“ ‘Check the Adam’s apples,’ ” said Roach in a singsong chorus.
Heat stayed on task. “So this is all widely available?”
“Maybe not as much as skate wheels and string,” said Raley, “but close. Plus a hobbyist could probably go to his neighborhood Radio Shack and find all he needed to build his own electronic voice box.”
“Then we start calling Radio Shacks.” As Nikki said it, she knew-and they knew-it could be tail chasing. The kind of thing she’d put Sharon Hinesburg on. “We have to take every shot.”
They split off to work it, and she called after them, “And ask Detective Rhymer to reach out to the app vendors.” To Heat’s irritation, Rook stayed put. “A little busy,” she said, picking up a report.
“Well, when are we going to talk about this? And you know the ‘this’ I mean.”
She gestured to the bull pen with the file. “I doubt the Homicide Squad Room is the optimal place to talk about your romp in the South of France with an old flame.”
“No, the Homicide Squad Room is perfect. Because this is murder for me.”
“Very glib, Pulitzer Man. We’ll definitely talk. But I have enough distraction to deal with right now, and two murders to work.”
“Make it three.” They turned to Detective Feller as he made his way over from his desk. “Can’t be sure it’s your boy’s doing, but another one just turned up.” And just like that, another ball got juggled up in the air.
In the category of extended-stay, hybrid hotel-apartments, the HMS pressed the envelope. The über-hip HMS, acronym for Home Meet Stay, catered more to the actor in town for a movie shoot than the road warrior looking for a plexi cylinder of Cheerios at a breakfast bar. On the way through the dour, mood-lit lobby, Detectives Heat and Feller had to pause while Rook got snagged by an Irish rock legend who was camping there while he scored a Broadway musical. Rook freed himself with a vague promise of cocktails sometime, and they moved on to the crime scene upstairs.
A pair of uniforms stood a little taller when Heat got off the elevator on nine and walked the herringbone carpet toward their posts at an open door. Camera flashes from inside popped against their backs, briefly printing their shadows on the opposite wall.
“African-American male, age sixty to sixty-five,” recited the medical examiner on their arrival in the bedroom of the suite. “Photo ID on the deceased indicates he is one Douglas Earl Sandmann.” The top mattress had been pushed aside, and Heat and the other two had to move around the bed for a look at the victim, whose body reclined faceup on the box spring.
Feller asked, “Isn’t this the exterminator dude from those TV commercials?”
“Oh, my God, it’s Bedbug Doug,” said Rook, who then recited the deceased’s catchphrase, “ ‘We squash the competition!’ ”
“Easy, Rook, we get who he is.” Nikki turned to her friend Lauren Parry, whom she had been seeing too much of lately for the wrong reasons. “What about COD?”
“Prelim cause of death is asphyxia. But not strangled like Maxine Berkowitz. Mr. Sandmann was suffocated by a mattress.”
“Ironic on so many levels,” said Rook. “But mainly because Bedbug Doug was killed with a bed.”
Heat forgave his irreverence because Rook had made a point. “Just like the restaurant inspector being killed by a pizza oven and a Channel 3 reporter getting strangled by a TV cable.”
Detective Feller walked the room, which had not been disturbed, except for the upset bed and bedding. “If he was done here, there’s no sign of struggle.”
Dr. Parry, waiting out the body temp reading, said, “I picked up chloroform traces here on the front of his coveralls. Forensics roped off some scrape-and-drag depressions in the living room rug. They’re testing the fibers for chloroform spills.”
Heat turned to the responding officer. “Who found him?”
“Housekeeping. Manager says there’s a supermodel coming in to do a calendar shoot, and the maid was checking to make sure the apartment was ready for her.”
“So this isn’t the victim’s room?” asked Heat.
“No, but he does have a bedbug contract with the building.”
“So why was he here? Did they call him in to check out the room?”
“Manager says no. He didn’t even know the guy was up here.”
Nikki sent Feller off to interview the manager more fully, and sent the pair of unis in the hall to knock on some doors to ask if anyone heard or saw anything. Lauren completed her field testing and ballparked the time of death window between midnight and 2 A.M. “Which means,” said Rook, “that your serial killer had already murdered him when he called you this morning.”
“If this is his work,” said Nikki. “We don’t know that yet.” She crouched down and lifted the dust ruffle with her gloved hand to look under the bed.
Rook scanned the dresser and stuck his head inside the armoire housing the TV. He lifted up the Bible inside the nightstand and said, “Death, where is thy string?”
“Got it,” said Lauren Parry. They came to her side, and she indicated about an eighth of an inch of red string, barely noticeable because it was wedged between the victim’s shoulder and the box spring.
“OK to move him?” asked Nikki.
The ME said to hang on, called in the crime scene unit photographer to document the string and its position, then gave Heat a nod. She and Rook stood back while Parry and her technician rolled the body on its side. The CSU shooter positioned himself and clicked; his flash strobed at what they found underneath: a length of red string tied to a length of yellow string, tied to a length of purple string. The end of the purple string was knotted through the hole in the head of a futuristic-looking door key.
“I need you, and pronto, Heat,” called Captain Irons as she double-timed past his office door toward the squad room. In spite of her low opinion of him, as the skipper, Wally deserved a briefing. So she reversed field and caught him up on the murder of Bedbug Doug. When she’d finished and turned to go, he said, “Not done yet, Detective.” Nikki stopped, not having a second to waste, hoping he could make it quick. “Do you know the pressure I’m under? Do you know how many times I get called about bringing this to a resolution?”
“Yes, sir, I can only imagine they’re all over you at One PP.”
He made a face and shrugged. “No, actually, the commissioner knows we’re busting our humps. I’m talking about the media.”
“Seriously? This is about media pressure?”
“Listen, Heat, this has been on my mind, so I might as well get it out.” He gestured to a chair and they sat. “I know you’re spending your time on your other… more personal case. But now that we have a serial killer and people are paying attention in the press, you have to stop chasing that dog and put your focus where I need it.”
She had been waiting for this shoe to drop. She had known that her dimwit commander, who’d initially been so alarmed by Nikki’s poisoning attempt that he tried to bench her ass, would forget all that. Had known that he’d whimper about her split focus. Had known that because his coconut couldn’t hold two thoughts at once, he’d assume nobody else’s could. It pissed her off that Irons talked so casually about this “other case” when it was her own mother’s murder she was trying to solve. But as Nikki had waited for this inevitable chat to come down, she’d been forming a strategy.
Cement heads like Wally Irons had to be managed, not cornered. Heat needed to set her personal anger aside and be effective, because much more was at stake than justice for her mom. Nikki felt in her bones that something else was coming from this Tyler Wynn conspiracy. Otherwise all this new activity-including the attempt on her life-wouldn’t be bubbling up. So instead of outboxing the Iron Man, she’d outsmart him.
“Sir, although my connection to the Tyler Wynn investigation started personally, there is one thing I am dead sure of.”
“Which is?”
“That you and I are probably the only two cops in this department smart enough to see that this is all bigger than one homicide.” A white lie of flattery couldn’t hurt. In fact, it was pathetic to see how Wally lapped it up.