Nikki kept hoping for the lightbulb clue that explained everything, but all she kept getting were these orphan leads that confused more than clarified. She told herself to be patient, that she just hadn’t gotten the story yet. And that, at the end of the day, it would all make sense. As long as she didn’t lose heart and give up the hunt.
And then, she asked a basic question. “You got this in e-mail. From whom?”
He told her without hesitating. Like it was nothing. Like it was a no-brainer. “Raley shipped it over.”
“…Raley. Just shipped it over, you mean, like it was just lying around?”
“No, of course not. He had some free time, and I asked him to scrub some security video.” He tilted his head toward her. “Is this an issue?”
“Only that Detective Raley doesn’t have any free time because he works for me doing the assignments I give him.”
“OK, so it’s an issue.”
“Irons banished you from the precinct.”
“Which is why I called Raley instead of going in myself. There’s no quit in me, Nikki Heat.”
“And did it occur to you that I might need to sign off on you poaching my detectives for your personal use?”
“Agreed. But last night when I got the tip from Beauvais’s friend Hattie about this…” he gestured to his screen “…you were busy playing Bob the Builder with your attackers, and I couldn’t reach you. So I called Rales and asked a fave. Is that really so wrong?”
An ache cinched her back muscles like barbed wire drawing tight. It didn’t come from her street skirmish. Just days ago Heat thought Rook was going to give her an engagement ring. Now he was giving her fits. Knowing a crossroad when she’d reached one, Nikki decided she had plenty of battle in front of her without opening a flank with Rook. For the greater good Nikki knew she had to eat it — to do what she did so well — which was to compartmentalize her feelings for the sake of the job. So she shrugged it off.
But there was one conversation she needed to have.
Since the radio car had been assigned to her anyway, Heat hitched a ride in the blue-and-white from Tribeca up to Chelsea. The officers thanked her for the French roast, joking that she had spoiled them for mystery muck they get from the street cart. When they dropped her at the same corner where she had been attacked barely ten hours before, Nikki declined their escort offer. But, as she walked past the driveway of the housing project, which was still wet from the blood hosing it got from CSU, she glanced back and got a wave from both unis as they kept watch from their patrol unit.
Raley and Ochoa looked a little bewildered when they pulled up in front of the brownstone on West Sixteenth to find Heat standing there waiting for them. The ambush had kept her from checking out the address Jeanne Capois had written on the grocery receipt, so Roach had offered to take the assignment that morning. But Nikki decided to show up, too. She had a reason to pull her surprise visit.
She crouched on the sidewalk beside the Roach Coach. Raley rolled down his passenger window and said, “Heard you had a night.”
“Let me think…Oh, right.”
From behind the wheel, Ochoa joined in the Downplay Game. “Listen, I need some carpentry done. You work on wood or just human flesh?”
The ball having sufficiently been tossed around the infield, they popped the latches on their doors. “Sit tight,” she said, causing her detectives to exchange more puzzled glances. “Change of plan. I’m taking this interview. I want you guys to run checks on these two.” She gave them the printout she’d made at Rook’s of the ATM screen grab. “Of course, that’s Fabian Beauvais in the background, but I want to know everything about the pair up front.” She paused and leveled a meaningful stare at Raley. “Sean, I understand you are already familiar with this photo after having done some freelance work for Rook without authorization.”
He blushed. “Hey, I was at the station late, anyway. It was Rook, so I thought…” he read her unhappiness and let it trail off. His partner wasn’t so cowed.
“What’s the problem here? Guy’s doing his job, helping out.”
Heat turned to him, quiet, but firm. “Are we debating this? We’re not debating this.” He blew some air and squeezed the steering wheel while both men looked straight ahead at nothing over the hood of the car. “Point made, it’s all good. You’ve got your assignment. Let’s meet up at the Murder Board in an hour.”
The Roach Coach departed without a word or a nod. Great, she thought as she watched it drive off; now they were both pissed at her. Kind of like she was at herself.
Waiting, buzzing, then waiting again, no answer came to Heat’s vestibule call up to Apartment Three. After pressing the other apartment buttons on the aluminum panel with no response, she rang up the building superintendent. He lived at another property on Bleecker Street, so she waited fifteen minutes while he made it up from his Greenwich Village neighborhood. Not too many years ago, she would have phoned the tenant, but, as was more often the case in digital times, there was no landline listed to the place. The super accompanied her to the door with his ring of keys and stood by while she knocked. Nikki announced, “NYPD, please open up,” knocked again, then put an ear to the door but heard nothing. She also sniffed, however, but got no telltale decay odor.
The super advanced to the lock but Heat signaled him to step aside, which he did, taking three steps back. With one hand on the butt of her Sig, Nikki turned the lock and pushed the door wide open. Once again she said, “NYPD.” This time it echoed off the bare hardwood floors and empty walls of the apartment.
The super peered in and said, “What the fuck?”
Nobody home. Not even a home.
The homicide bull pen at the Twentieth was shy one detective when Nikki Heat began her morning briefing. She had already phoned ahead to dispatch Randall Feller to Brooklyn to pick up Dr. Ivan, expatriate physician and auto-parts courier. If Zach Hamner wanted to cover his ass with a sworn statement about treating Fabian Beauvais’s gunshot wound and hearing him name Commissioner Gilbert as his shooter, she was happy to provide the paper. Knowing Feller’s weariness over bridge and tunnel runs, she’d told him to look at the bright side. “Hurricane’s coming. How many times can you go to a doctor’s office and pick up new wiper blades?” He actually laughed as he hung up.
She began her meeting with good news. “I’m getting my search warrant for Keith Gilbert’s gun, which is registered to his address in Southampton. I’ll be driving out there as soon as the physical docs arrive. It’s taking forever because every lawyer in the DA’s office is scrutinizing it to make sure the language is Dream-Team-proof.” Even though she felt upbeat about the warrant, the mood of the bull pen was mixed. Rhymer seemed fine, but Raley and Ochoa were still in a sulk. Nikki attempted to lighten things up. “Roach, I think I saved you boys some wheel spinning.” They were attentive but passive when she recounted her visit to the vacant apartment in Chelsea, and it was Rhymer who raised a hand.
“Did you get an ID on the tenant?”
“The name is Opal Onishi. Her lease shows her occupation to be a food stylist, but the document is four years old, and her employer at that time is no longer in business. Hello, economic downturn.”
“Cell phone?” asked Ochoa, breaking his silence.