"Put your guns away," he said. "I'm not going to resist you." His hands were by his sides. He did not think to raise them. Belle had followed him down the stairs. She stood beside him, pressed against his arm in case they intended to shoot.
The man in the dove gray overcoat did not bother to ask who Rick was. His first words were, "Mr. Liberty, you're under arrest for the murder of Wallace Peter Jefferson. You have the right to—"
"What—?"
"Remain silent—"
"Wait a minute—wait, you have the wrong man."
"Tell it to the judge, Mr. Liberty."
"Wait—!" Liberty shouted. "Just wait one minute."
Two uniforms jerked his hands together and wrestled his wrists into handcuffs, closing them tighter than they had to be. Rick heard Belle's voice, but couldn't make out what she said. The camera crew filmed him with Belle, then him alone as he was hurried, in a huddle of blue, down the stairs and pushed into a car—protesting so vigorously the arresting detective never got a chance to finish reading him his rights.
46
At five-fifteen, April rapped sharply on Dean Ki-ang's doorframe, then walked into the prosecutor's office. He was leaning back in his chair with his eyes closed, didn't seem to have heard her knock.
"You never go home, do you?" she said, sorry to have to wake him up.
He started, looked surprised, then checked his watch. "April, you're early . . ." He recovered quickly. "But looking very good," he amended. "I'm glad to see you."
"Thanks." April took off her gloves and unbuttoned her coat.
Dean gazed at her appreciatively, smoothing back his hair. Then he got up from his desk to close the door. "Here, give me that." He took the coat, threw it over a chair, then stepped back to look at her as if from a distance, making a telescope with his fingers the way he had the last time they met. "You're a sight for sore eyes. Did I tell you I'm a sucker for female Chinese sergeants?"
She smiled, trying to think of a suitable reply, neither too cold nor too warm. Something pleasantly neutral that wouldn't generate deeper forays into the subject, for she didn't know any other female Chinese sergeants. But Dean moved before she could think, stepping forward into her space and in one fluid move drawing her into a full body hug. April was too surprised to react. The unexpected embrace took her breath away. It was as if she'd been waylaid by someone on the street she'd never suspected.
Things like this happened all the time in the station houses, particularly to unwary patrol officers. April had always managed to step aside, get out of reach, show it wasn't ' worth it to mess around with her. She'd never been one of the "girls" the horny ones went after.
But this was no cop on a power play. This was a highly desirable suitor. Dean Kiang was a lawyer, a Chinese. He' was the kind of person Skinny Dragon told her she must smile at—be honey to his bee: work for if she could get the job, be indispensable to, then clinch the deal, lie back, and do nothing for rest of life. In the case of Dr. Dong a few months back, Sai had gone as far as to advise kissing on command, as necessary, the way the prescriptions on pill bottles read. Just to close that pie-in-the-sky deal for a June wedding and the happy life Sai wanted for her. Just keep up that kissing, and never mind what the man looked like, or whether he was an asshole. Never mind love. Sai liked to say love was like a lily: bloom only one day. Better think of other things.
In one second, less than a second, Kiang's hard wet lips were sucking noisily on her mouth while his hard tongue penetrated the unguarded space between her teeth, diving for her tonsils. His hips ground against her, driving the hard plastic of her gun into her side. His arms wound around her hips like a vine choking a tree. He pushed his chest against her breasts, hunching his shoulders around her. His hands grasped her bottom, pushing it up, pushing her pelvis forward against the hard protrusion bulging from his well-cut, gray pinstripe trousers.
"Oh, baby." He groaned and reached for her skirt, pulling it up, started rubbing the front of her thigh, then reached even higher to her crotch. He was holding on so tight with his other arm she could hardly breathe. Then, as she protested, he plowed into her mouth with his tongue and lips again with another rough kiss as he kept rubbing her, chaffing her as if he actually intended to rip off her tights and plunge into her on the spot.
Think of other things, her mother would advise at such a time. But the things Dean Kiang made April think of were too much garlic in his lunch and too much starch in his shirt, a thin and bony body like her father's. Unpleasant greedy lips and a hard greedy tongue. He reminded her of a goat rutting in a field or oversexed monkeys humping in a rain forest. Ki-ang's hand exploring her leg suddenly grabbed her crotch and gave it a hard squeeze. The reminders stopped and a rocket went off in April's brain. She was a cop, not a helpless woman. She pushed Kiang away.
"Stop!"
"Uh-uh." He didn't want to stop. He didn't let go.
"Stop. Now." She jabbed him hard with her elbows.
"Oh, baby," he groaned. He didn't seem to care about resistance. He was lost in another place.
For a few seconds she had been lost in another place, too. It was as if her magical Dragon Mother had actually entered her mind and made her forget how to kick, how to punch, how to judge right and wrong. For a few seconds April had actually been paralyzed, afraid of kicking the Chinese prosecutor in the balls and causing him to lose face.
But he didn't seem to be concerned about face, either. When he recovered himself, April was further shocked by his arrogance and her own uncharacteristic restraint. Before letting her go, Dean let both hands once again drop to her bottom and roam around the territory, squeezing at will, front and back, even as she was slapping his arms off.
Then he sat down at his desk again as if nothing had happened. Not a single thing. "Look, you're early. I don't have a lot of time. What's on your mind?" He checked his watch to show how rushed he was.
Murder. Murder was on her mind. She wanted to kill him. "You asked me to come here," she reminded him.
"Well, give, baby." He leered suggestively. "What's going on?"
Flushed and confused by the sudden shifts in his behavior and her own reaction to them, April opened her notebook and coldly told him everything that had happened that day.
"Well, that's good. But we don't need bloodstains on the mink anymore. It doesn't even matter what Liberty was wearing when he stabbed his wife. We've got him on another homicide now." Dean squirmed his fanny around the seat of his chair, proud of himself for his little adventure.
"What homicide?"
"We have a warrant out on him for the murder of Wally Jefferson."
"Huh? No, no. You're getting messed up here," April fumed. "That guy Julio something, the one we picked up last night—"
"Well, you caused me a lot of trouble with that. You picked him up. I questioned him. He wasn't the one."
"What are you talking about? The guy was a—"
"We found the murder weapon. Liberty's prints were on it. It's been confirmed. Liberty killed Jefferson. We figure it's a sure thing that he killed his wife as well." His face said end of story.
April's stomach was all over the place. The man made her physically sick. His spit was in her mouth. She was afraid she was going to hurl. "Where's Julio?"
"Oh, we let him go hours ago, but he's a witness. We know where he is. He'll come back and sing anytime."
"Who arrrested Liberty?"-
"Your people. He's at Midtown North."
And no one had told her. Ducci beeped her, Mike beeped her, she couldn't reach either of them when she called back. But no one from the precinct beeped her about that. April stood and grabbed her coat.