“I do.”
“Get it to me. I’ll be able to give you an answer in the morning.”
In her dream state, Nikki assumed that the tempo of the dew plink on her windshield had picked up until she opened her eyes to find one of the DHS agents softly rapping his knuckle on her side window. “Sorry, Detective, I tried not to startle you,” he said when she got out and stretched an unappeasable back cramp. “We finally found his cell phone.”
The evidence bag with the phone inside it sat on the galley table between Agents Callan and Bell in the RV command center. After walking more than four hours of grids in the woods, the flashlight team Heat had squinted at in her doze had located it not far from Nikoladze’s ATV escape path. “Mind if I see it?” asked Heat.
Yardley Bell pinched a corner of the plastic bag and handed it over to Nikki. While Heat unsealed the pouch, Bell said, “Oh, we ran a Customs check on the nutty professor. Vaja Nikoladze made three trips to Russia this year.”
“Probably accessed the smallpox culture there somehow and smuggled it out to grow here.” Nikki held up the phone. “Anybody got a stylus? I don’t want to touch the screen.” The communications geek at the console whipped his out with fast-draw speed and seemed quite pleased with himself. Holding the phone in her gloved hand, Heat opened the window for Recents.
“We’re way ahead of you,” said Bell. “Vaja got a call about forty-five minutes before the raid. We’re running the number now.”
Nikki looked at it and slipped the phone back into the bag. “You don’t need to. I know this number. It’s a burner. The same one somebody used to call Salena Kaye at the rent-a-car.” Heat zip-sealed the evidence bag then gave voice to what she had suspected ever since Tyler Wynn’s bomb went off. “Someone is tipping off our perps.”
SIXTEEN
Rook surprised Nikki in the Homicide Squad Room with a change of clothes when she rolled in just before six. “I fantasized about you in these butt-cupping jeans and your brown leather jacket to fight crime today,” said Rook. “I couldn’t find your Wonder Woman bulletproof bracelets at my place, though, so if you encounter any automatic weapons fire, you’re going to have to rely on your lightning reflexes.”
“Thanks, Rook, that’s sweet.”
“I just figured after a night in the field you’d want to tidy up. Oh, I also brought you a latte. Just how you like it. Sugar-free, two pumps of strychnine.”
After she changed, Nikki filled him in on the discoveries up in Hastings-on-Hudson, ending with the phone tip-off. Even though they had the bull pen to themselves, he lowered his voice. “So that pretty much sucks. How do you think the information is getting out to all our suspects?”
“Not so much a how, Rook, as a who.” Then, she said, “I was thinking on my drive down. Would I be too pushy to ask, where the hell is Puzzle Man?”
“Probably still working it.”
“Probably?”
“Right. I’ll see if I can encourage him.”
Nikki met with each detective over the next few hours to get an update on case progress. It felt like anything but. Salena Kaye had gone underground and Rainbow had gone strangely silent. “At least he hasn’t killed anyone else,” said Detective Malcolm.
“Considering Heat’s next, I think we can call this a win, so far,” added Reynolds.
Rook caught her eye and they met up in the kitchen. “Puzzle Man gave me the old ‘I was just about to call you’ BS. No matter. He says he may be close to something.”
“Really…” Nikki had been disappointed enough recently that her skepticism overshadowed her optimism. “Any hints?”
“No spoilers. And that’s a quote. But I twisted his arm, and he says he can meet us tonight. Café Gretchen at seven-thirty.”
“Great.”
“Although for him that could be nine. The one thing Puzzle Man can’t seem to figure out is how to read a clock.”
“You leave me brimming with confidence,” she said, and left him to microwave his container of instant oatmeal.
On her return to the bull pen Heat hesitated in the doorway, taken aback to find the visitor sitting beside her desk. “Agent Bell?”
“Good morning. Although, it sort of feels like the days and nights have melded, doesn’t it?” Her smile seemed genuine enough, but Nikki approached Yardley Bell with healthy caution.
“Kinda.” Heat allowed a neutral smile; no harm being civil to see where this was going. “What’s up?”
“Brought you a peace offering.” She indicated the coat rack behind Nikki, where the blazer she had left for testing at DHS hung on a hanger. “And relax, our lab has certified it as non-lethal.”
“Thank you.”
“As is that piece of orange string you sent over. It came back negative for smallpox.” Which left Heat still wondering where she could have picked it up. “I also have some news for you. Is this a good place?”
Heat surveyed her bull pen full of cops working phones and computers, and sat in her task chair. “Works for me.”
“First, forensics. We not only put our lab on priority turnaround, we have the capability of starting some of this process in the vans, on-scene and in-transit.” Agent Bell didn’t take out a file, a pad, or even an iPad. She did, however, elevate her gaze slightly above Nikki’s hairline occasionally, as if reading bullet points in the air. “Fingerprints. In addition to Nikoladze’s, we scored several lifts from Tyler Wynn down in the lab. Also one from Agent Bernardin.” A sense of tainted relief enveloped Nikki. Putting the three people together in that basement tied the elements, albeit in disquieting affirmation. Bell moved on to her next bullet. “The cage. More prints there. Bernardin. Salena Kaye. That crooked cop.”
“Carter Damon?”
“Yes. And Petar Matic. These IDs came quickly since they’re all in the database.” Out of habit, Heat made notes. Bell waited for her to catch up. “That dried blood on the cage does match type for Nicole Bernardin. We can’t get an exact match for her yet due to the sabotage of her toxicity lab work at OCME. But there’s also a fiber match to her clothing, so we’ll be able to run a DNA on that just to close all the loops.” She paused and looked up. “Oh. We also have a positive match for the lab solvent that was used to disinfect Bernardin’s skin.”
Nikki reflected on the cage, the drain in the floor, and Nicole Bernardin’s awful fate after discovery-caged, killed, and then baptized in a cleanser by Satan’s own. Heat said, “So we have confirmed she was murdered there. That’s good to know. Unfortunately that doesn’t move us forward with new info.”
“This does. We got the same reading from her clothes as your blazer. Smallpox. Consider yourself up to the moment on the forensics.”
“Good. And I do appreciate this new sense of cooperation.”
Agent Bell shrugged. “You and I got off on the wrong foot from day one. Last night’s little… confrontation… got me thinking about that. This is me just wanting to see if we can stay close and avoid any more conflict. Especially considering my last piece of intel.” She made a perimeter check and lowered her voice. “One of our deep-cover informants from one of the jihadist terror cells in New Jersey says he was contacted earlier this week by Salena Kaye.”
“So you’re calling this a Muslim extremist terror plan?”
“Not necessarily. He confirms from his other undercover sources that Ms. Kaye has been making the rounds of numerous affiliations. She’s basically shopping for a martyr she can recruit to deliver the punch.”
“Has she found anyone?”
“Don’t know. We only know one thing. We know it’s happening Saturday.”
Nikki felt a chilliness blow through her at the narrowing of the strike window. What had been two or three days to stop this calamity had been given a haircut to two. Heat and Bell held eye contact, one absorbing the alarming implications the other had already processed.
“Excuse me, ladies.” Captain Irons appeared, standing over them. “Heat? My office?”