“You mean from staking out adulterers at hot sheet motels for a three-hundred-dollar per diem?” He joined Rook and admired the spring day with him. “I’d say fine art recovery has made life a little easier. Plus I don’t feel like I need a shower after I cash the check.”
Before Joe Flynn climbed to elite ranks and the express elevators that came with them, Nikki’s mom had been the subject of one of his adultery investigations-commissioned by Nikki’s dad. Worried about Cynthia Heat’s increasingly secretive life, her husband hired Flynn in 1999 because he suspected his wife was having an affair. Flynn never found evidence of infidelity, but he did have stakeout photographs of Nikki’s mom which could be useful now in her search for Tyler Wynn.
Just as Nikki sidled up beside them, unable to resist the view of the Empire State Building and, in the distance, between skyscrapers, a sliver of Staten Island, Rook got a cell phone call and excused himself to take it. As soon as the door closed, Joe Flynn said, “Lucky man.” Nikki turned to find him staring at her like a beaming hopeful on Antiques Roadshow awaiting the appraiser’s verdict. Nikki wished her phone would ring, too. Instead she switched topics.
“I appreciate you digging for those photos.”
“Oh, right.” Flynn produced a thumb drive from his pocket and rolled it on the fingers of one hand, not teasing but not yet giving it to her, either. “I looked for the man and woman whose pics you texted me last week,” he said, referring to the images she’d sent of Wynn and his accomplice, Salena Kaye. “Didn’t see them in here.” And then he grinned at her again, adding, “Your mother was a beautiful woman.”
“She was.”
“Just like her daughter.”
“Thank you,” she said as neutrally as possible.
He finally read the signs and handed over the memory key. “May I ask who they are? The pair you’re looking for?”
“Sorry, I’d like to, but it’s a confidential police matter.”
“Can’t blame me for asking. Curiosity comes with the job description, right? Can’t switch it off.”
Oh, did Nikki hear that.
Heat hoped to find more in those photos than something to spark leads on Tyler Wynn and Salena Kaye. She also sought a clue to solve her big secret.
A few weeks ago, Nikki had stumbled upon a series of strange pencil notations her mother had left embedded in her sheet music. She believed it was a coded message. The dots, lines, and squiggles followed no pattern she recognized. Nikki had Googled Morse code, Egyptian hieroglyphs, the Mayan alphabet, even urban street graffiti, all to no avail. To satisfy her police objectivity, she’d even researched to determine if the symbols were simply shorthand for how to play the music. All she found was another dead end.
She needed help to crack it, but, acutely mindful of its sensitivity-this code could be why Tyler Wynn had her mother killed-Heat knew she had to keep it secret. Absolutely secret. She weighed the notion of telling Rook about it, knowing Mr. Conspiracy would throw his body, soul, and hyperactive imagination into breaking that code. But Nikki decided to hold on to it herself, for now. This wasn’t just a secret.
This secret was deadly.
After their meeting at Quantum Recovery, Heat signed her and Rook out at the lobby security desk. She took a step toward the Avenue of the Americas exit but sensed Rook lagging. “Change of plan,” he said. “That call? Jeanne Callow, you know, my agent?”
“Gym rat, too much makeup, Jeanne the Machine, that Jeanne Callow?”
He smiled at her snarkiness and continued, “The same. Anyway, I’m going to hoof it to her office on Fifth so we can plan publicity for the new article.”
A familiar claw dug into Nikki’s diaphragm, but she smiled and said, “No problem.”
“Catch up with you at your place tonight?”
“Sure. We can go over these pictures?”
“Um, yuh. We can do that.”
Heat drove back to the precinct alone, reaffirming her instinct to withhold the code from Rook.
Nikki shot a tense look from her desk across the bull pen and once again felt torn between her big case and another homicide. The team of detectives she’d called in on the Conklin murder sat cooling their heels because she was late for her own meeting. Desperately trying to get a lead on Tyler Wynn, Heat had thought she could squeeze in this call before the squad briefing but found herself stalled by a gatekeeper. “This is my fourth attempt to reach Mr. Kuzbari,” she said, trying not to let her anger seep through. “Is he aware this is an official inquiry from the New York Police Department?”
Fariq Kuzbari, security attaché to the Syrian Mission to the UN, had been one of her mom’s piano tutoring clients. Heat had tried to interview him weeks ago, but he and his armed goons rebuffed her. She wasn’t about to give up. A man the likes of Fariq Kuzbari could well shed some light on a spook colleague the likes of Tyler Wynn.
“Mr. Kuzbari is out of the country for an indefinite period. Would you like to leave another message?”
What Nikki would have liked to do was throttle her desktop with the phone and shout something very undiplomatic. She counted a silent three and said, “Yes, please.”
Heat hung up and caught a few antsy glances from her squad. On her way to the front of the room, she started wording her apology for keeping them waiting, but by the time she reached the whiteboard and turned to face them, the homicide squad leader had decided her call and the delay were police business. Screw John Lennon, she thought. Then Detective Heat dove right in.
“OK, so we’re looking at Roy Conklin, male, age forty-two…” Heat began, running down the basics from the crime scene. After placing on the board blowups of the victim’s ID photo and a color head shot cropped from the Health Department Web site, she continued. “Now, there are a few wrinkles in this death, to say the least. Beginning with the condition and placement of the body. A pizza oven is not involved in your everyday homicide.”
Detective Rhymer raised a hand. “Do we know yet whether he was killed in the oven, or if it was used just to dispose of the body?”
“Good question,” said Heat. “OCME is still testing to determine both cause and time of death.”
Detective Ochoa said, “We did get word from the ME that traces of chloroform were found on the front of the victim’s jacket.” Heat whipped her head his direction. She hadn’t known that. Her mind shot back to a missed call from Lauren Parry while she was in the thick of it with the Syrian Mission. The medical examiner’s boyfriend gave Nikki a small nod. Ochoa had her back.
“So…” Nikki picked up her rundown quickly, “it’s possible Mr. Conklin was either chemically subdued at the crime scene, or else beforehand, and transported. Until we know COD, we won’t know if he went in the oven alive or dead. If he was alive, we can only pray he was totally unconscious from the chloroform.” The room stilled as the cops contemplated Roy Conklin’s last moments.
She resumed. “The other wrinkles are the unburned items on and near the body.” She recited each as she posted Forensic photos on the board: “The lanyard and ID around his neck; his folded jacket; and the coil of red string with the dead-unbaked-rat beside it. At the very least, this bizarre MO suggests kinkiness, revenge, or a message killing. Let’s not forget, he was a restaurant health inspector, not only killed in a restaurant-potentially by one of its pieces of equipment. The placement of the rat plus the preservation of his DHMH badge mean something. Exactly what, we need to find out.”
Ochoa reported that the unis had come up zero on neighborhood eyewits. And his visit to Conklin’s apartment revealed no signs of struggle, burglary, or anything. The building super said Conklin’s wife was away on a business trip, and the super gave him a cell number. Raley had found a half dozen surveillance cams in the area and was poised to begin his video surfing. Feller, back from the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, had spoken to Conklin’s supervisor, who characterized him as a model employee, using terms like “motivated” and “dedicated” and calling him “one of those rare types who lived the job and never went off the clock.”