A Killing Gift Read online

  Lieutenant Sanchez's response to the news was a low whistle. "Well, you've got another feather now. You just saved a cop's life," he said.

  "That woman was a cop?" Jack was shocked. "She wasn't in uniform."

  "She's a sergeant. Did you get a look at the attacker?"

  Jack searched his mind, and the moment of chaos flashed back. He'd been walking in the fog with Sheba. He'd heard indistinct noises, like shuffling, scuffling. It had sounded like dancing on leaves until Sheba stiffened and began to whine and pull on the leash.

  Despite his unwillingness to go in that direction, she'd dragged him closer. At first the blurred silhouette of two bodies moving apart, then together gave him the impression of a modern dance of some kind. But he heard grunts, and finally realized that what looked like an embrace was in fact a judo hold. Sheba was lunging on the leash and he dashed forward without thinking of anything more than to stop what he and the dog knew was a mugging.

  He called out, reached out. The man dropped the girl and spun around behind his body so fast that Jack could not see his face or even get an impression of how tall he was. He turned blindly with no plan at all, just turned to where the danger was. As he turned, the man grabbed his arm and used his own weight to flip him. He didn't know if it was the hold or the fall that broke his arm. All he knew was that Sheba lunged at his attacker with her powerful teeth bared, and the man took off. It all happened in seconds.

  "No. I didn't see him," he said finally.

  Two medics interrupted the questions. Lieutenant Sanchez stepped back to let them do their work. Jack wanted to hang onto him, but a woman with a crew cut took his place, crouching down to talk to him. Another paramedic with the same hairstyle followed her, wheeling the gurney. Oh, no. He wanted to go home and hide out with his girlfriend, Lisa. Whatever happened, he couldn't take any more reporters.

  "Could we keep this out of the news? Please!" he called after the lieutenant with all the strength he could rally.

  "Press is here already, but I'll do what I can," he promised. "First we're getting you to the hospital. Later we'll talk. We'll be sending a few uniforms with you. You won't be alone."

  Jack didn't have time to figure out what that meant. What did it matter if he was alone or not in the hospital? He gave the officer their home number, then turned his attention to the medic who was sticking a needle in his arm.

  Five

  April's eyes were closed. When she'd gone down like a wet noodle, the back of her head smacked the sidewalk hard. Two explosions went off at once. Her skull, like a baseball connecting with a bat. Her lungs, already screaming for air, further deflated on impact. April was no character out of a cartoon flattened by a steamroller who bounces right back. Uh-uh. All her training went for nothing that night. She didn't fight right. She didn't fall right. And when she fell, an evil dragon snatched the breath right out of her and flew away with it.

  Seconds passed. She wanted to say, "I'm okay," get up, find her shoes, and get out of there. But her chest didn't rise. Her lungs didn't fill. There was commotion all around. She also had the sensation of a large animal, some beast from Chinese mythology, circling her body, breathing on her hotly. Marking her. She would have avoided that beast at any cost. But the grip of death held her as strongly as if her attacker still had her by the neck. She could not catch that breath the dragon had stolen.

  The weight of defeat crushed her, and she could feel herself letting go. The next thing she knew was the screaming agony of air forced into her lungs. And Mike was talking her back into the world.

  "Come on, querida. You're okay. You're okay." He said it over and over. "You're okay. You're okay."

  Irritation filled her. What the hell did he know about that? She was not okay.

  "You're okay," he said again.

  A memory filtered through the black. April had heard those words her first year on the job when she'd been in uniform on foot patrol in Brooklyn. She'd just come on duty when there was a radio call of a shooting nearby. There, at the improbable hour of eight a.m., a young mother and her child on their way to nursery school had walked into a dispute between two males-what cops called a fight. April and her partner had been the first uniforms on the scene. They'd found the woman sitting on the sidewalk cradling her dead child in her arms, crooning, "You're okay. You're okay."

  "You're okay," Mike told her in the same voice, then "Mirame." Look at me. As if he needed proof.

  She didn't want to look at him. She wanted to float away on the cloud that had come for her. But her mother, the Skinny Dragon, reminded her that the heavens were the territory of angry ghosts and dragons. If she died right now, she would not be so lucky as to fly away with the harps and angels.

  Did you get him? She formed the words, but no sound came out. The dragon that stole her breath had kept her voice.

  Mike whispered in her ear. "The ambulance is here. We're moving you. You did good, querida; he didn't break your neck. You're going to be fine."

  That line they always used finally opened April's eyes, and she came back to the horror of being a vic, lying on the ground. Somebody's jacket under her head. Probably Mike's. Poppy Bellaqua was holding her hand. She may not have a broken neck like her boss, but she knew she hadn't done good, not at all. Chief Avise was standing above them, arms crossed over his chest, shaking his head at her. She'd messed up.

  Six

  Aieeyyee." Sai Yuan Woo hit the ceiling when Mike came to tell her that her only child was in the hospital again. The shriek said it all. Last time shot in head. What now?

  The skinny dragon that was April's mother could wake the dead with that scream. She wouldn't stop long enough to listen when Mike tried to explain what happened or why he'd come at the early hour of five a.m. He'd come at that time for multiple reasons. He'd wanted April to benefit from a few hours of sleep before the assault of her parents. But he had to come before anyone in the sizable Chinese extended family claimed by the Woos was up watching TV. They didn't have any actual blood relatives left, but the large circle of friends and acquaintances from the villages of another world called each other sisters and uncles and cousins and thought of themselves as such. This prodigious fake family watched the local news twenty-four/ seven, always on the lookout for trouble.

  Skinny Dragon Mother would never have forgiven Mike if she'd heard that April was in the hospital from someone who'd seen the story on the morning news. It was his job to tell her before anyone else. He'd let them sleep as long as possible, but he himself had pretty much worked all night.

  Mike had a reason for staying up all night. Alfredo Bernardino had been overweight and in poor condition. The attack on him was bad enough. But a second nearly fatal attack only a few minutes later on a black-belt champion in the middle of Washington Square added a few lethal details to the story. The killer was not just lucky. He was highly skilled and fearless. The man was a trained killer who could break a man's neck in the blink of an eye. Damn right he'd been up all night talking to Bernardino's children and getting organized.

  Now he wasn't in the mood to listen to Skinny Dragon Mother yell bloody murder at him in Chinese. Never mind that he was telling her April was fine. Skinny screamed so loud she woke her husband, Ja Fa Woo, a chef in a fancy Manhattan restaurant who'd just gone to sleep a few hours ago.

  Muttering in Chinese, he stumbled out of the bedroom wearing shorts and a T-shirt with the logo of Midtown North on it, April's precinct.

  Skinny, who was dressed in black pants and a thin padded jacket, spun around to her husband and screamed at him for a while. He screamed back. At least he could understand her. Mike didn't interrupt what sounded to him like a dogfight. Finally Ja Fa Woo acknowledged him.

  " 'Lo, Mike. What happen?" he asked.

  In the early days of their courting, whenever Mike came by to see April, her father used to lean over and spit on the ground. But now he bobbed his head in respect. Mike was an important man. Almost son, so he gave him an almost bow in the middle of his wife
's tirade.

  Mike bowed back and went through the story again, because Skinny always got her facts mixed up.

  "Somebody dead?" Ja Fa asked.

  "Yes, somebody is dead. But not April." Some other cop. Her old boss. Mike left that out. "April is fine. Just a little shaken up."

  "Then why in hospital?" Ja Fa demanded.

  "Aieeeyee!" At the word hospital Skinny's wail went up again.

  "Something wrong?" Gao Wan, the Woo's upstairs tenant, padded into the kitchen. He, too, was wearing a T-shirt and shorts.

  Mike repeated his sanitized version of the story. The three of them conferred in Chinese while Mike stood there trying to reassure them. As expected, his worst fears were realized when they insisted that he drive them to St. Vincent's immediately because they had no other way of getting to the hospital fast enough to suit them, then drive them back to Queens when they were ready to come home.

  Mike nodded. "I'll get you there and back," he promised. Of course he would. And April would kill him for bringing them. With the Woos he couldn't win. Either the parents would be furious because he didn't do enough, or April would be furious because he did too much. Today, because he'd almost lost her, he would err on the doing too much.

  Mother, father, and tenant ended their discussion and disappeared to get dressed and collect important items for April. Immediate action for them took a long time. The minutes spun out into a very long wait. It was an hour and a half before they squeezed into his wheezing Camaro for the trip into Manhattan.

  Seven

  By two a.m. Thursday, April had been examined, X-rayed, and admitted for the night. But once she'd returned to life she was too wide-awake to calm down. She'd dozed and thought about Bernardino, how he'd promoted her. She'd thought about the search for the poor little girl who'd been held for ransom by a neighbor, then murdered. Her first kidnaping and homicide. April had been the one to see the little sneakered foot peeking out of a half-zipped sleeping bag in a pile of garbage behind a Chinatown building, years ago. Now Bernardino was gone, efficiently executed by what appeared to be a professional. But why Bernie?

  April had been in a lot of fights over the years, but only practice fights. Competition. Nobody had ever tried to kill her. Last night a man had tried to kill her. Now she knew what it felt like, and it didn't feel good. She wouldn't forget that iron forearm pressing into her neck. Her defensive moves kept playing in her head. Pathetic. She'd resisted, but not well enough. A little more pressure and he would have crushed her voice box-and maybe ended her life as well. He could have snapped her neck like a twig, as he'd done to Bernardino, but he hadn't. She was lucky. But she didn't feel lucky; she felt shamed.

  All through the night her privacy curtain was pulled all the way around her bed, and the faint glow of the night-light beamed ten thousand questions at her. People didn't usually kill cops on purpose. Sometimes they got in the way when something bad was happening, like a cop walking into a particularly violent domestic dispute and getting knifed while trying to break up a fight. Or someone responding to a radio call for a DUI and ending up shot in the face when he approached the driver's side of the car. Nothing personal. Accidents.

  Cops didn't get assassinated after their retirement parties. This was personal. April knew Bernardino. She'd worked with him and known his cases, but that was years ago. She had no idea what he'd been working on lately. She worried about it, drifted off to sleep, was awakened when a new patient was brought in at four-fifteen. She could hear the nurses whispering. It was an old woman with death-rattle breathing. April didn't want her to die right next to her. One death that night was enough. She wanted to go home.

  She was up with the light and getting dressed in her torn party dress when her mother appeared suddenly, pulling open her curtain with one yank.

  "Ma!" As usual, April was horrified to see her mother.

  Ja Fa Woo stuck his bald head in to get a look at her, too. No such thing as privacy.

  "Dad!"

  Then her replacement, Gao Wan, the substitute son she'd offered Skinny to get her mother off her back about marrying Mike, pushed into her space as well. Gao was the one carrying the bulging plastic shopping bags. April knew they contained the emergency medical supplies, stuff Skinny knew the hospital wouldn't have on hand. Ghastly fake medicine to cure whatever was wrong. Usually April didn't even have to be sick to be treated by her mother. Imaginary illnesses were enough.

  She eyed the bags with dismay. She had managed to get her underwear on under the hospital gown (modesty in case someone came in), but the torn silk dress was still over her arm. And she had no shoes. Gao Wan, about her age with no known girlfriend, stared at her excellent legs sticking out of the hospital gown.

  "What's wrong with you?" Skinny demanded in Chinese, as if she couldn't see perfectly well that April's jaw and neck were bruised.

  Ma! I'm fine.

  "Aieeeyeee!" Skinny screamed because no sound came out of her precious daughter's mouth.

  Ma, be quiet. People are sleeping. April's mouth moved, to no avail. Her voice was still gone. She put her finger to her lips. "Shh."

  Skinny Dragon didn't care how many sick people were trying to get some rest. She grabbed her daughter by the shoulder and gave her a little shake.

  Ja Fa Woo told his wife to be quiet. Couldn't she see that April was on her feet? Almost fine.

  Help!

  Mike stepped in to regain control. "Querida, where do you think you're going?" he demanded.

  To work. Did you bring me clothes? Still trying to get some sound out.

  "What?"

  "What's wrong with her?" Skinny screamed at Mike in Chinese, unaware that he could not understand her when she lapsed out of English.

  "Don't you know you can't come in here at this hour?" A nurse in a pink uniform came to shoo them out. "Visiting hours start at eleven."

  Mike flashed his badge.

  "I don't care who you are."

  "I'm getting out of here." April pulled on the nurse's sleeve to get her attention.

  "What do you need, dear?" The nurse turned to her.

  Skinny grabbed a shopping bag from Gao and pulled out some clothes. While the nurse's head was turned, she gestured April toward the bathroom. Go get dressed. We're going home.

  Eight

  Only a few hours later Officer Greg Spence gave April his usual line with an encouraging smile. "You don't need to think about this today, but it would help if you could get your impressions out while they're fresh."

  Greg was thirty-five, tall and attractive, with a more boyish look than Mike, who was only two years older than him and sitting on the other side of the table. April studied the two cops. Greg had married a few years ago, and his wife, Judy, was pregnant. April knew he'd make a good father. He was patient with witnesses. Patient with uncertainty. She was sorry she couldn't help him out now.

  "Okay?" he said, fiddling with his equipment. "You look a little shaky."

  Shaky? No, she wasn't shaky. She was angry. The last thing she wanted to do right then was go over the details of her failure. She took a painful breath and tried to calm down. She was a captive of the system just like every other victim of a crime. Like it or not, she had to go through the process.

  Actually, she had only herself to blame that she was there with the police artist instead of home in bed. She'd walked right into it. After escaping from Skinny and her father, she and Mike had gone back to the apartment they shared in Forest Hills. He expected her to sack out for the day, and she could have done that. Instead, she'd followed her plan. She'd swallowed three cups of strong green tea and a handful of analgesics. She'd bathed in a hot bubble bath for half an hour and then had to lie down to nap off a heavy case of dizziness from the hot water. She almost lost her day right then.

  Mike was just about to leave her and to go to work when she sensed his departure and popped right up again. Well, she didn't exactly pop. She dragged herself out of bed and rummaged around looking for something easy t
o wear. Mike heard the noise and came into the bedroom to investigate.

  "What do you think you're doing?" he demanded, catching her getting dressed for the second time that day.

  She couldn't get out an answer and tried some sign language. Got to go to work.

  "What?"

  I'm going to work!

  Mike shook his head. He could hardly argue with a mute, so he fried up a bunch of eggs and resteamed some of the dim sum left over from the weekend. He was so hungry himself after the long night that he didn't notice the problem she had getting solid food down. Every painful swallow reminded her that she was lucky to be alive and that Bernardino, who'd loved to eat, had had a different fate. Her resolve to get on with it deepened. She knew what she had to do. She had to go to his autopsy even though she dreaded being close to dead bodies. The ghost factor.

  Chinese believed that violent deaths led to angry ghosts. And angry ghosts were like invisible devils that caused every misery known to man. Keeping far away from the dead was no insurance against ghost revenge, but it made people feel safer. April, too. Despite the possibility of attracting Bernardino's negative afterlife attention, she needed to be there with him. Maybe it was loyalty. Maybe it was the ghost factor itself that encouraged her to stay with him. If there was the slightest chance that his unsettled spirit was still lingering around him, she wanted that spirit to be assured that she would not abandon him. She would find and punish his killer. She would return his care of her during his lifetime by helping to free his spirit for a happy afterlife with the wife who'd preceded him. She wanted to attend his autopsy.

  Her determination to be with Bernardino drove her past Mike's objections and back into the city to follow her own path, but other people had a different agenda for her. Mike took her to headquarters downtown.