Leslie Glass: A Killing Gift

A chain leash chinked ahead of her as a man curbed his big furry creature. "Good girl," he said as the mastiff peed a noisy lake into the gutter.

A car's ghostly headlights moved slowly down the narrow side street toward Washington Square. No sign of Bernardino. She turned toward the square. Behind her, a young man and woman walked slowly arm in arm. Ahead she could just make out another figure, no, two figures. She frowned. No, it was one figure bent over. Her heartbeat spiked with the strong feeling that someone was sick. Maybe it was Bernie and he'd had way too much to drink. Hard to believe, but possible.

She was wearing the kind of shoes that defied haste, fashionable slides with really thin heels and no backs that made her mince along like one of those women who never had to walk very far. As she moved toward him, the blurry figure straightened up, glanced her way, then walked in the other direction toward Washington Square.

"Bernie?"

She hurried after him, her eyes pointed ahead, not down. She bumped into the thick bundle on the sidewalk. Her foot struck it; then she looked down and saw the leather sleeve with the hand at the end.

Air sucked into her mouth with a hiss as she dropped the retirement gifts and went to her knees.

"Bernie! Oh, no!" She knew instantly that it was him. She recognized the old jacket he'd worn for years. She knew the hand, and she knew by the way he was lying there, his face pointing over his shoulder, that no natural disaster had occurred. He wasn't drunk. He hadn't had a heart attack. His neck was broken. Her old boss, her rabbi, her friend was gone, and there wasn't a thing she could do for him.

Rage and adrenaline shot through her system. Her purse with her gun in it was on the chair in the restaurant next to Inspector Bellaqua. The restaurant was full of cops, but at the moment she wasn't thinking about them or what she was supposed to do: Sound the alarm. Get help. A cop was down. There was no more serious crime than that. Instead she was up again, running to catch the man who'd killed her friend. Her party shoes flapped against the soles of her feet, clacking on the concrete as she ran. She'd caught a glimpse, only a glimpse, of a figure in the fog, and didn't see him now.

Shit! Where did he go? People in the square were just forms in the mist. But she had a feeling he was heading straight through. She crossed the street and picked up speed. Her heel caught in a crack in the concrete, and her own arrested momentum almost brought her down. She twisted, wrenching her back, but didn't fall. The shoe stuck, so she left them both behind. The cold of wet cement bit into the soles of her feet. But she was a fighter from way back, centered and fast. She didn't mind the wet.

Just ahead of her she sensed motion in the mist and heard footsteps. A man was walking, not fast enough to be in a hurry. She didn't want to yell, Stop, police, at someone she couldn't see clearly, someone who could take off. She didn't want to declare herself a cop without any backup, any muscle to protect her. Double stupid to leave the scene with no gun. Now it was too late to sound the alarm. She was running. The man ahead was walking fast. Useless strategies spun in and out of her head until some words spilled out of her mouth.

"Sir, you dropped something," she called.

"What?" He stopped, turned around, and took a few steps toward her, then crouched down, as if looking for whatever he'd lost. In that position it was hard to tell how big he was. April approached, automatically thinking she could take him.

"Beat it. I'm not interested." The voice was low and confident. The man thought she was a hooker. All she saw was a baseball cap pulled low. He seemed to be tying his shoes.

She moved closer. "It's right there. I think it was a credit card or something."

The rule was never to let them get close enough to stab or lunge at you. April was wary. She was thinking things over. He couldn't see that she didn't have a gun, but still she didn't want to take the risk of saying she was a cop and having him run. She wanted to engage him in conversation to keep him there. Her brain was spinning like a car wheel in sand.

"Where?" he asked, laughing.

"I'm not sure, I think near that bench." Under the light. April had both feet on the ground. She was balanced and sure of herself. The man was talking to her, way too calm to be Bernie's killer. But it felt odd, wrong. She was frozen, couldn't leave and didn't dare attack.

He crouched down as if to take a look. He wasn't acting like a killer, but she'd learned a long time ago to take nothing for granted. Then, soundlessly, he sprang at her with the full force of his coiled legs. His right shoulder tried to catch her in the stomach, and had she not moved backward a quarter step, she would have been driven to the ground. Instead his shoulder glanced off her side and she spun away. When he came back at her she kicked him, spun around a tree, and kicked him again. But he didn't go down. On her third kick he grabbed her foot and flipped her into the air as if she were a matchstick. She flew, and although she turned as she fell, she did not miss crashing into the trunk of the same tree that had shielded her before. Red blotches of pain filled her eyes. He was on her, pulling her to her feet, before her vision cleared. Helpless, she could feel the arm closing around her neck and another coiling around her shoulder. In a sickening instant she knew that this hold would leave her with a broken neck in a heap on the sidewalk like Bernie. She raised her right leg and smashed her shoeless heel down on his instep with all the force she could muster. The blow startled him, but did not ease the pressure of his arm against her throat.

"Arrgh." Her arms and legs tried to find a target as he held her from behind. More colors exploded in her own private fireworks behind her bulging eyes. This was what it felt like to die. Pure panic filled her as her throat was squeezed like a sponge. She could not call for help. She could not use her brain or her training. She didn't hear the screams from across the street or the sound next to her of a dog barking, or even the male voice that called, "Hey, cut that out."

Another cop was down.

Mike Sanchez had been preoccupied all evening, but not with murder. Homicide numbers in New York had hit their lowest level since 1962, when murders first started to be recorded in the city. Although there were still too many gun-related deaths in the tough sections of Brooklyn and the Bronx, there hadn't been a high-profile Manhattan homicide in months. Mike had watched the love of his life socialize and thought about police politics. A few years ago he never would have dreamed that he and his fiancée would be a Department power couple, invited everywhere the top brass went.

To the chief of detectives Mike had appeared to be wholly focused on the conversation. But actually April's every gesture had drawn his eyes to her. He couldn't help it. April was so changed from the way she used to be, he hadn't been able to keep his eyes off her.

When they'd first met in the detective unit of the Two-oh, April had kept the lowest of low profiles on the job. She worked hard, kept out of sight, and interacted with superiors only when she had to. She had not approved of dating colleagues in the Department-or, indeed, mixed marriages-and tried to keep their relationship low-key and unofficial as long as she could. But after they'd gotten engaged everything changed.

The two famous case solvers were perceived as comers, and now it seemed that every few days they were invited to some Department function they couldn't avoid. April's shyness fell away with the higher expectations for her, and she was thriving in her new identity. Tonight she'd looked good with her sleek longer hair and silk wrap dress. Classy, and no longer afraid to show off her figure a little. She had been talking easily with Inspector Poppy Bellaqua.