Twelve

"Jesus, April. I'm sorry about the mess." Kathy Bernardino was an attractive woman about April's age and size who didn't look her best as she confronted the chaos in the house where she'd grown up.

She was wearing jeans and a black turtleneck speckled with what appeared to be white towel lint. It was clear she'd made no effort to dress for the trip east, just grabbed her purse and come as she'd been when she heard the bad news. Her thick dark hair looked as if she'd pulled it back into a ponytail without brushing it first. Her nose and eyes were red.

April knew that Kathy had returned to New York several times during the year her mother had fought her cancer, and had been with her during the last week of her life. Now, only a few months later, she was back for another death, this one a total surprise. The chaos was unexpected, too. Kathy seemed mortified that she couldn't find a sofa or a chair to offer April that wasn't covered with the detritus of her late father's and mother's lives.

"What a fucking mess." She shook her head, the tears coming at the way her father had left the world and his house.

"He told me he was getting someone to help him. God knows, he could afford it. His sister, I don't know…" Her sentence trailed off.

April touched her shoulder. Don't worry about it.

"Fucking mess," Kathy repeated. She dragged a box filled with a hodgepodge of books and papers to the edge of the sofa and let it drop to the floor, then shoved it out of the way.

April scanned the living room that Lorna had decorated with such loving care. It truly was a mess, but not the kind of mess a burglar would leave, things tipped over and flung in all directions. Here it looked as if Bernardino had begun the process of moving but hadn't known how to go about it in an orderly fashion. The house seemed to be disgorging its contents from the inside, as if the disparate items had just tumbled from their cupboards, dressers, and closets all at once.

A whole lifetime's collection of stuff was out of the hiding places, covering every surface. Clothes, books, photos from every stage of their lives, a jumble of female house accessories in every category-statues, vases, needlepoint pillows with cute sayings on them. Kathy and Bill's artwork from years ago. Porcelain, colored glass, mugs. Decorative watering cans in graduated sizes. Linens. Artificial flower arrangements, dead and dying plants, housewares, lamps, long-ago-abandoned sports equipment. Maybe Bernardino had just begun the sorting process prior to packing and giving away. Maybe he'd just given up. It was hard to tell.

Kathy, it doesn't matter, April beamed at her. They could go outside into the backyard. The patio furniture was still covered from winter, but April could see a stone bench out there in the green lawn that needed cutting. She pointed at the bench. It was just six. The dense fog of yesterday had departed with the morning sun. At six p.m. it was still light and pretty out there, the sun dappling through the new leaves on the trees. An unseasonably warm evening.

Kathy followed her gaze. "No, I used to read there when I was little. My escape. I don't ever want to sit there again. We'll stay here." Kathy pointed to the space on the sofa she'd made, then pushed some more stuff onto the floor. The pile hit the rug with a muffled thump. "Sit here, okay?"

April nodded. Whatever. This was tough. The fact that Bernardino was gone was bad. Kathy's seeing her parents' house like this was bad. Bill lived in Brooklyn and was coming over to get Kathy in an hour or so. That was bad, too. April thought it through. The whole situation was rough.

Four hours ago she'd decided to leave Mike to his thing and obey his order to go home. She'd accepted a ride out to Queens from a uniform, but had stayed only long enough to get a neighbor who was always home with her baby to make a few calls for her.

Missy Yu had called Kathy Bernardino to tell her that Sergeant Woo was suffering from laryngitis, but wanted to offer her condolences today. At that time Kathy must not have heard Bill's suspicion. Her reply had been to come as soon as possible. So April had grabbed her laptop and zip drive, settled her bruised body into her car, and driven from Queens to Westchester.

Now she sat down on the red-and-blue flower-print sofa and looked around for a plug. Before she could locate one Kathy threw off her mantle of grief and went professional on her. She gave April the shrewd look of an FBI special agent, and April knew right away what was coming.

"I heard you got hurt. Is that why you can't talk?" Kathy asked.

From long habit, April shrouded her eyes and shrugged. I'm okay.

"You don't look so okay. What happened?"

April considered the question. She didn't want to be paranoid. Kathy was the daughter of a cop, after all. They'd known each other slightly and had always been friendly before Kathy became a Feeb. Right now they were supposed to be on the same side, but maybe Bill had shared his suspicions with her after all. April wondered how much trouble she could get into by sharing information. She hadn't spoken to Internal Affairs yet, but there was no question the unit was going to be all over this. April would certainly be called on the carpet and maybe have to clean it for almost getting herself killed last night. And Kathy was first and foremost an FBI special agent. It didn't really affect the situation except that NYPD liked to keep things in the family. Things were getting complicated.

April felt herself being sucked into the dangerous currents of Department politics. Could she trust Bernardino's daughter? Should she hint at the trouble Bill might be creating for himself by crying scandal? DAs could easily be investigated and disgraced. They got shunned. They got fired. She coughed to test her sore throat. A little sound came out but not much of one. The cough did produce a decision, though. April realized that she had only one story to tell and she would tell the same one to anyone who asked. She opened her laptop and typed the short version.

When she was finished, Kathy read it and sighed. "My father didn't like strangers crowding him even in bars. If anyone got close enough to take him, it would have to be someone he knew."

So Bill had talked to her. April lifted a shoulder and wrote, Any ideas?

Kathy covered the bottom of her nose and mouth with a hand as she thought about it. "You know, I could go way back on this. Dad was an MP in the army before he became a cop. Over in Vietnam. Before I was born. He's always been in law enforcement. He was a damn good cop, and good cops make enemies. You know that."

April guessed she did know. She had a few enemies herself. Did he have some special buddies from then that he kept up with?

"Yeah, I heard stories. I never met any of them, though."

Helpful. What about pictures? Do you have pictures?

"Oh, yes, there are a lot of pictures. Do you suspect one of them? Someone from then?"

I don't know. Just the way he was taken down suggests a military angle. Every killing tells a story; you know that. So what could it be here, revenge from an old gripe? A new one? Any ideas? she asked again. It took a while to type it all.

"No," Kathy broke in before she was done.

What about his cases. Did he ever talk to you about anything special? April tried something else.

"Oh, sure, all the time. Dad wasn't one of those guys who kept work and home separate. A lot of them do, you know. They pack up the gun and take off for work and you never know where they are or when they're coming back. And when they do get back, they give you that look that says, 'No questions, please.' That puts up a wall no one can get through."