the lobby surveillance photo of the Doe. Beside it, she taped the impound lot death shot Lauren had taken of her an hour before. “But this one is leading us to something.”
“Too weird she was in the lobby the same morning Starr got killed,” said Ochoa.
Rook rolled a chair over and sat. “Quite a coincidence.”
“Weird, yes. Coincidence, no,” said Detective Heat. “You still taking notes for your article about Homicide? Get this one down. Coincidences break cases. You know why? Because they don’t exist. Find the reason it’s not a coincidence, and you can pretty much get out your handcuffs, because you’re going to be slapping them on somebody damn soon.”
“Any ID yet on the Doe?” said Ochoa.
“Nope. All her personal effects were gone, car registration, license plates. A squad from the Three-Two is Dumpster diving for her purse in a radius around West 142nd and Lenox, where they towed her car from. When we break here, see how they’re doing on the VIN.”
“Got it,” said Ochoa. “What’s keeping our fiber test?”
“It’s the blackout. But I asked the captain to roll an M-80 under somebody’s lab stool at Forensics.” Nikki posted on the board a photo of the hexagonal ring Lauren found. She taped it beside the matching bruise pictures of Matthew Starr’s body and wondered if it was Pochenko’s. “I want those results like yesterday.”
Raley joined the circle. “I made contact with Kimberly Starr on her cell phone up in Connecticut. She said the city was suffocating so she and her son spent the night at a friend’s summer cottage in Westport. Some place called Compo Beach.”
“Alibi that, OK?” said Heat. “In fact, we’re going to split the list of everyone we’ve interviewed for the homicide and alibi-check all of them. And be sure to include that relief doorman who missed his shift last night.” Nikki crossed that item off her pad and turned back to Raley. “How did she react to the burglary?”
“Freaked. I’m still waiting for the hearing to return to this ear. But like you told me, I didn’t say what got taken, just that there was a break-in during the blackout.” He said Mrs. Starr was hiring a car service to bring her to the Guilford and that she would call when she was near so they could meet her there.
“Good going, Rales,” said Heat. “I want one of us to be there when she sees it.”
“Whoever it is, take earplugs,” he said.
“Maybe she won’t be so upset,” said Rook. “I assume the collection was insured.”
“I have a call in to Noah Paxton right now,” said Nikki.
“Well, assuming it was, she might be happy about this. Although, with all her face work, I don’t know how you’ll be able to tell.”
Ochoa confirmed what they suspected, that there was no security video of the burglary because of the blackout. But, he said, Gunther, Francis, and their team from Burglary were still knocking on doors at the Guilford. “Hopefully, it won’t be an infringement on anybody’s privacy issues to ask a few questions, what with bodies flying by their windows and sixty million bucks’ worth of art getting hauled out of their building.”
Detective Heat didn’t want to take a chance Kimberly Starr would get to her apartment before she did, so she and Rook went there to wait at the perennial crime scene. “You know,” said Rook as they entered the living room again, “she should just keep a supply of yellow tape on hand in the hall closet.”
Nikki had another reason for arriving early. The detective wanted to have some face time with the Forensics geeks, who never seemed to mind conversation with actual people. Even if they always stared at her chest. She found the one she wanted to talk to on his knees, tweezing something usable off the living room rug. “Find your contact lens?” she said.
He turned to look up at her. “I wear glasses.”
“That was a joke.”
“Oh.” He stood up and stared at her chest.
“I noticed you worked the homicide here a few days ago.”
“You did?”
“I did…Tim.” The techie’s face pinked around his freckles. “And I’ve been wondering something maybe you can answer for me.”
“Sure.”
“It’s about access to the apartment. Specifically, could someone have gained entry by the fire escape?”
“On that, I can answer empirically. No.”
“You sound so certain.”
“Because I am.” Tim led Nikki and Rook to the bedroom hall, where the fire escape met a pair of windows. “It’s standard to examine all possible points of entry. See here? It’s a code violation, but these windows are painted shut, and have been for years. I can tell you how many years if you want me to run it in the lab, but for our purposes, say during the past week, there’s no way these have been opened.”
Nikki leaned in to the window frame, just to check for herself. “You’re right.”
“I like to think science isn’t about right, it’s about thorough.”
“Well said.” Nikki nodded. “And did you dust for prints?”
“No, it seemed unproductive given that it couldn’t be opened.”
“I mean on the outside. In case somebody trying to get in didn’t know that.”
The technician’s jaw fell and he looked at the window glass. Whatever pink was in his cheeks bled out, and Tim, with his face of freckles, looked positively lunar.
Nikki’s cell phone vibrated, and she stepped away to take the call. It was Noah Paxton. “Thanks for getting back to me.”
“I was beginning to wonder if I upset you. It’s been how long since we last spoke?”
She laughed. “Yesterday when I interrupted your take-out lunch.” Rook must have heard her laughter, and he appeared from the hallway to hover. She turned and took a few steps away from him, not needing that layer of scrutiny, but she could see him hanging close by in her periphery.
“See? Almost a full twenty-two hours. A guy could get paranoid. What’s the occasion this time?”
Heat told him about the theft of the art collection. Her news was followed by a long, long silence. She said, “Are you still there?”
“Yeah, I—You wouldn’t joke. I mean, not about something like this.”
“Noah, I’m standing in the living room now. The walls are absolutely bare.”
Another long silence and she heard him clear his throat. “Detective Heat, can I get personal?”
“Go on.”
“Did you ever get hit with a big shock, and then, when you think you can’t deal with it, you work through it, and then—ahem, excuse me.” She heard him sip something. “And so you man-up and work through it, and just when you do, out of nowhere comes another crushing blow, and then another, and then you reach a point where you just say, What the hell am I doing? And then you fantasize about chucking it all. Not just the job but the life. Be one of those guys down on the Jersey Shore who make sub sandwiches in a hut or rent hula hoops and bikes. Just. Chuck. It.”
“Do you?”
“All the time. Especially this minute.” He sighed and swore under his breath. “So where are you with this? Do you have any leads?”
“We’ll see,” she said, adhering to her policy of being the sole interrogator in an interview. “I assume you can account for your whereabouts last night?”
“Jeez, you cut right to it, don’t you?”
“And now I’d like you to.” Nikki waited, knowing his dance steps by now: resist then cave to pressure.
“I shouldn’t be pissed, I know it’s your job, Detective, but come on.” She let her cold silence push him and he surrendered. “Last night I was teaching my weekly night course at Westchester Community College up in Valhalla.”
“And that can be verified?”
“I was lecturing twenty-five continuing ed students. If they run true to form, one or two may have noticed me.”
“And after that?”
“Home to Tarrytown for a big night of beer and Yankees-Angels at my local hang.”
