Burning Time (41 page)

Checking out the local precinct had yielded exactly the results she had hoped for. Every investigation was about as successful as the contacts one made. This time April lucked out. The desk sergeant was an old friend from grade school on the Lower East Side. He took the time to ask every uniform coming off duty from the street if there had been any disturbance, any complaint, anything that could help with a case from Manhattan. He displayed the photos of Grebs and Emma Chapman. Nobody could identify them, but Officer O’Brien had an old lady with a complaint about a rowdy tenant and a naked lady in her garage apartment. Maybe the old lady could make the ID.

Bergman had thought there was enough in O’Brien’s story to give April backup when she went in to check out the Bartello house. April had told him what Troland Grebs did to women, and Bergman liked the idea of nailing a possible interstate serial killer on his turf. His proposal was to give April three men for an hour or so, gratis. Just to be on the safe side in case Grebs was there and tried to bail out before her people were ready to grab him. They both understood it was a case from the Two-O, however, and the best thing was for the Two-O squad to follow it through. April appreciated his understanding. Then, because she was getting this much support from Queens, she took a big leap off the deep end. She called Sergeant Joyce for backup without knowing she absolutely needed it. If she was wrong Joyce would kill her.

April could see the house now, halfway down. But it was a one-way street. She had to drive around the block to get to it. She made the turn and headed around the block. On the next block over not all the houses were attached. It was possible to see through a driveway to the backyard of
the house that interested her. Overgrown shrubbery hid most of it. But, upstairs, on the garage side, the shades were drawn. She paused for a stop sign even though there were no cars in the four-way intersection. Everything looked quiet. She cruised to the end of the block and turned the corner.

Slowly, April drove back to Hoyt Avenue and finally stopped in front of the house two doors down. Mrs. Arturo Bartello’s house was pink brick with some decorative painted tiles set in here and there to make it fancier. April had seen this block and noted this particular house a thousand times. Maybe ten thousand times. It had a trellis with wisteria on it. The wisteria was in heavy bloom right now. Even two houses down she could still smell it. She wondered if there was wisteria, or any fragrant plant like it growing on the house Grebs lived in in California. Probably was. She got out of the unmarked car she had taken from the Two-O lot and locked it. Then moved in closer.

The house was staked out. One stringy-looking kid was in the backyard abutting the Bartello yard. April saw him down the driveway of the house opposite, hacking away at the air in the neighbor’s yard with a large pair of pruning shears. Now, a shabbily dressed man called Renear, with a baseball cap on backward, pulled an unmarked, mud-colored Chevy into an empty spot down the street. Two minutes later a huge bearded man lumbered up to the phone booth on the corner.

Where the hell was Sanchez? She’d called him over an hour ago. April looked at her watch. Four thirty-eight. After a few minutes, with her stakeouts around her, she had such a powerful feeling about the house the four of them were watching, she decided to displace the beard in the phone booth for a minute and call Dr. Frank.

Jason took the time to listen to the messages on his answering machine. Just in case Emma had tried to call him again. There were seven messages on it: three worried patients, and Ronnie and Charles, each twice. He returned the calls from the patients.

Then, reluctantly, he left the office and went into the apartment. He didn’t want to go back in there. The noise of the clocks was like hearing Emma’s life tick away. He closed the doors to the living room to silence some of them. He headed down the hall to the bedroom where Emma’s purse was still on the bed. He left it there, took his clothes off, and went into the bathroom.

He had just gotten into the shower when April Woo called. He jumped so fast at the sound of the phone he forgot to grab a towel.

“Where are you?” he demanded, dripping on the bedroom floor.

“I’m in Queens at the entrance to the Triboro Bridge. Hoyt Avenue around Twenty-eighth Street. Do you know where that is?”

“No kidding, Twenty-eighth Street. Did you find her?” Jason cried.

“No,” April said. “Not yet. But I wanted to tell you. It’s just like you said, right down to the diner on the corner.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I’m waiting for my partner.” April surprised herself. It was the first time she had called Sanchez her partner. “Look, we may be wrong. This may be nothing. It just fits, that’s all.”

“You don’t think it’s nothing, or you wouldn’t have called me.”

“I didn’t want to leave you in the dark.”

“I appreciate that,” Jason said. “Where can I find you? I’m on my way.”

“I’ll tell you when I have something. I have to go.”

“Tell me where to meet you.”

“It’s staked out. If you come anywhere near us, you could blow the whole thing.”

“I won’t blow it,” Jason promised.

April hesitated, then gave him an address at the end of the block. “Hang around by the diner,” she said firmly. “If you come any closer, I’ll lose my job. Understand?”

“I understand.”

April cut off.

Jason went into his closet and started pulling on his clothes without bothering to dry himself. Twenty-eighth Street in Queens. He passed that whenever he took the shortcut to the airport. He knew exactly where it was.

His hands trembled so much he could hardly button his shirt. If Emma was alive, she was going to be burned. He tried not to think about that as he reached for his wallet and stepped into his shoes. All that mattered was to get there before Grebs burned her.

The elevator was up at the top of the building. He could see someone struggling with packages. To hell with it. He started running down the stairs. The elevator door clanked shut and started moving toward him. He kept running.

In the booth on the corner, April hung up and turned to the detective with the beard. He was huge, probably six five.

“Anything?” he asked softly. His name was Paccio, but he had introduced himself in the squad room as Pac.

April shook her head. “Not yet.” She checked her watch. It was nearly five o’clock and beginning to cloud up.

Where was Mike? The Queensborough Bridge traffic was very heavy. That’s where Mike was. She was getting more anxious as the minutes passed. There was no sign of life in the Bartello house. What if Emma was in there, already dead? What if Grebs had taken off, and she was too late?

On the other hand, what if the old Bartello woman had overstated the case, as O’Brien had initially believed, and there was no woman in the garage apartment with blood on her head? O’Brien said Mrs. Bartello was old and upset about the sex. He didn’t take it too seriously when she told him the naked woman may have been beaten. It never
occurred to him that maybe she was locked in, too. April looked at her watch again. If she was wrong about all this, Joyce would have her head.

April decided to show the photos to the old lady without waiting for Sanchez. Just see if she could make the guy. That’s all.

“Tell my partner I went to talk to the old lady. You’ll know him by the mustache and gray jacket.”

“It’s your call,” Pac said, taking the receiver off the hook.

April headed down the street. It was oddly quiet. Except for Renear, with his backward baseball cap ducked deep under the hood of the dented and rusting Chevy, there was nobody out. No dogs, no children on tricycles, nobody returning from the store carrying plastic bags of groceries. April passed the house and looked up at the windows over the garage where O’Brien said the woman’s tenant lived. The shades on those windows were still pulled all the way down. April frowned, as she searched for a door into the space. She didn’t see one.

Upstairs in the main house the blinds were open, but there were no lights on. There were no signs of anybody being home in either place, but that didn’t mean anything.

Three shallow steps led to the front door, April went up the steps. Here the smell of wisteria was as sweet as anything she had ever smelled. It was almost impossible to imagine anything wrong in this sweet-smelling house. But she’d had that thought going into places before. The flap of her purse was open. She reached in and rested her hand on her off-duty pistol. Her other one was strapped to her waist. She rang the bell.

There was no answer. April rang the bell again. Maybe the old lady was hard of hearing. Still no sign of life. She rang the bell a third time and turned the doorknob. The
door was unlocked. April’s hands were sweaty as she stepped inside.

The hallway was empty. To one side, she could see the living room. Wow. Ornate, heavy furniture like the kind she used to gape at in the windows of the furniture store next to Ferrara’s in Little Italy. The dining room table was absolutely unbelievable. The four chairs around it were carved swans. The room she stood in smelled of old garlic, fried to the burning point.

“Hello, anybody home?”

No answer. She drew her gun and walked inside.
I’m just looking for the old lady
, she told herself. She moved down the hallway, hugging the wall.
Don’t make a target of yourself
. Shit. She had walked through the open door and entered the premises. Maybe that wasn’t so smart.

Nothing in the kitchen. Nothing in the living room. The door to the next room was closed. She stood on one side of the door and nudged it open with her foot. Nothing jumped out at her waving a gun. The room looked like a sitting room. Bookshelves, armchair, daybed, TV. It was empty. April climbed the stairs. Cautiously, she searched the bedrooms one by one, looking for the old woman and a door to the apartment over the garage. She found neither.

Where was the door? And what about the old lady? Did she always go out leaving her front door unlocked? April closed the door on her way out and slipped the gun back in her bag.

Outside nothing had changed but the clouds in the sky, moving in for the showers predicted later that night. The street was quiet, and there was still no sign of Sanchez. April checked her watch. Ten minutes had passed. What the hell was going on? He should be here by now. She was annoyed. Where was the old lady? She went around to the
garage again. The entrance to the upstairs apartment must be in the garage. That meant there was no other way out. She didn’t like this waiting.

She turned the handle on the garage door. It swung open with hardly any effort, and a light came on. She could see a car, a dark blue Ford Tempo, late model, rental. It was cool and dank in the garage. She shivered. Several pieces of old lawn furniture were folded up and stacked against one wall. An umbrella. A lawn mower. She crouched low and inched toward the stairs, careful to use the car as a shield. The cement floor was gritty under her feet.

At the back of the garage, she almost tripped on something soft. She looked down. It was a pink felt slipper, worn and gray at the edges. She bent to examine the slipper. There were three small red droplets on the floor, and some brownish spots on several of the blades of the lawn mower that stood nearby. She crouched down. What the hell—? Underneath the mower was a lot of dust, spider webs and dead flies, and something white. What the hell was it? April examined it curiously. What was that?

It had a toenail on it. It was a human toe. The toe was old and gnarled, the nail yellow and deeply ingrown. It looked not so very different from the dried sea slugs in large jars in Chinatown. The Chinese prized them as a delicacy, served them only on special occasions. But this was no sea slug. April’s thinking was automatic, deeply ingrained with years of studying unpleasant things. She knew instantly the toe on the dusty floor did not come from Emma Chapman. Emma Chapman was young and beautiful, well cared for.

A footstep sounded outside. April pulled her gun out of her bag a second time.

“Wake up.” Troland stood over Emma. “Want some soup before we get back to work?”

“What?” Emma struggled to focus. Everything was numb except for the fire on her stomach where he had been working on her.

“Soup. You have to eat something.”

She could see him now. Still wearing the leather jacket, open with nothing under it. And the jeans. The gun was in his right hand.

She shook her head, couldn’t make a sound with the tape over her mouth.

“Oh.” He remembered the tape and ripped it off.

“Ow.” Tears jumped into her eyes.

“Don’t start that. I’m being nice,” he said.

She didn’t reply.

“You got to be hungry. You want soup or not? I got Campbell’s Tomato.”

“No, thanks.” She didn’t recognize her own voice.

“Good—anybody touches the stove, and the place blows up.” He laughed like he’d pulled a good joke. She could
have the soup, but couldn’t touch the stove. He kept laughing.

“Huh?” Emma was shivering uncontrollably.

“What’s the matter now?” Abruptly he sounded angry.

“Place blows up?” Emma tried to stop her face from twitching, her body from trembling all over. She wasn’t successful. He was trying something new to scare her. He liked to do that. She didn’t want to believe him.

“Yeah, it’s brick on the outside. Well, not this part, up here is aluminum siding. But it won’t go without some help.”

He was telling her he planned to blow up the house. Emma had to keep focused. She couldn’t play his game.

“Relax,” he said, genial now. “There’s nothing for you to worry about. That’s for later.”

“My wrists hurt,” she said faintly. “Could you fix the ropes?”

He bent to check them, adjusting them just a little. “You’re all right,” he told her. “Want some juice?”

“What about the fridge?”

“What about it?”