“Rook, check this out.” She turned to summon him but he was already right there on her shoulder. “You’re very stealthy when you’re clean-shaven, you know that?”
“I am all sleekness like the fabled ninja. I am made of wind and smoke, not flesh and bone. Well, except for that little trick in the bathtub, if you catch my reference.”
Nikki covered her ears. “Ew? Please? Ew?” She rotated the monitor so he could read the report along with her. Forensics had labbed clothes from Fabian Beauvais’s SRO. One pair of jeans was dappled with dried spatters and abrasion transfers of a hardened resin commonly used to shellac exterior wood as a weather seal.
“You know what this means, don’t you?” said Rook. “He shellacked shingles by the seashore. Which means Alicia Delamater lied. Her faux Moroccan eyesore is all stone with no exterior wood to speak of.”
“Slow down there. He could have picked up that shellac anywhere, not necessarily from singles on the shea—forget it. You know what I mean.”
“I do. You’re applying the transitive law of mathematical logic to tell me that C minus A does not equal B if C is not the sea. Get it? Sea?” Heat elbowed him. “Hey, read what else they found.”
But in her eagerness, she quoted the next section for him. “Spectral analysis revealed nonparallel rows of indentations, including several slight punctures of the denim at the calf of one leg. See: attached photo.”
She opened the attachment and both reacted to what they saw: “A dog bite.”
“Not a bite, exactly. Having just received one of those message-chomps myself, I’d say that’s a warning hold from Topper. What are you doing?”
Nikki talked while she typed. “Replying to Forensics. To see if they can detect or ID any dog hairs by breed.”
“While you’re at it, you might also ask if they can test the bite for a possible DNA match to my German shepherd pal.” She shrugged why not? and keyed that in, too. “The manager at the slaughterhouse said Beauvais was injured. Is it possible it was from the dog?”
“Always possible. But no mention of blood. Not on these pants, anyway. I’ll have them double-check all his other clothes.”
“Yeah, I’ll bet those lab types love it when street detectives tell them to be thorough.”
A telltale rustle of plastic announced the arrival of Wally Irons carrying a crisp white uniform shirt and blue jacket in dry cleaner bags. The camera-ready captain always kept spare wardrobe handy in the event of a news conference or photo opportunity. But instead of unlocking his office, he entered the bull pen and came directly to Heat’s desk.
Normally obsequious to the press, he didn’t even acknowledge Rook. “Guess what I’ve been doing the last fifteen minutes, Detective. No, I’ll tell you. Sitting in my car in the parking lot getting an earful from the Office of Emergency Management. And why? Because some pissant tropical storm near Jamaica just bumped up to a Category One hurricane, and there seems to be a strong sentiment that a witch hunt being conducted by my precinct is distracting key planners from readying this city for a potential landfall.”
“And let me guess. One of those key planners is Keith Gilbert?”
“You tell me, Heat. Have you been stomping around outside your jurisdiction, dogging the heinie of a respected Port Authority commissioner when this entire region is about to go on storm watch?”
So there it was. Nikki wondered how it would come down. She’d half expected another drop-in by the commish. Or a phone call. But the squeeze came through channels. Back channels, actually, utilizing a high-level proxy to apply Gilbert’s pressure. “Sir, I object to the term witch hunt.”
“Tell the mayor’s man from OEM. He’s the one who used it.” Wally shifted the clothes hangers to his other hand and examined the pink indents the hooks had left on his porcine fingers.
“Storm or no storm, sir, I am conducting an investigation into a suspicious death, which has now been linked to a homicide.” She paused to let that seep through the crust and mantles of Wally’s skull. “I have no doubt that Commissioner Gilbert finds it unsettling to have the police looking into his potential involvement in this matter, but you know how it goes here, Captain. We always follow the evidence wherever it leads without fear or favor.”
She could see that registered as a platitude on the political survivor standing before her. But the other edge of the sword facing Wally was to keep his skirts clean if some future probe into his handling of a murder case put him on the record as an obstructionist. Heat was savvy enough to see that and applied her own pressure from that angle. “Sir, are you telling me to cease my investigation because it involves a highly placed member of government?”
This time Irons did seem quite aware of Rook. He glanced from the journalist back to Nikki and said, “Absolutely not. I’m apprising you of all angles…as you move forward.” The words fell dead from his tongue. But all Heat needed was to hear them.
“Most appreciated, Captain.” Heat and Rook flashed celebratory faces behind his back. “Oh, and Captain Irons? I’d also like you to sign off on getting a warrant to search Keith Gilbert’s phone records.”
“OK, Heat, now you’re pushing it.”
“But, sir, if I’m going to—”
“No way,” he snapped, cutting her off. “I said you can pursue your investigation. But I am not waking the lion by getting any warrants against the commissioner, not after the phone call I just had.” The Iron Man started off but had an afterthought and U-turned back to them. “In case you haven’t considered it, OEM is in overlap mode with Homeland Security and other agencies. This all works because we’re all in the same sandbox and we all talk to each other.”
“Sir?”
“I’m sure Counterterrorism is in the mix some way.” He gave her a meaningful stare. Butterfly wings brushed her stomach in fear that he would take this conversation to the next step and out her secret in front of Rook.
Nikki shifted, physically placing herself between Rook and Irons, trying to alter the dynamic. “Thank you again.”
“I’m just saying. Careful where you poke.” Panic rose in her. And then out it tumbled. “You just might kiss off that job offer for the international task force.” He nodded and clucked his tongue, then headed for his office, sorting out keys.
Rook’s face, so much more readable without the beard, drew into itself. “What job? What was he talking about?”
Heat led him into the break room where they sat at the lone table. Given the circumstances, she might have been more at home in one of the interrogation boxes. At least Nikki didn’t have to see herself in a mirror while she confessed. He watched her passively while she told him about the true reason for the Internal Affairs tail and the conversation it led to with Zach Hamner at One PP. “I really want you to know this has been tearing me up. I don’t keep secrets from you, but this just came up on the heels of our…thing…about you being gone so much that I…didn’t feel comfortable telling you just then. It was wrong of me for a lot of reasons, including this. This is worse.”
But she did hold one other secret, after all. Her accidental discovery of the ring receipt. That one, Nikki could better forgive. Or, at least, rationalize.
“Let’s get past you holding this back. For now,” he said, and a measure of relief filled her. It was only temporary. “What’s your thinking about taking this job?”
“It hasn’t been formally offered.”
“Nikki. You know it’s coming. It’s why you lied to me.”
“I didn’t lie.”
“By omission.”
“Is this what you call getting past this?”
“Where do you stand? Are you thinking about it? I’m sure it’s a big promotion. Very exciting. Lots of responsibility, lots of fulfillment…” He let it hang there for her to fill in the Mad Lib.
“Lots of travel.” She bobbed her head gravely. “International travel. I’d be gone a lot.”
“But I’m asking, will you be?” The question hung there in the space between them. Because they were built of fabric that dictated rising to calls and making personal sacrificing for duty, both knew where she was leaning without the words being spoken. Indeed, it was the whole reason she’d hidden the offer from him in the first place.
For Nikki Heat, the die was cast. She’d crossed the Rubicon the day her mom was killed and she decided to be a cop. “There’s a part of me that would like to hear some congratulations.”
The face that had trusted her so completely, so memorably, in the tub when she shaved him now clouded. He quietly replied, “I think the time for that would have been yesterday when you hung up from the offer and told me all about it.” And then he added, “But honestly, I do hope it’s good for you.”
Heat’s phone buzzed. She showed him
FELLER
on the caller ID, and he left her there to take it. Nikki’s heart clinched watching his back going through the door to the bull pen without a wisecrack or a funny face for her. Or even a glance.
“I’m about to hit the tunnel to Hipsterborough.” Detective Feller harbored an open contempt for the millennials who had annexed Brooklyn, as he put it, “spoiling a perfectly decent working borough that doesn’t need any more artisanal pickle stores or boutiques mixing home-crafted microbrews with curated vinyl LPs.” His car window was down. She could hear he was moving fast. “Got a call from a guy who knows a guy I talked to on my canvass in Flatbush. Thinks he saw those two goons we chased. They were asking around for Fabian Beauvais a few days ago.”
“That’s great, Randall.”
“We shall see. These folks weren’t such big talkers yesterday.”
“Use your innate charm.”
“More fun to beat it out of them, but OK. I’ll keep you looped.”
Heat pressed
END
and went into the squad room to share the news with Rook. She found him packing up his laptop and notes over at his squatter’s desk.
“Going somewhere?”
“Actually, yeah. I have lots of work to do on this article, and I’m not getting any writing done here. I’ll catch up with you later on.”
Nikki wanted more. Wanted conversation. Wanted a smile. Wanted it all back, clean. But standing there in shame and awkwardness, all she could manage was, “Sure. Your place? Mine?”
“I don’t know. Let’s check in.” The idea of the rooftop and candles became a hope that sank, plummeting without comment, featherless.
Heat tried calling Rook when they found the body of Jeanne Capois, but his phone went straight to voice mail. Not the sort of news you leave on a message, so she let it go with, “Big development. I’ll be in the field on my cell.” She resisted saying call me. Too needy.
Detective Ochoa spotted her and strode toward her unmarked Taurus when she pulled up in front of the prep school on West End Avenue. Nikki paused for a ritual breath then met him on the sidewalk. “School custodian made the find,” he said, escorting her to the black iron gate between the granite school building and a mixed-use apartment with a dental practice on the ground floor. “Garbage pickup is today. He was rolling the trash barrels to the walk, and there she was, dumped behind them. Lauren says there’s so much blood, no doubt she was done here.”
Dr. Parry crouched over the corpse, running tests and directing the CSU tech where to take photos. “This is a bad one, Nikki.”
“Sadistic shit,” said Detective Raley. He knew Heat wasn’t big on profanity but let it out. “Sorry for that, but this is pretty fucked up.”
Nikki leaned over the ME for a peek and quickly turned away. “This goes beyond blood loss from a beating,” said Lauren. “My totally prelim cause of death is asphyxia. See the choke marks on the neck? As yet, I see no signs of sexual assault, so I can only imagine it was either deviant behavior or torture.”
Ochoa said, “Based on the ravaging of the apartment she lived in, my money’s on torture.”
“Mine, too,” said the medical examiner. “Come closer. See the fingertips? That damage was caused by pliers—see the grooves made by the grippers inside the pincers? And her eyes…It looks like some sort of toxic or corrosive liquid was poured into them. The bright stain on her blouse could be from automotive antifreeze. I’ll test it.” Heat turned away again, standing up straight to look at the bright yellow leaves waving on the fall trees while she contemplated the horror of Jeanne Capois’s last moments alive. “She also has abrasions around her mouth where they must have gagged her. There are also numerous burns about her breasts and the soles of her feet.”
“What about these here?” asked Nikki. “The marks just above her wrists.”
“These are consistent with some sort of restraint biting into her skin.”
“Like disposable cuffs?” Ochoa said it, more than asked it. All three detectives went right to the bloody zip ties recovered from the vendor outside the planetarium where Fabian Beauvais crashed.
Lauren Parry, the scientist among them, said, “It’s highly possible. To be certain, I’d want to examine more carefully back at OCME.”
“Disposable cuffs it is,” said Ochoa.
“Can you venture a time of death?” asked Detective Heat.
As the medical examiner slipped brown paper bags over the victim’s hands to preserve DNA and particle evidence, she said, “The body’s been here two nights, I’d say. As for the hour, that’s tricky. I’m going to need my lab work to give us a window. That would make it the night of the home invasion, if it tests out.”
Nikki looked down at Jeanne Capois’s soft, kind face; such a contrast to the brutal agony she endured. What was her life like? The photos found in her room portrayed a joyful, young woman with lots of friends, a smile that lit up the world, and a boyfriend. A boyfriend who had also died in a most horrific fashion. Heat thought about an immigrant woman in her twenties, coming to New York, as so many did, to gain a toehold on the American Dream. And this is where it ended. In an enclosure where they kept the trash. Destined for a stainless steel table in the basement autopsy room on East Thirtieth. How did this happen? What was she into? One thing Heat knew for sure: Given the timing and her relationship with Fabian Beauvais, there was something more to all this than a first-genner seeking a better life.
The detectives huddled on the sidewalk while the OCME van backed up to the gate of the garbage area. Even though the prep school closed for the day following the discovery, technicians tented the area for privacy while the body got loaded. “TOD before or after the apartment ransack?” Heat asked.