“You can’t hurt me.” Milicia started toward April as the tiny dog charged into the room. Finally free after twenty-four hours in the small kennel, perplexed by her missing mistress, and excited by the angry voices, the puppy started dashing around and around Milicia in a dizzying circle, barking wildly.
“Stop that,” Milicia screamed.
The puppy continued to bark shrilly. Her sharp baby nails pawed frantically at Milicia’s calf, giving April precious seconds to recover her balance and reach for her gun.
The dog wouldn’t stop. It scratched at Milicia’s panty hose, at the hem of her skirt until the panty hose ripped and the puppy caught a nail in the tear.
“Shit!”
Milicia jerked away, back toward the center of the room, where she stood reflected in the mirror under the enormous crystal chandelier, lashing out savagely at the dog attached to her leg by a thread. The dog finally tumbled away, but Milicia went after it. The second time her kick missed the yipping ball of fur, her foot slammed into the library stairs that supported the antique mirror.
“Noooo—” In the middle of a long piercing scream, Milicia could see the little dog turn and leap into the Chinese policewoman’s arms. She could see that the policewoman had a gun pointed at her. She saw the huge mirror jolt, then teeter. The horror on the policewoman’s face.
The mirror pitched forward, setting the sparkling crystals on the chandelier above it into a gentle swaying dance. And in the last shimmering, light-filled split-second before the full weight of five hundred pounds of wood and glass came crashing down on her, crushing her skull, Milicia understood it wasn’t the policewoman who ended her life. It was the dog.
EPILOGUE
April walked slowly out of the precinct, sucking in the crisp fall air with the relief of someone who’d been in prison for a long time and hadn’t thought she’d ever be released. She looked up. The sky was a brilliant afternoon blue, scattered with the thinnest patches of pure white. She knew each kind of cloud cover had its own name, but until the names applied to some case she was working, she’d probably never learn what they were. Free. She was finally free to leave. Sanchez was somewhere behind her. She stopped on the sidewalk to wait for him.
At three-thirty in the afternoon the entire block of Eighty-second Street from Columbus to Amsterdam was double-parked with police vehicles, marked and unmarked. Many, many years ago the police union had bargained for the right of officers to drive their cars from wherever they lived and park them around the precincts where they worked, instead of having to travel on public transportation. From time to time, the lack of police on the subways and buses during rush hours and the glut of illegal parking around precincts engendered a swell of bad feeling, followed by some token action. None was in force today.
In addition to the solid line of double-parked cars, uniforms swarmed all over the sidewalk. Several nodded to April and called out to her. News traveled fast. She’d upset a prominent case that had been cleared only the day before. “Police Detective Involved in Death of Former Suspect” wouldn’t look good in the headlines or on the evening news. The department had to get the story straight.
Since the ambulance doors had closed on the body of Milicia Honiger-Stanton, April had been questioned for many hours—despite a pounding headache and severe bruises—about the events that had occurred in the building on Second Avenue. For over two hours she had been isolated from Mike and Sergeant Joyce while each was questioned separately.
A mean-eyed Lieutenant she’d never seen before had a long list of doubts about her story. He kept asking why she had returned to the building today. His repetition of the question implied disbelief that she was following orders to take the dog there. How could that be the case? It was a day she wasn’t even on duty. She had been scheduled to take her Sergeant’s exam. What about that?
“I missed it, sir,” April told him.
The Lieutenant continued to scowl at her. Not for the first time she had been uncomfortably aware of how the stale air always hung heavy in questioning rooms. Sometimes innocent people panicked in the closed spaces, looking guilty under the pressure of having to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Over and over until they got it right. She was also reminded how hungry-making this kind of stress could be. Sometimes the questioners fed people to encourage disclosure. Sometimes they did not. They had not fed her.
“We know you missed the test, Detective.”
“I was working off the chart, but I was on police business. Will I have another chance to take the exam?”
He laughed sourly. “Maybe in five years—if you’re telling the truth.”
April flushed. Five years might be the next time the test would be offered. That would be too late. By then, she’d already have Lieutenant’s pay, and it would be a demotion no one in their right mind would dream of taking. What a system. You could be promoted to detective, but had to pass a test to be a Sergeant or Lieutenant. Once you became a Captain, you could be promoted to any rank above. But with each promotion came a reassignment. For her it would mean she could no longer be a detective. She’d be reassigned to some other department. She might get to be a Sergeant in the detective bureau sometime in the future, but then again she might not.
A lot of people in her position would not risk taking the test. She had the pay and the job. Getting the rank meant they could put her in uniform and send her out to supervise foot patrol officers in the Bronx. They could stick her with a desk job anywhere at all.
Maybe it was a power thing. Maybe it was a gender thing. Maybe it was an ethnic thing. All she was absolutely sure of was she wanted respect. She wanted the rank. She waited for the color to fade from her cheeks.
“I am telling the truth, and I’d like an opportunity to reschedule the exam now, sir.”
The Lieutenant’s fingers did a little dance on his knee as he thought it over. He personally might have nothing to do with it, but he scared her all the same because you never knew who had the juice to do what.
“We’ll see what can be arranged,” he said finally.
That’s what made her think she’d be out of there by dinner time. It occurred to her then that the only way to make it in this world was not by being honey for the bees, as her mother advised, but by fighting for her rights every step of the way.
Mike came up behind her, took her arm as if he had ownership, and steered her out of the crowd. “You did good work, querida. You’re a first-rate detective.”
April forgot about the uniforms watching them from all sides. She squeezed his arm against her side. “Thanks for standing up for me in there.”
Sanchez grinned. “What’s a rabbi for?”
Oh, so now he was a rabbi again. “I don’t know what a rabbi’s good for. I’ve never been to church.” April laughed. “How about food? Are you good for food? That son of a bitch gave me a little water but not a thing to eat. Must have thought I deliberately set out this morning to murder a woman twice my size.”
“Fine. I’m good for food.” They strolled to Columbus and stopped on the corner. “What do you feel like eating?”
It was a loaded question. April hesitated. In five hours she would be meeting with Jason Frank to have dinner and Start working on the procedure to get Camille out of Bellevue, as well as appointing a guardian to see that she got the treatment she needed. April had promised Jason Chinese and was determined to pay for it.
The light turned green, turned red, turned green again while she thought about it. Finally she realized that what she wanted was to sit down with Mike and have a long, long talk about a whole lot of things: his dying wife, Maria, and his mother in the Bronx, what his hopes for the future were, and why he hadn’t taken the Lieutenant’s test a few months ago when Sergeant Joyce did. She wanted to breathe in his powerful spicy aftershave and … eat a burrito.