Judging Time Read Online Free PDF Page A

pointed at the mouth of the man the restaurant manager had identified as Tor Petersen. "Blue," Dr. Washington said.
    "Blue?" April looked at the man's grimy face, fixed in its puzzled expression. Where blue?
    "See that blue around his mouth?"
    The corpse's face looked gray to April, but she figured that was a result of the poor light. "What does it mean?"
    "Looks as if the poor bastard saw his date stabbed in the neck and had a heart attack."
    Washington straightened gracefully, shaking her fur coat out around her. "As for the woman, she must not have known what hit her. It doesn't appear as if she even tried to fight off her attacker. Someone took her by surprise. You're looking for a guy with a sharp knife or possibly a pick, maybe an ice pick, possibly someone she knew." The ME gazed at the door of the restaurant musingly, then shrugged. "I'll know more tomorrow. Meanwhile, see what kind of sharp instruments they have in the bar and in the kitchen. Someone might have put it back. Then again, he might have thrown it out."
    "Thanks." April was grateful for the input.

3
    I t did not look like a sentimental postcard of winter at 2:30 A.M., which was when Sergeant Mike Sanchez, after less than an hour of sleep, showered, dressed, and stumbled out in the storm to scrape snow and ice from the front and back windows of his red Camaro, which turned out not to be fully protected by the roof in the parking lot provided by his building. The job only half done, he tried the ignition key and discovered that the battery still had life. Then, with the windshield wipers noisily squeaking their protest, he slowly limped out of the borough of Queens, grateful he had been awakened now instead of three or four hours later when he might have had to dig the car out, or worse, resort to public transportation.
    For the last several weeks Sanchez had lived on the twenty-second floor of a building complex less than ten years old. His new apartment consisted of an L-shaped living room with a terrace the width of the picture window, from which the magnificent skyline of Manhattan alone was worth the rent; a bedroom with a view of the parking lot where his car had its own designated spot in all weathers; a bathroom with faucets that didn't drip and pipes that didn't clank when the water was turned on; a kitchen with both a dishwasher and a window.
    There wasn't much more in it than the queen-sized bed he'd yet to share with anyone, a table he'd eaten at once, and a quite new secondhand sofa covered in beige tweed he'd gotten from a detective whose wife decided to take him back after a year's separation that didn't end in divorce. The Garden Towers, as it was called, was seven minutes from the Midtown Tunnel, which in turn was close to the precinct on Twenty-third Street where Sanchez was now headquartered in the Homicide Task Force. The Twenty-third Street location put him around the comer from the Police Academy building where many of the labs were still located pending the completion of new and better facilities in Queens.
    One advantage of Mike's new life was that his hours were now a civilized 10 A.M. to 6 P.M. five days a week unless he was working off the chart on a major case. As a specialist he covered the whole city and was no longer confined to whatever came down in a single house. He worked out of one of the cubbyholes each precinct provided for Special Cases, was one of those people he used to resent when he was in a precinct detective squad and an outsider came in to "help" them. So far he hadn't had those kinds of problems of too much hostility directed at himself and liked the constant change of scenery. On the personal front, he now had a home of his own in which to spend time with the woman of his dreams, but hadn't gotten her there long enough for the amor ardiente he'd had in mind. Mike Sanchez never thought he'd fail big-time for a cop. But he had, and the woman he loved still worked the killer four-and-two schedule with days off