“I’m in here,” came his voice, sounding a little throaty and disconnected, as if he’d gotten a head start on the Sancerre. Nikki stepped into the kitchen and peered across the counter to discover Rook in the dusky light, prone on a massage table. He had a towel across his ass, and a strikingly gorgeous woman in nurse’s scrubs kneaded one of his hamstrings, her long fingers just a little too close to that perfectly rounded cheek. Rook made introductions without lifting his head from the foam donut. “Nikki, this is Salena. Salena, Nikki.”
Salena looked up briefly at her, only long enough to show perfect teeth through her smile. She whispered a hello then resumed her interest in the spot where the upper thigh met the hem of his towel. “Mmm,” said Rook.
Salena said, “This is very tight.”
“Mm-hm,” he answered.
“Excuse me,” said Nikki. She left them and found her way up the dark hallway of his loft to the bedroom and closed the door.
When he came to her afterward in his robe, he found Nikki cross-legged on the bed, working her laptop. “You didn’t have to hide in here.”
“Well, I wasn’t going to stand out there while you were having your ‘me time’ with your masseuse.”
“Actually, licensed physical therapist. The agency sent Salena over to replace Gitmo Joe. How cool is that?”
She closed the lid of her MacBook. “He still sick?”
“No, he quit. So it’s Nurse Salena for the rest of my rehab. It’s only a few more sessions, but I can live with that.” He did a few twists and bends. “I’m feeling better already.”
“He just quit?”
“I think he knew I never liked him. Sadist. Dude probably didn’t like it that I talked back and offered too much resistance.”
“That wasn’t a problem with Salena. Not from what I saw.”
“Are you jealous? Seriously? That was a therapeutic session from a licensed professional.”
She laughed. “Complete with tea tree oil and Enya. Jeez, Rook, I felt like I walked into a porn video.”
“There is no Enya in porn video.”
The door buzzer sounded. “I’ll get that,” she said. “I ordered us a pizza.”
He followed her out of the room. “Ooh, pizza delivery. Now we are talking porn video.”
They ate camp-style, right out of the box, while she filled him in on the surveillance HD Raley pulled from the jewelry store cam and the forensic news about the lab solvent and train residue on Jane Doe. When they were finished eating, he said he’d do the dishes and did so by dropping the pizza carton into the recycling. “Good call on the pie,” he said. “Although I can’t decide whose I like best. Original Ray’s, Famous Original Ray’s, or Swear to God, Folks, This Really, Really Is Ray’s.”
They adjourned from the counter to the dining table, where that afternoon he had spread the printouts he’d made of the PDF case file she sent him alongside his typed-up notes from their meeting with Carter Damon. “In case you’re wondering, Detective Heat, that was a very useful exercise for me to be able to sit down with that guy.”
“I’m glad somebody got something out of it. All I got was pissed.”
“I hadn’t noticed.”
She scanned his notes and said, “But I can’t see anything new that you got. Damon was right, it’s all information already in the case file.”
“What I got is a sense of his laxness. Maybe he wasn’t when he started the case, but this is a detective who dropped the ball when it got hard and the investigation called for some old-fashioned doggedness. To me, Carter Damon is Sharon Hinesburg without the nail extensions and push-up bra. The headline for me is that we have to go back ourselves and dig deeper.”
“I disagree. Much as I don’t like Damon’s slacker mentality-”
“-more cop-out than cop-”
“-these are dead ends. Captain Montrose always drilled us to follow the hot lead. And that means we focus on the fresh trail off that suitcase.”
“We can do both.”
Nikki ignored him, plowing onward. “And when we ID our Jane Doe, we’ll be even closer.”
“Why are you resisting this?”
“Beer?” she said, and left him for the fridge. Nikki had just finished pouring them each a perfectly cloudy Widmer Hefeweizen when her cell phone rang. After she listened briefly, Heat said, “Got it. Meet you downstairs from Rook’s in five,” and hung up. “That was Roach. If you want to come, you’d better wear more than a robe.”
“Where are we going?”
“Queens. They found our guy with the suitcase.”
FOUR
The tattoo busted him. As Heat had hoped, the Real Time Crime Center had a match in its computer that connected to a suspect. A week before, the owner of a convenience store in the Bayside neighborhood of Queens had called in a complaint on a shoplifter. The surveillance cam picked him up, and even though the petty crime didn’t have the weight to make the news or light up an All Points, the RTCC logged the tatt into its database, and the hit came within minutes of Detective Raley posting his JPEG on the server. Uniform patrols flashed the picture around Bayside, and a night watchman at a used car lot recognized him as a guy he had seen hanging around lately. The break came when the security guard spotted him again a few hours after the uni visit and tailed him to a nearby house while he put in a cell call to NYPD.
Heat, Rook, Raley, and Ochoa rode in tense silence under the flashing gumball, shoulders swaying and knees bumping against the doors of the Roach Coach while Detective Raley threaded the needle through evening cross- town traffic to the Midtown Tunnel and onto the Long Island Expressway. The only gap in Raley’s concentration came on the straightaway passing the steel Unisphere at Flushing Meadows, when he side-glanced Ochoa in the shotgun seat and rabbit wrinkled his nose. His partner suppressed a smile about Rook, whose fragrant herbal massage oil had also hitched a ride in back. Heat picked up on it, but all she said was, “ETA?” Her succinct way of urging focus and speed.
Their Crown Vic rolled up to the tactical staging area at Marie Curie Park in Bayside six minutes later, and Raley angled it nose-out with the other police cars. Emergency Services Squad 9, including a unit of SWATs, stood by in black helmets and body armor. The ESS field commander greeted her as she climbed out. “You made good time, Detective Heat.”
“Thanks for waiting.”
“Listen. Going to let this be your show,” he said.
The underlying message of respect embedded in that gesture nearly choked her up, but she let it go with a crisp, “Thanks, appreciate that, Commander.”
“Got it all buttoned up for you,” he said. “Suspect is inside a single-family two-story on Oceania, next street over. Con-Ed records list the owner as a J. S. Palmer, although the bill hasn’t been paid for six months and the juice is off at the resident’s request.” He used the red filter on his flashlight, so he wouldn’t night blind her, and spread a map full of neatly drawn deployment markings on the roof of the car. “It’s the corner house here. I’ve got a tight perimeter covering all possible exits, including canines here and here. Blue-and-whites have Northern Boulevard choked off, and we blockaded Forty-seventh Avenue after you came through, so we own the streets. I also have a team inside the neighboring house, and we’ve moved that family out the side door.”
“Sounds like you’ve covered everything.”
“Not done yet.” He keyed his walkie-talkie mic. “ESU Nine to Chopper Four-one-four.”
“Go, ESU Nine,” replied a calm voice with a high-pitched purr behind it.
“Ready in five.”
“Confirm five minutes, on your signal. We’ll bring the daylight.”
