Stealing Time by Leslie Glass

asked her.
"Yes." April's eyes dropped to her hands as if the change of subject meant the still-missing infant was her fault and hers alone. Then she wanted to smack herself for tipping over to meek.
"She speak Chinese?" Captain Johnson again.
"She's American-born, went to college," April said, trying not to flush.
"What's the culture on this? Didn't a Chinese couple kill their twelve-year-old daughter down in the Fifth recently? This a common thing among the Chinese?"
"This is not a Chinese thing, sir. The baby's father is Caucasian. The birth mother may well be, too." April knew he was pushing her buttons.
"So maybe having to take care of a white baby set her off," Johnson said, still going for the mother.
April became aware of Iriarte scowling beside her. His matchstick mustache twitched with anger. It was his privilege to torture his people. "I remember the case you're referring to," he said smoothly. "I believe it turned out there was no evidence that the Chinese family was involved in their daughter's death."
"I was talking to the sergeant." Johnson's eyes narrowed.
And he certainly had made his point. The culture question kept nagging at April. An ache in the pit of her stomach reminded her that when she'd checked the light outside the front door last night, she'd found the bulb had been unscrewed. Her parents had taken off without telling her. She felt anxious about what they were up to.
"So what do you want to do, Sergeant? It's your case." Iriarte slapped her hard with the responsibility.
"I think we have to look for Popescu's girlfriend and the missing stroller."
"You want to slow down the search in the park?"
April nodded. She'd be dead in the water if she was wrong and three days from now someone found the abandoned stroller in a playground uptown and the baby's body floating among the rowboats in the Central Park Lake. "And hope Heather will wake up and tell us something."
"Fine, get going."
"Yes, sir." April exited the commander's office and climbed slowly up the stairs to the squad room.
In a dark mood, she opened the door to her office— it was empty at the moment—and saw a document was back on her desk unchanged that she hadn't approved a half-hour ago. She picked it up and marched into the squad room, still under siege and noisy, to find Detective Rudner.
His skinny butt was planted on the edge of Hage-dorn's desk because his own was occupied, and he was calmly chewing the fat with the computer expert as if the last thing he'd ever do was try to pull a fast one. April jerked her chin at him.
"Hey, Charlie," Rudner said to Hagedorn, then shoved off the desk and followed her.
April shook her head and closed her office door. "Bertie, you try to use this in court, and they'll sentence you." She handed the form back to him. "I need to be able to visualize what happened here. What'd the guy do? Where was he positioned when he threatened you with a knife? Which hand held the knife? What size was the knife? Who was with him? The whole thing." The piece of crap he'd given her looked as if it had been written by a first-grader. Rudner was a detective with enough experience to know better.
"Aw come on, it's fine." He was a tall, lean blond with a red nose. The nose looked suspicious to her. Guy had red eyes, too. He was probably acting out because he was pissed at getting the scut work instead of the major case.
"Have a big night last night?" She glanced out the window in the door at Baum, who'd just come into the squad room and was watching her with his antennae vibrating.
Rudner shook his head. "Allergy. All those trees and bushes in flower . . . man, it's really killing me." He sneezed to demonstrate how miserable he was.
"You taking anything for that?" Anything alcoholic? She was his supervisor. It was her job to be suspicious.
He shook his head again. "Nah, none of that stuff works."
"You sure that guy last night had a knife?" April was back on the arrest form. If it was a proper arrest, she didn't want to risk