sprawled and boneless, just like Camille, almost as if the puppy, too, could die inside with the soul death of its mistress.
Then when Camille was finally able to stir herself after hours of inertia, the puppy would get up and race around. Round and round, up and down the stairs faster than any human could run. Camille knew if Puppy got away, no one could catch it. It was fast, very fast. She loved Puppy. More than Bouck. More than anything. She couldn’t live without Puppy. Upstairs the shop bell tinkled. The day was taking a long time to end.
10
E ight of them were squeezed into Sergeant Joyce’s office, which was about the size of a walk-in closet. The window was on an air shaft. From time to time Sergeant Joyce tried to brighten the place up with a few pots of English ivy. There were two such plants on the windowsill now, dwarfed and brown-edged with neglect. April counted three crunched-out cigarette butts in the potted dirt and knew there were likely to be more below the surface. The tiny room with its three chairs was as close as the detective squad got to a conference room. Sometimes they sat in the locker room, where there was a refrigerator and a table. Sometimes, when it was quiet, the detectives gathered in a questioning room and questioned each other. Now, hours before the crime-scene photos were available, before the autopsy report told them exactly when and how Maggie Wheeler died, they assembled to get organized.
There were two women in the room. Only one got a chair. Sergeant Joyce sat behind her desk. April leaned against the windowsill near the dying plants. Healy and Aspirante, always the self-appointed honchos, sat in the two visitors’ chairs in front of Joyce’s desk. Aspirante’s beady eyes and large nose were moist with ambition and a lot more heat than the room’s air conditioner could handle. He was skinny, not a centimeter taller than April, and pugnacious to compensate. Now he was holding forth about psycho-killers he had known, not saying anything because he hadn’t ever known one, but pushing noise out his mouth all the same.
“It’s the guy on the tape,” Aspirante said. “All we gotta do is find him.”
Healy, at twice Aspirante’s height and girth and possibly half his intelligence, nodded his agreement.
Joyce put her hand over the receiver. “Shut up,” she said.
April glanced over at Mike. He was nonchalantly holding up the back wall as if nothing about anybody’s behavior bothered him in the least. It was their case. Theirs. They were the first men in, the ones who answered the call and found the girl. And Mike had to know there wasn’t a detective in the room who wouldn’t do anything in his power to upstage them and complicate the process as much as possible.
Mike nodded at her, a small smile teasing the corners of his mustache. Clearly he was thinking the same thing and coming up with a different take on it. She knew how he thought. Life is short, take a chill. Hah, some philosophy.
But April felt a sudden shock at the eye contact and the way he raised his chin at her. The jolt was unfamiliar and a little unnerving. All the time Sanchez was away experiencing his roots yet again, April hadn’t just missed him. She actually felt anxious, as if a part of her were missing. She didn’t like the sensation a bit and was pretty sure she wouldn’t feel that way if they hadn’t almost gotten blown up together last May.
Now she had to worry about the effects of gratitude on this relationship that Sanchez called “close supervision.” She didn’t like it. She had always felt safer just a little isolated and separate from everybody. “Watch your back” was not a sufficiently cautious approach to either life or work for her.
Maybe it was the effect of all those years hearing her mother’s litany of every possible danger of being alive in Queens, America, as well as constant replays of the violence and chaos, starvation, and family separations in China
Then when Camille was finally able to stir herself after hours of inertia, the puppy would get up and race around. Round and round, up and down the stairs faster than any human could run. Camille knew if Puppy got away, no one could catch it. It was fast, very fast. She loved Puppy. More than Bouck. More than anything. She couldn’t live without Puppy. Upstairs the shop bell tinkled. The day was taking a long time to end.
10
E ight of them were squeezed into Sergeant Joyce’s office, which was about the size of a walk-in closet. The window was on an air shaft. From time to time Sergeant Joyce tried to brighten the place up with a few pots of English ivy. There were two such plants on the windowsill now, dwarfed and brown-edged with neglect. April counted three crunched-out cigarette butts in the potted dirt and knew there were likely to be more below the surface. The tiny room with its three chairs was as close as the detective squad got to a conference room. Sometimes they sat in the locker room, where there was a refrigerator and a table. Sometimes, when it was quiet, the detectives gathered in a questioning room and questioned each other. Now, hours before the crime-scene photos were available, before the autopsy report told them exactly when and how Maggie Wheeler died, they assembled to get organized.
There were two women in the room. Only one got a chair. Sergeant Joyce sat behind her desk. April leaned against the windowsill near the dying plants. Healy and Aspirante, always the self-appointed honchos, sat in the two visitors’ chairs in front of Joyce’s desk. Aspirante’s beady eyes and large nose were moist with ambition and a lot more heat than the room’s air conditioner could handle. He was skinny, not a centimeter taller than April, and pugnacious to compensate. Now he was holding forth about psycho-killers he had known, not saying anything because he hadn’t ever known one, but pushing noise out his mouth all the same.
“It’s the guy on the tape,” Aspirante said. “All we gotta do is find him.”
Healy, at twice Aspirante’s height and girth and possibly half his intelligence, nodded his agreement.
Joyce put her hand over the receiver. “Shut up,” she said.
April glanced over at Mike. He was nonchalantly holding up the back wall as if nothing about anybody’s behavior bothered him in the least. It was their case. Theirs. They were the first men in, the ones who answered the call and found the girl. And Mike had to know there wasn’t a detective in the room who wouldn’t do anything in his power to upstage them and complicate the process as much as possible.
Mike nodded at her, a small smile teasing the corners of his mustache. Clearly he was thinking the same thing and coming up with a different take on it. She knew how he thought. Life is short, take a chill. Hah, some philosophy.
But April felt a sudden shock at the eye contact and the way he raised his chin at her. The jolt was unfamiliar and a little unnerving. All the time Sanchez was away experiencing his roots yet again, April hadn’t just missed him. She actually felt anxious, as if a part of her were missing. She didn’t like the sensation a bit and was pretty sure she wouldn’t feel that way if they hadn’t almost gotten blown up together last May.
Now she had to worry about the effects of gratitude on this relationship that Sanchez called “close supervision.” She didn’t like it. She had always felt safer just a little isolated and separate from everybody. “Watch your back” was not a sufficiently cautious approach to either life or work for her.
Maybe it was the effect of all those years hearing her mother’s litany of every possible danger of being alive in Queens, America, as well as constant replays of the violence and chaos, starvation, and family separations in China
Similar Books
