“The picture on that Web site, FirstPress? Didn’t do you justice.”
“Oh, you saw the article,” said Rook with a sly wink to Nikki.
“Yeah, it was OK. Good story. But the writing… not exactly Shakespeare, you know?”
Rook’s smile vanished. “I think the detective has some questions for you, sir.”
“We’re going to keep the rental agreement she filled out, if that’s all right.”
“Absolutely.”
“This photocopy you made is obviously of a fake ID and an alias.”
“I pretended the copy machine was slow so I could stall her until you got here.”
“Very resourceful. Can you tell me what she was doing during that time?”
He came around the counter and stood where Salena Kaye had been. Heat made a little sketch, out of habit, and marked the spot. Sometimes these interviews were perfunctory; sometimes they yielded clues. In her experience, motivated people like Lew made good witnesses, so Nikki paid close attention. “She was mostly right here the whole time. Looking around a lot. Watching me in the back when I called you. It took two tries to reach you, and I didn’t want her to get away.”
“May I?” asked Heat. Mr. Lew stepped aside, and she stood where he had and rotated. “Looked around like this?”
He nodded eagerly. “Except she was doing this.” He repeated her move, but mimed holding a cell phone to his ear.
“She was on her phone. Did you hear anything she said? A name?”
The manager said, “She didn’t say anything, she was just holding it.”
She turned to Rook. “Go to the entrance where I came in, so I can see you coming.” He trotted out to the sidewalk and walked in the garage driveway, as Nikki had. As soon as Heat saw him, she ran to the glass door and retraced Salena Kaye’s route to the man lift, timing herself. She walked back to the office, looking thoughtful.
A patrol officer came in. “Excuse me, Detective? Got an eyewit.”
Outside the deli on Cliff Street, a bicycle messenger said he saw Salena Kaye race off in a silver minivan. “Did you get a plate?” asked Nikki.
The eyewitness shook his head. “It didn’t have any plates.”
“Was she driving?”
“Some dude.” He didn’t get a description of the driver. “I was too focused on staying alive. Van almost creamed me, booking ass out of there.”
A technician from ECU had found Salena Kaye’s shoulder bag under the deli steam table. Rook said, for the benefit of all in earshot, “She must have dropped it-when I took her down.” Heat was too busy placing the bag’s contents out on a table to pay attention.
She laid out a slim Eagle Creek travel wallet with the fake ID, a credit card in the same alias, a few hundred in cash, a popular lipstick and compact available from any drugstore, and a hotel room key with the identification tag removed. Heat also found a clip of 9mm ammunition. “A gal always needs a spare,” said Nikki as she set it beside the other items. To her gloved touch, the outer pocket of the bag felt like it held another clip, but it turned out to be a cell phone. Nikki opened Recents and saw the last call received. It matched the time Kaye had been in the rental office. Using her own cell, Heat called the squad. Hinesburg picked up.
“Hey, Nikki,” she said, the only one in the house who used her first name, a trait residing about midpoint on her list of annoying qualities, “did that tipster guy ever reach you?”
“You heard about him?”
“Yeah, some guy called and said he spotted Salena Kaye and wanted to talk to you. I started quizzing him to make sure he wasn’t a crackpot, and he got all cranked and said he couldn’t waste time and hung up on me.”
Heat recalled the rental car manager saying he made two tries to reach her. “Detective, how come you didn’t tell me?”
“I am.” And then Hinesburg actually giggled.
“Detective.”
“You mean before? I didn’t bother you earlier ’cause I thought he was a nut job.”
As she had so many times dealing with Sharon Hinesburg, Heat made a silent three-count before she continued. “You have a pen? Write this down.” Nikki recited the Recents number from Salena Kaye’s phone and asked her to run it. “And Sharon? Do call me immediately when you get the trace.”
After she hung up, Heat furrowed her brow, considered the screwup potential, then pressed the speed dial for Detective Ochoa’s cell. When he answered, she gave him the phone number and asked him to trace it. “And Miguel, don’t let Hinesburg know you’re doing this. I asked her to run it, and I’m having second thoughts about her follow-through.”
“You mean just now?” He laughed and hung up.
“You think someone called and tipped Kaye off, don’t you?” said Rook.
Heat continued to go through the shoulder bag. “Could be. Why do you ask?”
“Because back at the rent-a-car, when you asked me to go out and reenact walking in-playing the part of you-there’s no way Salena Kaye could have spotted you without you spotting her, too.”
“Not unless she has X-ray vision and saw me coming through the wall when I was on the sidewalk.” She glanced up from her bag search and gave him a smile. “That’s good deduction, Writer Boy.”
“I walked a mile in your shoes, Nikki Heat.”
“You can stop now.”
“Stopping,” he said.
“OK, here we go…” From a fold at the bottom of the shoulder bag she pulled out a small plastic card, about the size of a supermarket rewards chip. “Somebody joined a gym.” She held up the membership card with the bar code on it so he could see. “Coney Island Workout.”
Macka, the owner of the gym, paused his chore of rolling towels and stacking them in cubbies to scan the bar code on the infrared gun at Reception. “She bought a month-to-month. This who you’re looking for?” He spun the computer flat-screen toward them. Salena Kaye’s unsmiling ID photo, taken right there against the powder blue wall, stared out. But the name matched the fake credit card and license, not her real one.
“That’s her,” said Heat. “Do you have an address?”
“Sure do,” he said and brought that file up for them to see. “It’s in Fairfax, Virginia.” No surprise to Heat. She turned away to scan the gym, hoping to find someone Salena worked out with-also a long shot; Kaye would be a loner and just use the facility to keep up her battle strength. Then Macka said, “But I know where she lives. You know, she’s kind of a looker. I was waiting for my bus one night and saw her go in the Coney Crest on Surf Ave.”
On their way there, Rook said, “Excuse me, you’re not going to check in with our cousins at Homeland Security?”
Heat knew she should, but answered, “It’ll slow us down,” speaking the perfect brand of truth: the one that also functioned as camouflage for a deeper truth. Someone may have tipped off Salena Kaye about Heat’s visit to the rent-a-car. Nikki simply would not take the chance that it could happen again, and made a field decision that this raid would be lightning-quick, minimal in size, and known solely by the actual participants. She only made two calls. One to Benigno DeJesus, whose evidence collection team had finished scouring Heat’s apartment, and the other to the Sixtieth Precinct to request some uniformed officers to establish a perimeter around the motel and provide backup. Detective Heat never said for what, and nobody asked her to. Everyone just assumed it was all about the Rainbow case.
The Coney Crest fell into that subcategory of lodging known as the SRO, or single residence occupancy-a weekly transitional rental for the increasing number of unfortunate souls who’d lost their homes in a bad economy. In police shorthand, SROs also functioned as flophouses for the marginally legal and folks hiding out: shitheads, robbers, and offenders. The thing most of these places had in common was few questions asked, bad smells in the halls, and names that sounded classier than the joint.
As Heat walked the second-floor breezeway toward Room 210, a trio of uniforms crept up the far stairs to converge with her in the open hallway. She paused to look over the rail at the cloudy swimming pool where Rook waited beside the broken diving board. The Coney Crest’s manager, no constitutional scholar, never asked for a warrant. The weary man with pouched eyes simply gave Nikki his passkey, even though he pointed out that the one Heat had brought from Salena’s bag would fit 210 and about a half dozen other doors in the place.