The NCAVC analyst told Heat she had already been briefed on the case, and indeed she knew just about everything, including the colored strings. Heat said, “We’ve run this string MO through our RTCC data banks, of course, but I want to see if you get any hits on something kind of new.” She recapped the call she’d just gotten and could hear a keyboard clacking on the analyst’s end of the line as she spoke.
“Detective, can you send me WAV files of both those calls for me to scrub here?”
Nikki told her she’d attach them to an e-mail right after they hung up. “Meantime, there’s a marker we haven’t run for cross-check yet. You’ll hear it yourself at the end of today’s recording. He said he’d never had a cop this smart.”
“Oh…” The analyst felt the gravity of that, same as Heat. “I’ll bet you want me to look for intersections of serial homicides involving direct voice contact with law enforcement and get back to you with any hits.”
“This is why you do what you do,” said Nikki.
“Just helping the good guys, Detective Heat.”
At first, Nikki thought it was a hallucination. The stress she’d been under, the crazy hours she’d been keeping, things like that could bring on an episode. She rolled her chair to peek around her computer screen. Across the bull pen, inside Captain Irons’s glass fishbowl, it looked from the back like… Yes, it really was… DHS Special Agent Callan shaking hands with Wally. Wally, rising wide-eyed from his desk. Wally, whose jaw had gone slack and whose mouth gaped like an oxygen-starved goldfish, to complete the full aquarium effect of his office. Then both men turned, and the captain’s face shaded crimson, as he extended a hand to greet the lovely female guest, Agent Yardley Bell.
Frozen, Heat could only stare back when Irons gestured through the glass wall to the bull pen and the two federal agents turned her way. Nikki watched both of them smile at her. At least Bart Callan’s seemed genuine.
A minute later Nikki sat in a guest chair in the fishbowl with Irons standing beside her looking superfluous. “If you need me for anything,” said the captain.
“No, just your office will do it.” Callan looked around. “Unless you’ve got some other place we can meet privately.”
Wally added, “There’s Interrogation, you could use that.”
“We’re good here,” said Yardley Bell. They waited for Irons to read their silence. He gave a two-finger salute and left. Bell closed the door and leaned on it. Callan dragged a guest chair closer to Nikki’s and sat.
“Am I becoming old hat?” asked Heat. “Because carjacking me to your warehouse in Queens felt a little more special.”
Bell said, “Don’t feel ambushed. Agent Callan and I were in the area and thought we’d just drop in.”
“Golly.” Nikki borrowed her credulous grin from Joey on Friends.
“Wanted to ask you about Eugene Summers,” said Callan. “You and Jameson Rook spent some time at his apartment in Chelsea, and we were wondering why.”
“Are you interrogating me? Seriously?”
“Not at all. This is purely informational. We just like to close all the loops in our investigation.” He grinned. “Belt and suspenders.” He sounded about as credible as Bell’s claim about being in the neighborhood. Clearly, with this effort, they wanted something, and Heat told herself she’d better focus. As a skilled interrogator, she knew she needed to put her head in theirs and be them. What would she be after?
The code.
Could it be they were looking for the code? Or evidence one existed?
“We obviously know Summers was once run by Tyler Wynn,” continued Callan.
“So what did you talk about?” asked Bell.
“Did you ask him?” Heat asked.
“Kind of asking you,” she replied. Yardley gave Heat a soft stare, but the moment crackled with meaning. About dominance in the interview. And maybe about something else, too.
“Naturally, I wanted to know if Summers had heard from him.”
“And?”
“He hadn’t.”
“And what else?” Bell’s gaze didn’t waver.
She knew the best strategy was to tell the truth. Since Nikki would never give up the code, she did the next best thing. She told a truth. “Tyler Wynn has very specific tastes, and we wanted to get a track on him through his consumer trail. We didn’t know how far to trust Summers, so Rook used the cover of picking his brain for a magazine article to get the specifics we needed.” Heat stopped there. She’d seen so many people over-talk when they were on thin ice, when the best thing to do is get off it-and fast. She sat back in her chair and let them work.
“So this would be Rook’s version, too?” asked Callan.
Nikki shook her head derisively. “Version?” She stood and asked them to follow her.
The pleasure Heat hoped to get out of putting it in the agents’ faces by leading them inside Rook’s retail tracking center was quickly offset by his reaction to seeing Yardley Bell. And hers to seeing him. Nikki couldn’t write a clear caption to their expressions. Was it just the way old lovers looked at each other, or were these the smiles of unfinished business? She stepped right between them and said, “This is the makeshift command post Rook has set up with Detective Rhymer to pick up Wynn’s consumer trail.”
“Quaint,” said Agent Bell.
Heat said to Rook-and pointedly, “I was telling the agents how you and I met with Eugene Summers for the purpose of getting this enterprise going.”
“That’s right,” he said. “And we’ll see how polite the Maven of Manners is after he finds out his in-depth interview wasn’t for any article.” Smart. Even if Rook hadn’t picked up on her cautionary note, he knew enough to be circumspect.
Yardley Bell said, “I’d like to see what your process is, Jamie.” She turned to the others. “Could you give us a moment?”
Heat didn’t like getting split up. Not tactically, not personally. But when Rhymer slid out with his Diet Pepsi and half-eaten club, Callan held the door for Nikki. She hesitated and left, too.
Alone again in the captain’s glass house, Heat said, “So, was divide and conquer part of your drop-in strategy?”
“For the record, it wasn’t my idea to come here to brace you.”
“Who’s running your case, Agent Callan?”
“It gets complicated. It’s my office, my control, but Agent Bell packs major Beltway clout. She Bigfoots my whole day whenever she gets a wild hair.” He threw his palms open. “And here we are.”
“This is why I told you I didn’t want to get tangled up inside your little investigative community,” she said.
“I want to talk to you some more about that.”
“You can save it.”
“What if I said I agree with you?” He waited while she had time to absorb that surprise. “That’s right. I’ve been giving it some thought since our cocktails the other night, and I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to be on this team.”
She studied him warily. “Just like that, you change your mind?”
“More like a change of heart.” He rolled his chin to the glass like he didn’t want an interruption. Or scrutiny, maybe. “Heat, I think I’m feeling a little personal about you, and that wouldn’t be good for a close working relationship.”
“Right,” she said immediately, but then felt at a loss; not prepared for this, not at all.
One teenage summer on Cape Cod she had gotten it in her head to teach herself to windsurf. Starting after breakfast and going until sundown, Nikki’s day did not become the blissful, athletic sail she had envisioned. Instead, it devolved into a relentless series of crashes, spills, and wipeouts punctuated by mere seconds of balance until a sudden gust or rogue wave pitched her into another endo. Nikki stared at Bart Callan and wondered how her entire life had become like that day. Of all the curves she’d been thrown lately, of all the complications she had pulling at her, this one could be the most damaging. She sensed jeopardy if she mishandled this.