“And about the jerk chicken pop-up stores.”
“Yes. But when you tell me something is between us, it stays between us.”
“Then how did Yardley know?”
“No clue. But I can look you square in the eye and tell you it wasn’t me?”
They held each other’s stare. After a few seconds her phone buzzed with a text.
“Is that my lie detector result?” he asked.
“Don’t need one. Lucky for you, pal, I trust you.” She held up the phone. “Glen Windsor’s out of surgery. Want to come?”
“You bet.” Rook stood up and got out his cell. He gave Heat a sly grin and said, “Let me call Yardley first.”
The uniform stationed outside Glen Windsor’s private room on the second floor gave Rook an appraising once-over as they arrived just before midnight. “It’s all right, she’s with me, Officer,” Rook said. The cop actually laughed and, following Heat’s nod, gestured them both to pass.
They found the prisoner with his bandaged leg up on a pillow, watching NY1 news on the overhead. He didn’t seem surprised by Heat’s visit but said, “Wow, Jameson Rook, too. Am I going to be featured in your next article?”
“Absolutely. I’m doing one on excrement.”
“You’ll pardon me if I don’t get up.” He tugged at the manacle that cuffed him to the bed rail. “But I can still wave hello.” He gave Rook the finger and laughed. Nikki switched off the TV. “Hey, come on, I’m the lead story. I want to see it again.”
“You’ll be hearing about it for some time, Windsor,” she said.
Rook added, “Like the rest of your life.”
“Hey, why the disrespect, Rook? It’s not like you’re the one I was trying to kill.” He grinned. “Allegedly.”
As Heat drew over a chair she eye-signaled Rook to ease up, and he took a spot leaning his shoulder against the doorjamb. “How’s the leg?” she asked Windsor.
“You need some time on the range to requalify, Detective.”
“I put it right where I wanted it, believe me. If I’d killed you, we never could have had this chance to chat.” She took a seat and gave him some silence in an attempt to claim the meeting. Detective Rhymer had e-mailed Windsor’s file to her and Nikki opened the printout she’d made downstairs at Hospital PD. “Our detectives turned up some interesting things at your apartment.”
“Yeah?”
“Let’s start with the electronic box that alters voice pitch over the phone.”
Windsor scoffed. “I only use that to order pizzas. You’d be surprised how fast they deliver when Darth Vader places the call.”
Nikki decided to ignore the glib distractions and continued. “In your desk they found numerous files of clippings about me. Not just that cover story from last fall’s magazine-heavily underlined and highlighted. Also articles about cases I’ve worked over the past few years and photos of me-and not clipped. We checked your camera. They were taken by you without my knowledge. Pictures of me in the supermarket, pictures of me jogging, pictures of me taken through windows into my apartment.”
“What can I say? I’m a fan.”
“Your computer history shows a ton of searches for me, for Rook, and others in my life, including my parents, coworkers, even criminals I have arrested.”
“Detective, everybody clips articles and searches shit that interests them on their computers. It’s not like I have this secret closet with your pictures plastered all over it.”
“No, that would be nutty,” said Rook. Nikki flattened him with a glower, and he stared at the floor.
When Heat turned back to Windsor, he said, “He doesn’t get it. Calling it nutty.”
“What do you call it?” she asked.
“Preparation.” He held her gaze a moment, letting that settle before he continued. “I learned about you in his first article. You know, Crime Wave Meets Heat Wave? I read it over and over and thought, This one… this detective… is different. A challenge.” The words twisted Heat’s solar plexus as she recalled the other detectives Windsor had engaged over the years. And killed. Now she was designated as “this one.” He watched her from his pillow and must have known exactly what she was processing because he said, “I decided last fall I would test myself with you, but it wasn’t until I saw the online teases for Rook’s new article about you that I said I’d better get moving.”
He stopped there, leaving Nikki time to reflect on a psychopath’s classic need to share-or even claim-the limelight of his fixation. “Tell me what you mean by that, to get moving.”
“I wanted to test you when the article came out. When you had everyone’s attention. When there’d be heat around Nikki.” He grinned. “Tell me I don’t have a poet’s touch.”
Heat’s temper sat one inch from breaking the surface, and she struggled not to lose it with this guy. But her objective-even more immediate than building a case against a serial killer-was only one thing: Nikki needed to learn whatever information he had tortured out of Salena Kaye so she could stop the bioterror plot. “Tell me about the conversation you had with the dead lady in the helicopter.”
“Now? I really wanted to see Ferguson’s monologue tonight.”
Letting her rage explode wouldn’t get her anywhere. She decided the time had come to get under his skin for a change. And Heat believed she knew the soft spot where the knife would go in.
As soon as Glen Windsor came on the radar as a suspect, she had unleashed Malcolm and Reynolds to do a biographical search on him. Heat held the results in her lap. She picked up the single page she hoped would tip the balance her way. “You like being a locksmith, Glen?”
“What’s that supposed to mean? It’s a job. It pays my way.”
“Yeah, but you? A… locksmith?” Nikki had respect for every trade, but for this purpose, she put a shit stank on the job title. He shifted slightly on the hospital bed and examined his fat bandage. “Not what you had in mind, was it?” His eyes flicked over when she played with the page in her hand. Nikki waited to milk the moment and said, “We did some research-yeah, we do computer searches, too-and know what popped up? You were dismissed from the NYPD Police Academy.”
“That’s ancient history,” he blurted, not sounding like it was archive material, at all.
“Maybe so, but it’s kind of interesting. According to records, you got bounced because you failed the psychological evaluation.”
“That’s a fucking rigged test.” His breathing became more rapid. Wilding flashed in his eyes. “You ever seen that test?”
“I have,” she answered quietly. “I took it myself. Passed.” She delivered that with a smile and let it sit there. “The thing about the psych eval? The deficient ones never think it’s valid.”
His manacles clanged against the stainless bar as he tried to sit up. “Hey, fuck you. Deficient, my ass. I was too smart for those losers at the Academy. They were threatened by my special gifts and set me up to get bounced. Jealous shits.”
“Bet you would have made a great detective, otherwise.”
“Fuckin’-A right.”
“Except I see the NYPD wasn’t the only place you failed. I don’t have all of them here, Glen, but there’s a short list of you washing out as an investigator at several top security firms and then a sort of descending curve of gigs until you landed at… locksmith.” Then she added, “Oh, and security systems. So you did have that going to keep the dream alive.”
“This is bullshit. I know what I can do. I know who I am. I know my destiny. I am smarter than all those assholes, and I’ve proved it.”
Rook chimed in. “By ambushing Bedbug Doug?”
“Hey, fuck you, too.”
Heat didn’t mind the gang pile this time. “Rook’s got a point.”
“The fuck he does.”
“Is that what your destiny’s all about?” she continued. “Sneaking up on innocent people pretending you’re better than they are?”