Frozen Heat

THIRTEEN

Rook asked the bartender to turn up the volume on their TV so they could hear the breaking story, which didn’t go down so well with the Sunday Night Baseball fans, but he and Nikki didn’t care. They stood under the big screen, their wings forgotten and growing cold on the table behind them, as they gaped up at the New York cable news channel.

The reporter stood outside a length of caution tape in a city street and spoke to the camera. Underneath him the graphic read: “Live, from Hell’s Kitchen.” Pressing the earpiece to his ear, he nodded, picking up his cue from the anchor. “Thanks, Miranda. Yes, a major break in a case that has been the talk of New York this week, ever since the frozen corpse of an Inwood woman, the victim of a fatal stabbing, was found inside a suitcase on a food delivery truck.” He turned and gestured behind him, and the camera slowly zoomed to show the front entrance of a tan brick apartment building, where an NYPD uniform stood guard. “You can see it’s quiet here now on West Fifty-fourth Street, but that’s the doorway of the building where, minutes ago, officers and detectives of the NYPD stormed the apartment of an alleged killer.”

Next came recorded footage of Captain Irons standing with his gut to the crime scene tape, in his glory, with his name plastered on the screen and a sea of microphones pointing at him. “Our suspect’s name is Hank Norman Spooner, age forty-two, a self-employed apartment sitter. Mr. Spooner was apprehended without incident by myself and Detective Sharon Hinesburg from my precinct, the Twentieth, as well as officers assisting from Midtown North.”

Rook said, “This gets better every minute.” Heat didn’t respond; she just stood transfixed as Irons answered one of the questions shouted at him from the press frenzy.

“The suspect came under our scrutiny this weekend after one of my team received an anonymous phone call expressing regret for the murder of Nicole Bernardin last week, as well as for the death of another victim, Cynthia Trope Heat, in 1999.” Nikki flashed back on Roach’s account of the giddy Saturday night appearance of Irons and Hinesburg listening to an audio recording behind closed doors. Reporters shouted more questions all at once. “That’s right,” answered the captain, “the caller implicated himself in both murders and said he couldn’t live with it anymore. His call contained sufficient detail about both crimes that we felt assured he was our man and, upon tracing him to this address, made tonight’s arrest. He is currently in custody up in the Twentieth Precinct, and is in the process of making a formal confession. May I say that the citizens of New York City will sleep better tonight, knowing we have taken this individual off the streets, and I am proud to have led the team that brought this case to a safe and swift conclusion. Thank you.”

Heat’s cell phone rang. It was Ochoa. “What about a heads-up?” she snapped. Not even a hello.

“Hey, I’m just hearing about it myself. Captain iced us all out. Except for Hinesburg, nobody had a clue. I’m calling you first off to make sure you knew. I guess you did.”

“Oh, Miguel, I’m sorry I flared.”

“No sweat. It blows, we all get it. I’m heading in now to see what’s what and do as much damage control as I can. I’ll keep you posted.”

“Do,” she said and hung up. Nikki threw down enough cash to cover the check and tip and started for the door. Rook was already holding it for her.

On the walk back to his loft, he said, “I wonder how many items on the Kama Sutra menu Big Wally scored by mentioning Hinesburg on TV.”

“Save it, Rook.”

“Hey, I’m pissed, too. This is how I cope.”

“Then cope with your inside words. I’m not up for conversation now.” But then after three strides, she said, “He’s screwing the whole thing up. No, worse than that. What scares the hell out of me is that he’s just getting started screwing it up. I’m out of there less than a week, and he’s not only got the wrong guy but he’s potentially doing irreparable harm to these cases.”

“Then stop him.”

“How?”

They waited at the crosswalk, and he stepped to face her eye to eye. “You know how.”

“No,” she said. “I told you I would never do that.”

“Then, fine. Let Wally be the bull in the china shop while you watch it on TV.” The light turned and he walked on. She caught up with him.

“I hate you.”

“Inside words,” he said.

The next morning, Heat arrived ten minutes early for her seven o’clock coffee meeting with Zach Hamner, hoping to use the time before he showed to quell the upset she felt at stooping to see the weasel. But when she walked into the cafe near One Police Plaza, he was already finishing off a combo breakfast consisting of a Denver omelet, home fries, bagel and cream cheese, juice, and an espresso. Hamner didn’t rise when she came in, just gave her a nod and pointed to the chair across from him. “You’re early,” he said, checking the time on his BlackBerry.

“I can wait outside and you can finish your meal.” She had told herself on the subway ride downtown that she wouldn’t be snarky with him, but Zach Hamner made it hard to resist. The NYPD senior administrative aide to the deputy commissioner of legal affairs liked to swing his dick, and Nikki figured it got all its length from his title. Every transaction, large and small, was a power play to him, and forcing her to come all the way down to the Cort Cafe, for a conversation they could have easily completed the night before on the phone when she’d called him, constituted a command appearance to prove who swung the longest rope.

Zach pretended to be oblivious to her annoyance. “No, I can eat while we talk. Coffee?”

“No, thanks.”

He finished his bagel, making her wait out his chew while he surfed new e-mails on his phone. Heat conceded that Zach “The Hammer” Hamner had cause to be unhappy with her. And, clearly, this ceremony of disrespect was payback for the political capital she’d cost him two months before. That was when she’d stunned the Police Commission by declining the promotion he had engineered for her to take command of the Twentieth Precinct.

When he took his sweet time to flick a sesame seed off the sleeve of his charcoal pin-striped suit, she almost walked out. In these few short minutes of proximity, the viscousness of his world-a power broker’s bazaar of trades and leverage-brought back the agony that had sent her fleeing from the bump in rank. This was why Heat had refused to call him when Rook mentioned it the week before. But now, with Irons in danger of blowing up her mother’s case, Nikki knew she had no choice but to suck it up and acquiesce.

And so did Zach Hamner.

He set his BlackBerry to the side and said, “So. Trouble on Eighty-second Street?”

“As I said last night on the phone, I’m on mandated leave at the worst possible time. Captain Irons engineered that, and now that I’m sidelined, he’s bigfooting both of my investigations and putting them at risk.”

“And one of them’s your mother’s homicide, right?”

He knew that already, but she played along and swallowed it. “That’s why I’m asking for your help.”

“I tried to help you once before and that didn’t go so well.”

“Let’s be honest, Zach, you would have been helping yourself with my promotion, too.”

“Enlightened self-interest. You can’t hitch your wagon to a star without creating one.” He flashed a mirthless grin and let it drop. “I misjudged you, Heat. You pissed on me in public.”

Fulfilling her role in the transaction, she said, “I’m truly sorry if I caused you trouble,” and watched him process those words: the entire reason for the trip.

“OK, then,” he said, satisfied to get the deference he wanted. “Wally Irons. Tough one. They love him at One PP. His CompStats are stellar.”

“Come on, Zach. His CompStats versus The Hammer?”

He liked the sound of that. “Your cell phone charged? Good. Stay aboveground this morning so I can reach you.”

“Thanks for this.”

“Oh, hey, listen,” he said. “Let’s understand ourselves here. You’ll get a chance to thank me. The bill will come due someday.” He slid the check for his breakfast across to her. “And it’ll be a lot more than just this.” Then he left without a good-bye.

Two hours later Detective Heat might have entered the bull pen of the Twentieth Precinct to applause, but she got ahead of that. Nikki had called Roach and told the two of them to pass the word to keep her return low-key. Zach Hamner warned her that Irons had to choke down the orders from the top of the food chain and not to rub his nose in it. But The Hammer had worked his magic getting her reinstated, with the sole face-saving bone thrown to the captain that she agree to return for a follow-up with the shrink for the blowup in his office. “That’s all I have to do?”

“For them,” Zach had said. As if she needed to be reminded of his banked IOU.

She dug in immediately by having Hank Norman Spooner brought up from his holding cell to Interrogation One while she read the confession he’d written the night before. The suspect also had a rap sheet that she studied. In the nineties he had worked as a security guard but got dismissed following complaints for petty thefts in the offices he patrolled and for stalking several females in the apartment buildings he’d been hired to protect. Spooner did probation and suspended sentences for those and had been served with several orders of protection. He also had a peeper charge in Florida from when he had worked as crew on a cruise ship, which had constituted his sporadic employment for much of the prior decade. He did ninety days plus probation for that; otherwise, no other jail time.

Nikki asked Detective Rhymer if anyone had checked Spooner’s cruise dates against the murders, and when he said no, she gave him that assignment and wondered how the hell Wally Irons could have gone on TV and called this an investigation.

The inevitable confrontation with her precinct commander came as she put her old friend, the Sig Sauer, in the lockbox in the hall outside Interrogation One. “Welcome back, Heat.” She spun the combination and turned to the voice. There he stood with Detective Hinesburg at his elbow.

“Captain.” Brevity, she thought, was face saving’s best friend.

“What’s going on here? I understand you called my prisoner up.”

“Yes, sir,” said Heat, keeping things deferential. “I have a few questions to ask him. I also have one for you. Any news on that missing glove?”

“Nada. And I’ve been a thorn in the butt of Forensics.”

Detective Hinesburg chimed in. “Immaterial now, isn’t it? Now that we’ve got our man.”

Hinesburg’s stupidity might have been amusing to Heat in a Real Housewives sort of way if the detective didn’t do so much damage. “And what about the guy I shot who wore that glove? Does ‘our man’ have any bullet holes, or did you notice?”

“No,” Sharon said, “I’d definitely notice that.”

Irons interceded on behalf of his detective-slash-secret girlfriend. “Obviously, we’re not talking the same person, Heat. Which is telling me your shotgun shooter is probably from another case altogether. An old grudge. Like maybe a holdout from that death squad that tried to get you in Central Park last winter.”

Detective Heat could see this was going nowhere good and looked to move things along. “Guess we’ll see. Excuse me.”

“Hang on,” said Irons. “We already got a signed confession, why you going in there?”

She held up Spooner’s file. “Captain, with all due respect, everything in his confession is public knowledge. Every detail has appeared in magazine articles like Rook’s one about me, news reports, news leaks…” Nikki managed not to look at Hinesburg, whom she was certain had also sourced the numerous follow-up stories to her first leak. The latest reports had even given away critical media hold backs, such as the railroad grime on Nicole’s clothing and the matching precision stab wounds in the backs of her mother and Bernardin.

Irons waved both palms at her. “Whoa, let’s get to this flat out, Detective. Published or not, this guy confessed to it all. And you should be happy ‘cause it takes your dad off the list. So what’s on your mind, going in there? Is it our job to get the guilty off, or to get them off the street?”

“It’s our job to get the truth. And that is precisely what I have in mind. Because if this man is lying to get his moment of fame, or whatever, the killer is still out there. Now let me do my job. Because if you arrested the wrong guy, would you rather find out now or when the DA throws your case out at a press conference?”

Nikki loved watching Wally’s eyes widen at that notion. “OK, Heat. You’ve got one shot. Take it. I’ll be watching.”

Hank Norman Spooner’s eyes lit up when Detective Heat entered the airlock door into the interrogation room. A smile that felt a little too grand to Nikki greeted her as she took her seat across the table from him. She said nothing, just let first impressions enter, unfiltered. These always proved valuable, and to absorb them, she shut out everything else: the stakes of the case; the upheaval of the week-plus since the freezer truck; the audience of Irons and others behind the mirror. For Nikki Heat, it always came back to Beginner’s Eyes.

He hadn’t shaved but still managed to appear clean-cut. His sheet put him at forty-two, but she would have subtracted seven years. Attribute that to the slight build and the boyish face. And the hair. Neatly trimmed and parted, it was red. Not red in the bright sense but softer. Auburn. The day’s growth of whiskers had a blonder hue, making them disappear on his cheeks which, she noticed, had begun to blush as she studied him. And he still smiled that too-friendly, too-familiar grin. His teeth had some yellow in them, and he knew it, judging by the way he kept his upper lip. His hands were folded on his lap under the table, so they would have to be read later. To Nikki, hands were the best tells, second only to the eyes. His stayed on her, expressing what she could only call bliss. And the eye contact was good. Like the smile, too good. Her beginner’s impression got borne out by his opening sentence.

“I can’t believe I’m meeting the real Nikki Heat.”

Hank Spooner was a fan.

She decided not to acknowledge that and maintained a clinical distance, turning her attention down to his file. The fan card could be played later, if needed. What she wanted right then was to listen and to learn. If this was indeed the killer, Nikki wanted to pick up the bits of information that would tell her that. If he wasn’t, she needed to pay attention for the inconsistencies to get to that, too. Heat did what she did in every interview: set aside her bias and paid attention.

“I have some clarifications I need regarding your statement.”

“You got it.”

“But first, I want to understand your background.”

“Name it, Detective.”

“You had some trouble on one of your jobs as a security guard.”

“It was really a misunderstanding.” His manacles clanked as he brought his hands up to gesture. She wasn’t surprised to see that his nails were immaculate, and his slender fingers were clean and lightly freckled like the skin under his eyes.

“These charges say you stole from the offices you guarded and stalked women in the apartments you patrolled.”

“As I said, all a misunderstanding. I did borrow some electronics, you know, computers and a printer, but intended to return them.”

“And the stalking?”

He put a hand over his heart. “I learned the hard way, when you are a lowly apartment security guard, it’s best not to ask residents on a date.”

“You had three restraining orders.”

“That’s what I mean about the hard way.” He fixed her with his grin again, and she put her nose back in the manila folder.

“And for about ten years you’ve worked on cruise lines?”

“That’s right. Well, off and on.”

“What sort of work?”

“Bit of this, bit of that. I worked casino operations staff doing slot maintenance. Also did some time on deck operations. You know, prepping chairs, handing out towels, lifeguarding.”

“You got fired from your cruise in 2007.”

“Only because I refused to accept a reassignment to work as bartender. I have a severe citrus allergy.” Heat looked up to stare at him at length for the first time. He fidgeted under her fixed gaze and explained himself. “That’s right. And you try to mix a drink on a tropical cruise that doesn’t have a lemon, orange, or lime.”

“Never heard of that,” she said.

“That was the reason, no lie. As a kid, I almost died from anaphylactic shock, so I said no way, and they fired my ass.”

Nikki mulled that over and went back to the rap sheet. “I thought you’d been put ashore because you were caught spying on a female guest.”

“That was on another ship. And all I did was check her stateroom for fresh towels. Her word against mine, and who do they believe? The paying guest or the grunt in the white uniform?”

“And how have you made ends meet between cruises?”

“I do some dog walking, a lot of apartment sitting. Oh, and I have a blog now.”

“Blogging? How well does that pay?”

“Not so much yet. But I’ll get there. I’m also on Twitter. I hear I’ve gone bat shit with followers since I got arrested.”

Easing into a new phase, she smiled at him and said, “You’re going to be pretty famous yourself, I guess, Hank.”

“Think so?” He beamed upon hearing his name from her. “Not like you, Detective Heat. And you’re not even on social media.”

“Not my thing.”

“You should do it. You’d trend off the hook. Seriously, you’re a real hero. I’ll bet I’ve read everything there is about you.” Nikki pulled out his confession and, from its contents, bet Hank Spooner had indeed become quite the expert.

“So you say you killed Cynthia Heat?”

“Your mother.”

“How did you kill Cynthia Heat?”

“It’s in there.”

“Tell me.”

“I stabbed her. One time. In the back.”

“Where was she?”

“In her apartment near Gramercy Park.”

“Where in the apartment?”

“In the kitchen. She was making pies.”

“Nicole Bernardin. How did you do that?”

“I stabbed her.”

“How many times?”

“Once. Same way. In the back.”

“And where was Nicole?”

He paused slightly. His first hitch. “Waiting for a train.”

“Where?” The railroad connection had been leaked in one of the articles and this was her attempt to shake him with detail.

“Larchmont.”

“PD up there says no blood on the platform.”

“It’s in there,” he said with a gesture to the confession. “I said she was buying a ticket at the machine near the parking lot. And it’s rained a lot since then.” He gave her a satisfied look as if he had seen through an attempt to trip him up.

Over the next hour, Heat tried to knock him off his declaration either by misstating things he’d written or by rapid-firing questions about details out of order, knowing that most liars adhere to sequence as their means of sounding credible. He nimbly adjusted to everything she threw at him, and Nikki pictured Irons behind the glass, gloating. Spooner had just finished describing the front of her building in Gramercy Park when she said, “We have more to talk about, but I’m going to get something to drink. You thirsty, Hank?”

“Well, sure,” he said with that smile nearing adoration.

As she passed through Observation One, Irons rose from a chair. “What’s going on? Aren’t you satisfied yet?” She just smiled and stepped out the hallway door, so he turned to Raley and Ochoa. “She always like this?”

“Always,” said Roach.

Hank Spooner perked up again when Heat returned a few minutes later with two cans of soda. She popped the tops, took a sip of hers, and set the other in front of him. He just stared at it. “Something wrong?” she asked.

“Do you have anything else?”

“Sorry Hank, this isn’t McDonald’s. What wrong with it?”

“Nothing, unless you’re trying to kill me.” He slid the orange Pellegrino as far away as he could reach. “I told you. I have a bad citrus allergy. One sip of that, and I’m in the hospital or dead.”

“Oh, sorry. Wasn’t thinking. I love them. Keep my own stash in the fridge here.” She picked up his can and her own and walked toward the door.

“You’re good,” he said. When she turned and gave him a puzzled look, he continued, “The orange soda. You were just testing to see if I was lying about my citrus allergy.” He gave her a wink. “Nice one.”

“Busted,” she said.

When she entered the Observation Room again, Irons said, “Well, are you satisfied he’s our killer?”

“No.”

“How can you not be? His story’s solid as a rock.”

“So what? Like I said, it’s a story anybody could have put together from public knowledge.”

“But like I said, the man confessed.”

“Sure, because he’s got some sort of fame psychosis or stalker agenda he’s working out and I’m the lucky object of his desire. Leave that to the shrinks. He’s lying, and I can prove it.”

“How? He answered all your questions.”

“True, but there’s one hold back on this case that didn’t get leaked. And it’s my own. Whoever killed my mother took a can of soda from our fridge right afterward and gulped it down.” She held up the orange San Pellegrinos. “It was one of these. Sixteen percent real citrus juice.” As it registered on Irons and he turned to gawk at Spooner through the glass, she said, “You can book Allergy Hank on whatever you want, but my mom’s murder? Forget it.”

Captain Irons stood gaping through the ob window at his prize suspect when she left.

Detectives Raley and Ochoa were at their desks when Heat came back into the Squad Room, and she corralled them to the back hallway, out of earshot of the rest of the bull pen, and closed the door. “Sorry to go all Deep Throat, but I need this handled with discretion.”

“Want me to get Sharon Hinesburg so she can join us?” said Ochoa.

“Do,” she said. “And let me put Tam Svejda from the Ledger on my speaker phone.” After they had a good laugh, Heat opened up the accordion file of bank documents her father had given her. The two detectives’ faces sobered as Nikki briefed them on the account her mother held in secret from her dad. “I can’t go into the significance of it, but I need someone I can absolutely trust to quietly-but thoroughly-trace its activity. Especially in November 1999.”

“Done,” said Raley, taking the documents from her.

“And if he blabs,” said his partner, “I’ll cap his ass.”

“He would,” agreed Raley.

The three emerged from the back hall, and Nikki found Rook camped at his squatter’s desk off to the side of the bull pen. He pointed to the shield and Sig on her hip. “Nice to see you wearing your tin again and packing, Sheriff.”

“Feels right,” she said. “Not quite Paris, though.”

“Look at it this way. Not as much dog crap to step in.”

“Elegant. You’re a wordsmith and a poet.”

Heat called together a quick Murder Board roundup. Detective Rhymer reported that his checks with the cruise line showed Hank Spooner had not been away at sea during either killing he confessed to. Even though Nikki had eliminated Spooner from her mother’s murder, she decided to go beyond thorough and assigned Detective Hinesburg to make sure he got held in custody until his whereabouts could be verified for the night of Nicole Bernardin’s stabbing. Then she sent Sharon on a field trip to Westchester County to survey the Larchmont train station herself and to show pictures of both Nicole and Spooner around. The alibi check went to Malcolm and Reynolds.

Heat very much wanted to bring the squad up to speed on the information she and Rook had learned about her mother’s and Nicole’s CIA activities, but her tight little ship had sprung too many leaks. She had already confided in Ochoa, so her work-around would be to also brief Raley, Feller, Malcolm, Reynolds, and Rhymer individually-not the transparency Nikki liked to operate in, but that’s what happens when the boss is sleeping with a team member with a Bat Phone to the Metro desk at a tabloid.

After the meeting broke, Nikki listened to a call-back message from Eugene Summers, the young man in the 1976 London picture with her mother and Tyler Wynn. When she asked Rook if he wanted to come along with her to meet him for lunch, he got so excited that he shook his moneymaker right there in the bull pen.

“God, will you look at me back then?” said Eugene Summers as he examined the old snapshot of himself. “Good lord, and the width of that tie. Margaret Hamilton could land her broom on it and still have room for three flying monkeys.” He handed the photo back to Nikki. “I loved your mother, you know. Those were great years, and Cindy was absolutely special.”

Nikki thanked him for saying so, while he took a sip of iced tea, avoiding eye contact with the other lunchers at Cafeteria who recognized him from the cable TV show that had made the real-life butler a breakout sensation in his sixty-first year. After decades as a professional manservant in Europe, Eugene had gotten a call from a studio head he had served during a summer in London, who had an idea for a TV show like Arthur, pairing the fastidious and urbane Mr. Summers with various unruly young celebrity stoners. Thus was born Gentlemen Prefer Bongs, whose success transformed Eugene into America’s ex officio arbiter of taste and propriety in everything from grooming to etiquette to wine pairing.

In his message, when he had called her back from his Chelsea loft, Summers seemed thrilled to have heard from Cindy Trope’s little girl and agreed to meet for lunch. Rook couldn’t have been happier, too. Not only was he addicted to the series, but on the way to the restaurant, he had said to Nikki, “What do you think the odds are this is going to be one of those cases where the butler did it? Because I could sell that story to any magazine in the country just for the headline.”

Of course, when they met at his table, Nikki heard the obligatory praise about how much she resembled her mom. Rook, who regularly hobnobbed with Hollywood A-listers and blockbuster music icons, just grinned like a dope as he shook hands with the reality star. Heat prayed he wouldn’t embarrass her by asking her to take a photo of the two of them.

They began on a somber note with Eugene’s condolences to Nikki for the loss of her mother, and his disbelief at the deaths of Nicole and, now, Tyler Wynn. “I got a call about Tyler when I woke up Sunday morning. I’m still reeling.” He made a brave face and sat tall. “However, I am reminded of the words of Oliver Wendell Holmes, who said, ‘Good Americans when they die, go to Paris.’”

Nikki found it interesting that he was still in the loop. “May I ask who told you about Wynn’s death?”

“Not by name. Let’s say a mutual acquaintance.”

“Were you and Tyler Wynn close?” she asked.

“Once. But we hadn’t seen each other, oh, in ages. But he’s a man you hold in your heart.”

Heat said, “I guess this leads us to where I want to start. Were you part of this Nanny Network of Tyler’s that my mother was in?”

“Not that I don’t want to cooperate, Detective, I do,” said Summers, “but you put me in an awkward position.”

“You took an oath not to divulge secrets?” asked Heat.

“Oath or not, I’m preternaturally discreet. It’s not just professional, I have personal standards.” Then he saw her disappointment. “But despair not. For Cindy’s daughter, I can bend the rules. I’ll speak in generalities. Or use non-denial denials. For example, to the question you just asked, my answer is that I’m sworn not to say. And that tells you exactly what you want to know, doesn’t it?”

“Good enough,” said Nikki.

Summers noticed Rook absently playing leapfrog, as he often did, with his knife and spoon, and fixed a chastening look on him. Rook ceased and said, “Wow, just like the show. Did you see, Nikki? I just got the Summers Stare.” Then he pleaded to the TV butler, “Give me the catchphrase. Come on, just once? Please?”

“Very well.” Summers arched a brow and delivered a haughty “How uncouth.”

“Effing awesome.” Rook laughed with glee but settled when he saw Nikki stare, and said, “Continue. Please.”

Heat formulated a question according to the rules. “Let’s say- if you had been in this network-would you recall the names of some of the enemies whose homes became infiltrated?”

“ If I had working knowledge of that network I’d probably take a wild guess and suppose that not everyone spied on was an enemy. Intelligence-gathering is often back channel, so the subjects of surveillance might just as likely be diplomats or businesspeople ripe with information. Or merely social friends of an enemy.”

“And what about my mother? If you had been in a position to know, would you know the names of the subject homes she infiltrated?”

“Sorry. If I had known such information I didn’t retain it. And that’s flat-out true. I would have had my own full plate.”

“What about when this picture was taken in London? Was she there to spy on her patron family?”

“Again, I can’t say.”

“Same for Nicole Bernardin?”

“Afraid so.”

Rook said, “Can I play this word game, too? You said if you had known such information, you didn’t retain it. If you were in a position to find out what a fellow spy was working on, how would you guess that you-or someone — would do that?”

“Well played, Mr. Rook.”

“I have a headache,” he said.

“I would imagine, like any close friends in their twenties moving about Europe, social contact would be important. No Twitter back then. So systems probably developed. Mail and phone calls would be out of the question due to surveillance, so I would guess…,” he paused and winked, “that enterprising kids would communicate their whereabouts and sensitive information through a series of unorthodox secret mail stashes. Let’s call them drop boxes.”

“A drop box,” repeated Rook. “You mean like a loose brick in the town square with a chalk mark on it?”

The famous butler pinched his face into a sour grimace. “Oh, please. That is so Maxwell Smart.”

Nikki asked, “How, then?”

“I suppose,” he said with another wink, “that each member might have had his or her own signature drop and might find unique means to communicate its secret location so the bad guys couldn’t figure it out.”

Images surfaced in Heat’s mind of her mom’s and Nicole’s ransacked apartments. Plus the phone call to the Bernardins from a Mr. Seacrest looking for a package. “If you had such knowledge, would my mother or Nicole have drop boxes other than in Europe? Let’s say-hypothetically-here in New York?”

“That I wouldn’t know. I would have left the network by then- if I had been in it in the first place.” Another wink, why not?

“When might that have been, if you’d left it?” Rook asked.

“Late nineties.” Then he added with a chuckle, “ If.”

“Would you have still been in Europe when her mother was killed?”

“That’s where I was when I heard the news, yes.” Summers thought some more and said to Rook, “Did you just ask me for my alibi?” Then he turned to Nikki. “Is that what this was for? To check me out as a suspect?”

“No, not at all,” said Heat.

“Well, it feels like it to me. And I have to say, as someone who came here out of respect and in good faith, that I am insulted. If you wish to speak with me again, it will be along with my attorney. Excuse me.” Heads in the restaurant turned from red pear salads and chicken and waffles as Eugene Summers scraped the feet of his chair from the table and stormed out.

Rook leaned down and plucked the butler’s napkin off the floor. He held it up and said, “How uncouth.”

Nikki flipped to a fresh page in her spiral and made a note to have someone check the whereabouts of Eugene Summers on the murder dates. If only to dot the i on the if.

Heat had just finished double-parking her Crown Victoria on West 82nd with the other double-parked undercover cars outside the precinct, when Lauren Parry called her on her cell phone. “Got a second, Nikki?” Her voice sounded constricted and low. Something was up. Nikki waved at Rook to go inside ahead of her and leaned on her car. “This is not a good news call, Nik,” said her pal, the medical examiner. “I really, really have to apologize.”

“What’s up?”

“It’s the toxicity test on Nicole Bernardin. It’s ruined.”

“You’re going to have to help me here, Lauren. I’ve never heard about a tox test getting ruined. What’s that mean?”

“Just what it sounds like. Something went wrong in the lab. You know how we put blood and fluids through tests using gases to screen for chemicals and toxins in the system of the deceased?”

“If you say so.”

“Well, that’s what we do. And somehow, the gases got screwed up. The supply of pressurized gas canisters that got delivered was contaminated, and now we cannot lab Nicole’s body chemistry. I feel awful. Nothing like this has ever happened before.”

Nikki said, “Don’t beat yourself up. Unless you are the one responsible for gas delivery. You aren’t, are you?”

Lauren didn’t chuckle. Instead she said a sulky “No.”

“Then when you get your gas supply situation cleared up, just run her tox test again from other samples.”

“I can’t, Nikki, that’s the thing. This morning Nicole Bernardin’s body was cremated at the request of her parents and sent back to France.”

In spite of Heat’s disappointment and frustration, she reacted to her friend with a feather touch. Nikki told Lauren not to dare to take it personally, and that she would be in contact later about a follow-up investigation since this had a fishy quality, particularly in light of the lost glove at Forensics.

Detectives Rhymer and Feller were her free team at the moment, so when she got into the bull pen Heat told them she wanted to see them immediately for an assignment. But then she saw the light blinking on her desk and checked her voice mail first.

The message was from Lysette Bernardin calling from Paris, in tears. Between her anguish and her accent Nikki had to strain to understand her message at first, then it suddenly became chillingly clear. Mme. Bernardin and her husband Emile wanted to know how this could happen. How in the world could someone cremate their daughter’s body against their wishes?