Leslie Glass - A Killing Gift

"I hope this won't take long. We have to go," she said.

"I'm just going to stay for a moment. I just want to show you something."

April stepped around a pile of luggage to follow them into the living room, where the light was better. "What made you decide to get out of town?"

"You did." Lisa brushed her dark hair back. "Last night when Al called after you let him go, Jack looked at me and said, 'I must be crazy. What am I doing still here, still talking to a killer?' "

Jack nodded. "It's time to move on. Nothing like a life-threatening event to goose a person into reality. This is my life now. I have to deal. We're on standby on US Air. If we don't get on, we're taking the shuttle to Boston, then driving down to the ferry. When are you going to arrest him?"

"Probably today. We have a few things to clear up."

"Yeah, well, let me know when it's over. This has been…" He sat on the sofa, shaking his head. Lisa perched on the arm of the sofa. "We have to go," she reminded him.

April pulled the photo of Rick Leaky and his dog out of her pocket.

"And guess what-he called me again this morning." Jack couldn't quite let go. "It's so fucking creepy."

"Oh, yeah? What's he want now?"

"Same thing. He wanted to make sure I was coming to the reunion next week."

"What day is that, Jack?"

"Helloooo, it's Wednesday."

"Okay, Wednesday isn't a good day for either of us."

"No, and he asked about you."

"What?" April felt a little stab of concern. "Me cop?" Or me victim? she didn't ask.

"He recognized your picture in the paper. You'd better watch out."

April's tongue darted to the corner of her mouth. Never underestimate an opponent, she thought. "I have people with me," she said. And she was in a car, had a gun, was a cop.

"He's already killed a cop." Jack read her mind. "He's crazy. He thinks you're after him."

"Well, he's right. And I'm going to get him, too. Don't worry; we know where he is. He's not going to hurt anyone else." Still, she felt a second prickle of anxiety. Hell, she was furious, and worried. A second later she brushed off the fear. He wasn't Superman. He was just a crazy squirrel with a friend who got off on hurting people, seeing people hurt. Two nuts who probably egged each other on and weren't even smart. She'd found them, and they couldn't find her.

"What did you want me to look at?" Jack asked.

She passed the photo of Leaky and his mastiff called June. "Have you ever seen this guy before?"

Lisa and Jack studied the man and dog for a long minute. Lisa shook her head. "Who is it?"

"Someone who works out in a gym around here," April said vaguely.

"That's some powerful-looking dog. What is it?" Jack asked.

"She's a mastiff. Her name is June; have you seen her?"

"Maybe." He covered the man's red hair with his hand.

"Maybe isn't good enough. It's an unusual dog."

Lisa pointed at her watch. It was five to twelve.

April didn't move. She wasn't hurrying through this. What was time to them now?

"Okay, I have seen him, but not with the hair," Jack said finally.

"The night of the murder?"

"No, I saw him before that."

April's heartbeat spiked. "When?"

"I saw him with Al, a couple of weeks ago, maybe the Saturday before. Yeah, I remember. It was a Saturday. The press was still following me around, taking pictures wherever I went. There are a lot of pictures of me and Lisa with Sheba around. I wouldn't be surprised if someone took a picture of us. I was with Sheba. This guy was with Junie. Yeah, I remember. He was wearing a Yankees cap and called her Junie. Al introduced us. Those two looked very connected. Are they a couple?"

April shook her head. "Just the karate thing. Were they in the square the night of the attack?"

"I'm not sure. Maybe Sheba would know." Jack cracked a smile.

"Where is Sheba?" April asked.

"She's with my girlfriend Sharon. Can we go now?" Lisa asked.

"There's a guy in a Corvette downstairs. He's going to follow you to the airport and make sure you get on the plane. Do you have a number where you can be reached?"

Lisa wrote it down and gave it to her. Then she jumped up and did something unexpected. She reached out and gave April a hug. "Thanks. You saved our lives. I guess you're one of those heroes they write about."

"No, no." April shook her head. She hadn't saved anybody. Bernardino and Birdie Bassett were still dead. Al Frayme and his buddy were still walking around. "Get out of here, and have a nice flight," she told them.

Mike exhaled noisily as he examined the photo of Rick Leaky. "We got them now. This puts Leaky at the scene of Bernardino's murder. You sure this is the guy you saw, querida?"

"Where's my medal?" April burst into a grin. She figured she'd done most of the work here, and now she wanted to be there for Frayme's arrest. "When are you moving?"

Mike shook his head. "You're something of a management problem," he said angrily. "Why did you take off like that?"

"I don't know what your problem is. I had to pee. When I was finished peeing, I had messages. We wanted Devereaux safe. Well, he was leaving town, so I had to see him before he went."

"How about consulting with me?" Mike didn't like these answers. His fuse was getting shorter.

April delicately lifted a shoulder. "I was downstairs. You were busy. You didn't pick up on your cell." Thank you, Beame, she thought. "Be reasonable."

Mike's fingers drummed on the desk. He wasn't buying the excuse. He was looking like Lieutenant Iriarte, April's boss from Midtown North, accusing her just because he could. It was a familiar scene in her life, a superior who happened to be her fiancé, chewing her out in the CO's office.

"Excuse me; you left something out," he fumed.

"Well, I already had the name of the gym. I got Frayme's a.k.a. It would have been a waste of time not going over there." He had her on the defensive big-time, and she didn't like it one bit. What was his problem?

"Look, we have a plan going here; you messed us up," Mike said sharply. "I'm the boss here."

"Well, you have no concept of time," she snapped back, surprised at her vehemence in telling the truth. It was taking time. Everything had to be done just so, and everything took forever, preparing the search warrants, waiting for rulings from the judges on the warrants, serving the warrants, doing the searches. The hours and hours of back-and-forth with the DAs, chewing, chewing over every little detail. Dotting the Is, crossing the Ts, and all the time the suspect was free.

April glared back. Only she seemed to be in a hurry. How could he expect her to sit there while they played with themselves hour after hour? She'd saved them a couple of days at least. Messed them up! How about broke the case? Her face froze into a Chinese wall of (number forty-two) silence as she tallied all the days of this case when she'd been up hours earlier than Mike, doing the kind of grunt work that he didn't do anymore. She was the one who had cross-checked the phone lists and the names and found Frayme in the first place. She was the one who had ordered the dog book, who had located likely karate studios, who was on the phone with Kathy and Bill and Beame and Hagedorn.

This was exactly what happened with commanding officers! They thought just being the head was enough. But the head of a snake couldn't move without the tail, and the head of a man couldn't think without a beating heart. And she was the beating heart of this case. Her heart hammered out her resentment, and also warned her to keep her mouth shut. The tongue was the enemy of the neck. And she didn't want her head to roll.

"We have a team here. An ABC kind of schedule going," Mike said slowly.