The thud of the door into the wall matched the pounding under Nikki’s vest as she entered the unlit house, leading the SWAT team in a surreal ballet of flashlight beams and rapid incursion. She called out, “NYPD, identify yourself!” but only heard the slap echo of her own voice in the near-vacant house. The assault force fanned out, a third rolling to the right side of the downstairs with Heat, a third going left, circling toward the dining room and kitchen, with Roach and the remainder heading upstairs to the second story and attic. The spotlight from the circling copter pierced the windows and crept along the walls, making the house feel like it was spinning. Each terse update whispered in Heat’s earpiece confused and disheartened her. “Dining room: clear.” “Kitchen: clear.” “Master bed: clear.” “Hall closet: clear.” “Attic: clear.” “Basement: clear.” The downstairs pincer groups met up in the kitchen, which smelled from enough stacked garbage to qualify for a cable TV hoarders show.
But no suspect.
“Garage status?” she said into her mic.
“Clear.”
The ESS commander came downstairs with Roach and met her in the living room. “Doesn’t make sense,” he said. “And there’s no place to hide. Closets are empty. Only a ratty mattress on the floor of the master.”
“On the vacant side down here, too,” said Detective Ochoa. He traced his Stinger LED across the nail hooks, illuminating the spots where pictures once hung above an unbleached rectangle in the hardwood the size and shape of a sofa. Now only a pair of mismatched patio chairs sat off to the side of a grimy, secondhand rug.
“Any false walls?” asked Rook, coming in the front door. “I know for a fact some of these old houses have fake doors behind bookcases.”
Heat sounded a familiar refrain. “Rook, I told you to wait outside.”
“But I saw the pretty light from the helicopter and it pulled me in against my will. It’s like
Close Encounters
for me. Or the rose ceremony on
Bachelorette
.”
“Outside. Now.”
“Fine.” He backed up to leave and stumbled to the floor, landing on his butt.
Ochoa shook his head. Raley helped him up and said, “See? This is why we can’t take you anywhere.”
“It’s not my fault. I tripped on something under that rug.”
“Well, lift your feet,” said Nikki. “On your way out.”
“Detective?” said Ochoa. He was down on one knee, running his palm across a lump in the stained green shag. He rose and whispered to her, “Hatch handle.”
They peeled back the rug and exposed a three-by-three square of plywood with a pull ring handle and hinges embedded into the floor. “I’m going in,” said Heat.
The commander cautioned her. “Let’s drop some gas down there first.”
“He’ll get away. What if there’s a tunnel?”
“Then we’ll send a dog.”
But adrenaline called her shots. Nikki slid her forefinger into the pull ring and threw the hatch back. She shined her light into the emptiness and shouted, “NYPD, show yourself.” A startled moan came from below.
“See anything?” asked Raley.
Heat shook no and swung a leg into the opening. “There’s a ladder.”
“Detective …” said the ESS commander. But too late. Overwhelmed by the drive to capture her suspect, Heat broke from procedure and descended. Ignoring the rungs, she slid down the outer rails, using the ladder like a firehouse pole. Nikki landed in a crouch, Sig Sauer ready in her right hand. She plucked the flashlight from her teeth and shined it across the cellar.
He stood completely naked in the center of the partitioned-off section of basement, staring at her with detached eyes that appeared to see and not to see. “NYPD, freeze.” Her suspect didn’t respond. Besides, he had already frozen, standing there motionless yet unthreatening as SWAT backup rained down to join her, training assault weapons with tactical-mount lights on him. “Hold fire,” said Heat.
She wanted him so dead, but she needed him alive.
All the flashlights revealed a sea of shoes surrounding him. Hundreds and hundreds of shoes: men’s and women’s, old and new, pairs and orphans—all in neat rows of concentric circles around the center, toes pointing at him. “So,” he said. “You came for my shoes.”
“What do you answer to, William or Bill?” Nikki waited again for him to speak and would wait as long as she had to. The suspect had remained silent since they sat down to face each other in Interrogation One ten minutes before. Mostly, he just studied himself in the observation mirror. Occasionally, he looked away, then back, as if to surprise himself. He rolled his muscular shoulders so that they flexed against the orange fabric of his jumpsuit.
At last he asked, “Is this mine to keep?” and seemed to mean it.
“William,” she said. “I’m going to call you what it says here on your rap sheet.” He broke eye contact and looked back in the mirror. Detective Heat studied the file again, although by then she had committed the salient facts to memory. William Wade Scott, male cauc, age forty-four. Basically a low-end drifter whose arrest record traced his movements through the Northeast following his dishonorable discharge on drug charges after Desert Storm in 1991. His beefs ran on the petty side, a ton of shoplifts and disorderly conducts, plus a few arrests that raised the bar, most notably a 1998 electronics store smash-and-grab in Providence that earned him three years as a state guest. Nikki tasked Ochoa to run a double-check with Rhode Island Corrections for the release date because that incarceration alibied him for her mother’s murder.
Behind the mirror in Observation Room 1, Detective Ochoa texted her, confirming William Wade Scott’s prison release in 2001—a year and a half after her mom’s killing. She read it passively, but Rook watched her fists ball under the table after she slipped her cell phone back into her pocket.
In the wake of so many setbacks on her mom’s case over the years, Nikki had hardened herself against despair, but this one stung. However, as ever, Heat’s response to disappointment was greater resolve. And a reality check. Did she honestly believe the killer would fall into her lap on the same day as the new lead? Hell, no. That’s what tomorrow was all about.
Rook turned to Raley and Ochoa in the Ob Room. “That still leaves him as a possible for the Jane Doe killing, doesn’t it?”
“Possible?” said Raley. “Yeah, possible …” The “not likely” was silent. After the raid in Bayside, neighbor interviews said the naked man in the basement was not the owner of the residence on Oceania Street but a homeless squatter, one of a number who had moved into nice, suburban neighborhoods throughout Long Island after residents simply walked away from upside-down mortgages. The block had filed several complaints about the man, but they grumbled that nothing had come of them. But Raley’s follow-up check on the absent homeowner suggested this vacancy hadn’t come from a mortgage walk-off. He pulled up an old 1995 New Jersey arrest against the owner for operating a hydroponic pot farm in the basement, which not only accounted for the floor hatch in his next residence—the Bayside house—but also his abandonment of the property to keep a step ahead of drug enforcement.
“OK,” said Rook, grasping for any good news, “there’s still the suitcase. He possessed the suitcase that connects to Heat’s mom. If he’s not the killer, maybe he knows him.”
Ochoa said, “She’ll get there. You watch. This is her art.”
“Why were you hiding from us in that basement?” Heat asked. No reply. “We identified ourselves as police. Why did you need to hide?”
He released his gaze from the mirror and smiled. “I don’t need to hide. I could get out of here now, if I wanted to.” Scott yanked up both wrists beside him, pulling his manacles taut and then releasing them. “These mean nothing to me.”
Nikki played along on the tightrope walk of trying to pull straight answers from a delusional, likely schizophrenic, man. But right then William Wade Scott was her best hope. If he wasn’t a good suspect, he might be a great witness. Acting unfazed, she moved a mental chess piece, a pawn. “Was it about the cigarettes you stole the other night?”
“This is all bullshit once I am taken up. You must know that.”
“Maybe I’m not as informed as you. ‘Taken up’?”
“To my vessel,” he said. “I received the special communication.”
“Of course. Congratulations, William.” Her affirmation surprised him and made him rivet her with a penetrating squint, listening intently. “Is that why you needed the suitcase? For your trip?”
“No, for the shoes! I found it and thought there’d be more shoes inside.” He leaned forward and winked. “They’ll be so pleased when I bring them shoes.”
She leaned forward, also. “But weren’t there shoes inside the suitcase? Didn’t you see shoes?”
“I … did.” He began to fidget but stayed with her. “But they were … They were still on her.”
“On whom?”
“Her!” he said, then stooped over to grind his eye sockets with the heels of his palms. “I couldn’t take them off her.” He grew more agitated. “I couldn’t keep her.”
“Did you kill her?”
“No. I found her.”
“Where?”
“In the suitcase, pay attention.”
“Where did you find the suitcase?”
“Behind the nursing home around the corner.” He calmed and confided his big secret with a stage wink. “They throw out lots of shoes there.”
Heat made a hand gesture to the mirror, but inside the Ob Room, Raley and Ochoa were already on their way out the door for a return drive to Bayside and the nursing home.
“So when you saw her in the suitcase, why didn’t you take her back to where you found her?”
“The nursing home? Why? She was dead,” he said as if the logic of that should be obvious. “But I didn’t know what to do with her. A body is, well, it’s a complication to The Plan.” Nikki opted not to press and gave him plenty of line. He fidgeted some more and said, “I dragged her around all night. Then I saw it. A preservation vessel. It was perfect. Plenty cold inside. Even had a ramp.”
“You sure you don’t want to just crash?” asked Rook when he and Nikki got back to his loft. “It’s coming up on two
A.M.
No harm, no foul if you want a rain check.”
“I’m too wired to sleep. And besides, you promised me one of your Killer Caipirinhas, and I’m holding you to it, writer boy.”
“You’re on. Worth every bit of being held at gunpoint by an international arms dealer just to score his bartender’s recipe.” He opened the fridge to hunt fresh limes. She settled on the bar stool at the counter to watch the magic.
Long as the day had been, Heat’s fatigue couldn’t match her frustration. When Roach called in from the security office of the nursing home in Bayside, they had mixed news. Due to the late hour, they were fortunate to interview the same watchman who had been on duty the night before, when William Wade Scott said he found the suitcase there. Unfortunately, however, the facility had no surveillance cams at the disposal Dumpsters, which meant no pictures of the homeless man finding the suitcase and, worse, no shots of whoever left it there. The security guard did recognize the freeze of Scott rolling the luggage and verified seeing both him and the baggage leaving the property about two hours before Raley’s surveillance picture had been taken. He also said he saw Scott arrive empty-handed, validating his story that the case had been scavenged. Adding more cold water to the embers, he didn’t recognize the Jane Doe. Roach had called in the Evidence Collection Unit to survey the Dumpster area—a long shot that had to be covered—and then clocked out, telling Heat they’d return at sunup to interview staff and residents about the suitcase, Jane Doe, and whatever some nonagenarian insomniac might have seen staring out a window in the long night of the soul.
“What’s going to happen to Willie Shoetaker?” asked Rook as they clinked glasses.
“Real sensitive, Rook.” She sipped her cocktail. “But I forgive you because this Caipirinha is awesome. To answer your question, I Article Nined William Scott for an involuntary psych evaluation. It lets me hold him a few days, plus he’s better off in Bellevue. Not that I expect to get any more from him. I’m afraid he seems to be a gap in the chain, not a link.”
“Hey, you never know.”
“Don’t patronize me. I do know.”
Recognizing the rise of her firewall, Rook busied himself with his drink to fill the strained silence with something other than strain. After a decent interval, he said, “Well, here’s what
I
know. This may be a dead end, but only on one front.”
“Here we go. Are you back to 1999 again?”
“No. Before that. I want to look into your mom’s life.”
“Forget it, Rook.”
“Carter Damon said your mom was a piano teacher, right?”
“Tutor. Piano tutor.”
“What qualified her for that?”
Nikki scoffed. “Qualified? Pal, do you have any idea how qualified?” But then she was surprised by the answer he gave without taking a beat.
“You mean like an advanced degree from the New England Conservatory of Music while training to become a top concert soloist? That kind of qualified?” As she sat there just gawking at him, he clinked her glass and said, “Hey, you don’t get a pair of Pulitzers by being a slouch in the research department.”
“All right, so you have your special gifts, smarty. Where’s this going?”