worked her phone while Rook hit the streets to forage for lunch. Detective Ochoa took her call solo. His partner Raley was tied up checking on one of the dozens of anonymous tips the squad had received since Hinesburg’s leak to the Ledger. “It sucks, I gotta tell you,” he said. “We have enough legitimate stuff to check out on our own, but since this hit the media, we’re choking on tip pollution. That article slowed the whole case down.”
“You’re preaching to the choir, Miguel.”
“I know, but you’re in Paris with Rook and I want to do what I can to screw with your good time. Hey, maybe I can get Irons to bench me, then Lauren and I can go somewhere fun. There’s an Elvis convention in Atlantic City. I could rock my whole Elvez gig.”
“Well, before you put on your gold lame jumpsuit, I need you to check something out for me.” She swore him to silence, then gave him the short version of Tyler Wynn’s connection to her mother and Nicole. After Ochoa muttered his third “Fuuuck…,” she said, “Wynn’s shooting came the night before Nicole’s murder. I want you to get on Customs and the airlines for names of passengers arriving from the Paris airports to JFK or Newark last Wednesday. Don’t forget connections through London and Frankfurt, and wherever. Run the manifests through the database for any names that are on the watch list or show priors for assault or weapons busts. Do the same with Interpol.”
“You think it could be the same killer?”
“I don’t know what I think, but if there’s any chance it was a hit by one person, it’s worth clearing. I don’t love the different MO, but he may have used a knife on Nicole because he couldn’t travel with a gun.”
“Yeah, and a gun is so hard to find in New York,” said Detective Ochoa. “But I’ll get rolling on it.” He cleared his throat and said, “Now I guess it’s on me to tell you some not so good news.”
“Let’s have it.”
“It’s the glove.”
“No fingerprints?”
“Worse. No glove.”
“What?”
“Captain Irons just called in from the lab. He went there this morning to bang on doors for results, and somehow, it got lost.” The vacuum of silence on her end was so complete he said, “Detective Heat, you still there?”
All she said was “Somehow?”
Rook said, “Somehow?” with the same shading of disbelief when he got back to the room and she told him about it. “I don’t think somehow is the reason. I think it’s more like someone.”
“And he’s off.”
“How can you say that?”
“Because I knew this would propel you into Area Fifty-one. Rook, for once, can you try doing what I do for a living and deal in hard facts instead of indulging in wild speculation?”
“Want to talk facts, Nikki? All right, fine. Exactly how often does key information go missing in an important homicide investigation?” She just stared at him. “OK, forget I even asked that. But come on, this is different. This has spook written all over it.”
“Or incompetence.”
“When I hear that word, I only think of one man. The man of Iron.”
“Guess I’ll have to wait until I get back to suss that out.” She unwrapped the paper around one of the ham and cheese baguettes he’d returned with. But Rook’s brain crackled too much to eat. He set aside his sandwich after a single bite and paced the room. When Nikki saw him tapping madly on the screen of his iPhone, she said, “I hope you’re playing Words with Friends with Alec Baldwin, because if you’re still in foil hat mode over this lost glove, let it rest.”
“I’m off the glove-for now. I’m searching my contacts.”
“What for?”
“You may like to play it fast and loose with the facts,” he said, teasing her with her own words to him, “but as an investigative journalist with not one, but two, Pulitzers on his mantel…”
“Two, you say.” She took another bite.
“… I like to verify facts independently.” He stopped scrolling. “Ah, here we go.”
“All right, Mr. Woodward-or is it Bernstein? — what are you planning to verify?”
“I want to confirm what Tyler Wynn told us about being CIA and running your mother through his Nanny Network. To me, everything he said made perfect sense. In fact, I felt a certain vindication in his story. I don’t know if you could tell that or not.”
“I had an inkling. So whom are you going to verify this with?”
“An old deep-cover source of mine from when I was researching my Chechnya piece for First Press. His name’s Anatoly Kije. This guy’s incredible. Straight out of Tinker, Tailor. An old school Russian spook for SVR-which is what the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service calls itself now instead of KGB. Everybody’s rebranding. KGB, KFC…”
“Rook.”
“Sorry. Anyhow, my boy Anatoly lives here in Paris, and if anyone would know about Tyler, your mother, and anything else going on in that network, he would. In fact, he may be able to shed light on those questions Tyler Wynn had the bad manners to die before he answered. May he rest in peace.”
“All right. Assuming this KGB guy-”
“SVR guy.”
“-knows anything, why would he share it with you?”
“Because during the course of our meetings here in Paree, let’s just say Anatoly and I spent a lot of time together closing bars. We were like this.” He crossed two fingers then tapped the call icon on his phone. “To this day, I can’t get a hangover without thinking of him.” He held up a palm to quiet her, as if she were the one doing all the talking.
“Hello, is this Imports International?” He gave Nikki a knowing wink. “Yes, hello. I would like to speak to your branch manager, please, Mr. Anatoly Kije. Yes, I’ll hold.” He whispered to Nikki, “Transferring to his assistant.” Then he said into the phone. “Hello? Let me see, is this Mishka?… No? Oh, you must be new. It’s been a while. My name is Jameson Rook and I’m an old friend of Anatoly Kije’s. I happen to be in town and I was wondering if he- Rook. Jameson Rook, that’s right. I’ll hold-”
Rook got kept waiting on hold long enough for Nikki to finish her baguette. Long enough for him to weary of pacing and sit in the corner chair. Then he stood suddenly. “Hello? Yes?” And then a frown crossed his brow. “He did? Really. Are you sure? I’m so sorry. Yes, good-bye.” He hung up and flopped back in the chair.
Nikki said, “Don’t tell me he got shot, too.”
“Worse. He said he never heard of any Jameson Rook.”
With answers that solved at least one part of the mystery of her mother’s life and no new leads to follow in Paris, Heat and Rook reserved seats for a flight home the next morning. The chaos and incompetence visited upon her elite squad had much to do with Nikki’s drive to get back to New York. Captain Irons embodied the worst aspects of civil service. He always had been a paper pusher with a badge, but now, with his own command and Detective Heat out of the mix, the Ironman’s blundering ways ran unchecked. Sure, sometimes evidence like gloves got lost. And media leaks wreaked havoc on cases. And occasionally, the worst detective in a squad slept his or her way to a level of responsibility that surpassed competence. But these things rarely converged all at once in a perfect storm of serial bungles. Even if her leave remained in force, Nikki reasoned that proximity would at least give her a fighting chance to stem the damage before the case of her life got trashed.
True to form, Rook suggested that they try to unplug from work for their final night in Paris. Nikki asked, “You mean, like try not to be too mindful of the fact that we watched a key witness die before our eyes this morning?”
“There ya go,” he said. “And if it helps, I’m not above digging up the old ‘Tyler would have wanted it that way’ chestnut. And judging from those photos in that keepsake box, he wasn’t one to let a good time go to waste.”
Heat agreed to the mental night off. In fact, she welcomed it-but only if Rook let her treat him to dinner for their REWOTC (Romantic Evening While Off The Case). “Even for me, these acronyms are starting to blur,” he said. “But you’re on.”
