Tracking Time Read Online Free PDF Page A

The alarm button had gone off at the sound of his voice. Jason was an important doctor, a busy man, who wouldn't call her just to make small talk.
    "A psychoanalytic candidate I'm supervising, a young psychiatrist, didn't turn up for a meeting last night. He didn't answer his phone this morning, and he didn't call in. I'm concerned."
    "Any particular reason?"
    "He's just very conscientious, very obsessive. If he had a medical emergency, he wouldn't forget to call and cancel."
    "Hold on." April padded into the other room for her notebook, took it out of her shoulder bag, and came back. "Okay, give me the info."
    Jason gave her the pertinent information. Maslow Atkins was the man's name. His address was in her old precinct, the Two-O. The right thing to do would be to call one of the detectives from her old squad to take care of it. She told Jason she'd let him know who'd be looking into it.
    "Thanks," he said. But he sounded disappointed that she wasn't taking care of it herself.
     
    The suite of small, windowless, detective squad rooms on the second floor of Midtown North was just waking up at eight o'clock when April came in to work. No one was in the holding cell, and Lieutenant Iriarte was holding court in his office. Like every unit commander, he had his favorites. In his case they were the unlikely trio of Creaker, Skye, and Hagedorn. Skye was tall and brawny, of Irish-Native American extraction, so he said. He had a broken nose, blue marbles for eyes, and a number of scary-looking scars on his shaved head. Creaker was a short bodybuilder with a boxer's blunt face and arms so thick no jacket sleeves were wide enough to hide the muscles. Hagedorn, the computer expert and Iriarte's absolute favorite, was big and soft, and had a pale pudding of a face, and limp, discouraged-looking, mouse-brown hair. These two yangs and a yin, by April's estimation, were among the least evolved humans on earth. But they were not as bad as the detectives she'd worked with in the Two-O-always watching the surgery channel on TV. And she had to admit that Hagedorn was a first-rate hacker who'd helped her out with background checks on the computer more than once.
    Iriarte was a small, good-looking Puerto Rican, a really snappy dresser with a matchstick mustache suspended exactly midway between his nose and upper lip, and strong family values. At the moment he was wearing a gray suit with a slight lavender tinge, a yellow shirt, and a black tie. He gestured through the glass wall of his office for April to join them. She did.
    "Hey, Woo, what's up?" he asked, acting real nice.
    "Not much. Some little stuff. It was pretty quiet last night. What about your rape victim?"
    "She's still in the hospital, guy beat her up pretty bad.
    Turns out she's a hooker. Her pimp thought she was dealing on the side, followed her on board, locked up her customer in the stateroom, then raped her and knocked her around. The suspect says the three of them were friends, were partying, and the other guy got out of hand. The DA's not even considering rape charges, and the customer doesn't want his wife to know, so the scum may get lucky and walk away." Iriarte shook his head. His three ugly henchmen shook theirs in unison. Disgusting what went down.
    He finished his narrative and glanced down at the short stack of sixty-ones, the complaints that had come in during the night. Down to business, he called in the other five detectives on duty, went over pending cases and assigned the new ones. When he was finished with that, April returned to her office and dialed the number of Maslow Atkins, Jason's young shrink. She didn't expect him to answer, but it was worth a try.
    She listened to the voice on his answering machine, soft and regretful that he wasn't available to take the call. Something about his tone struck a chord in April. She was a cop who worked on instinct, always assumed the worst. The bottom line was Jason Frank was a fancy doctor, but he was also her friend.