Of all the times she had listened to it, though, this was the first time she had knowing that the muffled voice was Petar’s.
Homicide 101. In any murder case, the likely killer is close in. You clear husbands, wives, exes, common- laws, estrangeds, children, siblings, and relatives before you move on to the other likelies. Beyond her father, they looked for boyfriends in her mother’s life but not in Nikki’s. But then, who was the lead investigator but Carter Damon, Petar’s accomplice-after-the-fact and obstructionist-for-hire.
Nikki listened again and yet listened anew. She heard the familiar small talk with her mother about spices, the checking of the fridge, her screams, and the dropped phone. The mumbled voice of a man. She paused and played it back. And then she played that section back again and again.
At straight-up noon, Heat sat on the twelfth floor, in the tranquil room on York Avenue, at the session she’d booked that morning with Lon King, Ph. D. Nikki told the department psychologist about her history with the recording and that, for the first time ever that day, when she listened to it, she heard Petar.
“And why is this something you want to focus on, this recording?”
“I guess to ask if I could have been in denial.”
“That’s always possible, but I wonder if your curiosity goes deeper.”
“See, this is the part I hate.”
He smiled. “They all do, at first.” Then, he continued, “I don’t care how resilient you are, Nikki, you have a lot to deal with here.”
“That’s why I called you.”
“I’m certain you are not only reliving trauma and loss, but also experiencing a profound sense of anger and betrayal. Not to mention confusion about your own choices and instincts. As a detective, about crime. As a woman, about men.”
Nikki sat back and rested her neck against the cushion. As she stared at the unblemished whiteness of the ceiling, she tried to wish away the confusion, to grab the handle on the sense of order she’d held just a day before. “I feel like I had the rug pulled. Not just on the case, but on what I thought my own life was. What I thought love was. It makes me worry about what I can trust.”
“And for you, I know trust is paramount. Mistrust feels… well, it’s chaotic.”
“Yes,” she said, but it came out in breath without resonance. “Which is what I feel now. I always envisioned solving my mom’s murder would be clean and neat. Now all I feel is…” She swirled a finger like a cyclone.
“I’m sure. Especially with the betrayal of your intimacy. But could part of it also be because your life has been so defined by this case you don’t know who you are if it’s over?”
She sat up to face him. “No, it’s upsetting because it still isn’t over and I don’t want to let my mother down.”
“You can’t. She’s dead.”
“And the man who ordered it is still out there.”
“Then you will do what you have to do. I know that just by your unique definition of a leave of absence.” She nodded in agreement but without humor. “I’d ask you to try to keep scale on this, as overwhelming as it all is. Mistrust feeds on itself. It’s like a virus. You can’t do your work-or live your life-second-guessing your instincts. You’ll become the proverbial deer, frozen in the headlights. Who do you trust the most, Nikki?”
“Rook.”
“Can you discuss this with him?”
Nikki shrugged. “Sure.”
“Openly?” She hesitated, which answered his question. “My experience with cops in this room is that grace under pressure is great in a moment. As a lifestyle it takes a toll. It’s the stoicism. You are alone.”
“But I’m not now. I’m with Rook.”
“How much of you?” He didn’t make her answer but let the softly ticking second hand behind her fill some space before he continued.
“At one time or other, if we’re lucky, we struggle with how much of ourselves to reveal to one another. At work. In friendships. In relationships. You and Don kept the struggle physical without revealing or sharing. That worked because of parity. Neither of you wanted to go deeper. That won’t be so in all relationships. You may want to reveal more of yourself than someone else. But, from what you’ve told me, the opposite is true. So-long term-the issue will have to be confronted at some point if Rook needs more intimacy than you are willing to give. It may turn him away. Not now, but someday, that reckoning will come. And you will let him in, or not. You will be vulnerable with him, or not. And you will experience the consequences, based on your choice. I hope the choice you make fulfills you.”
Nikki stepped out onto the sidewalk from her session bearing more questions than solutions, but one thing in life looked brighter. The yellow Wafels amp; Dinges gourmet food truck had parked for its lunchtime business that day a block up York Avenue. She waited in line, vacillating between sweet and savory and went for a mashup: de Bacon-Syrup wafel, and ate it on a bench under the Roosevelt Island Tram. When Nikki finished, she sat a while to watch the red gondolas of passengers float overhead and ride out over the East River, and wished the weight of her cares could be packed into a sealed capsule and borne away into the sky on steel cables. It didn’t work. That became clear when Agent Bart Callan, Department of Homeland Security, sat beside her.
“You should try de Throwdown,” he said. “It’s the wafel that beat out Bobby Flay’s.”
“Don’t you guys have e-mail? Instead of ambushing me, how about a nice OpenTable invitation next time?”
“Like you would respond.”
“Try me, Agent Callan. As I said last meeting, come in through the front door, I’m very cooperative by nature.”
“Unless cornered.”
“Who isn’t?”
“I need to know everything you learned from Tyler Wynn and Petar Matic. If you can tell me what was in that drop box, that would be helpful, too.”
Heat took her eyes off the tugboat churning upriver under the Queensboro Bridge and regarded the agent. Peel away the military zeal and the aggravating habit of surprise appearances, he seemed like an OK guy. Then self doubt about her trust instincts raised a caution flag. “You must have One PP on speed dial. Use it.”
He shook no. “Not optimal. This is too sensitive, too big. If this goes into the bureaucracy chain, there’s no containment.”
“Then why involve me?”
“Because you are already involved. And you don’t have a big mouth.” He grinned. “I learned that the other night in the warehouse.” She returned his smile and he held out his hand. At first, Nikki thought he wanted to hold hers, but he took her lunch garbage, and she blushed at her misunderstanding. He tossed her plate and fork in the can beside him and then pivoted on the bench to face her. “Detective Heat, I can assure you of one thing. The case we are working is developing into a matter of the highest national security. Maybe if I disclose to you, it will make you feel better about sharing with us.”
“I’m listening.”
“It’s a short story. Nicole Bernardin, who was once CIA, reached out to us about a month and a half ago to say that she had come upon highly sensitive documentation of something urgent she needed to share. We did thorough checks on her background with Central Intelligence as well as her more recent history working with Tyler Wynn in his new-let’s call it, independent-capacity. We made arrangements for her to get the information to us, but someone killed her before she could tell us where to find it.”
Heat said, “If you want to know about the drop box, I found it, but I never saw what she had stashed.”
“What did it look like?”
“A tan leather pouch with a zipper on top. The kind merchants use to take their cash to the bank.”
He squinted, envisioning it, and said, “Thank you for that.”
“You can thank me by answering this. If you knew Tyler Wynn had switched sides, why didn’t you arrest him? Especially if he was into something endangering national security?”
“Exactly for that reason. Come on, Heat, you know what it’s like to keep a suspect on a leash. We never picked up Wynn because we didn’t want to blow his cover before he led us to whatever he’s involved with.”
“And how many people have died while you held this leash, Agent Callan?”
