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.
Thirty-six
Dr. 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."