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the crime-scene tapes all over the place, it was hard to imagine what it must have been like for the girl looking out from this stool on Saturday. Who had seemed safe to Maggie Wheeler? Most likely it was someone she knew.
    April thought of her own Saturday. The past week had been unlucky for her. Saturday was her day off. She had wanted to study all day. But Sai Woo, her skinny dragon mother, had bullied her into attending her cousin Annie Chen’s wedding. Annie Chen was five years younger than April, a bank teller, and not even her real cousin. So April hadn’t exactly been dying to see her celebrated and feasted. And her mother didn’t make it any easier.
    “No mistake Annie’s Chinese name Rucky Girr,” Sai Woo had remarked. “Sometimes gods smile and sometimes don’t,” she added grimly.
    “Very profound,” April muttered. So chubby Annie, who still had a number of zits on her face, married a postal worker from Brooklyn. What was so lucky about that?
    Her mother poked her in the ribs with the toothpick she was still using to clean spare-rib gristle out of her teeth.
    “Nice boy, good steady job, that’s what’s so rucky. But not so good food.” She frowned at the spare-rib gristle clinging to the toothpick before depositing it on her plate.
    April agreed. All that luck, and the food still wasn’t good.
    Maggie Wheeler had a worse Saturday. She was murdered and hung up in the storeroom sometime on Saturday.Now it was Monday morning. April looked out at the street.
    Columbus Avenue was two parking and three traffic lanes across. The shops were so far apart, you couldn’t really see what was happening in them. How well did people in these shops know each other? Out in Astoria, where April lived, everyone in the neighborhood knew everyone. Same in parts of Chinatown. But it was a different story up here. Affluent. Indifferent.
    Mike walked out of the back room with Sergeant Joyce, supervisor of their detective squad. April had a feeling Sergeant Joyce didn’t like her and would rather not have her around. Sergeant Joyce was thirty-eight years old, the mother of two young children, and had already passed her test for lieutenant. She was waiting for a big enough group to accumulate to warrant the ceremony. She was already commander of a squad but was not yet getting commander’s pay. Sergeant Joyce was frowning now, probably worrying about how not solving this case, if they didn’t solve it, would affect her salary. Getting the raise was a political and production thing. And April knew Sergeant Joyce needed the money. April also knew how ambitious she was. Sergeant Joyce wanted to rise in the department, maybe to captain and command a precinct of her own.
    Sergeant Joyce was a big deal now. She had been on television, taking the credit for solving April’s last case while April and Sanchez were in the hospital getting their burns treated. Still, Sergeant Joyce was kind of a hero to April. Joyce had been married to an Irish cop who threatened to divorce her if she became a cop. He’d proved as good as his word. She’d been in Sex Crimes before she became a supervisor. Where she’d go next was anybody’s guess. Taking credit for other people’s work was sly, but good manipulation of the system. April could not fault her for it.
    Sergeant Joyce was shorter and plumper than April. She had a round face, thin lips, a pug nose, blue eyes, and a special affinity for plaids with green in them. April knew men found the sergeant cute and sexy. Today she was wearing a green and pink plaid suit that was both too short andtoo tight around the butt. A deep frown creased her forehead and the corners of her mouth. She dragged her fingers through her badly cut, badly bleached hair and cocked her head at April.
    “Ready?” she demanded.
    April nodded. “You think it’s some kind of sex crime?”
    “How the fuck should I know? Let’s get out of here.”
    April stole a glance at Mike, wondering if he found Sergeant