Frozen Heat

FOURTEEN

Detective Ochoa came to Heat to thank her for not assigning him the toxicity lab investigation at OCME. “Even though Lauren and I are in a relationship, I want you to know I could deal, if you put me on it. But the doc takes a lot of pride in her work, and she’s wicked upset right now. I’m just as glad to have Feller and Opie handle it so I can just be her shoulder, know what I mean?”

“I get it, Miguel. Hey, look at me, working my own mother’s case. I think we both know how to shut out our personal feelings.”

He frowned. “Didn’t say I could do that. But good for you.” And then before he walked on, he added, “I guess.”

Nikki gathered the troops to get some new assignments rolling. Her squad made a smaller circle with Hinesburg away in Larchmont and Detectives Feller and Rhymer off covering OCME, but Heat was eager to regain momentum her first day back, so she decided not to wait for a full house.

On the walk from his desk, Detective Raley put his hand up and said, “I just got some news you might be interested in.” Nikki’s heart skipped, fearing he might slip and make a public report on the bank account she had asked him to keep low-key, but Sean Raley knew better than that. “For the last few days, I’ve been surfing traffic cam archives along East Twenty-third and I finally scored a hit.” He handed her a color still. “This is at Third Ave, just after that maroon van tried to snowplow you and Rook.”

“This is the van.” She could see Rook craning, so she held it up for all to see.

Rook said, “Sure is. Too bad the cam didn’t get a shot of the driver.”

“I know,” said the King of All Surveillance Media. “And the plate’s a stolen. But check out the side of the van. Righty-O Carpet Cleaners. Don’t get too excited, the name’s bogus. So’s the phone number.” He consulted his notes. “It’s listed to some business called the Pompatus of Love.”

Rook said, “Oh, right, that hotline where sex goddesses fulfill your wildest fantasies. As long as you have a valid major credit card.” He caught Nikki’s look and added, “Or, so I’ve read.”

Raley tapped the photo with his pen. “I’m betting this is the same van that was parked outside Nicole Bernardin’s when her place got tossed.”

“Let’s find out,” said Heat. “When Feller and Rhymer get back, have them run the pic up to Inwood to show their power walker eyewit. If it’s a match, put it out as an APB. Nice work, Sean.” She smiled and added, “It’s good to be king.” As Heat posted the shot of the van on the Murder Board, she said, “Malcolm and Reynolds.”

“Yeah, I see our initials up there beside ‘cremation,’” said Reynolds.

“I want you to find out where that order came from. Now, I don’t need to tell you this is about as serious as it gets. Not just because somebody messed with our case, it’s a desecration that brought tremendous heartache to a bereaved family.” The partners could read how deeply Nikki felt this and managed to say they’d handle it without adding their usual gallows humor. The embargo didn’t last long.

Detectives Feller and Rhymer came into the bull pen from OCME, and Malcolm said, “Hey, look who’s back. The gas masters.”

Reynolds jumped in, “That was fast. What, you both have a tail wind?”

And they were off for several rounds of gas ribbing. Nikki knew better than to fight a room full of guys lapsing into locker room adolescence, so she waited them out, clocking one minute on her watch. “OK, OK, now I’d like to hear their report.”

Ochoa said, “Hey, guys? I think she wants to move on. That is, if you culos are done venting.”

Following a chorus of “whoas,” Feller and Reynolds reported that the contaminated gas didn’t end up at the coroner’s by mistake. They explained that the medical examiner’s toxicity lab receives scheduled deliveries of pressurized gas tanks from an outside supplier for its tests. But the morning of Nicole’s lab workup, the delivery truck got stolen and used by someone to deliver the tainted supply of canisters.

“How come nobody reported the truck stolen?” asked Rook.

“Because it showed up back in the lot with its original load an hour later,” said Rhymer. “They figured it for a joy ride.”

Feller added, “And when the real driver made his usual delivery, it was a different shift at OCME, so they just unloaded it and kept them as spares. Nobody said anything.” He shrugged. “Flaw in the system.”

“That someone exploited and sabotaged Nicole’s tox test,” added Heat.

Rhymer asked, “Why would someone go to all that trouble?”

“Same reason they’d order the cremation of the body,” said Rook. “To hide something in the results.” He saw they weren’t looking at him like he was so nutty this time, so he continued. “But what?”

“And who?” asked Heat. “I want to find out who.”

“I’ll take point on that.” The roomful of detectives turned to see Captain Irons in the doorway. “Heat, your crew has its plate full. I’m going to handle this one personally.” Then he left, leaving no room for debate.

Feller said, “Guess after his Hank Spooner screwup, Wide Wally is trying to prove his worth.”

“Or pull his weight,” said Ochoa. “Good luck with that.”

Much as she didn’t care for his leadership, Heat didn’t abide public contempt for a precinct commander. “A little respect, all right?” That was all she needed to say to shut that down.

Detective Rhymer asked her, “What do you suppose is going on here, Detective? First the missing glove, then the bad gas, then the body gets cremated.”

“It’s no coincidence, we all know that.” She and Rook made eye contact, both thinking the same thing: that the hand of CIA, Homeland Security, or even some clandestine foreign agency might be orchestrating this. Nikki wondered if this was the time to share what she’d learned in Paris with the rest of the group. Then Raley spoke up, and the decision got made for her.

“Does anybody else think it’s weird that we never got a match on Nicole Bernardin’s fingerprints? I mean, here she was, a foreign national without prints on file?”

Malcolm joined in. “Odd, indeed. Especially since back in 2004 the feds changed immigration regs to make even permanent legal residents get printed. So how did Nicole skip that biometric documentation?”

“And no alien registration number, either,” said Raley. “All those years in this country, and no A-card? I bet you know what this means, Detective Heat.”

She tried to decide: Close it off, or share? Sharing would allow this bright group that was so eager to help her weigh in with ideas. But what a risky step, even with Hinesburg and Irons out of the building. Closing off discussion would be safe but potentially obstructive. Nikki stalled in the middle ground to buy time. “I have some thoughts, but I’m not sure I should go into them.”

“Why not?” asked Reynolds.

Rook said, “It’s need-to-know. Eyes-only.”

“Nicole Bernardin was a spy?” asked Raley, not at all as a question.

Heat turned to Rook and shook her head. He said, “What gave it away?”

“Eyes-only? Clever… Max.”

“Sorry about that, Chief.”

Heat held up her hands to the squad, the palms separated by inches. “I was this close to telling you anyway. So now I’m this close.” She brought them together. “But with all the leaks around here lately, I need your pledge that this stays in this group and doesn’t go beyond you.” Every single one, without prompting, raised his right hand.

So Nikki made a leap of faith.

Sometimes risks pay off. If Heat had not opened up to her squad, she never would have found herself in Midtown with Rook an hour later waiting for an elevator in the lobby of the prestigious Sole Building and feeling her first excitement at a potential lead since spotting Nicole Bernardin on her mother’s old recital video.

Nikki had given her detectives the cut-down version, editing out the Russian kidnapping, the Homeland Security encounter, and the most private parts. Nikki was not prepared to give up family secrets-especially not the nasty rumor that her mother had turned traitor at the end. Roach might piece that together if anything came of the hidden bank account, but she’d deal with that then. Meantime, filling the squad in on the Nanny Network, Tyler Wynn, and the CIA had given them plenty to digest. She’d finished by admonishing them again not to share and also to make sure to tell her immediately if anyone contacted them about the case.

Feller asked, “You mean CIA? FBI? One PP?”

“I mean anyone.” Nikki didn’t explain further, and as surely as she had in her Paris photo reenactment at Point Zero, she once again found herself in her mother’s footsteps, becoming cagey and strategic rather than open.

One practical advantage of her briefing was that she could now make assignments, like having Rhymer check out the alibi for the reality TV butler, Eugene Summers. But beyond mechanics, it also allowed her to mine the thoughts of her team, even if only for validation of her own ideas. Reynolds said, “First place I’d go is to those folks your mother spied on.” Which Heat, of course, had already considered.

“The problem is, where to start?” she said.

Rook opened his Moleskine to a dog-eared page. “I did some research on the North Vietnamese family from that box of photos-the family whose son your mom tutored before the Paris Peace Talks. The dad was prominent, so he was on Wikipedia. Both parents died in the eighties, and the son has been in a monastery since.”

“Not that Wikipedia isn’t the investigative journalist’s best friend, Rook,” said Randall Feller, putting a bit of stank on it, “but my gut says we’re smarter to focus in person on her mom’s most recent activity before the murder.”

“Agreed.” Detective Malcolm swung one of his work boots up on a chair back. “I’d say fuck it to the old gigs and start with her U.S. spy work. The old European stuff is going to be hard to trace and you’re going to end up doing a lot of wheel-spinning, sifting through forty years.”

His partner Reynolds said, “True that. Old scores are harder to trace and not likely to carry motives unless they are some mighty epic grudges. I’d start with those last targets she was snooping.”

Heat, already feeling better for their input, said, “Yeah, but how do you do that if you don’t know who her clients were?”

Rook got the lightbulb look and jumped up. “I know how.”

And he did.

The elevator let them out into the forty-sixth-floor offices of Quantum Retrieval. The receptionist was ready for them and ushered Heat and Rook to the corner office so immediately that they were still clearing their ears from the elevator ride when she gestured them in to meet the CEO.

“Joe Flynn,” he said with a broad smile to go with his self-assured handshake. After Heat and Rook declined bottled waters, Flynn motioned them to the mission decor conversation area away from his desk.

Before Rook sat, he took in the view of Rockefeller Center below. The skating rink had long been defrosted and switched over to cafe tables that he watched being set for dinner. “Nice digs. Business must be good.”

“Smartest move I ever made was to quit staking out adulterers at seedy motels and make the jump to insurance recovery. That was my quantum leap.” He paused to let them make the connection to his company name. Flynn looked tan, fit, and rich, like a doctor from a primetime medical drama. Rook didn’t like the way the sexy insurance investigator was appraising Nikki, and he sat close to her on the couch. “First piece of stolen art I recovered took me one week and paid me as much as I’d made in three years of gumshoeing errant spouses… Plus the ones who weren’t having affairs,” he said pointedly to Heat. He flashed her some teeth Rook bet came courtesy of the Brite Smile off Fifth Avenue.

She said, “So you recall that my father hired you once for a case.”

“It was ten years ago, but Heat’s not that common a name. Plus you look just like your mother. And that’s a major compliment, in this humble man’s view.”

Rook, who hadn’t bargained for this when he came up with the brainstorm of contacting Joe Flynn for leads, tried to quell the ex-PI’s bald flirtation by jerking the leash into business. “Cynthia Heat’s murder is still under investigation.”

“Saw that in the Ledger,” he said. “And all over TV last night. I thought you had your killer.”

“We’re keeping things open for now,” said Heat. “We need to go deeper.”

“I like going deeper,” said Flynn, prompting Rook to slide even closer to her. It didn’t seem to faze the other man. “Can I do that for you, Nikki?”

“I hope so. Do you still have records of your surveillance and any other checks you made on the people she was spending time with back then?”

“Well, let’s just see.” Flynn picked up an iPad from the table beside him and started flicking the screen. He caught Rook watching and said, “You should get yourself one, man, they’re amazing. They gave me one of the betas after I recovered a stolen prototype. Some goof left it in a bar, if you can believe that.” He tapped the glass and said, “Here we go. Summer-fall 1999. Piano tutor, right?”

“That’s right,” she said.

“Got it.” He looked up at her. “I’d normally ask for a warrant, but since this hits close to home, let’s not stand on ceremony this time. All right with you, Detective?”

“Quite.”

He tapped the screen again. “Copy’s being printed for you now. Leave me your e-mail and I’ll also attach the file for you.”

She handed him a card. “My phone number’s on there, too.”

“But the e-mail,” said Rook, “that’s all you need, right? For the attachment.”

“Right,” said Flynn. “So you think one of these people may have killed her?”

“Hard to know. Let me ask one more question. You were hired to check for infidelity. Did you observe anything else? Arguments? Anybody threatening my mother? Did she do anything or go anywhere out of the ordinary that you didn’t log because it wasn’t strictly part of your assignment?”

He tugged his ear as he thought. “Not that I recall. Been a number of years, but I’ll keep thinking. If I come up with anything, I’ll sure phone you.”

“Great.”

“Anything else?” he asked. “And I mean anything.”

“Yes,” said Rook stepping between them. “Do you validate?”

Rook’s hide was still chapped over Joe Flynn’s come-ons to Nikki when they got back to the precinct. “That guy obviously clocked too much time chasing lotharios and degenerates. You hang out at enough hot sheet motels, sooner or later the bedbugs are going to bite.” Heat ignored his grousing and made a list of the handful of names in Flynn’s file of her mother’s tutoring jobs during his surveillance and apportioned background checks on them around the squad. She didn’t post the list on the Murder Boards; this wasn’t for everybody.

Meanwhile, other results started coming in. Eugene Summers alibied out. Customs confirmed from passport records that he had indeed been in Europe in November of 1999. And the night of Nicole Bernardin’s death, TV’s most famous butler had been in LA on a location shoot at the Playboy Mansion. Also, Malcolm and Reynolds had buttoned down Hank Spooner’s whereabouts in the kill zone. At the time he had confessed to stabbing Nicole in Larchmont, New York, his credit card placed him in Providence, Rhode Island, running an arcade tab at Dave amp; Buster’s until midnight. The detectives e-mailed Spooner’s mug shot to the manager, who confirmed he’d been there until closing, pestering waitresses.

Armed with Flynn’s short list and some background checks on them to read overnight so she could start interviews the next day, Heat and Rook killed the lights in the bull pen and set out for his loft for some takeout and study.

At that time of night, the half hour before Broadway curtain, it was impossible to get a southbound cab, so they surrendered and took the subway. When their train made its stop at 66th, both of them twisted in their seats to see how repairs were going on the tiles damaged by the quake. Work had stopped for the day but, as they pulled away, behind the caution tape and sawhorses, the mosaic of acrobats and divas was well on its way to restoration. That’s when Nikki turned back and noticed the man watching her. The tell had been his eyes, which darted away when she saw him.

She didn’t say anything to Rook. Instead, two stops later, when the man in the rear of the car remained in her periphery, Heat nonchalantly got out her cell phone and typed a note and held her screen on her lap for Rook to see: “Don’t look. Back of car. Gray suit, white shirt, black beard. Watching us.” Rook, not the best at following instructions, surprised her by not looking. Instead he pressed his thigh against hers in acknowledgment and hummed a low, “Mm-hm.”

The man stayed in position through numerous stops. At Christopher Street, Nikki used the bustle of passengers getting off and on to sneak a peek. When she did, she noticed a bulge in his suit coat at the hip. Heat typed, “Carrying.” That made Rook make a quick scope. As soon as he did, the man stood.

Heat watched him by not watching, using her periphery but letting her hand fall casually across her lap, ready to draw.

At Houston, the man stepped off without a glance.

“What’s your take?” said Rook.

“Maybe nothing. Maybe undercover transit cop watching me because I had a bulge, too.”

“Then why did he get off?”

“Guess we’ll never know,” said Nikki, rising herself as the train slowed at Canal Street. “Ours, right?”

They came up the stairs to the sidewalk and instinctively kept their heads on swivels. The intersection, where West Broadway and Sixth Avenue converged, was busy, as usual, but the sidewalk was clear. Then Rook said, “Heat. Blue Impala.”

Nikki followed his gaze across Sixth and spotted the man from the subway in the passenger seat of the blue Chevy as it pulled up. “This way,” she said, and they both made a sharp turn in the opposite direction, not running, but striding quickly to get some cover behind the line of mail trucks parked beside the post office. As they passed the third truck in the line, another man stepped out from in front of it, blocking the sidewalk. Nikki reached for her hip.

“I wouldn’t,” the man said. He held his hands open to show they were empty, but they could also see he wasn’t alone. Two other men flanking them on the sidewalk held hands on holsters inside their coats. Footsteps from behind told them they were surrounded. The setup was perfect for an ambush-a dark, windowless street-and Heat kicked herself for taking the bait. She kept her hand on her gun, too, but didn’t draw.

“You’ve been running a check on me, Detective. I want to know why.” He let his hands fall to the sides of his tailored suit and sauntered closer. With his shaved head and goatee he resembled Ben Kingsley. But not the Gandhi Ben Kingsley. Menacing, like the Sexy Beast Ben Kingsley. That’s when Heat recognized Fariq Kuzbari, security attache to the Syrian Mission to the UN, standing before her.

“I have some questions to ask you, Mr. Kuzbari. Why don’t you come to my precinct during business hours tomorrow instead of a street at night? I imagine you must have the address.”

He chuckled. “That creates numerous complications. I have diplomatic immunity, you see, therefore this arrangement saves you a great deal of frustration.”

“Immunity, huh? How would your ambassador like to explain why the head of his secret police and his armed detail accosted a New York cop on an American street?”

“Feisty.”

Rook said, “You don’t want to know.”

Kuzbari spoke something in Arabic to his entourage, and they dropped their hands off their guns. “Better?”

Heat assessed the situation and took her hand off her Sig. His brow lowered. “Now, what kind of questions?”

She thought of pressing for the station-house interview but he had a point. A stall or, worse, a no-show, wouldn’t help her. “They’re about a homicide case I’m investigating.”

“How would such a matter be of any concern to me?”

“A woman was murdered in 1999. She was a piano tutor to your children. And she was my mother.”

If Kuzbari made any visual connection from Cynthia to Nikki, he didn’t let on. “My deep condolences. However, again, I must ask how this involves me.”

“She had been in your home twice a week the summer before she was killed. She traveled with you for five days to a resort in the Berkshires, Mr. Kuzbari.”

“These are all true facts, as I recollect them. Yet, if you are trying to assign some motive to me by implying I had some sort of relationship with your mother, you would be wasting your time as well as mine.” Nikki wasn’t suggesting anything like that, since Joe Flynn had pretty much ruled out an affair, but her experience as an interviewer told her not to say anything, to see where Kuzbari would go. “As for that week in the Berkshires-Lenox, as I recall-it was hardly a romantic getaway. I was there in my capacity of providing security to the ambassador at a symposium, and I stayed with him. Your mother roomed in a separate bungalow with my wife and children and another family attending the conference.”

“May I ask who they were?”

“Why, so you can harass them for no reason, as well? Detective Heat, I sympathize with your interest in settling this score, but I am confident I will be of no service. So, unless you have anything else, let us adjourn to continue our lives.”

Before she could reply, he turned and disappeared between the parked mail trucks. They heard a car door slam, then the rest of his group vanished, leaving Heat and Rook alone on the sidewalk.

Rook said, “At least no bags over our heads this time.”

The next morning Heat and Rook walked down Fulton toward the South Street Seaport to visit another one of her mother’s tutoring clients. This time, barring surprise ambushes, they had an appointment. As Rook paused to read the plaque on the Titanic Memorial, Nikki said, “I’ve been thinking about our encounter with Fariq Kuzbari. If it made me feel like I’m swimming into deeper waters on this case, imagine how Carter Damon felt.”

They moved on and Rook said, “You’re not excusing that loser, are you?”

“Never. I just understand why, being the mediocre lead he was, he probably felt overwhelmed and checked out.”

“And what about Kuzbari? After a pushback like he gave us, do you just cross him off your list?”

“No. And I make that call, not he. But I have a gut feeling that says Kuzbari’s not worth the focus, so I am going to concentrate on the other names on Flynn’s list, for now. I can always brace him again later, if I need to.”

“Did you just say you had a gut feeling? Detective Heat, are you starting to pick up someone’s bad habits? Are you thinking like a writer?”

“Lord, take my gun and shoot me now. No, forget gut. You want to hear my rationale? Fine. Even if Kuzbari were implicated, it’s not likely he would have done the killing personally. He has a crew of suited goons to do that, so I’m certain he’d alibi out. Also, he’d be tough to investigate because of his diplomatic protection. Not impossible, but it would draw time and energy. Meanwhile, I have three others to interview, and we both know the clock is ticking before Captain Irons works his magic again. No, Rook, this is triage. So let’s not call this my gut. Let’s say I am… accessing instincts born of experience.”

“Spoken just like a writer.”

A custodian in rubber boots hosing cobblestones on the mall shut off the nozzle to let them pass as they arrived at the main entrance to Brewery Boz. The landmark brick mercantile building not only had been restored to serve as the British company’s U.S. flagship brewery, it catered to tourists with a Dickens-themed pub. The owner and chief brewmaster, Carey Maggs, met them in the lobby, and the legendary English reserve went right out the window when he saw Nikki. “Bloody hell,” he said in his Mayfair accent. “You look just like your mum.”

Maggs had good reason to do a double-take at the sight of her. In London back in 1976, when Carey was eight years old, Nikki’s mother had been employed by his beer magnate father as his piano tutor. After he’d emigrated to America in 1999, Carey Maggs had passed the torch by hiring his childhood piano teacher to tutor his own son. “That’s the circle. The circle of life,” said Rook.

“Don’t need to tell me about history repeating. Here I am making suds just like my father did back in the UK,” Maggs said as he led them on a tour of his brewery. The humid air in the massive facility was tinged with enough yeast and malt to taste them; equal parts inviting and off-putting at that early hour. As they passed giant vats and containers with their sprouts of coiled tubing and pipes, Carey Maggs described the process in brief, and how they performed all processes on-site, from malting, to mashing, to lautering, fermenting, conditioning, and filtering.

Rook said, “I don’t know why, but I thought these would all be copper.”

“Stainless steel. Doesn’t impart taste to the brew and it’s easy to clean and sterilize, which is critical. Those vats over there are copper-plated on the outside, but that’s just for aesthetics because they face the showcase window of the pub.”

“Impressive. Your father must be proud of you for continuing the legacy,” said Nikki.

“Not so much. We part company on the business model. Dad named his signature beer after the town drunk in a Dickens novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood.”

“Durdles,” said Heat, recalling her own dad’s longing for it.

“Right. Well, my dear father seemed to forget that Charles Dickens was all about exposing social injustice and corporate greed. So now that I run the company, I’ve not only expanded our Dickens brand to pubs and beer gardens, I donate half our profits to Mercator Watch. That’s a foundation that monitors international child labor abuse. I call them GreedPeace. You heard of it?”

“No,” said Rook, loving the nickname, “but now that you gave me a title, I have an article to pitch Rolling Stone.”

“The way I see it, how many million is enough when half the world is starving or doesn’t have water to drink? Of course, that’s all too radical and socialistic for the old man, but he’s just a big Scrooge. Now, how’s that for irony?” Carey laughed and finger combed the unruly curtain of brown hair that had fallen over one side of his forehead. “Sorry about prattling on. You didn’t make the trip here this morning to listen to this.”

The three of them took seats on red leather bar stools in the empty pub, and Nikki said, “Actually, I do have some serious business to discuss. I’m investigating my mother’s murder, and since you knew her so long, maybe you can help provide some information.”

“Of course. Now I feel even worse for blathering on. Whatever I can do.” Then his eyes widened. “I’m not a suspect, am I? Because that would pretty much suck, especially considering how I felt about her. I mean, Cynthia was wonderful.”

She didn’t tell him whether he was a suspect or not because she hadn’t decided. Instead, Nikki moved forward with her questions. She’d prepped carefully, knowing an interview like this would be tricky because she faced the challenge of not revealing that her mother had been a spy. So Heat decided to proceed as she would with any other interrogation of an eyewitness or person of interest and see what shook out: nervous behavior, inconsistencies, lies, or even new clues. “Think back, if you can, to the month leading up to her killing,” she began. “November of ‘99. Did you see any changes in my mom’s behavior?”

He thought it over and said, “No, not that I recall.”

“Did she confide any worries? Seem agitated? Mention anybody who was bothering her, threatening her?”

“No.”

“Or say that she felt like she was being followed?”

He thought and wagged his head. “Mm, nothing of that sort, either.”

And then Heat tried to ascertain if her mother had been snooping his home. “During that last month she worked for you, did you or your wife ever get a feeling that things in your house were disturbed?”

His brow was puzzled. “Disturbed in what way?”

“Any way. Items in disarray. Items out of place. Items missing.”

He shifted on his bar stool. “I’m trying to makes sense of this, Detective.”

“You don’t have to, just think back. Did you ever come into a room and find something was moved? Or gone?”

“Why would that be? You asked me if she was agitated. Are saying your mother had developed some mental problem and gone klepto?”

“I’m not saying that. I’m just asking if things were disturbed. Do you need to think about it?”

“No,” he said. “I don’t remember anything like that.”

“Let me ask about other people who may have been in your home back then.”

“You do realize that was ten years ago plus.”

“I do. So I’m not talking about plumbers or deliverymen. Houseguests. Did you have anyone staying with you?”

“Hello. You think somebody we knew might have killed her?”

“Mr. Maggs, it would be helpful for you not to keep guessing what I’m trying to learn and just focus on the question.”

“Brilliant. Carry on.”

“I just want to know if you had any houseguests. Overnight, weekends?” Heat had circled a notation in Joe Flynn’s surveillance log that a man, about thirty, had been at the Maggs residence that week just before the PI got pulled from his stakeout by her dad. “Anyone stay in your apartment with you while my mom was there giving lessons?”

He shook his head slowly as he thought. “No, I don’t think so.”

Rook said, “That was right around Thanksgiving. No friends or relatives came to stay with you the week before Thanksgiving?”

“Of course, that is not one of our traditional UK holidays, so let me give it a fair bit.” He made a steeple of his fingers and pressed them to his lips. “Well, now that I think it over, it comes to me that a college mate of mine did arrive and stayed with us that week. Your mentioning Thanksgiving jogs my memory because the kids were going to be off school. We were planning to leave that weekend for London and he was going to mind our flat while we were chocks away.” Maggs recognized the implications and grew unsettled. “But if you’re thinking he had anything to do with it, no. I couldn’t believe that, not him.”

She turned her spiral to a fresh page. “May I have the name of this friend?” Carey closed his eyes slowly and his face went slack. “Mr. Maggs, I am going to ask you again to give me the name.”

In a voice that had gone strangely toneless, he said, “Ari. Ari Weiss.” Then he opened his eyes. He looked as if the admission had hollowed something out of him.

Nikki spoke quietly, but persistently. “Can you tell me how I could get in touch with Ari Weiss?”

“You can’t,” he said.

“I have to.”

“But you can’t. Ari Weiss is dead.”

“Confirmed,” said Rook, hunched toward the screen at his desk back in the precinct. Heat crossed over to him as he referred to it. “Obituary for Ari Weiss, MD, says the graduate of Yale School of Medicine and Rhodes Scholar-which is probably how he met up with Carey Maggs, up at Oxford-died of a rare blood disease called babesiosis. It says here, that is a malaria-like parasitic disorder which, like Lyme disease, is usually tick-borne, although it can come from transfusion, blah, blah.”

“Rook, a man’s dead, and all you can say is, ‘blah blah’?”

“Nothing against him. It’s just I’m one of those people who hears about rare diseases delivered by ticks and I start scratching and checking my temperature every five minutes.”

“You’re a prize package, Rook. Lucky me.” She hitched a thumb at the obit on his screen. “Meanwhile, a potential lead hits another dead end. When did he pass?”

“2000.” Rook closed the webpage. “That eliminates him as a suspect for Nicole Bernardin’s murder, anyway.”

Nikki tried to stay upbeat in the face of yet another lead coming to an apparent dead end. She was making a mental note to do some of her own research later on Ari Weiss, when Roach startled her.

“Detective Heat?” Nikki turned to see the partners standing before her, looking grim.

“Tell me,” she said.

“We’d better show you,” said Ochoa.

As she and Rook followed Roach across the bull pen, Raley said, “I scored this a few minutes ago, but I waited for Sharon Hinesburg to clear out for her two-hour lunch.” He sat at his desk and keyed some strokes on his computer keyboard.

Ochoa said, “It’s the statement for November 1999 on your mother’s separate account at New Amsterdam Bank and Trust.” The monitor filled with a financial PDF. Raley rolled his chair back so Nikki could lean in to read it.

Rook bent over beside her to look and let out a low moan. Heat turned away, her face drained of color.

As if to confirm the reality she feared, Detective Raley said in a hushed voice, “According to this, your mom received a two-hundred-thousand-dollar deposit the day before she was killed.”

“Detective, do you have some idea what this means?” asked Ochoa.

Nikki didn’t reply. Because she would have had to say that it meant it looked like her mother had sold out her country.

Her head became light. Heat turned back to see the document again, hoping she had been mistaken, but the image clouded before her eyes. Small trembles made her hands start to shake, and when she crossed her arms on her chest to hide them her whole body began quaking from the inside, radiating out to her joints. As her legs grew weak, she heard Rook’s voice, sounding like it came from the end of a tunnel, asking if she was all right. Nikki turned away to cross to her desk but changed her mind when she got halfway across the room and wove unsteadily out of the bull pen, smacking her thigh into a chair or maybe a desk on the way out.

When she got to the street, fresh air didn’t help. Nikki’s head still cycloned in a whirl of panic. Even in the bright morning light her vision remained fogged by a deep blue haze, the way condensation forms on a shower door. She rubbed her eyes, but when she opened them again the mist had crystallized, making her view a solid sheet of blue ice. Behind it, shadowy figures moved, seeming familiar to her, but unrecognizable. A face looked back at her through the frost. It looked like her own, through a clouded mirror. But it might have been her mother’s.

She didn’t know which.

Somewhere behind her, Heat heard her name being called. She ran.

She didn’t know where.

Rubber squealed and a truck horn blasted. Defensively, Nikki put out her palms and touched the hot grill of a semi as it skidded to a stop. She stayed on her feet, but the jolt fractured the veneer of ice she was looking through enough for her to see how close she had come to getting hit by a truck.

Nikki turned and bolted through traffic on Columbus Avenue, running somewhere, anywhere.

Away.