"What! Nobody told me that. Where are you?"

"Well, she bolted from the hospital a while ago. Didn't anybody tell you she wasn't coming in?"

"She's supposed to call in. Let me talk to her, will you?" He barreled right ahead as if he hadn't heard the words hospital, fight, and suspect.

"Really sorry about that, Arturo, but I told you some asshole tried to wipe her last night and she's lost her freaking voice."

"Huh?" For a second April's boss was speechless himself, not sure whether or not Sanchez was pranking him to get April a day off. Pranking was not uncommon. Finally he said, "No kidding."

"No kidding. She's lucky he just knocked her voice out. It's a woman's nightmare, right?" Mike winked at April.

"Jeez," Iriarte said. "Anything I can do?"

Thanks, April mouthed at him. Thanks a lot.

The rest of April's day was just as frustrating. Bernardino's daughter, Kathy, arrived in the afternoon, but April was not able to call with her condolences, to inform her that she and Mike would be out to talk to her and to look at the house soon. Mike had to make that call, and it was a tough one. In less than two months Kathy and Bill had lost both their mother and father. Bill needed someone to blame. So heaven only knew what ideas the prosecutor would pour into the ear of his sister the FBI agent over dinner tonight. Both were trained investigators. It was almost enough to make a person paranoid. April didn't want to be paranoid, and she didn't want the Department to be blamed.

Chinese philosophy for health called for the consumption of no less than twenty cups of tea a day. For once April was following it. Hot water and Lipton's tea bags were all she had, but she downed some every twenty minutes. She was wired with all the caffeine and desperate for the return of her voice.

In her early years as a cop, April had followed orders and kept her thoughts to herself. Silence had been a choice she'd made to stay out of trouble. Now all her thoughts were trapped inside, but it wasn't like the old days, when silence was her comfort zone. She wanted to talk to Mike, but she had no voice and she could tell he was shutting her out.