Judging Time Read online

She fell silent for a long time, forgetting her audience as she examined the heart, then told her recording machine in technical terms what she found. Finally she moved on, methodically, removing each organ, examining and weighing it and taking tissue samples for slides. She opened the stomach and examined the contents.

  "What's your take?" Mike had been fidgeting.

  "He'd just finished quite the hearty meal. Nothing's digested here. Looks like chicken, cooked apples. Rice. Beans, greens. Hmm, bananas. Looks like soul food."

  "I mean, is there anything for us to stay for?"

  "Oh, we've got a long way to go. Got to x-ray, got to do testes and aspirate his bladder for urine samples. We got to open his head and take a look at his brain. More than once I've missed a cause of death until I opened the head. Once there was blood all over the place, but I couldn't find a point of entry on the corpse anywhere. It turns out the guy had been shot in the mouth with a twenty-two. Bullet was lodged in his skull. "

  "Oh, yeah, the jumper," April said.

  Dr. Washington ignored the remark.

  "But that's not the case here," Mike said quickly, shooting April a quizzical look.

  "Oh, no. This guy died of a heart attack. Doesn't mean I won't find he had prostate cancer or something else, though."

  "Well, I've about had it, then," Mike said. "How about you, Duke?"

  "Yeah, thanks."

  April accompanied the two men to the door, then peeled off to the ladies' locker room. "Don't you dare leave without me," she said. "I'll meet you in five."

  "What'd she have to go and bring up the jumper for?" Mike muttered.

  Ducci laughed. "Probably has her reasons."

  Mike gazed after her, wondering if his mother could be right about April after all.

  The dust and fiber department in the police lab was a long narrow room with three windows on one side and sea green porcelain tiles halfway up the wall on the other. The floor was a grungy gray-green linoleum that hadn't known a shine since the day it was laid. Years ago, the room served as a dust and fiber lab for one scientist. Now there were supposed to be three dust and fiber people to cover all the felonies in New York City, but one had retired six months ago in fear of losing his vision after twenty years of focusing his whole being into the eye of a microscope. He hadn't been replaced.

  These days Fernando Ducci, who'd started as a patrolman thirty years ago, and Nanci Castor, a thin-faced civilian with a good blond dye job who'd just hit forty and didn't look it, manned the microscopes alone. Since very few crimes could be committed without the perpetrator taking something from the scene away with him and leaving something of himself behind, Ducci and Castor thought theirs was the most important job in law enforcement. They had to identify and match those physical traces that could prove a suspect had been at the scene of a crime: a snag from a victim's jacket in the backseat of the suspect's car, a spot of oil from the suspect's basement on the murder victim's sleeve, a clump of asphalt from the suspect's driveway on the robbery victim's front porch. A hair with an unusual dye found in a cap by the body of a murder victim that matched the hair of a suspect who said he'd never been near the murder victim.

  Ducci and Nanci went through the items collected by the criminologists in the Crime Scene Unit. They searched for connections that were more subtle than fingerprints and DNA, for the means to make a match between disparate people who might live far away from each other but who were somehow linked by a deadly crime.

  Nanci was out when Mike, Ducci, and April returned from the ME's office only a few blocks uptown. Mike picked up the skull on Ducci's guest chair and examined it briefly before setting it on the desk. The skull sitting there the last time Mike had visited Dust and Fiber had had a bullet hole in it and buck teeth with many cavities. This skull had no bullet hole and perfect teeth.

  "What happened to Roberto?" Mike asked, meaning the old skull.

  "Someone stole him. He was a gift, you know, from the Guatemalan police." Ducci's slicked-back, shiny black hair did not move as he shook his head sadly at what the world had come to. Then he sank into his desk chair. In a dark suit, black-and-purple silk tie, blue shirt with white collar and cuffs, Ducci was an anomaly. His mouth was small and puckered with concern. His face was round and unlined. Except for the winged eyebrows flecked with gray, he still looked like the choirboy he'd been forty-five years ago. He opened the side drawer of his desk that was filled with Snickers bars and took three out.

  "How about some lunch?" He offered the first to April. She shook her head, still very quiet.

  "Queasy?"

  She shook her head again. Just not hungry. Mike gestured to the chair. "Sit down."

  "So who's this?" he asked about the new skull.

  "I think she's Asian, look at that set of teeth. Now, there's a woman who didn't eat sugar. I think I'll call her Lola." He peeled open the paper on one of the Snickers bars.

  Mike's mustache twitched as the scent of chocolate suddenly mixed with the chemical and death smells that recently had lodged in his sinuses.

  Ducci pushed a candy bar across the desk. "Come on, I'm paying."

  "Uh, no thanks."

  "You two. Can't enjoy a party." Ducci took a huge bite of his and chewed happily. "Don't ever say I don't buy you lunch," he said with his mouth full.

  "If you bought us a food lunch, we'd eat it, right, April?" Mike glanced at April. She didn't look good.

  "Oh, come on, this is food. Take. It'll do you good." Ducci finished the first bar, shrugged, started on the second.

  Mike swallowed a rising tide of stomach acid. "We've gotta go in a minute," he muttered. "Any thoughts before we leave?"

  Ducci threw the candy wrappers in his wastebasket and brushed his hands together, cleaning up for business.

  "Well, remember Rosa said the Liberty woman was struck just once. The site of the wound was barely above the clavicle. There were no hesitation marks on the neck or chest. Her injury was a direct hit to the carotid artery, and the victim bled to death. Probably fairly quickly."

  Ducci put his hand to his mouth and rubbed his pink lips with his fingers. "We're still drying out her stuff. I haven't even got all his things. So it will be a while before I've done my analysis. The thing is, I can't picture what happened." Absently he stroked Lola's uninjured skull.

  Mike sucked on his mustache. "No hesitation marks. So she wasn't threatened or tormented. No bruises, nothing under her fingernails or his. So neither fought back."

  "Maybe there wasn't time," Ducci murmured.

  "Maybe they weren't afraid," Mike said. He glanced at April again. She wasn't talking.

  "Someone they knew."

  "Yeah. Quite possibly it was someone they knew." Mike tapped a pencil on the desk. "April, are you all right?"

  "Sure."

  "Mike, I get the feeling it was an accident," Ducci said.

  "Oh, yeah? How do you see that? You think a friend showed up, just happened to be carrying an ice pick. And this person who just happens to be carrying an ice pick meets his two pals coming out of the restaurant on a night when their driver was not waiting on the street. So what's the scenario, Duke? This friend greets them, then strikes the woman a lethal blow. And this blow occurs in a very special place—"

  Ducci nodded, demonstrating the sites with his hands. "Higher in the neck the thyroid and trachea cartilage is in front of the carotid artery. A person would have to slit the throat with a knife or a razor to get to it. Where this guy strikes is where the carotid artery has turned the corner and is in the very front, the most exposed place. No knife or razor was necessary."

  Mike scowled. "Then how do you see accident here?' "

  "It was too direct a hit, but not a professional hit. A professional wouldn't use an ice pick, too uncertain.

  He'd have to get too close to the victim and would never go for one and not the other. Nah, this person struck once and took off, probably in terror. . . ."

  "How about somebody saw him?"

  "Wel
l, that might be your man Patrice. But accident keeps coming to mind. You know what jealousy and rage is like. They lose their minds, keep stabbing away, killing the victim over and over. This just isn't that."

  "One homicide, one bum ticker. The DA's going to go crazy with this, huh, April?"

  " Yes, he is," she said, opening her mouth for the first time.

  "You're looking for someone who knew them real well," Ducci said.

  "How about the wife?" April said.

  "Why would she kill Merrill Liberty if her husband was already dead of a heart attack?" Mike said.

  "Petersen didn't have the heart attack until the killer arrived. Maybe Daphne intended to kill him, but he died of shock before she got to it. Stranger things have happened."

  "Imagine the prosecution trying to prove that she scared him to death."

  "She'd scare me to death," Mike muttered.

  "Daphne Petersen still has the most to gain," April pointed out.

  "Ah, I don't know. What about Liberty? What's his profile? Is he a man of iron control—a person capable of studying medical books, planning a job like this, hitting her in just the right spot?" He shrugged again. "He ever hurt people before, off the field, I mean? How cold a guy is he? Most of them kill the boyfriend first, and then the wife. They don't kill the wife and leave the boyfriend to die of a heart attack. A little too pat, somehow, isn't it?"

  "I'm having someone do a profile on him."

  Mike turned to her in surprise. "You didn't tell me that."

  "We haven't spoken recently."

  Ducci tapped his pencil. "That's good. I'm wondering if maybe Liberty knew he didn't have to kill the boyfriend. Maybe Petersen was incapacitated already."

  "In the restaurant?"

  "Yeah, in the restaurant. That would ring, wouldn't it?" Ducci said.

  "That would ring." Mike patted the skull.

  "Doesn't ring to me," April said.

  "Why not?"

  "You're talking about a big strong guy who could snap a neck like his wife's with two fingers. Why kill her with an ice pick? Well, I've got to go." April grabbed her coat.

  "I'll come with you. See you, Lola," Mike murmured to the skull. '

  18

  On Monday Rick Liberty was taken to identify the body of his wife in the morgue but was not allowed in the room to touch her. The rest of that day and the next day he stayed at home, receiving his and Merrill's friends as was appropriate for one in deep mourning. He provided a splendid spread of food and drink, but did not dress up or make much of an effort to speak with his guests. No one but his partners seemed to expect it. On Tuesday evening he spent several hours reviewing his personal and family history with Jason Frank for the police. The interview required a great -.deal of reflection and forced him to think about things he had pushed out of his mind for a long time. Throughout the interview, he managed to preserve a facade of calm and restraint, but the experience triggered a deep rage. Rick did not sleep at all on Tuesday night. By dawn on Wednesday morning he could no longer bear the inaction of waiting.

  Early in the morning Rick decided to test the waters outside his building. He did not know that today would be the day of Tor Petersen's autopsy or how much was at stake in what the medical examiner found. He figured that people from the press would again gather around his building to see if this would be the day for him to come outside and break his silence. He knew that the police already considered him a suspect. He figured they, too, must have their representatives watching-the building. Before making his move, he wanted to talk to Jason again, but he was afraid to call him.

  He now had a three-day stubble that was thick and surprisingly gray for a man of only forty. He was glad he'd always been so very particular about his appearance. No one had ever seen him tattered or with a three-day growth. Now he was glad to look as ugly as he felt. There was a doorman, but no elevator man, in Rick's building. He took the elevator to the basement. Before eight o'clock, no one was around. He traveled through the dark halls to the storage bin assigned to his apartment. He dialed the combination, unlocked it, and went in without turning on the light. After only a few minutes of rummaging around, he found what he was looking for: a rusty-colored parka, stained and dusty from years in a cardboard box that had not been properly sealed. Near it was a pair of lace-up snow boots, with their sides flopping over. He put on the snow boots and cut off part of the laces with the knife on his keychain so the tops would continue to flop. Underneath the jacket he wore a sweatshirt. With the hood of the sweatshirt up he looked dangerous. In his neighborhood, people would not make eye contact with dangerous-looking black men. He relocked the storage bin and went out the building on the Fifty-sixth Street block. No one was looking for him there.

  At 11 A.M. Rick walked into the Persian Garden on Ninth Avenue and Forty-eighth Street, where Wally Jefferson was waiting for him in the empty restaurant. Jefferson was sitting with his back to the wall at a table for two, drinking coffee and reading a racing form. When he saw Rick, he dropped the paper and got up.

  "Mr. Liberty, I'm sorry for your loss," he said. His cap was in his hand. He hung his head to show his respect.

  "Sit down, Wally."

  Wally sat down. "You okay, man?" he asked solicitously. "You look bad."

  "Let's talk about your well-being, not mine." Rick sat down in the outside chair, pinning Jefferson in.

  When a tiny Asian woman came over to take his order, he waved her away.

  "Look, I said I was sorry about your car. It was one of those things. You know how it is." He looked at Rick strangely. "You okay, man?" he asked again.

  "I don't steal people's cars, Wally. So I don't know how it is." Rick clenched his fist.

  "I didn't steal the car. I told you 1—"

  "You stole the car."

  "Now wait, that's a cold way of looking at things. I was a little strapped. I needed it for a day. I'll get it back."

  "Wally, you listen to me. My wife and best friend are dead. I don't give a damn about the car."

  Wally looked scared. "No sir, I didn't have nothing to do with that. I swear." He was nervous. His eyes darted toward the door. "I swear it, man. Nothing to do with that."

  Rick's fist hit the table. His knife jumped off the edge and struck the floor, making a loud clatter in the empty room. "You're a liar!"

  Wally eyed the knife. "No, man. He sent me home, I swear it. I don't know nothing about it."

  "What do you use the cars for?" Rick's fist hit the table again. The tiny Asian woman came out of the kitchen. "How about you order," she said calmly.

  "Coffee," Rick said without looking at her.

  "Espresso, cappuccino, latte, Turkish? What kind coffee?"

  "Regular coffee."

  She went back into the kitchen.

  Wally shook his head. "You don't look good, man. Maybe you should see a doctor."

  "I want you to understand me, Wally. I need to find out what went wrong here. You understand. You're not going to shit me. I'm going to know."

  "I told you-"

  "No, you didn't tell me."

  "I can't tell you nothing about no killing. I don't

  know about that. They were fine when I left them." Wally looked at his hands guiltily.

  "Then what do you know about?"

  "I got two kids. I don't know nothing about nothing." He gave Rick the goofy smile of a dumb person catering to a smart one.

  Rick studied the grin for a long time, holding Jefferson's gaze until the Asian woman brought the coffee. Then he got up, dropped a five-dollar bill on the table, and left the restaurant.

  Through the window, Jefferson watched him head downtown. When Liberty had passed from his view, he pulled a cell phone from his pocket and called Julio. "You have to get that car back for me. I'm coming out to Queens to get it now," he said and hung up before the Dominican could argue.

  19

  At six-thirty on the morning of Merrill Liberty's funeral, Mike called April at home to offer her a ride
into the DA's office in lower Manhattan where they were meeting Dean Kiang at eight.

  When she picked up after two rings, she was panting. "Wei?"

  "Wei, yourself. It's me."

  "Oh, Mike. What's up?"

  "What are you doing?"

  "What do you think?"

  "You alone?"

  "What do you want, Mike?"

  The voice coming at him had started cool and was getting cooler with every exchange. He didn't want to let her know it bothered him. "I thought we might make a formal date, have dinner tonight."

  "Oh, I don't know. Let's see how the day goes." She sounded weary now.

  "That's pretty evasive."

  "Well, I've got a lot to do. I may be busy."

  "Still evasive. I get the feeling things aren't going too well with us."

  "I don't know where you'd get that idea," she replied, downright frosty.

  "You're not talking to me, querida. We may be working the same case, but you're out there, flying away from me. I can feel it."

  "And that's the right way to go." April finally exploded- into the phone. "Mike, you call me querida in front of everybody. I'm not your darling. I've never been your darling. You humiliated me for a whole year at the Two-O, and now you're starting all over again at Midtown North. If you mess me up here, I get dumped out on the street with a big thud. Do you understand what I'm saying here?"

  "Hey, what's going on—?"

  "This is not a question of face for me. I'm telling you, don't play with me anymore."

  "What are you talking about, I never played with you."

  "Oh, come on, you know you did. You get off on making everybody think I'm your girlfriend."

  "I want you to be my girlfriend. I love you."

  "But I'm not, Mike. You're creating an illusion of something that isn't true. I'm just trying to do my job here. I don't want to take the heat for something I'm not doing."

  "Jesus, April, I love you. Why make everything so complicated?"

  "It's only complicated when you don't get it. This game is over."

  "Oy, that was cold. I told you I love you. I don't say that a lot."