April looked Carmella over, always more worried about the females in bad situations than the men. April figured her fear for other female cops had to come from really old prejudices little girls were taught about not being able to take care of themselves. Or maybe she had some semblance of a maternal instinct, after all. It pissed off the female uniforms when she screwed up her face to assess their equipment and moods before they went out, just as Skinny Dragon Mother did each time she went out.
There were a lot of supposed-tos and not-supposed-tos in the department. You were absolutely not supposed to go out on the street or on an arrest without a bulletproof vest on. Occasionally they had a problem with a female officer—usually one of the young ones— who didn't want to wear her vest because she thought it made her look fat. It wasn't April's job to make sure they were wearing their vests, had all their equipment, and the batteries worked in their flashlights, but when females were working her cases, she couldn't help looking for violations. When one jumped out at her, she screamed the way a mother did at a kid running out the back door into the rain without a coat on. She didn't like to think she had a maternal instinct, so she assumed she just didn't want to feel guilty for the rest of her life if something happened to one of them on her watch.
Carmella Perez. Too skinny. Possibly didn't eat meat, or anything else. April noticed four or five holes, but no earrings in her ears, no rings on her fingers. So far so good. The watch with a large round dial looked too heavy for her slender wrist. It read 9:07. Carmella wore a red-and-black-plaid flannel shirt with a black turtleneck, her vest and her gun under it. April knew that even if it got really cold Carmella would keep her jacket unzipped so she could get at her gun. They'd talked guns at lunch once, so April knew Carmella still carried the old .38 Chief's Special and took good care of it. She told April she'd tried a automatic at the range once and couldn't get over how light and easy it was to grip. But then the gun jammed when she pulled the trigger and that was it for her. In the department you still had to buy your own gun, and she wasn't taking any chances laying down big money for a weapon that might fail her when she needed it. She was taking some chances with the hair, though. April wrinkled her nose.
Carmella's eyes flashed. "What chu looking at?" She took the attitude position with one foot splayed and a hand on the opposite hip.
She was an inch or two taller than April, maybe five eight. The extra inches she got with her heavy winter boots put her at about five ten. April jerked her chin up at the hair.
"Anybody ever tell you you could get your scalp ripped off?"
"With Bobby here to protect me?" Carmella laughed as a white uniform about five five with his shoes on chugged up grinning and raised a hand to pet her hair as if it were a friendly animal he hadn't seen in a while. She slapped the hand away.
April ignored the horseplay. "Make me happy. Put the hair up. Our lady may be in a loving mood this morning and feel the need to protect her man."
"Shit happens," Bobby agreed, hitching at his belt as if the rise was too short in his uniform trousers.
"Nah, this one's my buddy. She won't give me no trouble." Now Carmella was grinning.
Still struggling with his balls, Bobby did a quick knee bend and hitched at his pants some more.
Carmella watched, speculating. "You all twisted up again, Bobby?"
"Yeah, you want to help me out?"
Now April was getting annoyed. These two were pushing al her buttons and knew it. Sometimes when you went to arrest a batterer, it was the wife who went berserk pulling a cop's hair, hitting him with a frying pan, biting. Horseplay might calm these two down, but it was dangerous.
Bobby's partner, a guy they called DodQ, showed up. "Ready?"
"Put up the hair," April said.
"Sure." Carmella wrapped a scarf around her neck.
"She says 'sure,' but she'll only take it down later in the car." Bobby grabbed a handful and tweaked the hair.
Carmella punched his arm.
"It's trouble all around. Put it up, and keep it up," April warned.
Carmella's cheerful expression soured, and April knew she'd made an enemy. A perfect Chinese person knew how to get her way without giving offense. A perfect American didn't give a shit. April wasn't perfect in either culture. She turned away, suddenly depressed. "Go on, safe landing," she muttered.
The elevator door opened and Mike swaggered out with his leather jacket on. "I hear you're looking for me."
Where did he hear that? April swung around, irritated that she'd waited too long to get out to the lab without him.
* * *
They took an unmarked gray unit, and April was glad to let Mike drive slowly through the dirty slush. He was thoughtful, didn't offer his opinion of her boss, Iriarte, or the surveillance officer who'd lost their suspect, or anything else about the failures in the precinct where she worked. She was grateful for that. Then he spoke.
"Look, April, I know how you feel about me. I see how it is with your boss. Now I guess it was stupid to think I could charge into your new house, into a big case like this, and there'd be no repercussions for you."
She was touched by his sensitivity, didn't trust her voice to reply.
"Pretty dumb, huh?"
"Hey, it's not your fault. You didn't know."
"Wasn't a hard one. We never liked strangers in our cases."
She couldn't help smiling. "Is this an apology?"
"Maybe. The problem is, it wouldn't look good for either of us if I backed off now. We'd have a mess and no sure way to clear the case. We'd both be fucked for sure, no pun intended. We've got to work together on this one, are you agreed?"
"I agree we have to solve it, yes. Do we have to work together every minute? No."
Mike fell silent. After a while he changed the subject. "I checked with security in Liberty's building. Guess what?"
"Liberty isn't on the videotape going out on the night of the murder or last night, either," April said.
"Worse than that."
"He isn't on the videotape coming in on the night of the murder."
"Nope. Guess again."
"Why do I have to guess? Why don't you just tell me?"
"You're no fun."
"I know." Nothing new there.
"So, there's no videotape."
"Someone took it?" April prompted.
"Uh-uh. There hasn't been a videotape in a year. It was too expensive to run it. There'd never been a robbery in the building, and the constant spying was getting some of the people in the building in trouble."
"Nose picking or affairs?"
"Whatever. The board voted to stop the twenty-four-hour-a-day filming. Now a guy sits in the screening room from eight a.m. when the building opens to six p.m. when it closes. Inside the building complex the residents can go anywhere. But delivery people can't go up in the elevators unescorted after that."
"So security is only for nonresidents. Liberty must have known that."
Mike shrugged. "It's how he got out unseen last night. Must have gone downstairs into the basement and walked out through the garage. He didn't take his car because it was stolen the day before the murder. The garage attendants confirmed that Jefferson took it the fifth, not the week before as he told us."