A Killing Gift (18 page)

T
his time they took the Camaro, and no one grumbled about the muffler. The gas was low in the Chrysler, and noise didn't matter to them now. April combed her wet hair with her fingers, feeling guilty for her quick soak in the tub.

"You're quiet; are you okay?" she asked.

"It could be a copycat," Mike muttered. He didn't like the possibility of losing Harry, his second-best suspect.

April flashed to Jack, the alumnus of York U. Neither of them were happy.

Mike accelerated, and the Camaro thundered through the Midtown Tunnel. When they came out on the Manhattan side, the city was still very much awake and alive. Warm weather always drew people to the streets and kept them out until late. Rain scattered them to dry spots under store awnings for a few minutes, but they often emerged again before the sky stopped spitting. Tonight the sidewalks were wet, but the rain had stopped.

As always on her way to a homicide, April was beset by Chinese demons. This time it was worse than usual. The repeater they had on their hands could have murdered her. Almost dying had humbled her. After nearly a year of being engaged, she and Mike would have missed their chance to marry, to buy their house and have a baby. She hadn't even changed her address. At her not-quite-real home, they were still sitting on Mike's hand-me-down sofa, living in a partially furnished apartment and driving worn-out cars. What were up-and-coming careers in the face of the gaping failure to take some time for living? Suddenly it seemed as if they were living an unfinished life on borrowed time. Lorna was gone, Bernardino was gone, and now someone else was gone.
Shit.
She touched Mike's upper arm and reflexively he made a muscle for her to grip.

At the crime scene the Camaro joined more than a dozen vehicles with flashing lights that roadblocked the streets around the east and south sides of Washington Square. Mike parked behind one of them and killed the engine. From a distance April could see that someone had hung lights in the tree above the body, and yellow crime-scene tape roped off the area. Her heart beat in her throat as she clipped on her ID, swung her heavy purse over her shoulder, then got out of the car.

They walked without being challenged to where detectives from two precincts and brass from downtown stood away from the body, talking, smoking, holding on to their cigarette butts. The local news vans with their satellite dishes were also showing up. April didn't join the crowd. With her makeup in the drawer, and her hair hanging down like a wet mop, she was in no mood to socialize. She wanted to see the woman who hadn't gotten away.

"Sergeant Woo."

April turned around and saw Chief Avise beckoning her with his index finger. She put her hand to her wet hair and walked over.

"You interviewed a Dr. Crease yesterday?"

"Yes, sir," April said. He knew that already. She had the dean's list. And so did everyone else.

Chief Avise jerked his head at a park bench close to the south side of the square. "She wants to talk to you."

"Really? What's
she
doing here?"

"The vic had been at a York University party. One of the guests saw her come in here. He thought she was going to get caught in the rain and drove around to pick her up. When she didn't show, he came to look for her."

April frowned. "Is that guest still here, too?"

Avise nodded. "He left his driver with the body and went back for help. Dr. Crease was inside the building waiting for the rain to stop."

"How long did it rain?"

"Five minutes, more or less. She's over there." The chief didn't say anything else, just walked away toward the permanent cement chess tables, where Mike was now talking to the crime-scene team.

April took a wide path into the grass around the yellow tape and came out behind the bench where the dean was waiting for her. Dr. Diane Crease was sitting primly with her knees together, still wearing the same pink-and-black tweed suit. She stood up when she saw April.

"I'm glad you're here," she said quickly, then swiped at her eyes. "This is terrible. The president lives night and day for this school. It's been his whole life for twenty years."

April tilted her head, thinking of the victim. It was worse for her. "Who is Birdie Bassett? Does she have another name?" Birdie was a name for a sparrow.

"I don't know. I didn't know her. I just met her tonight. She was new."

"New?"

"New to the circle. I don't know anything about her. I'm new to the circle, too. I don't know the ropes yet. I've been here only six months-since Dr. Warmsley took over. He recruited me."

"You wanted to talk to me," April said.

"Yes. You were asking about the tenth. Several things were going on that day. But one in particular in the afternoon. If you can pinpoint the time of the call, it might help. I didn't think it was particularly relevant until this happened."

"How does it relate?"

"Well, some of the names I gave you were for a development meeting. This was a development dinner." She looked so uncomfortable. "Dr. Warmsley is going to be so upset."

"Development of what?" April asked.

Dr. Crease gave her a look. April read it as the dumb-cop look. She didn't know what development was.

"Fund-raising," Dr. Crease explained. "Dr. Warmsley has a goal for each department. The pressure is on us all to bring in resources to raise each department to the highest level, both academically and in services to the community. That's my mandate."

"Oh." April got it. With five first-rate schools in the immediate area competing for students and funds, Dr. Warmsley was putting on the pressure for York.

Dr. Crease was badly shaken. "I just wanted you to know."

"You told me Dr. Warmsley was here for twenty years," April said.

"Yes, but he just became president. He's going to be very upset."

Well, who wasn't? One retired cop and one university donor were killed within a block of each other. And April had the strong feeling that Jack Devereaux was somehow targeted, too. She swallowed the lump in her throat. "Thanks. You can go home now. You know where to reach me if you have anything else."

April finished her good-byes and found Mike interviewing a tall man in an expensive-looking suit.

"The only person I saw was a man with a big dog," he was saying as April joined them. Mike made the introductions.

"Sergeant Woo. Mr. Hammermill."

He nodded. "Pleased to meet you."

As April nodded, her attention strayed to the CSU unit, now dressed in their white Tyvek overalls and white booties. They were talking with the ME, who had come to the scene himself. Unusual for him, but she seemed to remember that Dr. Gloss lived somewhere in the neighborhood. She watched them as they moved toward the taped-off area. Hammermill kept his eyes averted.

"Can you describe the man with the dog?" Mike asked. He was doodling down the side of his notebook.

"He wore a Yankees hat," Hammermill said. He looked at April again; then his eyes glazed over. Maybe he'd had too much to drink. He was a very elegant man, out of his element.

"Anything else?" Mike asked.

"He had a Chase Bank umbrella. I didn't see his face."

"What kind of dog?" April asked.

"I don't know. It was big and hairy."

Uh-huh.
"Would you recognize the breed if you saw it again?"

"I don't know. I don't notice dogs much."

But he had noticed the dog. People always noticed dogs. April checked her watch and followed the ME to where the victim was still lying where she had fallen over an hour ago. The CSU team lifted the tarp that had been covering a beautiful young woman wearing a snug black cocktail dress. The dress was hiked up high enough to reveal long legs and smooth thighs. Suddenly open to view, she looked like a mannequin from an expensive department store, posed in a party dress on the ground with her head twisted and her face frozen in a fake expression of emptiness. She was lying on her side. One leg was straight and the other bent. April was shocked. Somehow she'd expected a Birdie to be old.

She caught her breath and coughed, then moved closer to get a better view of the expensive sling-back heels with the open toes that revealed the nail polish on the woman's toenails. Her fingernails were a matching pink, and her hands, curled in death, looked soft and appeared to be without any defense wounds. But first impressions could be deceiving.

Sometimes when the medical examiner removed victims' clothes, puncture wounds were discovered, knife wounds, gunshot wounds. Even hair sometimes hid deep depressions in the skull from blows to the head. Tissue from the killer could be found under the victim's nails. A broken nail from the killer could be caught in the victim's clothes. Many things not visible to a viewer at a scene could be hiding somewhere on the victim's body. It was clear that this kill was cold and calculated, like an expert hunter killing a deer. And the most macabre thing about the scene was that rain had fallen for at least a few minutes after the victim died. Droplets of water still hung from the soaked blond hair. Rivulets had run down her arms and her legs and puddled in spots in the pavement around her. April stepped back and watched the ME go to work.

E
arly in the a.m., after a late night and very little sleep, Mike and April traveled back into Manhattan to the edgy Sixth Precinct. The rain had started again before dawn and held through the night. It was a wet morning. Fog from their warm breath steamed up the car windows, and traffic was already beginning to bunch up around the bridges by seven-fifteen. April hadn't slept enough and hadn't had enough tea to get her voice going. She wanted to talk, but they didn't have a chance in the car.

Mike was on his cell phone, taking a call from the branch supervisor of the FBI. The FBI had an instant response to serial killings. Two killings of a like kind pushed the button, and special agents were coming in to help the NYPD, like it or not. For April and Mike it meant there would be more toes to avoid, more people to keep in the loop.

As Mike talked, his voice was low and calm. He was supposed to be on his way out of Homicide, no longer engaged at this level on the front lines of murder investigations, but he did not show any sign of irritation. He was at home under the gun, still good at keeping the sharp edges off his Bronx machismo. Mike was a born negotiator, never at a loss. April could almost be lulled by his confidence, his assurance to the Feeb that everything was under control, even though it wasn't at all.

Before they hit the Midtown Tunnel, she called her boss, Lieutenant Iriarte. Like everybody else in the department who'd had enough sense to get out of the boroughs, where the population was too dense and the apartment prices were too high, he lived up in Westchester. She knew he was on the road by six-thirty.

Iriarte picked up his cell on the third ring.

"It's April," she croaked, letting her voice do its cracky thing because she hadn't been in to work in a week and didn't know how well he was taking her absence.

"Oh, nice of you to call in, Woo. Feeling better?" Iriarte asked sarcastically.

"Yes, sir. How's it going?"

"With us? I'd like to say it's been a madhouse, and we're swamped without you. But the truth is it's been quiet," he admitted. "I hear you caught another one downtown last night."

"Yes, sir."

"I hear it's bad."

"Yes, sir," April repeated, because that pretty much covered it. Two killings in the same place a week apart had about the same odds of occurring as lightning striking the same building twice. It wasn't exactly an advertisement for an area with the highest concentration of students in the city-including CUNY, the New School, the School of Design, NYU, Pace, and York University. One murder in a location considered a quality-of-life safe zone might be considered an unfortunate anomaly. Two murders there could only be deemed careless. Not enough uniforms on the streets, yada, yada, ya. The unlucky commanding officer of the Sixth Precinct, Captain Jenny Spring, was on the carpet big-time. Nobody envied her unfortunate situation.

"What do you have on this karate nut?" Iriarte asked, sounding satisfied that his own detective unit wasn't going to be a mob scene for the duration.

"You seem pretty well informed already, Lieutenant," April croaked out.

"No, all I heard is he's right up your alley. That why you're on it?"

With this remark, he reminded her that the killer was better and smarter than she, and also that Iriarte knew things he wasn't supposed to know.

"No, sir. Doesn't seem to be my alley at all." April hesitated.

"How can I help?" he asked. She could feel him settling back in his Lumina, letting his hostility melt. She could tell he was beginning to like her. Maybe she should stay out of his sight more often.

"I need somebody," she said slowly.

"Don't we all? Who do you need, Woo?"

"Woody, sir."

Lieutenant Iriarte broke out in laughter because he considered Woody Baum the worst detective in his unit, which was one of the reasons April could rely on him. Loyalty always came easily to the underdog. "Oh, sure, take him and never send him back." The lieutenant laughed some more.

"I'd also like Hagedorn to check a few things." Hagedorn was the computer whiz in the Midtown North unit. He was a real yin character, with a pudgy body and a soft moon face, but the fastest detective at pulling a back story out of the Net.

Iriarte snorted, pleased to be useful. "Fine. Whatever you need."

April thanked him, and they both hung up. Mike hung up, too, and they headed into the tunnel for the second time in less than twelve hours.

D
r. Jason Frank was a morning person, always up at first light in a race with his two-year-old toddler, April, who was a morning person, too. They both wanted to be the first to greet the other. Jason's wife, Emma, slept in an hour longer. What drew her out of bed and into the kitchen every morning was the aroma of coffee, toasted waffles, bagels, or corn muffins- whatever Jason offered up in the way of breakfast. His culinary competence was limited to freshly squeezed orange juice, fresh fruit, and toasted whatever, and Emma was always appropriately grateful for whatever he served.

On Thursday April won the first-up race. Long before six, she'd climbed up on her parents' bed, put her face about an inch from her father's nose, and breathed on him until he grabbed and tickled her.

"Orange juice, Daddy," she demanded. "Please."

After he got up to supply it, she sat on the closed toilet seat while he went through his shaving routine. Sometimes Jason wore a short beard for a year or two. But now he was back into the routine of scraping his cheeks and gabbing with his little nonstop talker, who liked to lather her own cheeks and play-shave herself.

By seven he'd finished showering and was dressed in a white shirt, lightweight blue suit, and one of his dozen boring blue-and-red-striped ties. He'd already checked his e-mails and his phone messages, and thought that nothing terrible had happened in the night. Patients needed prescriptions refilled, they wanted to change appointments. Colleagues had to reschedule meetings. At that moment everything appeared normal in his world, and that was enough to make him happy.

Despite the endless round of terrors expressed daily by his patients about world war and the precarious state of the stock market in addition to their own private tragedies of death and life-threatening events, the rebirth of spring was reviving his hope. He loved his wife and baby and worked hard every day to balance fear against normalcy.

In fact, life's urgencies post-9/11 had taken on a new poignancy for him. Just having the privilege of being alive and present for his family and patients felt like a gift. Every day was a new gift. Today, when Emma came into the kitchen with a sheet crease on her left cheek, her lovely hair still a little messy, wearing one of his T-shirts, and yawning her sleep away, he felt it again. Blessed.

"Hey, baby," she murmured to Jason.

"I'm not a baby," April replied.

Jason laughed. "Hey, gorgeous." He moved close to cuddle his beautiful wife, nuzzle her neck.

"No way." Emma made a grumbling noise at the idea of beauty in the morning, so he hugged her and kissed her some more until she stopped protesting. Then he poured coffee with hot milk into a large mug and handed it over so she could climb out of the sleep pit.

"Thanks." Her first smile of the day. After that first smile had warmed him all the way up, Jason finally turned on the news. The first thing he saw on NBC was a fast-breaking news alert that Birdie Bassett, his most important appointment of the day, had been murdered last night. "Oh, no." He felt the blast of another human life wasted and gone. What was it with him and homicide? He'd had respite from violent death for more than a year, but now it was back. Someone on the fringe of his life had a violent death the night before he was to meet her to discuss important business.
Damn!
Reflexively, he moved the plastic syrup container out of April's range. She already had a lake of it on her plate and was squeezing out more.

"No, Daddy!" She tried to retrieve it from him.

"You've got lots," he pointed out.

"What's the matter, honey?" Emma responded to his body language. She always knew when he crashed. April didn't.

"Yum," she said, eating her waffle with both hands and dripping all over the table. "Yum, yum."

"Somebody I was supposed to see today died last night," Jason said softly.

"Goodness. Who?" Emma's eyes opened wide.

"Remember Max Bassett?"

"Of course, your lifesaver. But didn't he die weeks ago?"

"Yes. This is his widow." Jason was too depressed to pour more coffee for himself, and he needed it now.

"I'm sorry," Emma said. "Was she old?"

"No, she wasn't old."

"What did she die of?" Then she got it and stared at him questioningly.

Jason shook his head. He didn't want to go there. Emma herself had been stalked and almost killed a few years back. She was still suffering nightmares from the experience. Only months later, her best friend had been stabbed to death. Their lives were changed forever, and baby April was the result of their need to love each other and have a family. Their precious daughter was named for April Woo, the detective who'd handled both cases, and baby April reminded them of her in some way or another nearly every day. But Jason didn't want to face another murder.

"No, sugarplum. That's enough." A few seconds ago Emma had been sleepy and out of it. Now she was on active toddler duty with a wet towel at the ready to swab sticky syrup out of April's adorable blond curls as soon as she finished covering them with it. And Emma was on that other alert, too. The murder alert.

"What happened?" she asked as soon as Jason muted the TV.

"Later." He clicked his tongue. He
really
didn't want to talk about it now. The sudden death didn't bode well for the institute, and that was upsetting, too.

Jason was a prominent psychiatrist/psychoanalyst who taught and supervised candidates at the Psychoanalytic Institute. He also chaired about a hundred thousand ineffective committee meetings there a year. Max Bassett had helped the institute emerge from several decades of decline and finally enter into the modern age. With Max's death, chaos among the dinosaurs was certain to reign again.

It was a selfish thought, but Jason couldn't help it. The whole mental-health field was suffering from HMO-itis, but psychoanalysts most of all. Psychiatrists had become closely aligned with drug companies and were reimbursed nicely for heavily medicating every kind of emotional distress. Psychoanalysis didn't qualify for reimbursement by HMOs and was scorned by drug companies. To make matters worse, analysts had trouble accepting the fact that they had to fund-raise to support their institutions just like everybody else. Soliciting funds from their patients and patients' families was considered taboo. It was a catch-22. With the loss of an important advocate like Max Bassett, so much had been at stake for the institute that Jason had been looking forward to meeting his widow.

He pushed away the selfish feeling of loss for the institute with the same motion he used for his breakfast plate. Then he remembered the tremor in Birdie's voice when she'd returned his call a week ago. Something had been bothering her about her husband's will and about his death. She had questions. Jason hadn't thought much of her concern at the time. No one ever believes death is a natural consequence of living. But now that she was gone, he was sorry he'd taken so long to see her. His week could not have been that busy. What had he been thinking? He began to torment himself about it.

At eight he said his good-byes to Emma and April, then traveled the long distance to his office in the apartment next door to begin his patient day. Several hours later, during the time he was supposed to be at Birdie Bassett's apartment, he'd brooded long enough to call April Woo on her cell phone.

"Sergeant Woo," she answered right away.

"Hey, April, it's Jason. Long time no talk."

"Jason! I thought you dropped off the end of the earth. How's my namesake doing?"

"Talking up a storm. Emma's great, too. How's Mike?"

"Oh, being promoted to captain any day. We're doing okay. What's up? I never hear from you unless there's trouble."

"Well, there's trouble. Birdie Bassett, that woman who was murdered last night…" He sighed. "I had an appointment with her today."

"I'm sorry for your loss, Jason. How can I help you?"

"Well, her husband was a donor at the institute. I didn't know her, but she called me last week."

"I see. Do you have some information that could help us?"

"Her husband died recently and she voiced some concern about it. I'm calling about that."

"What kind of concern?"

"She knew him well, of course. She said he was in perfect health, but you know, people have trouble accepting the fact that sometimes no one is to blame. We're a blaming society."

"For sure. What are you suggesting?"

"I'm not really suggesting… You just always told me there are no coincidences in police work. And Mrs. Bassett was troubled last week. I don't know the full extent of her suspicions. I'm just reporting what she told me in the few minutes that we talked. She'd inherited a lot of money, and she gave me the impression that her stepchildren didn't get what they expected, and they were contesting the will. She definitely had her concerns. Last night she was murdered. I just wanted you to know."

April was silent. She wondered about Mike's copycat speculation. Maybe Bernardino's death presented an opportunity to Birdie's enemies. It had happened before.

"Are you there?"

"Yeah, I'm here."

"Can you talk to the detectives handling the case?" he asked.

"Oh, sure. I guess I could do that," she said.

"Are you the detective handling the case?" he asked after a beat.

"One of them."

"So you know everything about it?"

"There was another homicide in Washington Square last week, a retired police lieutenant, my old supervisor, in fact. This is the second one," she said slowly.

"What does it mean?"

"I don't know. At the very least it means there's a sick person out there who kills rich people with his bare hands."

"Rich people. I thought you said your supervisor was a cop."

"Bernardino was a cop with fifteen million dollars in his pocket. Thanks for the tip, Jason. I'll get back to you." Jason hung up the phone more distressed than he'd been before.