JUDGING TIME

April Woo has made Sergeant and been transferred to Manhattan's Midtown North, but the more her caseload changes, the more it stays the same. When soap opera star Merrill Liberty and her husband Rick's best friend, megabucks Tor Petersen, are found dead shortly after leaving Liberty's restaurant—Merrill stabbed to death and Petersen evidently the victim of a fatal heart attack—April races to the scene, but she's barely ahead of her old partner (and aspiring lover) Det. Sgt. Mike Sanchez, who swoops down from Homicide to work the case with her. Was the killer Rick, whose football fame, banking wealth, and white trophy wife hide crippling insecurities that have led him to psychiatrist Jason Frank's couch? Or was it Wally Jefferson, the Petersen chauffeur who swiped Rick's car, then conveniently managed to be home in Jersey when his boss breathed his last? Or Petersen's alluring widow Daphne, who found some way to kill her husband that not even ferocious deputy medical examiner Dr. Rosa Washington managed to detect? When two of her three suspects take a powder, April's left free to tangle with Rosa Washington, harassing ADA Dean Kiang, ever-hopeful Sanchez, and her disapproving mother (who does, however, take time to tell her that she's ``velly solly brack man kirr'') en route to an unsurprising solution. Even so, April's carrying less baggage here than in her previous three cases (Loving Time, 1996, etc.). Next time she might actually be able to do some detective work of her own.