“Did she have anything with her,” asked Heat.
“No, just her purse.”
“Did it seem particularly full or unusually heavy?”
“What a peculiar question.…No, not that I noticed.” Of course, Heat was fishing to see if Jeanne Capois’s hurry was all about getting some unknown object out of the apartment. That is, assuming that’s what the invasion was all about.
“Did she have any visitors recently or talk about anyone bothering her?”
The old woman shook her head.
Rook asked, “Do you know how she came to this particular job?”
“Oh, yes. An agency.” Then she stared and stared. So long, in fact, Nikki wondered if she was having some sort of episode. Then she came back from the ozone and said, “Happy Hazels. Knew I’d remember it.” She grinned and held up a hand, which Rook high-fived. Then Wilma squeezed her eyes tight behind her thick glasses and slapped her knee joyfully. “I’m on a roll. Something else came to me. Those young detectives showed me a photograph.”
Nikki had snapped a shot with her iPhone of the Coney Island man, Fabian Beauvais. She held it out to Wilma and traded a quick hopeful glance with Rook. “Yes, that one. I just remembered. I have seen him before, after all. This fella brought Jeanne to the apartment one night last month. Or June. I don’t know. Mr. David was away in Florida, I know that.”
Nikki calmed herself in the face of the old housekeeper’s big connection. She handed the photo to her for closer inspection. “But you are completely sure it was he?”
“Absolutely.” She tapped an arthritic finger on her temple. “Sometimes it comes late, but it always comes right.”
“How did they act? Did they seem to know each other well?” asked Rook.
“They had their tongues down each other’s throats.”
“Well enough then,” he said.
First thing the next morning, Heat addressed her squad from the Murder Board. “Thanks to a photo hit from a witness found by the Detectives Roach, we now have a solid link between Fabian Beauvais and the home-invasion homicide of Shelton ‘Shelly’ David.” Raley and Ochoa sat hunched in their chairs, each swollen-eyed and wearing the previous day’s clothes. In the gap between photos of the two dead men she posted a blowup of Jeanne Capois, vignetted from the Battery Park selfie. “Roach?”
Raley side nodded to his partner and Ochoa stood to tag in on the briefing. He ran down the findings at the crime scene, including the odd sock of a home invasion without an apparent theft.
“And you don’t think the ransack was just to cover the murder of the vic?” asked Randall Feller.
Ochoa nodded. “We were liking that. Even had Opie do the drill on the old broker through his First Precinct contact. That’s still in progress, but the game changed when we drew the missing maid’s connection to Splat Man.” Even without turning he could feel Nikki’s disapproving stare boring into him and amended, “I mean, Mr. Beauvais.” Then he faced Heat and added, “We’ve pulled Detective Rhymer off the Wall Street assignment so we can detail him to track Jeanne Capois.”
Raley joined in: “Logic being, she’s now the hot lead. Whether she has information, is in danger, or is a player. Just wanted you to know.”
Heat said the wisest thing she could have to them. “Your case, your call.”
Detective Rhymer reported that he had already started working the same agencies he’d contacted on his ID search for Beauvais. “Got her picture out to airports, transit, and subways, too. The Happy Hazels voice message says they don’t open until seven-thirty. I’ll pay them a visit then to see if they have any alternate addresses or emergency contacts on file for her.”
“Still no video around West End Avenue of the home invaders?” Heat asked Raley. And when he shook no, she said, “Have you thought about re-scrubbing those security cams for Jeanne Capois to see where she might have gone after leaving the apartment?”
“I have now.” The room chuckled, but then immediately quieted when they all saw Rook entering the bull pen for the day. He was carrying his coffee and her vanilla latte. And he was beardless.
He read the silence and said, “I miss something?”
“Yeah, like half your face, homes,” said Ochoa. “Did you at least save a lock for me?”
During the burst of catcalls and rowdiness, he handed Nikki her Starbucks and she mouthed, “I like it,” which made him smile — with lips she could actually see now. After West End Ave., they’d gotten to his loft after 1 A.M., too wired to sleep, so they carried glasses and a bottle of Hautes-Côtes de Nuits to the bathtub. He mentioned that, on the plane, he had seen a Bond Girl shave Daniel Craig in a preview of Skyfall and, after their second glass, Nikki straddled him with a razor. It wasn’t the warm water and the Burgundy that excited her (well, maybe a little). It was the thrilling intimacy of the act and Rook’s complete trust as he rested his head back on the edge of the tub while she ran sharp steel down his throat to his naked chest. Their kiss at the end gave her his old mouth back, and they finally found sleep after surprising each other with a newfound intensity.
“Welcome back, face,” she said as Rook rolled a chair over to join the meeting. Heat briefed the group on Keith Gilbert’s unannounced visit then connected the dots from the chicken slaughterhouse to the Hamptons, including the encounters with Alicia Delamater, who claimed Beauvais worked for her, not her lover.
“Nice and tidy,” said Detective Feller, giving voice to all their instincts. “Not saying there isn’t something there, but for me, coincidence is like air freshener. It only masks the odor. The trick is to know of what.” He recapped his walking tour of Flatbush, “making friends with the islander folk, and handing out business cards to anyone who’d talk to me. No hits on the mug shot or the sketches, although my gut tells me a few people recognized the dude. I’ll work it some more today.”
Heat said, “Take the picture of Jeanne Capois along, too.”
“Maybe I should stop at CVS and get one of those cute little photo albums.” His Galaxy buzzed. He checked it and held the screen out to her. “Three-four-seven area code. Could be a callback from Flatbush. Better take it.” Feller hustled off to his desk across the room for quiet. With no new clues or theories developing, Nikki released the squad to work their assignments. She refreshed her computer and found a new e-mail from Forensics at the top of her stack.
“Rook, check this out.” She turned to summon him but he was already right there on her shoulder. “You’re very stealthy when you’re clean-shaven, you know that?”
“I am all sleekness like the fabled ninja. I am made of wind and smoke, not flesh and bone. Well, except for that little trick in the bathtub, if you catch my reference.”
Nikki covered her ears. “Ew? Please? Ew?” She rotated the monitor so he could read the report along with her. Forensics had labbed clothes from Fabian Beauvais’s SRO. One pair of jeans was dappled with dried spatters and abrasion transfers of a hardened resin commonly used to shellac exterior wood as a weather seal.
“You know what this means, don’t you?” said Rook. “He shellacked shingles by the seashore. Which means Alicia Delamater lied. Her faux Moroccan eyesore is all stone with no exterior wood to speak of.”
“Slow down there. He could have picked up that shellac anywhere, not necessarily from singles on the shea — forget it. You know what I mean.”
“I do. You’re applying the transitive law of mathematical logic to tell me that C minus A does not equal B if C is not the sea. Get it? Sea?” Heat elbowed him. “Hey, read what else they found.”
But in her eagerness, she quoted the next section for him. “Spectral analysis revealed nonparallel rows of indentations, including several slight punctures of the denim at the calf of one leg. See: attached photo.”