Interesting. Now he knew something about Milicia he hadn’t known before. He had another piece of the sisters’ puzzle.
“Dogs make great companions. Have you always had one?”
Camille responded to this by covering her whole face with her thick mane of tangled hair. She didn’t answer.
He tried a different tack. “What about Bouck? I guess he didn’t mind about Puppy after all.”
Behind her hair, Camille giggled. “Not after the break-in.”
What break-in? Jason made a mental note to come back to the break-in. “How does Puppy feel about being here?”
“She’s okay as long as I’m here.”
“Oh, that’s good, because if she has to stay around here too long, she may get bored.” He paused, waiting for Camille to relax again. “How do you feel about being here?”
Camille started swaying from side to side, so the curtain of hair in front of her face swung back and forth. “It’s a horrible place. I hate it. I want to go home.”
“I can understand that. How do you feel about talking to me? Would you rather the officer stays, or waits outside?”
Abruptly Camille pushed her hair back and sat up, looking around as if she were upset about forgetting the officer in the corner.
“She can leave.”
Jason nodded at Goldie. “It’s okay if you wait outside.”
The officer hesitated, then got up and left.
Jason processed Camille’s response. He saw it as a healthy thing that she trusted him with her dog, then felt there was enough of a relationship between them to allow the guard to leave.
“What happened?” he asked as soon as the door closed. “How do you come to be here at the police station tonight?”
Camille shook her head. She didn’t want to tell him. “They do that to people sometimes. Tonight it was my turn.”
“Did something happen to make it your turn?”
“I don’t know.”
“Why don’t you tell me about what you’ve been doing the last few days.”
“What about them?”
“Oh, like how you spent your time the last few days before you came here to the police station. What’s your routine? What are your days like?”
Camille thought for a long time. Then she said: “I’m decorating the house. That takes a lot of time.”
“Is that the house where you live?”
“Yes.” Camille looked down at Puppy. Puppy was lying limp in her lap. Camille stroked her.
“Who lives there with you?” he asked.
“Puppy.”
“Anyone else?”
“Bouck does.”
“Tell me about Bouck.”
Camille shook her head. “He told me not to.”
“Bouck told you not to talk about him?”
She was silent.
“Is Bouck the reason you’re at the police station tonight?”
“No, Bouck hates the police. He says the police don’t protect anybody. We have to protect ourselves.”
“Does Bouck protect you?”
“Oh, yes. We have locks on all the doors and Bouck won’t let me go out unless I’m feeling just right. And he tells me how I have to be careful on the street.”
“The city’s a pretty dangerous place,” Jason agreed. “Have you ever been attacked or followed?”
Camille looked at him shrewdly. “No,” she said flatly. “Have you?”
He made a tiny noncommittal motion with his head and went on. “Do you ever feel people on the street are dangerous?”
Again the shrewd look. “Anybody can be a mugger.” Camille played with her hair. “You never know.”
True enough. The woman wasn’t stupid.
“What about salespeople in the grocery store or restaurants? Do you ever think they mean you ill, like they’re out to get you?”
Camille laughed. “That’s crazy. Do you think I’m crazy?”
She seemed lucid, didn’t appear to be delusional. He went on without answering. “Sometimes people can hear voices when no one else is around.”
“That’s crazy, too.”
Jason smiled. She was shrewd, didn’t want to appear crazy. “Tell me about the last few days,” he repeated. His stomach growled. Very discreetly he glanced at his watch. Ten hours had passed since he’d had something to eat. He remembered that April had promised him food. He wondered if she was out getting it for him.
57
The door from the kitchen to the hall was open. April saw a big man crowd Lieutenant Braun, trying to push him out. The man’s cheeks were red and blotchy, his eyes wide with shock and fury. He was thick around the middle and had the threatening gestures and loud, hectoring voice of a bully.
“Who the fuck are you?” he demanded, looking like someone who would have no trouble punching a cop.
“Lieutenant Braun, Homicide, NYPD.” Braun held out his badge.
Bouck didn’t look at it. “Get out of here.”
April glanced down at the bundle of Maggie Wheeler’s clothes on the top basement step, her heart racing. The man was probably their killer. And he was up on something, really high. She’d seen guys like him so high, they didn’t feel pain, couldn’t be stopped by half a dozen officers with stun guns, or even a .38 slug. She was scared.
“Just calm down,” Braun said. “We have a warrant to take a look around.”
The guy had no intention of calming down. “Oh, yeah, what for?” he demanded belligerently.
“A woman in the shop across the street was murdered. We’re investigating the case.”
“Are you nuts? What does that have to do with me?”
“Like I said, we’re investigating the case.”
“Oh, no, you’re not. Not in here.” Bouck spun around. “Who the fuck is this?”
“Sergeant Roberts,” Roberts’s voice replied.
Now two detectives were in the hall. There were five in the house. Where were the others? Adrenaline pumped through April without showing her the job to prepare for. She needed to tell Braun and Roberts what she’d found, to warn them, but they were jammed into the narrow space of the hallway. She didn’t want to provoke an incident. Where was Mike?
“You can’t just bust into innocent people’s houses in the middle of the fucking night. Are you nuts?” Bouck screamed at them.
“Unh-unh,” Braun said conversationally. “We have reason to believe someone from this house may be involved in two homicides.”
“You got to be crazy. No way,” Bouck said furiously. Then as if surprised by the thought, “Who? Jamal?” That stopped him. For a few seconds, while he thought it over, he had nothing to say. Then he got his voice back. “No way.”
He looked from one cop to the other. “Where’s Camille?”
Braun didn’t say where the woman was. His voice got cold and his confidence came back. “You want to see Camille?”
“Yeah.”
“Fine. Then do what we tell you to do. Got it?”
Wrong thing to say. Bouck stuck out his arm and tried to push past Braun. “I want to see her now. Get out of my way.”
“Hey, watch that.” Braun stood his ground.
“I want to see Camille.”
“Fine. Come with us to the precinct. You can see her there.”
“You took that sick woman out of my house?” Bouck’s voice rose to a shriek.
The three of them were in a tight space, two without much patience and the third walking off the deep end. April’s thoughts whirled. She didn’t know what to do. She didn’t know Braun and Roberts, didn’t have the language developed with them to say the man they were so busy provoking was probably their perp. Ducci had suggested the killer might be a cross dresser or a transvestite. Bouck was clearly the one in charge here, kept his girlfriend in a restraint in the maid’s room. Maybe he was the shopper, wore the clothes on the racks upstairs. Maybe he signed Camille’s name in The Last Mango’s guest book.