But Petar was trying to seed her with doubt. Nobody else had heard him admit to the murders any more than anyone else would know if she had shoved him in front of that train. If she couldn’t find physical proof that would stand up in court, Petar Matic would walk. Keenly aware of those stakes, he played his ace card. “I have something you want, you know.”
If she blinked and showed interest she would lose ground, and that could be the beginning of the unraveling of this case. So Heat remained stoic. She betrayed no tells and said nothing.
“And maybe it’s not just information about your mother’s killing. Or the other one.” He tossed it off as if these murders were just inventory items to be noted then dismissed from reflection. “Something is coming. It’s big and it’s bad. This has been in the works for ten years-if that period creates a context in any way for you.” His allusion to the decade that bookended the two stabbings was his way of teasing her interest without admitting guilt. Petar was smart. Nikki had to be smarter.
Without taking the negotiation bait, she said, “If you know Something about a pending crime, you are obligated to share that information.”
“Sound advice, Detective. Maybe I will.” He flashed her his arrogant grin again and said, “I guess that depends on the right arrangement.”
Irons was in the Ob Room with Rook when she came through the air lock from Interrogation. The captain rushed over to Nikki. “You’re not really going to bargain with this creep, are you?”
Heat glanced up at the wall clock. “What are you doing here after midnight, Captain?”
“I heard you nabbed our man and I wanted to be here.” She noticed he was freshly shaved and dressed in his duty uniform, with extra starch in the white shirt. Wally had taken time to get himself camera-ready. “You’ve got him to rights, don’t you?”
“Not that simple. He told me he murdered both victims, but it’s my word against his, unless we button him down hard. Even beyond that, there are things we need to know that his cooperation will bring to light.”
Irons scoffed. “Sure. And long as you’re letting him call the tune, why don’t you just spring him?” And when he remembered who else was in the room, he said to Rook, “Don’t print that.”
“Never heard it, Captain.”
“Petar is not going to spring anywhere, sir. I just think the prudent course is to take a breath, bide our time, and confer with the DA first thing in the morning.”
Irons said, “You just want to drag this out so you can satisfy your own personal curiosity about every little detail and loose end about your mother.”
Heat said, “Listen to me, Captain, nobody wants to see this guy sent away forever more than I. But that means getting it right so he doesn’t walk because someone got hasty and sloppy. We have him. Our job now is to make it stick.” Irons started to interrupt, but she plowed right over him. “And what if he’s not posturing? What if he does know something that will help us arrest conspirators and prevent someone else from getting killed? Do you call that just a loose end?”
She didn’t wait for Irons’s permission. Nikki opened the door to the hallway where a pair of uniforms waited on post. “Take my prisoner down to Holding.”
It felt like any normal workday in the bull pen, except it was coming up on two A.M. on the biggest night of Heat’s career as a detective. Nikki had Ochoa hitting the phones, extending her initial APB on Tyler Wynn to CIA, DHS, and Interpol, as well as making sure the spy’s name and image made all airport checkpoints plus Amtrak police and Port Authority PD. She’d sent Feller and Rhymer to search Petar’s apartment with special instructions to quarantine all documents, receipts, photos, and computer data. Detective Hinesburg was MIA again, so Heat put Detective Raley on scrubbing those OCME security tapes that had been sitting around to see if they could get a face to go with the gas truck driver who’d sabotaged the toxicology test. No detail of the case existed in isolation for her anymore. Every thread they could eventually connect to Petar would keep him from walking.
Rook came over to Nikki’s desk when she hung up her phone. “Malcolm and Reynolds checked in while you were on your call, so I took the message for you. Let’s see if I got all this. They said they’re glad you’re not dead… At least I think that’s what they said.” He shrugged. “Oh, well. And then they gave me an update on the Forensics work at Carter Damon’s storage unit. How’m I doing?”
“Ass like yours, you could be my personal secretary anytime. What’s up with the van?”
“They found a set of work boots in it. Size eleven, same as the kind that stomped through Nicole’s apartment. Lab will check them for a carpet fiber match.”
Nikki moved over to the Murder Boards, where she made a notation for the boots next to the other data for the Bernardin apartment. “What else?”
“Traces of blood in the cargo area inside the van. Malcolm said he knew you’d be all over that, and assured you that DeJesus is handling that personally.” He waited while she logged “Blood/DNA” on the board, and then he continued, “Finally, they have good lifts off all surfaces and door handles. They’re running fingerprint IDs now.”
When she capped her marker, he asked, “So who were you on with so long?”
“Prefecture of Police in Paris, France.”
“That’s a toll call, you know.”
“Worth every penny.” He followed her back to her desk and she picked up her notes. “Get this. No record of any attack on Tyler Wynn. No record of his death. No record of him being in the Hopital du Canard. No record of him leaving the country.”
Rook stroked his chin. “Were we even there?”
“No. Not according to hospital records or detectives in Boulogne-Billancourt. They never spoke to us. It never happened.” She tossed her notes on the desk.
“How are you bearing up?”
“It’s like a Road Runner cartoon. I’m fine, as long as I don’t stop and look down.” She touched his arm. “And how about you? How’s your poor wrist after grinding on that bolt half the night?”
“Hey, five more minutes and I would have cut through that thing. How do they make it look so easy on Storage Wars?”
“Real life is never like TV,” she said.
“Especially reality shows.”
Nikki’s phone rang and she picked it up. “Homicide, Detective Heat.” The color left her face. She dropped the phone on her desktop and rushed to the door.
Rook chased after, “What’s wrong?”
“Everything.”
Heat didn’t wait to use the lockbox. She just handed her Sig to the guard as she raced into Holding. Sprinting past cells of drunks, burglars, and public urinators, she arrived at the back where the isolation cell door stood open and three officers in blue gloves knelt over Petar.
He had pitched forward off his bunk and lay sprawled on his back with a fresh, open gash in his forehead where his head had smacked the concrete. His eyes bulged in their sockets, and his skin was deep purple with crimson webs of capillaries coloring it. His tongue looked blue enough to be called black and protruded from his open mouth from a pool of froth that capped a trail of pungent, bloody vomit that ran down his neck and onto the floor. The crotch of his orange coveralls was drenched with his urine and his bowels had released in death.
The officers rose up from him. One ran out, clutching his mouth. Nikki found herself taking an unconscious step back and bumped into Rook. One of the uniforms said, “We tried to CPR him, but he was gone by the time we got the cage unlocked.”
“Did anyone see what happened?” she asked.
She was speaking to the officers, but one of the other prisoners said, “He just got his dinner and started retching something fierce.” The prisoner added a demonstration, but Nikki turned away to survey the cell.