Irons closed the door and said, “Do you know what it’s like to sit and watch everything going on around you and not be part of it?” Her answer, especially in that moment, would not have been terribly empathic, so Heat didn’t reply. She just waited for Wally to get to his point, so she could get back to work. “I sit here sometimes and I look out there and… Well, it’s hard to sit on the sidelines. Anyhoo, I was thinking, maybe there was something you could give me to help you with.”
She thought a few seconds. “Cat burglars. Whoever crept into my apartment the other night knew how to get in and out without a trace.”
“You want me to run cat burglars through the database?”
“Yes. See who’s out of prison, any recent activities, especially around the areas the victims lived or were found.” When she said it, his face lit up. Heat would have felt better about this bolstering if he weren’t her precinct commander.
“On it,” he said as she left.
When Heat returned, she didn’t find Yardley Bell at her desk anymore. But she saw the agent across the bull pen, standing in front of her Tyler Wynn-Salena Kaye Murder Board, studying it. Rook came up behind Nikki wrapped in a smog of artificial cinnamon, stirring his oatmeal. “Hey, look who’s here.” Then his brow creased. “You two aren’t going to have a duel or anything, I hope.”
“No, we’ve sort of buried that hatchet. But still, I am not too crazy about her hanging out, surfing our board, looking over our shoulders, you know.”
“You still hate her.”
“Not at all-Much-A little. She’s just sort of an uncomfortable presence. In here. Right now. Think you could-?”
“Done.” He took a few steps and circled back. “You sure you don’t mind that I-?”
“Go.”
With mixed feelings, Nikki went to her desk, watching Rook chat up his ex: Why, Agent Bell, can I interest you in a hearty breakfast? I can zap one of these for you. Mm. Now, instant oatmeal may not be as memorable as pain perdu at Charbon Rouge, but it’s a damn sight better than those mutton-fat pies we gagged down in Chechnya.
As they walked out, chuckling, Yardley asked, “So how’s it going with the new article? I saw on your Twitter page you’re getting offers from Hollywood…”
Heat made a survey of the Murder Board to see if anything was up there she hadn’t shared with DHS, so she wouldn’t be accused of withholding. Satisfied, she decided to check in with Ochoa. Earlier she’d instructed him to call the bank that held the credit card Salena Kaye tried to use at Surety Rent-a-car. Ever since, he had been studying Kaye’s account, tracking her spending for tips to her whereabouts or anything else that would shake loose a much needed clue as the terror deadline closed in.
Detective Ochoa handed Heat a printout he had made of Salena Kaye’s credit card history. “I heard Rook and that DHS babe. Man, what’s wrong with my life? Eight years of dog hours, a joke paycheck, deadheads either barfing on my shoes or shooting at me… Writer dips his toe in for a couple months, and George Clooney’s sending him fruit baskets.”
“You realize you are talking about my boyfriend.”
“Awkward. Sorry. Just thinking out loud.”
Heat started to open the file and then closed it. “George Clooney sent Rook a fruit basket?”
“He didn’t tell you?”
Nikki dove into the file again, changing the subject. “What did you hear from Salena Kaye’s bank?”
“She opened the credit card account two months ago under her alias with a cash wire transfer to fund it as a pay-as-you-go. Banker told me, in this economy a lot of lenders are offering those for new cardholders or folks rebuilding damaged credit. You can see that the only charge on it was for the attempted truck rental. I checked out the Virginia billing address for the card. It’s for an accountant. I use the term loosely. It’s basically a skeevy mail drop.”
“Dead end?” said Heat, closing the file.
“On to the next,” he said as he moved back to Roach Central.
Pushing forward was all a detective could do. Especially when confronted by brick walls, you kept moving until you broke through. In that spirit Heat picked up her phone and called Benigno DeJesus. “Detective,” he said cheerfully, “how are you this morning?”
“I am in a forensics state of mind.” Nikki asked him to summarize the work he had done on Salena Kaye’s hideout. She had to force herself to recall that all that had happened less than twenty-four hours before. Such was the toll of a blended day after a lost night in Hastings.
The ECU detective said, “I just now got my confirmation from the laboratory. We have positive matches on the bomb materials that took out Tyler Wynn in his Sutton Place apartment. And I guess you’ve heard by now that there was no bioagent evidence in her room.”
“Yeah, I got that from DHS. The reason I’m calling is I have my fingers crossed you found something that might put me on her trail again.”
He chuckled. “You mean like a bus ticket with an address written on it in lipstick? Maybe a USPS mail-forwarding request?”
“No, huh?”
“Sorry to disappoint, Detective. She lived monastically and left no paper trail. Not even a receipt for a diner. From her garbage, it looks like she survived on microwave meals and power shakes from the gym. And you know me, I checked. We even Dumpster dived to locate her trash bags in the alley bins.”
“Yes, Benigno, I know you,” she said, unable to mask her disappointment. “Thanks, anyway.”
“No problem. Say, did you find your iPad? I left it on your kitchen counter.”
“My iPad?”
“Right. When my crew investigated your apartment yesterday, I found the tablet under your bed. Forgot to mention I left it on your counter so you’d see it.”
“I haven’t been home yet,” Nikki said. She spotted Rook coming back into the bull pen and asked DeJesus to hold. “Rook, did you leave your iPad at my place?” He opened his courier bag and fished his out. Heat uncovered the mouthpiece. “Benigno, I don’t own an iPad, and it’s not Rook’s.”
Less than an hour later it arrived at Heat’s desk, delivered in a sealed pouch by a runner from ECU, after Nikki’s super had let Benigno into her apartment to retrieve it. Detective DeJesus told her he had already dusted the iPad, so she didn’t need to worry about gloves. When she powered it up, the lock screen opened to a wallpaper photo of Joe Flynn smiling at the helm of his sailboat, with the Statue of Liberty in the background. Rook and the squad gathered around her let out a collective sigh at the chilling notion that Rainbow had also left this behind on his nocturnal visit to Gramercy Park.
“Well,” said Randall Feller, “that’s some progress. We found Flynn’s missing iPad.”
Heat managed her uneasiness by remaining analytical, her cop sense telling her this piece of intimidation could be turned into a lead if she kept her head and followed it through. “Why? What do you suppose the message is of this?” She turned to her crew as they drew seats around for an impromptu meeting. Or maybe to form a circle around her. “The string on the pillowcase made his point about my vulnerability and his power. No joke intended, but isn’t leaving this sort of overkill?”
“A control freak’s a control freak,” said Malcolm. “Simple as that.”
His partner, Reynolds, chafed at that. “Is that kind of thinking moving us forward? I don’t think so. Let’s stay curious.”
“I know what makes me curious,” said Raley. “I’m always wondering what somebody’s into. What they’ve been surfing. May I?” Heat handed him the iPad. He opened the Google app and found a string of searches for Jameson Rook.
Ochoa turned to him and said, “This Joe Flynn guy a fan, or just stalking you?”
Raley tapped the glass a few times and said, “Neither. All these searches were made after Flynn disappeared and/or died.”
“What’s the search history?” asked Rook.
“Mostly to FirstPress, your Twitter account, and… let’s see the most recent. Your Facebook page.” A few taps later, he brought up a photo. “Recognize this?”