Leslie Glass - A Killing Gift

Chinese philosophy for health called for the consumption of no less than twenty cups of tea a day. For once April was following it. Hot water and Lipton's tea bags were all she had, but she downed some every twenty minutes. She was wired with all the caffeine and desperate for the return of her voice.

In her early years as a cop, April had followed orders and kept her thoughts to herself. Silence had been a choice she'd made to stay out of trouble. Now all her thoughts were trapped inside, but it wasn't like the old days, when silence was her comfort zone. She wanted to talk to Mike, but she had no voice and she could tell he was shutting her out.

And sure enough, just before two p.m. Mike glanced at the clock on his wall. "Ready to go home now, querida?" he asked, trying hard to sound neutral.

April shook her head. She wasn't going home. She had things to do. She wanted to see Marcus Beame, who'd been standing next to Bernardino at the bar before he left, probably the last person to speak to Bernardino. Beame had the same job in the Fifth Precinct that April had in Midtown North. He was second in command in the detective unit. He'd know what Bernardino had been working on.

"Querida," Mike said slowly. "I want you to go home now, rest up." He said it suavemente, con cariño, but there was steel behind the sweetness.

She shook her head.

"I know you want to stay on this, but you know you can't."

She shook her head some more. She didn't know why she couldn't. Anger flashed in her eyes.

"You've got to move over," he said softly.

Victims didn't investigate their own cases. It was clear that was what he meant. She wasn't being asked to the dance.

April's anger came and went quickly as she considered her options. For every rule deemed unbreakable in the Department, there was always an exception. Long history had proved that nothing was set in stone.

Homicide investigations were like construction sites. In the beginning there was the body and the physical evidence that included everything the perpetrator left behind of himself-fibers from his clothes, hair from his head, saliva from a cigarette butt or a piece of gum. A footprint, a fingerprint. A weapon. The shape of his hand on the victim's body. And everything he took away from the scene that could later prove he'd been there, had had contact with the victim. The cause of death itself could be a signature. The principal investigator on the case was the architect who had to construct the murder from the crime scene backward to precipitating events that might have been set in motion days, weeks, or even years before.

In easy cases the plan of the house could be read right in a crime scene that told the whole story almost from beginning to end. Man came home, surprised his wife/lover/girlfriend in bed with another man, shot them both, then himself. The lovers were naked. The perpetrator was clothed. Double homicide/suicide. Case solved in a matter of hours. In hard ones the physical evidence didn't lead to the perpetrator. They called the hard cases mysteries. April moved over to Mike's desk and nudged him out of his chair.

"I knew the day would come when you'd try to take my place." He laughed, but a little uneasily. April was nothing if not hard to manage.

"Look, querida, I got people waiting for me," he told her.

She blew air out of her mouth and started typing on his computer. Is IA investigating?

Mike read the words as they came up on his screen and nodded. Of course. So?

Are they going to talk to me? She typed some more.

"Probably." So?

Who's on it?

"I don't know," Mike said. "What's your thought?"

Just thinking dirty, she wrote.

"Any particular reason?" Reflexively, he lowered his voice.

Bill jumped on it, she typed.

"That doesn't mean anything." But Mike shook himself like a dog shaking off a hurt. Then combed his mustache with his fingers. "One of us?" He said it softly, doubtfully.

April took a few seconds to go through the list of people who'd been there at Baci's last night. People they'd known for years. People Bernardino had known for decades. Friends. But that wasn't where she was going with it. She was thinking about all the posters that had been up on every floor of the puzzle palace. Must have been hundreds of people who knew about that party and didn't go. People on the job, but also people coming in and out of the building for dozens of reasons. Civilians could read, too. Everybody who could read knew about it. Everybody who'd ever worked with Bernardino knew about it. It hadn't been private. And probably a poster had been up at the Fifth Precinct, too.

I'm not suggesting it's one of us. It was just an odd time and place to make a hit, she typed.

"Yeah." So, they already knew that.

Anybody talk to Beame yet? April changed tack.

"I'm sure. Why, do you want to talk to him?"

All this time he'd been standing next to her reading the screen. She swung around in his chair and looked at him. Yeah, I want to talk to him.

Shit. He sighed, shaking his head.

April turned back to the keyboard and typed some more. Well, what do you think?

He put his arms around her and breathed into her hair.

"I feel lucky, querida. I could have lost you." He said this seriously. He didn't go so far as to blame her for what she did. But it was in the air. For a second she felt a deep chill.

"Look, April, even if you can't remember what he looked like, he knows you. He has an advantage. You don't know him, but he knows you. He knows Devereaux, too. Are you listening to me?"

Her face had become like stone. She was listening. He pulled over another chair so they both were facing the computer.

"Do you know who Devereaux is?"

Yeah, they'd told her who he was. April typed, My hero turns out to be one of the richest men in America. What do you get a guy like that for a thank-you gift?

A little joke to make Mike laugh. He didn't laugh.

What was he doing out there anyway? she tapped out.

"Walking his dog. You asked me what I think. Well, it doesn't have the look of a robbery gone bad."

April touched his hand. No, it didn't. And it didn't have the look of a stranger murder.

Mike echoed her thought. "If it's a stranger murder, what would be the motive?" He ticked off a list of possible motives. "Jealousy? Revenge? Money?" He scratched his chin. "That's about it."

Fear of discovery? April typed. Maybe Bernardino knew something.

"Or maybe he just did something to tick the guy off. A spur-of-the-moment thing."

April shook her head. The perpetrator hadn't run away. He'd attacked her, too. / knew Bernardino, she typed, then wondered.

Jealousy? Or had Bernardino just pissed someone off big-time, someone who felt this was his chance to get even. Someone he'd put in jail. Somebody he'd demoted. Somebody he'd hurt in some other way. Or was it about money? That led to the question, Who else stood to gain by his death? Anybody other than his kids?

"Sorry, querida. It's time for you to go home." Mike had already arranged for a car to take her home. April had her own plan. She didn't resist.

Bernardino's autopsy took place between two and six p.m. that day. Dr. Gloss, the medical examiner, liked to boast that he could do an autopsy in two hours if he was pressed. But in this case, he'd taken his time.

Mike got him on the phone at six forty-five.

"Sad thing," was the first thing the ME said.

"Yeah. What do you have?" Mike cut to the chase.

"Believe it or not, the guy was in pretty good shape. He had some shrapnel wounds that healed pretty good. Was he in ' Nam?"