The Silent Bride (4 page)

"She's gone?" April asked. Meaning from the scene.

"Oh, yeah. The girl arrived DOA at the hospital."

"Did both officers go with her?"

"One went with her. Two more arrived almost at the same time. They're still here."

They moved closer to the building. The tapes were already up, barring the way up the front walk, but April and Mike would have skirted the bloodstained area anyway. This was going to be a challenge for the CSU unit. A hundred and fifty people stampeded out of the building, leaving footprints of blood, and other bits of themselves behind—tears, eyelashes, fingerprints, lint, fiber, even sequins from the fancy ball gowns.

More car doors slammed. April and Mike turned to see two pairs of German shepherds with trainers arrive and get out of their cars. April knew one of them from a bomb scare at Kennedy a few years back. Actually, it had been an American carrier flying to Tel Aviv, now that she thought about it. The rabbi's wish for an examination of each and every car was coming true. This was going to take a while.

"Any leads?"

Mike shook his head. "The father insists his daughter never dated anyone else," Mike said. "So it's not a boyfriend/girlfriend thing."

"No date? Ever?" April was surprised.

"They're Orthodox. The boys and girls don't mingle. They don't even sit together. Men and women have separate sections here. The father also said no one outside the community knew her. She never left the four corners."

"The what?"

"That's what they call their neighborhood. I thought you knew Jews."

April rolled her eyes. What she knew about Jews could fill a teacup. A Chinese teacup. "What about the parents?" she asked.

"Wealthy. Very."

"I mean, do they leave the four corners?"

"It's a very tight group. I gather they don't mix socially outside, but Schoenfeld, the bride's father, has his business in Manhattan. He claims he has no enemies. He doesn't believe his daughter could be a target. He thinks the shooting was just an attempt to get everybody running to their cars so they'd be blown up in the parking lot."

"Imaginative theory. Is that why they're all in the parking lot now?"

Mike shrugged. Everybody knew by now that terrorists didn't do two-stage operations in a single site. They always made one hit with the hope of getting as many people as possible. They wouldn't shoot one female in a large crowd and leave all the men sitting there. What sense was there in that? Also, shooting and bombing were two different activities, involving different planning, psychology, and equipment. The shooting of a bride at a wedding had to be a personal thing. Somebody wanted her, and only her, not living happily ever after. April shivered.

Since Skinny Dragon Mother had told April in no uncertain terms that she'd rather see her only child dead on her wedding day than married to a non-

Chinese, that sort of thing felt quite reasonable to her in a totally crazy kind of way.

Police were everywhere now, moving people out of the parking lot, taking down names and statements, and starting to check the cars. Forty minutes from the 911 call, the CSU pulled up in two blue-and-white station wagons, and the investigation team was in place. It was a very high-profile case.

Four

L
ooks like we have all the big guns here. How ya doin', April, Mike." Captain Dan D'Amato, commander of the CSU unit, looked a lot like an actor playing a cop. Handsome guy, six feet tall, slim build. Styled hair, blue eyes that didn't miss a thing.

He strode up with Detective Vic Walters, known as the architect because he had a degree in the field and was their structure specialist. Not that any of the forty-two CSU detectives considered themselves specialists in only one area. They were evidence collectors, supposed to know everything. Some of them were accredited scientists, like Vic, who analyzed the items they found and drew the pictures for the DA and the juries. Others photographed, sketched, collected thousands of bits and pieces of paint and soil and fiber and dust and markings of all kinds, handwriting, impressions like footprints, tire marks—everything imaginable for the scientists to match.

"Dan, Vic." Mike held out his hand, and the three men shook. Vic greeted April in a similar fashion.

"Sergeant. Long time."

"Good to see you," April replied.

Handsome Dan looked her over. "Always good to work with the best," he said curtly. "Nice outfit," he added, awarding her a quick smile.

By the time April smiled back, he was already past the small-talk stage. "What do we got?" he asked.

Mike answered. "One homicide, two injuries, and a nightmare scene. Did you know it was a wedding party?" Mike pointed at the building. "A hundred and fifty people were seated in there. The wedding march was playing. Never been any trouble here, so there was no security—" He shrugged to shake off some tension.

"How many people went in? You?" Dan interrupted before he could go on.

Mike held his hands out, palms up. "Not me. I'm just relaying the pertinent here. Girl was shot in the back. First officers on the scene went in. Chaos in there. Panic. EMS went in to work on her. A lot of people were moving around, trying to get out...."

"Okay, been there, done this." He was impatient to go in and look.

"You want to take a minute to hear, or not?"

"Yeah, yeah, I'll hear."

"It's better to have the picture." Mike combed the ends of his mustache.

"Okay, I know. Go ahead, give me the picture."

"The shooter must have come in after everybody was inside. But who knows, maybe he was one of them and ducked out. The lobby is a closed space. Our guess is he stood there for some time, several minutes at least, waiting for the bride to walk down the aisle. She was late." Mike glanced at April. It was all news to her. She had nothing to add.

"As I said, he shot her just before she reached the altar. Maybe you'll get something off the doors."

Captain D'Amato nodded seriously. "Definitely. We could get lucky. Magic is coming. Vic will stay. Who knows?" Now he shrugged. They were all big shruggers.

April stood on the bottom step and let her thoughts wander over to the parking lot. Hundreds of people to interview in this case. She liked that. Somebody was going to know, and that individual who knew would tell her. Somebody always knew. A brother, a sister, a drinking buddy, a friend. There were very few killers who didn't scratch the itch to brag.

This crowd in the parking lot was a particular windfall. A hundred and fifty guests well acquainted with the bride and groom. It wasn't going to be a mystery, she assured herself. They'd nail the killer fast, and the community would heal.

April was absorbed in the bubble of her own thoughts. It was clear to her that this was no random killing, a child caught in the cross fire of a political act. More likely the shooter was someone close to the bride and her family, not a stranger. It had to be someone, unlike herself, who would fit in, not be noticeable. Someone who knew the way in and out, what moment to strike. Someone very, very close to her.

Lost in her speculations, April suddenly realized that she was staring at a woman about her age wearing a pink-and-light-blue, large flower-print dress with long sleeves, many tiny tucks in the bodice, and a skirt that fell to her ankles. Around her neck was a thick collar of gold, and her hair was as black and thick as April's. The hair looked like a lacquered helmet, hard against the soft flesh of her face and the soft colors of the dress. There was something a little perplexing about it. The hair got April's attention.

Skinny Dragon Mother was always complaining about her hair getting thinner and thinner, losing weight with the years as she was. Skinny's white scalp showed through; she hated that. Soon she would have only three, four hairs on her head, Skinny grumbled. It seemed like every week she bought more herbal medicine from a fake doctor to make her hair grow thicker.

April slowly realized the hair of the woman in the parking lot was a wig, and one that happened to be not so different from the wigs strippers wore in bare bars. A big and brassy wig. Short but wide and high, and definitely sassy. April was further astonished that this woman's wig wasn't the only one. Lots of women were wearing them. She wondered if there was some cancer epidemic among them, and they'd all had chemotherapy.

The woman's chin jutted defensively at April's scrutiny. April turned away, sorry that curiosity and surprise had shown in her face. She didn't want to be disrespectful. Forget the wigs. She had a job to do. She made a big show of searching in her purse for her notebook. She had long been in the habit of taking extensive notes. Every stage, every interview in an investigation, required reports called DD-5s. Some people found the writing a chore, but April was addicted to correctly documenting information so that later she could recover her process accurately. This was a requirement of the job, but she was even more thorough than most. She had private notebooks for her own private thoughts.

On the operative level she worked for the DA and the court case that came down the road. Her particular investigative nightmare was not the squirmy stuff, finding the bodies, even touching them when she had to—although Chinese feared the ghosts of corpses and avoided contact with them as much possible. April's nightmare was more along the line of many months, even years later, having some defense lawyer cause her to lose face by losing the case in front of the DA and the jury. So she wrote everything down, even the tiny details of crucial first impressions that often got lost in an avalanche of information that came later when the parameters of an investigation invariably widened.

Now she wrote down her time of arrival, who and what vehicles had been on the scene. It was Sunday. What was the significance of Sunday? The daughter of restaurant workers herself, she considered not only the cops on the scene, and the guests, but also the staff. How much of a staff did this temple have? Who was here today? Maybe some individual who worked here had a grudge. She knew that Jews hired non-Jews to work on the Sabbath, turn on and off the lights, lock and unlock the doors, clean up. What about them?

Mike was still talking. "The other two injured individuals are both males. Possibly by bullets that went through the victim. This guy knew what he was doing. Hey, Ken, Artie, how ya doin'."

Detective Kenneth Souter, a short, dark-haired, broad-chested, mustached thirty-eight-year-old with an intense expression showed up with Arthur Hayle, known as Bacon because of his large size, not his views or habits. Each carried two heavy black suitcases that contained the equipment. Ken particularly had received a lot of attention after he'd lifted a partial thumbprint from the back of a bench in Central Park. That partial was entered in the computer bank in Albany, and a match popped up of a guy who'd been arrested and printed for turnstile jumping. The print led to the arrest of the killer of four individuals in unconnected cases. Zero tolerance for quality-of -life crimes had led to printing everyone arrested for anything. It worked wonders to shake real criminals out of the trees and enraged everyone else printed for the small stuff.

Mike finished his account. The commander and three CSU detectives immediately donned Tyvek overalls that covered them from head to foot and went into the building to evaluate the scene before a team of two would get down to work.

The brass had finished their look-see and were getting ready to leave. One caught Mike's eye to call him over. A few minutes later, they were heading for their cars, and Mike jerked his chin at April.

She moved to his side, and he touched her hand, sending a shiver up her arm. "The rabbi has some concerns. The chief wants you to work with him until Poppy gets here," he said.

"Okay." April's face was unreadable, but she was surprised. Inspector Poppy Bellaqua was commander of the Hate Crimes Unit.

Mike gazed over her shoulder. "You're on it. We'll get organized later."

Usually April loved getting out of her Midtown North precinct detective unit for a high-profile case, but this one felt like a curse leveled at her. A young bride murdered in front of her husband-to-be, her parents, brothers and sisters, and friends. All reason rejected a crime so cruel. She didn't want anyone she loved to be tainted by it. Superstition! She shook off the selfish reaction and obeyed the command to work with the rabbi.

"I'm Sergeant Woo. I'll be working on the case with Lieutenant Sanchez," she introduced herself a minute later.

Rabbi Levi was a small, ascetic-looking man in black robes. He did not look at her or respond.