The Silent Bride by Leslie Glass Read Free Book Online

mirror, and other odds and ends, including a honey blond wig on a white Styrofoam head. The head was labeled Tovah Ribikoff. Another wig. April caught her breath.

Six
A t eight-thirty April was on the road, heading back to Queens. At this hour the ground was in total darkness, the sky was her favorite deep blue, still backlit just a little by the dying sun, and the traffic wasn't too bad going south. Her mood was queasy, queasy. Mike was attending the autopsy without her. She didn't want to admit that she was glad. She had these groceries to take home. Then she was meeting Mike at his place. She felt unsettled. With Ching's wedding coming up, her family would be upset about the murder. Every bride in New York would be.
Her cell phone rang. With one hand on the wheel she fumbled around in her annoying purse that just couldn't stay organized with its numerous pairs of rubber gloves, her private notebooks and the Department-issue notebooks called Rosarios, her all-important address book, powder, lipstick, blush, hand cream, tissues, pens, .38 Chief's Special. Ah, right at the bottom she found the precious StarTAC. She flipped it open on the fourth ring.
"Sergeant Woo," she said, hoping it was Mike even though they'd parted only a few minutes ago.
"Hi, it's Ching. What's up?"
"Ching, how are you?" April said cautiously.
"You sound weird. Where are you?" Ching demanded.
"Oh, on the road."
"Working?"
"Yeah. What's going on?"
"Just wondering how it went with Gao. Am I a brilliant genius or what?"
April didn't answer. She knew Ching was a brilliant genius, but not why in this instance. She sighed as her lane suddenly slowed nearly to a stop.
"April, you did have lunch with Gao Wan, didn't you?" came the perky, happy voice of the one person in the world she didn't want to alarm right now.
"Oh, yeah. Sorry, it's been a long day." Seemed like a month.
"Nice guy, huh?" Ching prompted.
"Very nice," April said. Neutral.
"You don't have to do anything for him. I was just thinking he might be useful to you."
April sighed again. How could the off-the-boat be useful to her? People had such funny ideas. "I'm sorry, Ching. It's been one of those days."
"Oh, God. Don't make me feel guilty. I thought you were on your day off."
"I was, but something came up."
"A murder like the Wendy's?" Ching said, a little breathless now because the cop stuff always scared her to death. "The Wendy's" was a seven-person homicide and the worst case April had ever seen.
"No! No, no, nothing like that," she said hastily.
"What, then?"
"Nothing to worry about. Just a police matter." The lane opened up, and she hit the gas.
"You all right?" Ching sounded worried.
"Yes, of course. Talk to me. I'm sorry about Gao."
April hit a dead zone and the connection broke. Nothing came out of her phone but a reminder of a phantom ear print. She tossed the phone back in her bag, vowing to call Ching back when she got home.
Then she was back on ears, reviewing what she knew about prints. Not a whole lot. Skin on the hands and soles of the feet had their distinctive swirls and ridges but no oil glands, which meant the telltale marks often invisible to the naked eye that were left behind on certain, but not all, surfaces by "sweaty" palms and fingers were in fact 98.5 to 99.5 percent secreted water. The thing was, not everybody secreted equally. Some people didn't secrete enough moisture to leave prints, and cold hands didn't secrete either. April pondered the issue of secreting ears. Ken had fumed the moisture from this ear almost from the air itself. Impressive, but hardly conclusive.
The ear in question turned out to be located at such a low height, less than five feet, that Ken had to admit in the end that it might have come from a child, hiding out from the service. Or alternatively, the shooter was a young boy, or a girl. This was another idea that reason resisted. Yet April knew well enough that kids could kill. Or the shooter could have been hunched down, crouched, even