“Did I wake you?” Charles demanded.
“No.” Jason was disappointed. He’d been thinking about Emma, more than half hoped it was her.
“Are you alone?”
“Yeah, I’m alone. What’s up, Charles?”
There was a lengthy silence. “Look, I’m sorry I ripped into you today.” Charles sounded sorry.
“That’s okay. I’d probably have felt the same.”
“We’ve been friends for a long time.”
“Yes, we have. Thanks for calling.”
“That’s not the only reason I called.”
“Oh, what’s up?”
There was a short pause, then Charles spoke. His voice had a catch in it. “The shirt came back from the laundry.”
“The shirt? What shirt?” Jason searched his memory for a shirt.
“Milicia gave a shirt to Brenda in Southampton. The Saturday night before you got there. The night the first woman was murdered. It was a weekend gift, a big white shirt. I have it in my hand.”
“Was that the shirt Brenda was wearing the day I came?”
“Yes. Brenda must have worn it to appear appropriately grateful. It was way too big for her.”
Jason remembered. “Yes.”
“Look, I don’t know if it’s the one the police were looking for. It doesn’t have a store label in it. But I wanted you to know. And Jason—happy birthday.”
Jason closed his eyes. “Thanks, I appreciate it. I’ll call the detective on the case and let her know.”
The first clock began to strike the hour. Then the second. Suddenly the room went into its bonging frenzy. Jason took the portable phone with him and shut the connecting doors. Now he couldn’t see the lightning, or the river, the trees on Riverside Drive shuddering in the wind, or the crooked horizon of New Jersey. He went into the kitchen and turned on the light. It was midnight, but Jason dialed April’s work number anyway. The polite voice that answered said Detective Woo was not there, was off tomorrow. He had no idea what her home number was.
83
April swallowed down some hot lemon water from the mug that said GOOD LUCK, LONG LIFE in gold Chinese characters on the side. The mug was a thank-you gift from the sister of a man who’d been kidnapped upon arrival at Kennedy Airport by the people who arranged for his immigration. The kidnappers demanded an additional thirty thousand dollars for his life. April had located the man in an abandoned warehouse in Newark. In addition to the mug, she was given a bag of oranges and a live eel.
This important and symbolic morning she sat at her tiny kitchen table in her underwear, drinking from her lucky mug, trying to calm down and stop sweating so she could put her clothes on. It was just before eight. Her exam began at ten.
After two weeks of working what she now called the sisters case, it was over. It didn’t matter if Camille Honiger-Stanton struck her as a victim, not a killer. This wasn’t the first time she was unsatisfied with the resolution of a case. Probably wouldn’t be the last. Anyway, the ghosts under the ground would surface sooner or later. There was still the evidence, the handwriting samples to match with the boutique guest book in the Maggie Wheeler homicide, the dog’s teeth marks to match the bite on Rachel Stark. And who knew, maybe Albert Block could give them a positive ID on the woman he saw leaving The Last Mango before he discovered Maggie’s body.
April couldn’t calm down. How could she be afraid of answering a few questions? What was the big deal here? She’d taken and passed a lot of exams in her life. She’d testified in court. She’d inspected putrifying corpses, tussled with muggers twice her size. She’d been shot at and burned. She had a father who was an expert at the silent treatment and a mother who demanded answers to more questions, of greater depth and complexity, than any prosecuting attorney she ever encountered. How could a mere written exam, followed by an oral one in front of no matter how stony-faced a board of examiners, be any worse than a thousand things she’d already experienced? And yet she had to admit she was scared to death. Didn’t want to fail and lose face in the squad. Didn’t want to endure the contempt of her mother, let down Sergeant Joyce.
She’d hardly closed her eyes all night. She felt slightly nauseated and hung over, so tense that she almost fell off her chair when the phone rang. She was certain it was her mother.
“Wei?”
“April, it’s Mike.”
“Calling to wish me good luck?”
“Good luck, querida.” He didn’t remind April that if she made Sergeant, she’d lose her job as a detective. She’d have to go back into uniform, would have to leave the Two-O, become a supervisor in some other precinct, maybe even go back to the street. He didn’t say it, but April thought she could hear some conflict about that in his voice.
“Thank you. I’ll call you later—”
“One other thing,” Mike interrupted. “The forensic dentist just called. Seems like this guy’s a morning person. He’s already made a mold of the teeth of Milicia’s dog and had it bite a few things, including some stuff they use that acts like human tissue.”
April let her breath out. “And?”
“He says we got a match with the bite mark on Rachel Stark’s ankle.”
April was silent as her excitement mounted. She’d been right. It wasn’t over.
“You with me?”
“Yeah. I’m coming in. I’ll see you in twenty minutes.”
“What about the exam?”
“I’ll make it.”
April hung up and hurried into the bathroom, adrenaline pumping in with every heartbeat. She prepared for battle, smeared on more deodorant, dusted her armpits with powder. She threw on the good-luck outfit she’d laid out the night before, then slipped out of her house without encountering a parent.
After last night’s heavy rain it was a glorious day, finally crisp and cooling into autumn. The leaves on the trees outside the house were brown around the edges. Some were already on the ground. The rest of the leaves would fall early. April breathed in the fragrance of grass and damp earth. The season was changing. Her heart lifted as she moved toward her car. Suddenly it all seemed easy. All one had to do was dig a little deeper, like her mother said, and whole armies of ghosts would rise up from the earth to tell their stories. April wondered if maybe she were turning out to be an optimist after all.
The first thing she saw when she entered Sergeant Joyce’s office at eight-twenty was the spatter of ugly rust-colored stains on her blouse. Exactly at the third button, between the Sergeant’s generous breasts, the spray of dried coffee indicated a day of chaos had already begun. The second thing April saw was the dog kennel on the floor. It was a pale putty one, for a small dog, the kind people used for traveling. The apricot poodle inside was weeping like a baby, the heart-rending sounds pleading for release.
Surprised, Sergeant Joyce glanced up and scowled. “You’re not here today. Aren’t you supposed to be—?”
April swallowed. “Yeah, taking the exam. I have a few minutes. I thought I’d check in.”
Sergeant Joyce frowned some more. “What the hell for?”
“I heard we got a bite-mark match in the Stark case with Milicia’s dog.” April’s confidence still soared. She still felt good. They were going to nail the right person after all.