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  When she came into the kitchen, both the dog and her father came to life. The dog barked and Ja Fa Woo jumped up to give his only child what passed for a hug. He was a little drunk, but not so bad that he staggered. The ashtray was full of butts. She worried that he drank too much and was rotting his liver, that he'd fall down one night in the subway, that he'd get lung cancer from smoking all those cigarettes. All of the above.

  "Beautiful girl," he said, lighting up now. "What want for dinner?"

  With both Mother and Father Woo standing there so hopeful they'd have her at least for the night, she was at a complete loss for the right words to tell them she loved them a lot, really. But something had come up, and she had to leave.

  Seven

  O

  n Monday at six-ten, when the cloudless sky outside his twenty-second-floor Forest Hills apartment was already brightly heralding the new day, Lieutenant Mike Sanchez was awakened by a throbbing erection. In his dream his body was pressed against April's. She was wearing a bikini, not much of one, yellow like her pantsuit. They were lying together, baking in the heat of a Mexican beach. Maybe a Caribbean beach. Hawaiian. Somewhere far away. He was caressing her flat tummy, the bare skin on her neck, her shoulders, her arms. Hugging her tight. Kissing her. April's skin was so smooth that he never got tired of stroking and admiring it. Smoother than any skin he'd ever felt before, and he'd felt plenty.

  "Alpha hydroxy is the secret," she told him.

  "Ha-ha." The very idea broke him up every time.

  His mother, Maria Sanchez, complained that

  la china

  was too skinny and didn't eat enough (wasn't a Catholic), but her body was all roundness and generosity to Mike. Although she was not Catholic, April's spirit was just right, too. She was gutsy and tough, but not hard. How could he explain it to his mother, his priest? April's virtue came from doing right, not from fear of hell. Totally unusual where he came from.

  Another difference was that her emotions didn't erupt when she was angry. She didn't get loud and hysterical like the other girls he'd known. She didn't try to eat him up from the inside or own him. How could he explain it? Oh, he throbbed with longing. April aroused so much feeling in him that he wanted to merge with her, be so completely together that their thoughts and bodies became one. This passion for her made him crazy because she would not m?»rry him. And marriage was on his mind, on his mother's mind.

  Mike knew his feelings for his lover, the woman he wanted as his wife, were both nuts and not nuts at all. Nuts because they were so intense, beyond anything he'd felt for anyone in his life. And not nuts because every day he was handed death on a platter. And every day his mother nagged at him to get married.

  "Almost thirty-seven,

  un adulto, casate, dame ninos,"

  Maria Sanchez complained.

  Give me some babies!

  But the only babies Mike saw were dead newborns stuffed in garbage cans. Young children burned to death in fires. Girls of all ages raped and strangled. College students mugged and drowned in the rivers. Almost every day some loon dreamed up an unimaginable horror to perpetrate on innocent humans. The World Trade Towers. How could a person absorb such horror? Mike often wondered how God could let such terrible things happen.

  And he worried that he could never have a good life when this life he led of death every day destroyed so many marriages, including his own. His first wife had left him many years ago, then died of leukemia in Mexico. Mike was beginning to think April would never marry him and save him from that terrible failure.

  But in his dream, he and April had escaped. They'd jumped all the hurdles. The snipers had missed them at their own wedding, and finally they were on the honeymoon seashore, set for life. He was breathing the tea rose smell of her, licking pina colada from her lips, and she was murmuring in his ear, urging him to hurry up... hurry up and come inside her. Oh, he was throbbing.

  "Querida,"

  he moaned.

  "Hurry up, lover boy. It's your turn in the bathroom." It was April's voice, but not in any dream.

  He smelled coffee, opened his eyes, realized that he was hugging a pillow. And she was standing with a cup in her hand, laughing at him. He reached out to grab her.

  "Chico.

  Time to get up!"

  "Uh-uh." He didn't want to come back from heaven. He rolled over, turning his back on her.

  "Fine." She walked around the bed, then put the mug down beside his nose.

  He muttered, grumbled. Bleary-eyed and deflating quickly, he sat up. As in his dream he was naked. But unlike his dream, he was not married, and not on a beach. He was in his queen-size bed, twisted up in the blue sheets that April had bought and he liked so much. The sun was orange in the sky, and all the tragic events of yesterday crashed back on him in a single arid breaker.

  "Que hora?"

  he asked.

  "Six-fifteen."

  "Mierda."

  He peered at her through a haze of sleep and groaned again. April was already dressed. She was wearing a light cotton wrap skirt, navy blue, and over it a slightly brighter blue jacket, smartly tailored, but loose enough to conceal the 9mm Glock she wore holstered at her waist. The jacket wasn't buttoned now. Her blouse was white. She was a very traditional girl, wearing a brand-new outfit for the first time. The skirt was not too long, not too short. Her face was fresh; her hair was newly blow-dried. She looked good. The woman he loved was a beauty.

  Cdmo no?

  Peering down at him, she refrained from scolding. He always had more trouble getting up in the morning than she did. This morning he looked so wasted that she took pity on him. She sat on the bed and began to rub the stiffness out of his neck and shoulders.

  "Ohhh. Ohhh. Nice." He let his head roll around in her hands for about two seconds. Then, since she was now close enough to grab, he tried kissing her to get her to lie down again. This was not so easy to accomplish with an expert in karate who also wore a gun.

  "Stop it and tell me about last night."

  End of neck rubbing. End of nice sitting on the bed. She was back on her feet, fussing with the duvet and pillows that had fallen on the floor.

  "We had a nice party, you and I. Come back."

  "Too late." She threw a pillow at his head, then another, tidying up for the day.

  He sighed and reached for the coffee, secretly pleased. She'd made coffee just the way he liked it, thick and sweet. He swallowed gratefully. "Angel from heaven, when are we getting married?"

  "I had a dream about that girl last night," April said, pulhng up the sheet to cover his lap. Modesty.

  He laughed. "Was the dream a special message for you,

  queridal"

  As his dream had been for him.

  "Probably. Why didn't you want to talk about it last night when you got home?" she accused.

  "Where did you learn to make such good coffee,

  queridal"

  He couldn't help changing the subject, wanting the credit for having taught her himself. The case could wait three seconds, just three.

  "I worried all night. You got home late, wouldn't talk." The sound of her complaining like her mother was enough to make him laugh some more. She wouldn't let up.

  "Thank you for the coffee," he said.

  April dipped her head in acknowledgment. She didn't drink coffee in the morning. Hot water with lemon. Or just hot water. He was grateful for her making the effort for him and gave up a little information.

  "Tovah Schoenfeld had a malformation in her brain. That was about it." The autopsy on the young bride had given Mike a squirmy feeling.

  Before Dr. Gloss, the ME, peeled back Tovah's scalp and sawed off the top half of her skull as if it were nothing more than the cap of a boiled egg, the girl had been lovely, a real stunner. It had been creepy to discover that had she lived, she might have died prematurely anyway.

  "Really, what kind of malformation?" April asked.

  "A little thing, like an aneurysm. It could h
ave popped at any time. Weird, huh?"

  "But that wasn't the COD?" April sat on the bed again and took his hand because she could see that he felt as bad as she did. Shit, a bride! This case was personally upsetting to both of them.

  Mike shook his head. "You know how Gloss likes coming up with the special touches. He thought the brain thing was an interesting anomaly, since it might have caused her a problem at a later date. She'd had her appendix out. She wasn't pregnant." He swallowed the last of the coffee. "She was still a virgin. That's about it."

  He gave her hand a last squeeze, then reached for his watch on the table and snapped it on his wrist. His three seconds of normal life were over. Now he was charged. His business was to catch a killer. It was his primary focus, and he was ready to go.

  "That's one theory out the window." April took the empty cup to the kitchen.

  "Boyfriend/girlfriend? Well, maybe."

  "Would a spurned lover kill a virgin?"

  "Maybe," Mike said again, disappearing into the bathroom.

  "How many hits? What about the gun?" April fired questions at him through the door.

  "I'll tell you in the car," he called out.

  He stood under the hot water in the shower, scrubbing with the rough green seaweed soap April said purified his skin and increased his qi. He didn't know what his qi was. He suspected it was one of those things he had enough of already. In any case, he didn't think it was stimulated by laceration. He preferred soothing sensations, so he finished up quickly, jumped out, shaved, trimmed the ends of his lush mustache, and doused himself in aftershave. Then he put his clothes ori in a hurry because April always complained it took him longer than a girl to choose his outfits. He changed his tie only three times, preoccupied by plans for the investigation. He was determined to clear this awful case in a day, two at the most.

  Eight

  W

  endy Lotte's phone started ringing off the hook before seven. The phone was so persistent it felt as if the whole world was out to get her, not just a client this time. She pulled her beautiful duvet over her head and lay in bed, sniffing the stale scent of fear that emanated from all the pores in her body. Seven rings, then silence when voice messaging picked up. Then it started again. Wendy was frightened. Who else could it be but that detective again? This might be her busy season, but please. No one called this early.

  She knew enough about cops to be afraid. She didn't want to go through another ordeal. Her life was good now. She'd stayed out of trouble all these years. But yesterday she almost lost it when the detective with the mustache started pushing her around. The bastard wouldn't let her leave, wouldn't believe her story and let her just go home, even though she was a pro at lying. He even searched her

  car.

  It freaked her out.

  All night in a seriously inebriated state Wendy worried about the questions people would ask today. She worried about having to attend the funeral. Just the thought of a second funeral in less than a year made her puke. She puked a lot during the night and didn't sleep at all. Hanging over the cool porcelain bowl in her bathroom, she agonized over her past and future and gagged in equal proportions.

  This morning she was so dizzy she couldn't get up. She writhed under the covers, trying to calm down and overcome the worst hangover she'd had since high school. She'd dreamed this exact thing so many times. Only weeks from the big four-oh, she was the only person in the world who wasn't being celebrated, wasn't getting a party, wasn't married with children.

  How many brides had she married over the years? A generation of them. Literally hundreds of times she'd worked through every single reception thing: from the lists, to the invitations, to the gowns, to the organization of registries in the appropriate stores, the categorizing of gifts when they arrived, the thank-you notes. The prewedding dinners, often with their impossible blending of bride-and-groom ill-fitting families. The tantrums over flowers and ballrooms and bands. The bridesmaids who got so drunk they couldn't stand up (and worse). The seating plans, the timing of everything so it all went off each time just like a NASA space shot. Now she was doing the sweet sixteens and the debutante parties for the children of couples whose weddings she'd worked on twenty years ago. Some of them were on their second marriages. From sea to shining sea Wendy had walked in brides' shoes through every single phase of it. Every phase but one. She was almost forty years old and she hadn't pulled it off herself.

  Practically all her life she'd dreamed of being a bride—the center of attention—feted and endured in all her demands and jitters. A big diamond sparkling on her finger. She'd dreamed every detail, the dress, the room, the flowers. Other girls found men—or their mothers found them—why not her? Sometimes, when she had to smile for hours and hours at other girls' weddings, it was so painful that her face felt like a pinched nerve.

  Tovah Schoenfeld's death was a cautionary tale in a way, because she didn't deserve to be a wife. She didn't want to be a wife. The marriage would have been a flop, another fake. Wendy was sorry about the resulting chaos, though. The last thing she needed was to be questioned, to attend the funeral, to have her name in the newspapers.

  Wendy had a firm rule: She never drank on the job. Never! A bottle of leftover celebratory Veuve Clicquot

  might

  find its way into her large carryall after an event and she

  might

  sip it slowly at home. But last night after police had checked her bag for the gun that had murdered poor Tovah, she'd been so upset that she'd slipped back into the party room and taken two bottles. Two were all she'd been able to rescue. No gifts had been on display, and she didn't want the trinkets in the little Tiffany boxes. There had been nothing else to rescue. It turned out that the Schoen-felds, who looked as if they were throwing money all over the place, were actually careful to the extreme about getting ripped off. The expensive gifts had always been elsewhere.

  The phone rang seven times and was silent, seven times and was silent. Wendy's selfish assistant, Lori, had taken a vacation so there was no one to answer the phones and be her buffer against the world.

  Wendy hated having no cover. Now she had to do a second event by herself. It wasn't fair. Reluctantly, she turned her thoughts to the wedding of Prudence Hay, who happened to be another undeserving, spoiled brat with a mother who doted on her. Wendy had no choice but to get a move on. With an aching head, she dragged herself out of bed, put Tovah behind her and Prudence to the fore.

  Nine

  T

  he Long Island Expressway was already jammed by the time Mike and April hit the road at seven.

  "You mind telling me where we're going?" April asked.

  "One PP."

  "Oh, yeah. I thought we were going to the Bronx."

  "We're meeting Inspector Bellaqua first. Know her?"

  "Not personally," April said.

  "Good woman."

  Satisfied for the moment, April pulled out her cell phone and called into Midtown North to get her messages. Then she roused her boss, Lieutenant Iriarte, on his cell while he was on the road driving in from his home in Westchester. He yelled at her for about ten minutes.

  'Trouble?" Mike asked as soon as she finished the call.

  "The usual bullshit." She dialed Woody Baum, her protege and sometime driver, and talked to him for a while. When she finished that call she was quiet.

  "Quenda,

  you okay?" Mike asked after a minute or two.

  Her response was a Chinese silence he didn't try to decipher. He took the Midtown Tunnel, then the

  FDR down to the bridge exit. The traffic wasn't too bad. At eight-oh-nine, he flashed his gold at the patrol officer guarding the triangle around headquarters. The uniform waved them through the many barriers into the fortress of One Police Plaza, otherwise known as the puzzle palace. A number of department vehicles, black Crown Victorias, blue-and-white cruisers, and vans were parked inside the triangle. There was no place for Mike's ancient Camaro. At the ramp leading dow
n to the garage in the building, he flashed his shield again, then drove in and found a parking place far from the elevators. From the garage they went straight up on a slow elevator that filled on the way. Mike said hello to a few people with whom he'd worked over the years, but he and April stood well apart and didn't speak to each other.

  Everybody knew the elevators had ears, and theirs was a situation ripe for gossip. On the eleventh floor they got off and turned right. The Hate Crimes Unit was on the southwest corridor, last door on the left.

  Bias Unit

  read the outdated sign on the frosted glass-topped door. Mike went in first.

  The area was set up just like dozens of other special units in the building. The main room was an open space crammed with desks and computers, filing cabinets, a few narrow lockers. On the far end a bank of windows faced downtown, where the sun was streaking in from Long Island. Narrow pathways between islands of four pushed-together desks barely allowed navigation through the room. Mike followed the path to the inspector's office. Bellaqua had a corner office with windows on two sides, a bookcase, an attractive desk, a small circular conference table, all the accou ferments of a modern business executive. She was on the phone. As soon as she saw Mike, she finished up and waved him in.

  "Hey, Mike. Right on time," she said. "Some night last night, huh?"

  "Yes, it was. Inspector, this is Sergeant April Woo from Midtown North." Mike turned to April, who was right behind him.

  "My old precinct. I've heard about you, April. Is Iriarte still in command over there?" Inspector Bel-laqua was one of the higher-ranking women in the Department. She was about April's height, with a fuller, womanly figure and a round, youthful face. Dark hair, sharp eyes. Fresh lipstick, well applied and not too red. She regarded April with interest.

  "Yes, ma'am." April responded with a no-frills answer. She always took things real slow with new people.