Leslie Glass - Burning Time

“It’s someone who knows her,” Jason said flatly.

“Obviously, it’s someone who knows her, someone from a long time ago. How much do you really know about her?” Charles asked.

“I thought I knew everything,” Jason said.

So much for that.

“Uh, do you mind if I make a copy of these?” Charles was already on his feet.

“Why?”

“I don’t know. I want to think about it.”

“I don’t want them out of my hands,” Jason said, shaking his head.

Charles opened the door to his closet. It had filing cabinets like Jason’s, but unlike Jason’s, it also had a Canon copier. “I’ll make copies. Any objection?”

Jason shrugged.

Charles copied the letters. “I think you should call the police,” he said again. “Maybe they have a way of finding out where these came from.”

“Yeah,” Jason said slowly. “I hadn’t thought of that.”

“Call me later. I’ll be in this evening.” Charles opened the double doors carefully so the patient in his waiting room couldn’t see him.

24

The shift was almost over. April studied her watch with the phone in her hand. Jennifer Roane was so upset by the possibility that the girl found in California might be her daughter, she wanted to get on the next plane to San Diego. April had to tell her several times that wasn’t a good idea.

“Why not?” she demanded.

“We have no reason to think it is Ellen, and your going to California won’t help.” The seconds were passing very slowly.

“What do you mean?” the distraught woman cried.

“You might not recognize her,” April said gently.

“How could I not know my own baby?” the woman sobbed.

She’d been outside for a while. There had been distressing postmortem changes. April didn’t say that. She said they needed Ellen’s medical and dental records to make a positive identification. “I’ll call you as soon as I know,” April promised. There, four o’clock.

“I want to go there, I want to see her,” Jennifer sobbed.

“Let’s make sure it’s Ellen before you think about that,” April said. She hung up thinking her own mother would feel the same. One child only, that’s all the Gods saw fit to bless Sai Woo with. She wanted grandchildren to keep her memory alive. If the dead girl in San Diego was Ellen, who would keep Jennifer Roane’s memory alive?

The phone on her desk rang.

April picked it up. “Detective Woo.”

“Hi, this is Mike. I’m on my way out to the range. You haven’t been there all month. Why don’t you come with me? I’ll pick you up in twenty minutes.”

Sanchez was somewhere on the street. She could hear the traffic in the background.

“How do you know when I was there last?” she said.

“I’m a Detective First Grade. I don’t miss anything. You want to or not?”

April paused to think it over. It was true she’d hadn’t been to the range in a long time. She didn’t like to take the time to go there and practice. It was true she half believed if she never used her gun she would never have to.

She wasn’t stupid, though. She did practice pulling it out, and taking the stance with the safety catch off. She did it in the second-floor apartment of the two-family house she shared with her parents in Astoria. She had fixed up the apartment herself and paid half the mortgage for the house, but got no privacy. Her mother came up with no warning. If she caught April with the gun out, it made her crazy.

It was true she had to qualify every month. April debated taking the ride to Randall’s Island.

“Yeah,” she said. “Thanks, Sergeant, I would, if nothing comes up.”

She called him Sergeant because she didn’t want to call him Mike and have him think this might be a date or something. She was practically engaged to Jimmy Wong, and Sanchez knew it.

“I’ll be there in ten minutes,” he said.

April glanced at Sergeant Joyce’s door. It was closed. Better hurry. Sometimes Joyce liked to come out at the end of the day and assign a new case to April just as she was leaving. It was always something that wouldn’t lead to a promotion. Something like the Ellen Roane case that she didn’t expect April to do anything with. Well, surprise, maybe she had located Ellen Roane.

April picked up her bag. The door to Sergeant Joyce’s office opened as if by magic. Sergeant Joyce had her garish green plaid coat on, Irish as always. Her lipstick was fresh. She handed April a complaint as she left.

“This is one for you,” she said. “He’s waiting.”

April looked at the complaint and frowned. A doctor getting annoying letters. That was a good one. Sanchez would probably leave without her. Just as well.

She went out to the bench just inside the detectives’ room, suddenly a little nervous.

“Dr. Frank?” she said.

“Yes.” He stood up.

“I’m Detective Woo,” she said.

He surprised her by holding out his hand. “How do you do?”

She shook it briefly, further unnerved by the questioning way he looked at her. Yes, yes, she was a real detective, had years of training, knew what she was doing. He was tall, light-haired, medium build. Attractive look about him. Intense. She knew his tweed jacket was a good one, and wondered what kind of doctor he was as she led the way back to her desk. The room was pretty empty, the way it gets at change-of-shift time. There weren’t any suspects in the pen.

Everybody who came into the precinct with a problem was different. Some people were hostile, some defensive. Most of them were shaken up and frightened. She had noticed up here that the Spanish, Caucasians, and Afro-Americans were often aggressive and demanding, wanting instant service, as if the precinct were a restaurant and the cops waiters.

The doctor with the heather tweed jacket she admired didn’t show his face. He examined the room without actually appearing to, exactly the way she did when she went to new places. He settled himself in her metal chair before saying anything.

She knew by the way Sergeant Joyce told her to take care of it that this was a public relations thing. April was always the public relations detective. Downtown she had enjoyed translating the system, because she felt like a social worker with a gun. Often, when she couldn’t do something for people herself, she could point them to someone who could do something. Now she had a chance to explain the system to the kind of person her mother wished she would marry.

“What can I do for you?” she asked.

He smiled, as if that were his line.

“Have you been in this precinct a long time, Detective?” he asked, surprising her a second time by accepting her authority and answering her question with a question.

“Eight months,” she said. Six days and seven and a half hours.

“That’s not a long time.” The doctor’s eyebrows furrowed.

Was that furrow a frown that meant he took back her authority only seconds after giving it to her? Did he think she wasn’t up to his problem? Well, she was up to it. She had arrested very large and angry people. She could handle any situation.

“No, it isn’t.” She rustled the complaint sheet. In a few minutes Sergeant Sanchez would be there to get her. She suddenly wanted to get this over with.

“What kind of cases do you get here?”

What was this, a delaying tactic? He certainly was taking his time getting to the point. Maybe he didn’t really want or expect her to do anything for him. He stretched out his long legs. The gray flannel trousers he wore still had a pretty good crease at the end of the day. Didn’t he have patients waiting for him?

“All kinds of things, but mostly robbery, assault. Break-ins. There are a few homicides here, but not as many as in other parts of the city. You probably know that.”