?"

"Adoption?"

"Yes, didn't you know it was an adopted baby?"

"No, can't be. Baby is Heather's baby, my grandson."

"Certainly, but maybe not her birth child."

"Why are you saying this? He's her child, I know."

"How do you know? Did you see her pregnant, were you with her when she gave birth?" These were

hard questions for a mother far away and in the dark about many things to answer. A pained silence followed.

"She sent me pictures," she answered after a long pause.

"Of the baby?"

"Yes, of course pictures of baby. But also pictures of herself pregnant."

It was clear Mrs. Kwan couldn't accept that her daughter was not the birth mother of her grandson and further that Heather Rose had tried to hide the fact by faking her pregnancy in photos. April felt sorry to be the one to pass on such dreadful news, sorry for the mother whose daughter had lied to her and cheated her of a grandchild she claimed as her own. And also sorry for herself because she was no closer to finding the baby's real mother than she'd been before.

"Tell me about your daughter, Mrs. Kwan," April went on as gently as she could.

"What is there to tell? She's good girl, beautiful girl. Smart girl. Went to best college, full scholarship. Marry very smart man, very rich man. She send many presents. Call me every week. Best-quality girl." She began to weep. What else was there to know?

April pressed on. Was Heather a sad person? Did she ever hurt herself? Was she upset when things didn't go well? How about her level of patience? Did she get impatient easily? Was she happy in New York? Did she ever set a fire when she was a little girl, ever hurt an animal? Did she ever get burned, or burn anybody?

"What kind of questions are these?" the mother demanded.

Routine, April assured her. She couldn't completely abandon the possibility that Heather might have found out her baby was her husband's with another woman and killed him in revenge. Such things were not completely unknown in history.

Mrs. Kwan knew what April was getting at, but insisted Heather wasn't that kind of child. Good child. Too independent, maybe, but good.

"How many months ago did your daughter tell you she was having a baby?"

Silence.

"Was she excited about it?"

"She's a good girl."

"When you talked to her after she got the baby, what did she say? How did those weeks go? Did she enjoy having a baby?"

"What kind of questions are these?" Mrs. Kwan asked again but this time in a way that indicated she knew very well what kind of questions they were. "Heather Rose good girl," she assured April again. "Best daughter in whole world. She call me every week. Never complain. Never." But Soo Ling Kwan must have heard something in her daughter's voice during those weekly calls.

She insisted Heather Rose had suffered no injuries, no accidents, had never hurt or starved herself. But she had also immediately jumped to the conclusion that any call from the police had to mean her daughter was dead. It might not be an unusual reaction, but still April wondered if a part of Mrs. Kwan had been expecting such an end for her daughter. She learned nothing else.

If it had been a quiet night, April would have been heading out about now. But this was the kind of case that made everybody nuts. Even if Iriarte hadn't told her to keep on it, she wouldn't have been in a hurry to leave. Nobody liked abuse and missing babies. They weren't the kind of thing you could go home and forget: have a nice night. Losing a kid was the worst. It was more than a career maker or breaker. It was personal. She glanced at the stack of pink message slips on her desk. Then her phone rang.

"Midtown North detective squad, Sergeant Woo," she said in nice even tones.