Burning Time (28 page)

Her forehead wrinkled with puzzlement. “Hospital?”

He laughed. “What kind of hospital looks like this?”

She groaned. “My head.” She shivered. “Where are my clothes?”

“I guess I’ve changed a lot since you saw me last.” He was wearing his leather jacket. The one like the guy in the movie had. “Don’t you recognize me?”

“I can’t … move.”

A jet thundered over the house. She looked up at the skylight. “What’s …?”

“Maybe I wasn’t so hot then, but I’ve come a long way.” He squatted next to her on his heels, ignoring her confusion. “You know the Patriot missiles. I built those. And the cruise missiles, too. I’ve done a lot for this country. Won the whole war.”

Emma groaned, frowning some more. “Car crash …”

He shook his head. “Uh-uh. Tro.”

“My head.”

It upset him that she didn’t seem to know him. He had to get up and walk away in frustration. Maybe she had a
stupid concussion. He snapped open his lighter, flicked it on and off, watching the flame spurt and die. That calmed him.

Emma lifted her head and looked down at her naked body. Her hands and feet were tied. Her forehead wrinkled with puzzlement.

In a second he was back. “I’m a whole other guy. I used to have some trouble with my temper, but I got that under control. I’m a terrific guy now.”

Emma closed her eyes. She swallowed. When she opened her eyes again, he was still there, standing over her.

“And I got a better bike. Remember my knucklehead? Rigid, straight-leg frame, with a six-inch springer and a set of full apes?”

“A bike hit me?”

“No, I guess I already had the panhead, right? Yeah. Well, I got a twenty-thousand dollar bike now. You should see it. Nessy engine, everything custom made, custom painted.” He had forgotten he sold the bike.

Another jet thundered over the house. She looked up again. In the dark, the lights of the plane twinkled in the skylight.

“Where am I?” she said thickly.

“A special place.”

“Well, how did I get here?” she mumbled.

“I picked you up off the street and brought you here.”

Emma’s blue eyes closed.

“Wake up,” Troland demanded.

“Bike crash,” she muttered. “Bike crash?”

“No, honey. I picked you up off the street and brought you to a special place for a special reason.”

“What? What reason?” Her voice was still slurred and puzzled.

“My reasons. You’ll see.”

There was a moment of silence, and then she started to cry with her eyes squeezed shut. “My head hurts. I want to go home.”

“Don’t cry,” he snapped. “I don’t like crying.”

Her eyes popped open wide and stared at him, stunned.

“I’m sick. I have to go home.” Her voice came from a long way away.

“No, honey. You’re mine now. You’re not going anywhere.”

“Going home,” she said thickly. There was a pot of glue in her mouth. Cement in her legs.

“No, honey. You’re mine now. You gotta remember that. Just completely mine.”

She shook her head, her whole body trembling uncontrollably. She moved her hands and feet around in the ropes, as if to check if they were attached to something.

“Remember me? I’m Tro. You don’t ever say no to me again. Got it?”

He watched her face change. It went through a lot—deflated, paled, reddened. For a second it almost looked like she was going to choke on fear. He liked that, smiled with encouragement.

“Good, now you know me,” he said with satisfaction. “Keep it up. It’s going to be great.”

He turned around to show her the gun. They liked that kind of thing. He was sorry his bike was in California where she couldn’t see it. Still, he had photographs of it. He could show her those. He headed for the bedroom, needed the switchblade, too. He wanted to show her the switchblade.

Sanchez pulled up next to Dr. Frank’s building and parked the car in front of a hydrant. It was eleven-thirty. Their shift ended a half hour ago. The call from California had come just as they were leaving. Sergeant Joyce was already gone.

April took the call and talked to Dr. Frank for a long time. He was still at the San Diego Police Department with Sergeant Grove. He was extremely worried about his wife. He had been out of touch with her for nearly twenty-four hours. She had left a message at noon his time to call her immediately. Now it was almost nine hours later and he still hadn’t heard from her. He had called the apartment, her agent, her friends. No one knew where she was. Grove faxed April the sheet on Troland Grebs.

As the husband talked to her long-distance, April felt sick with anxiety. It was possible that she had not done the right thing from the very beginning with this case. Maybe she had waited too long to call the wife. If she had called earlier, she might have found out the real story
then. Why had she accepted the doctor’s request that she not call? And when she did call and the woman didn’t call her back, why didn’t she just go over there and talk to her? Now she, April Woo, would be to blame if she went in there and the woman was dead.

April felt sick, sick all over. People weren’t supposed to just run around on their own, checking things out. There was a system for doing everything. April followed the rules. She always followed the rules. There was a reason for every one. Cases had to have complainants, or they weren’t cases. Cases that came in after eleven had to be referred to Central. If she let it go until tomorrow, then the doctor would come home. If his wife still wasn’t there, he could fill out a Missing Person Report, and Sergeant Joyce would assign the case.

But it was her case. She’d already been assigned this doctor, and she’d messed up. She should have followed through. She should have talked to the wife before. What if she was dead on the floor? April had been trained just for this kind of thing, to look around and underneath what people were telling her for the real story. Why hadn’t she listened more carefully, asked more questions? It seemed to be about letters, but she knew it wasn’t always what it seemed to be.

Every day she tried to remind herself about the robbery call that came in when she was so green the sap was still leaking out of her every pore. She got to the address and climbed three floors to find a hysterical young Chinese woman covered with bruises, dressed only in a robe, hitting herself and wailing in Chinese that it was “My fault, my fault.”

After talking to her for a long time, April finally persuaded the woman to tell her what the crime really was. She had been raped and sodomized by two men for three
hours. And the only thing that had been stolen was the woman’s whole life. No way the man who was engaged to her would marry her now.

April never waited until tomorrow for anything. Why had she not gone to see this Chapman woman sooner? My fault, she told herself. She had been intimidated by the husband, the doctor. Now she couldn’t go into an unknown situation by herself. They didn’t exactly have partners in Detective Squads. When big cases came in, they all worked together, each trying to find a tiny piece. In small cases they usually worked on their own. They certainly could work together if they wanted to.

“Mike,” April had said when she hung up, “I need your help.”

The car had stopped, but she wasn’t in a hurry to get out. She looked at Mike.

“All set?” he asked.

They had hardly spoken on the way over. She was tired, and apprehensive about what she was going to say and do. They had an understanding. This was her case, and she had to handle it. But she had no real sense of these people. All she knew for sure was that the husband was a doctor, a shrink he finally told her. And the wife was an actress. But what did that really mean? She had no idea what it meant, no idea at all what their lives were like. She had never met any people like that.

For months after being transferred up here, just walking into one of these buildings on the upper West Side was a shock to her. And she was still trying to get used to it. She didn’t know about buildings with doormen to guard the entrance, back elevator men to take away the trash, drugstores, dry cleaners, and grocery stores that all delivered. She didn’t know people who wore fur coats and had dog
walkers to walk their tiny dogs, who went to the Caribbean islands in winter and passed through Queens only to get to the airports or the Hamptons.

She’d never been to the Caribbean or the Hamptons. She was born in a building where the toilet out in the hall was shared by three families. And the tub was in the kitchen. All she ever wanted was to grow up, get her degree, and help people like her mother and father survive. She had never asked to come uptown, to have to look in the mirror and wish her eyes and bottom were round. Never in ten thousand years would she have wanted to have to learn to walk and talk and think like educated Caucasians. And now she had to. These people were coming to her as if she knew how to solve their problems.

The shrink, with all his years of education and training, had come to her, as helpless and terrified as any illiterate Asian just off the boat.

She glanced at Sanchez and nodded. “Yeah, let’s go,” she said.

“Jesus, what a place,” he remarked.

April looked up at the extraordinary canopy made of some kind of carved metal. She had found that even in buildings like this, she was still afraid of what was behind the door. They had taught her that, but the fear must be from another life. She had always been scared to open the door. April couldn’t get the thought out of her head that maybe there was a reason the wife never called her back. Maybe she was already dead.

She glanced at Sanchez again. He was waiting for her to go in first. She straightened her shoulders. She didn’t want him to know she was scared.

“Hi, I’m Detective Woo, and this is Sergeant Sanchez from the police.” Usually when she said it, the sound of the two names together made her want to laugh. Tonight it didn’t.

April pulled out her badge, and Sanchez did, too.

The night doorman stubbed out his cigarette and looked at them dumbly. “What’s going on?”

“We’ve have a request from Dr. Frank to check his apartment,” she said. The name on the pocket of the man’s uniform was Francis. It was probably his first name.

“He’s away.” The man’s eyes looked dimly out at them from puffy lids. “Do you want me to ring his wife?”

“Is she here?” April asked.

“Could be,” the doorman said.

“What do you mean, she
could
be here?” April said.

“Well. She ain’t in the book, and I ain’t seen her since I come on. She could be out. She could be in.”

“What time do you come on?”

“Eleven.”

That was only forty-five minutes ago. So, Emma Chapman
could be there or she could have left any time since yesterday. April nodded. “Please call her.”

“I’ll have to ring the apartment …” The doorman gestured at the old-fashioned intercom, one of those ancient telephone switchboards with the plugs and buzzers. There were no names by the holes, but there was a thick ledger on the table with a list of apartments and people who were out. April leaned over to look at it. Dr. Frank was listed as away. Emma Chapman wasn’t on that day’s list or the one for the previous two days.

“Well, go ahead. Ring up,” she said.

Sanchez moved out of the way. Francis stuck a plug into a hole and pushed the knob down. There was a faint hum as the connection was made.

No answer from upstairs.

“Where does it ring?” April asked.

“In the kitchen.”

“Is it loud enough to hear in the bedroom?”

“Depends.”

“Try again.”

He pushed the knob down a second time.

“What’s the procedure with the ledger?” Sanchez asked as the man rang over and over.

“Front or back?”

“You have two books?” April watched the board. Nothing. She hadn’t expected anything. God, she hoped the woman was at a friend’s house.

“Two doors, two elevators. Two books. Guess she must be out.” Francis gave up ringing and lit another cigarette. “What’re you looking for?”

“We’re looking for her,” April said. “Emma Chapman. Do you have a key to the apartment?”

“Well, yeah.” He frowned. “But I’m not supposed to give it to anybody.”

Everything always took forever. April took a deep breath. Everybody took persuading. Without a warrant, this guy might not let them in.

“You don’t have to give it to us. You can open the door and stay with us,” she suggested, keeping her voice casual.

“We’ll only be a minute,” Sanchez added.

“I can’t leave the door,” the man hedged.

“Oh, come on, not even to take a leak?”

Sanchez was good at making people do what he wanted. April’s face didn’t change when he took charge of the situation. She was a detective. He was a sergeant. She never forgot that.

Francis eyed them suspiciously. “The Doc is a real particular man. How do I know you’re really cops?”

Sanchez pointed out the glass door to the blue-and-white police car parked by the fire hydrant. It had their precinct number on it.

“By our squad car, Francis. You going to take us upstairs or what?”

Mike had left the lights flashing on top of the car. He did that sometimes, even though it ran down the battery. It did the job now.

Francis considered it only for a second. Then he moved away from the switchboard and locked the front door. “Okay, two minutes. But you better not touch anything.”

Sanchez held his hands up to show he had no intention of touching anything. As they headed to the elevator, April looked around. Twelve floors up at the top was a stained-glass skylight in the middle of the ceiling. The elevator was a big metal cage. The stairway went around the building in a square so you could walk all the way up if you had to. This place was … She didn’t know exactly what it was. She let out her breath in a little whistle.

They stopped on the fifth floor. April stepped back as
the metal door accordioned closed. She wondered how many kids had gotten their fingers caught in it over the years.

They started around the square landing. There was a little indentation, not quite a vestibule, for every apartment.