Leslie Glass - A Killing Gift

Cops didn't get assassinated after their retirement parties. This was personal. April knew Bernardino. She'd worked with him and known his cases, but that was years ago. She had no idea what he'd been working on lately. She worried about it, drifted off to sleep, was awakened when a new patient was brought in at four-fifteen. She could hear the nurses whispering. It was an old woman with death-rattle breathing. April didn't want her to die right next to her. One death that night was enough. She wanted to go home.

She was up with the light and getting dressed in her torn party dress when her mother appeared suddenly, pulling open her curtain with one yank.

"Ma!" As usual, April was horrified to see her mother.

Ja Fa Woo stuck his bald head in to get a look at her, too. No such thing as privacy.

"Dad!"

Then her replacement, Gao Wan, the substitute son she'd offered Skinny to get her mother off her back about marrying Mike, pushed into her space as well. Gao was the one carrying the bulging plastic shopping bags. April knew they contained the emergency medical supplies, stuff Skinny knew the hospital wouldn't have on hand. Ghastly fake medicine to cure whatever was wrong. Usually April didn't even have to be sick to be treated by her mother. Imaginary illnesses were enough.

She eyed the bags with dismay. She had managed to get her underwear on under the hospital gown (modesty in case someone came in), but the torn silk dress was still over her arm. And she had no shoes. Gao Wan, about her age with no known girlfriend, stared at her excellent legs sticking out of the hospital gown.

"What's wrong with you?" Skinny demanded in Chinese, as if she couldn't see perfectly well that April's jaw and neck were bruised.

Ma! I'm fine.

"Aieeeyeee!" Skinny screamed because no sound came out of her precious daughter's mouth.

Ma, be quiet. People are sleeping. April's mouth moved, to no avail. Her voice was still gone. She put her finger to her lips. "Shh."

Skinny Dragon didn't care how many sick people were trying to get some rest. She grabbed her daughter by the shoulder and gave her a little shake.

Ja Fa Woo told his wife to be quiet. Couldn't she see that April was on her feet? Almost fine.

Help!

Mike stepped in to regain control. "Querida, where do you think you're going?" he demanded.

To work. Did you bring me clothes? Still trying to get some sound out.

"What?"

"What's wrong with her?" Skinny screamed at Mike in Chinese, unaware that he could not understand her when she lapsed out of English.

"Don't you know you can't come in here at this hour?" A nurse in a pink uniform came to shoo them out. "Visiting hours start at eleven."

Mike flashed his badge.

"I don't care who you are."

"I'm getting out of here." April pulled on the nurse's sleeve to get her attention.

"What do you need, dear?" The nurse turned to her.

Skinny grabbed a shopping bag from Gao and pulled out some clothes. While the nurse's head was turned, she gestured April toward the bathroom. Go get dressed. We're going home.

Only a few hours later Officer Greg Spence gave April his usual line with an encouraging smile. "You don't need to think about this today, but it would help if you could get your impressions out while they're fresh."

Greg was thirty-five, tall and attractive, with a more boyish look than Mike, who was only two years older than him and sitting on the other side of the table. April studied the two cops. Greg had married a few years ago, and his wife, Judy, was pregnant. April knew he'd make a good father. He was patient with witnesses. Patient with uncertainty. She was sorry she couldn't help him out now.

"Okay?" he said, fiddling with his equipment. "You look a little shaky."

Shaky? No, she wasn't shaky. She was angry. The last thing she wanted to do right then was go over the details of her failure. She took a painful breath and tried to calm down. She was a captive of the system just like every other victim of a crime. Like it or not, she had to go through the process.

Actually, she had only herself to blame that she was there with the police artist instead of home in bed. She'd walked right into it. After escaping from Skinny and her father, she and Mike had gone back to the apartment they shared in Forest Hills. He expected her to sack out for the day, and she could have done that. Instead, she'd followed her plan. She'd swallowed three cups of strong green tea and a handful of analgesics. She'd bathed in a hot bubble bath for half an hour and then had to lie down to nap off a heavy case of dizziness from the hot water. She almost lost her day right then.

Mike was just about to leave her and to go to work when she sensed his departure and popped right up again. Well, she didn't exactly pop. She dragged herself out of bed and rummaged around looking for something easy to wear. Mike heard the noise and came into the bedroom to investigate.

"What do you think you're doing?" he demanded, catching her getting dressed for the second time that day.

She couldn't get out an answer and tried some sign language. Got to go to work.

"What?"

I'm going to work!

Mike shook his head. He could hardly argue with a mute, so he fried up a bunch of eggs and resteamed some of the dim sum left over from the weekend. He was so hungry himself after the long night that he didn't notice the problem she had getting solid food down. Every painful swallow reminded her that she was lucky to be alive and that Bernardino, who'd loved to eat, had had a different fate. Her resolve to get on with it deepened. She knew what she had to do. She had to go to his autopsy even though she dreaded being close to dead bodies. The ghost factor.

Chinese believed that violent deaths led to angry ghosts. And angry ghosts were like invisible devils that caused every misery known to man. Keeping far away from the dead was no insurance against ghost revenge, but it made people feel safer. April, too. Despite the possibility of attracting Bernardino's negative afterlife attention, she needed to be there with him. Maybe it was loyalty. Maybe it was the ghost factor itself that encouraged her to stay with him. If there was the slightest chance that his unsettled spirit was still lingering around him, she wanted that spirit to be assured that she would not abandon him. She would find and punish his killer. She would return his care of her during his lifetime by helping to free his spirit for a happy afterlife with the wife who'd preceded him. She wanted to attend his autopsy.

Her determination to be with Bernardino drove her past Mike's objections and back into the city to follow her own path, but other people had a different agenda for her. Mike took her to headquarters downtown.

First she was questioned by Chief Avise himself, then Poppy Bellaqua. They wanted to know if she had spoken with the man, if he had said anything. She couldn't remember. They'd asked if she'd seen him. She couldn't remember that either. Now the artist who sketched the faces on the wanted posters that the police distributed to the newspapers and TV had the assignment of getting a description from her. And they all used the same words. They were all talking to her the way they talked to civilian victims: as if she'd gone deaf and stupid as well as mute.

She was ensconced in Mike's airless, windowless office in the Homicide Task Force on the second floor of the Thirteenth Precinct on Twenty-second Street, close to the Police Academy, where she'd been trained to remember a lot better than this.

"You up for it?" Greg asked again gently.

April had worked with him many times before, helping witnesses remember details buried deep in their subconscious. It was an iffy business. Nothing these days was proving to be more unreliable than eyewitness testimony. A lot of people over the years had been falsely accused and falsely convicted of crimes they hadn't committed on the basis of what people said they had seen, sometimes just to help the police close the case. That would not happen here. She had not seen the man's face. She hardly saw his shape. She did not remember talking or fighting with him, only the grip around her neck.