Naked heat

Chapter Eighteen

Nikki Heat was big on hands. Sitting in an interrogation room, what she could observe physically about the person across the table was as important as what that person was saying-or not saying. Facial expressions, of course, were key. So were posture, demeanor (restless, fidgety, calm, checked out, and so forth), state of hygiene, and attire. But hands told her a lot. Soleil Gray's hands had been lean and strong from the rigors of her athletic stage dancing. Strong enough, as it turned out, to overpower Mitchell Perkins with such force that people assumed his assailant had been a man. One of the tells Nikki had misjudged when the singer had been sitting at the table with her lawyer just the day before was the cut on her knuckle which the detective had taken to be from the rehearsal hall, not the street mugging.

Now, self-reproach was trying to creep in on Heat, pestering her with the virulent notion that if she had only looked at that hand with a more open view to causes she might have averted a tragedy. She told that idea to have a seat, she'd deal with it later.

Morris Granville's hands were soft and pallid, as if he soaked them daily in bleachy water. He was also a nail biter, although he wasn't doing it in front of her. Swollen domes of irritated skin enveloped the nail stubs at the tip of every finger, and the cuticles that weren't scabbing were raw. She considered those hands and his loner lifestyle and decided to let her projection end right there.

His mind was on Soleil Gray as well, and it wasn't lost on Nikki that her despised moment of fame was the very thing that had brought Morris Granville to her. He had sought out Detective Heat because of her public connection to the now-dead singer, so he could share his moment of special bonding: the night he saw Soleil argue on the sidewalk outside a club with her ex-fiance, Reed Wakefield.

"And you are certain this was the night Reed Wakefield died?" asked Heat. She had been through this with him and asked that same question in different ways over the last half hour, looking for the slipup. Morris Granville was a bona fide celebrity stalker. For this reason the detective was exercising a high degree of caution. His experience could provide an important missing piece of the puzzle, but Heat didn't want to jump for that candy in a weak moment of wishful thinking.

Nikki had run all her back-channel checks. Asking him what date it was. "May 14." What night of the week that was. "A Friday." What the weather was like. "It was drizzling off and on. I had an umbrella with me." Whether there was security. "I already said there wasn't any. Nobody else was out there." She told him these, as well as the other details he had given her, were all things she could check. He said that was good because then she would believe him. She noted that he seemed to relish the fact that she was writing down his answers. But she was skeptical there, too. Heat knew his need to be at the center of things could be driving that the same way it drove everything else in his life.

There was another question she wanted to ask Morris Granville. An obvious one to her, but she held it, wanting to get to the things she didn't assume first, in case he decided to stop talking. "What happened with the fight?"

"It went on a long time."

"In the rain?"

"They didn't seem to care."

"Did it ever get violent?"

"No. Just arguing."

"What did they say?"

"I couldn't hear it all. Remember, I said I didn't want to get too close?"

Heat mentally ticked off one of her consistency cross-checks. "Did you hear anything?"

"It was about their breakup. She said he was only into himself and getting high. He said she was a selfish bitch, stuff like that."

"Did she threaten him?"

"Soleil? No way."

Heat made another mental note that Granville sounded like he had taken on some role as Soleil's defender. She began to wonder if this stalker's outreach was rooted in squaring himself in her legacy somehow. She filed it as a possibility but left herself open. "Did Wakefield threaten her?"

"Not that I heard. And he was out of it, too. He kept holding on to the light post for balance until they were done."

"How did it end?"

"They both cried and then hugged each other."

"And then what?"

"They kissed."

"As in kissed good-bye?"

"As in romantic."

"And after they kissed?"

"They left together."

Nikki double-tapped her pen on her spiral notebook. He was getting to the part she wanted to hear, and she had to make sure to ask in a way that didn't set him up to please her. She kept her question general. "How did they leave?"

"Holding hands."

So she got more specific. "I mean did they walk? Take a taxi? How did they leave?"

"They got in one of the limos. There was one waiting right there."

Heat concentrated on trying to sound detached even though she could feel her pulse rate rising. "Whose limo was it, Morris? The one Soleil came in or Reed Wakefield's, do you know?"

"Neither, I saw them come in cabs."

She tried not to get ahead of herself, although the temptation was strong. She told herself to keep the slate blank, just listen, not project, ask simple questions.

"So it was just there and they flagged it?"

"No."

"What, they helped themselves to someone else's limo?"

"Not at all. He invited them and they got in with him."

Heat pretended to be perusing her notes to keep the gravity out of her next question. The one she had been waiting to ask. She wanted to make it sound offhand so he didn't go defensive on her. "Who invited them for a ride?" Pablo drank the last swallow of the electric-blue energy drink and set the empty bottle on the interrogation room table. Because of his age, Roach wouldn't make the boy sit through the interrogation but had strategically allowed him to have his snack in there to let the stakes sink in on Esteban Padilla's cousin Victor. Raley set the teenager up with an officer from Juvenile to watch TV in the outer area and returned to Interrogation 1.

He could tell by how Victor looked at him when he sat down across the table that Raley and his partner had been right when they planned their strategy. Victor's concern for the boy was their wedge. "Happy as a clam," said Raley.

"Bueno," said Ochoa, and then he continued in Spanish. "Victor, I don't get it, man, why won't you talk to me?"

Victor Padilla wasn't as self-assured outside of his neighborhood or his home. He said the words, but they sounded like they were losing steam. "You know how it is. You don't talk, you don't snitch."

"That's noble, man. Stand by some code that protects bangers while some dude that carved up your cousin walks free. I checked you out, Homes, you're not part of that world anyway. Or are you some kind of wannabe?"

Victor wagged his head. "Not me. That's not my life."

"So don't pretend it is."

"Code's the code."

"Bullshit, it's a pose."

The man looked away from Ochoa to Raley and then back to Ochoa. "Sure, you're going to say that."

The detective let that comment rest, and when the air was sufficiently cleansed of innuendo, he head-nodded to the Tumi duffel of money on the table. "Too bad Pablo can't hang on to that while you go away."

The guest chair scraped on the linoleum as Victor slid back an inch and sat upright. His eyes lost their cool remoteness and he said, "Why should I go away anywhere? I haven't done anything."

"Dude, you're a day laborer sitting on almost a hundred Gs in greenbacks. You think you're not going to get dirt on you?"

"I said I haven't done anything."

"Better tell me where this came from is all I can say." He waited him out, watching the knot of muscle flex on Victor's jaw. "Here it is straight up. I can ask the DA about making this problem go away if you just cooperate." Ochoa let that sink in and then added, "Unless you'd rather tell the kid that you're going away but, hey, at least you were loyal to the code."

And when Victor Padilla bowed his head, even Detective Raley could tell that they had him. Twenty minutes later Raley and Ochoa stood up when Detective Heat came into the bull pen. "We did it," they said in an accidental chorus.

She read their excitement and said, "Congratulations, you two. Nice work. I scored a hit, too. In fact, I'm getting a warrant cut right now."

"For who?" asked Raley.

"You first." She sat on her desk to face them. "While I'm waiting for my warrant, why don't you tell me a story?"

While Raley rolled over two desk chairs for them, Ochoa got out his pad to consult as he spoke. "Just like we thought, Victor says his cousin Esteban was making money on the side selling information about his celebrity riders to Cassidy Towne."

Raley said, "Ironic when you consider the big stall was all about some snitch code."

"Anyway, he was spying for pocket money that he got if his tips were hot enough to make her column. Twenty here, fifty there. Adds up, I guess. It's all a beautiful thing until one night last May when some bad shit goes down on one of his rides."

"Reed Wakefield," said Nikki.

"We know that, but here's where Victor swears to God his cousin never told him what happened that night, only that there was some bad business and the less he knew the better."

"Esteban was trying to protect his cousin," said Heat.

"So he says," added Raley.

Ochoa flipped a page. "So whatever exactly went down is still unknown."

Heat knew she could fill in some of that blank, but she wanted to hear their raw story first, so she didn't interrupt.

"Next day cousin Esteban gets canned from his limo job, some vague BS about personality conflict with his clients. So he's out of a gig, gets bad-mouthed in the business, and has to drive lettuce and onions around instead of A-listers and prom queens. He gets all set to sue-"

"Because he's been wronged," interjected Raley, quoting the Ronnie Strong commercial.

"— but drops it because once our gossip columnist hears from him about whatever happened that night-obviously involving Reed Wakefield somehow-she gives him a load of money to drop his suit and chill so he doesn't attract attention to it. Probably she didn't want a leak before her book was done."

Nikki jumped in here. "Cassidy Towne gave him a hundred large?"

"Nope, more like five grand," said Raley. "We're coming to the big payout."

"Esteban wanted more, so he double-dipped. He called up the subject of his tip to Cassidy Towne and said he was going to go public with what he saw that night unless he got a healthy chunk of change. Turns out it wasn't so healthy."

Raley picked it up. "Padilla got himself a hundred grand and then got himself killed the very next day. Cousin Victor freaks but hangs on to the money, figuring to use it to get away someplace where whoever did this can't find him."

"So that's what we got," said Ochoa. "We got some of the story, but we still don't have the name of whoever Padilla was shaking down."

They looked up at Nikki, sitting on her desk grinning.

"But you do, don't you?" said Raley. In the auditorium of the prestigious Stuyvesant High School in Battery Park City, Yankee phenom Toby Mills posed with an oversized prop check for one million dollars, his personal gift to the varsity athletic program of the public school. The audience was packed with students, faculty, administrators, and of course, press-all on their feet for his ovation. Also standing, but not applauding, was Detective Nikki Heat, who looked on from behind the curtain at the side of the stage, watching the pitcher grip 'n' grin with the athletic director, flanked by the Stuy baseball team turned out in uniform for the occasion. Mills smiled broadly, unfazed by the strobe flashes pummeling him, patiently turning to his left then his right, well acquainted with the choreography of the photo op.

Nikki was sorry that Rook couldn't be there. Especially since the school was only a few blocks from his loft, she had hoped that if he hurried he could meet her there to close the loop on his article. She had tried to return his calls on the drive down, but his phone rang out and dumped to voice mail. She knew better than to leave a message with sensitive content, so she said, "So let me get this straight. It's OK for you to bug me when I'm working, but not the other way around? Hey, hope the writing's going well. Got something going on, call me immediately when you get this." He'd be pissed about missing it, but she'd let him interrogate her, a thought that gave Nikki the first smile of her long hard day.

Toby's eye flicked to Heat in one of his turns, and his smile lost some of its luster when he registered her presence. It gave Nikki second thoughts about coming to see him in this venue, especially after her experience that day on the Intrepid. But he made no move to flee. In fact, when he finished shaking hands with the team mascot, who was attired in fifteenth-century garb as Peter Stuyvesant, Mills made his good-night wave then strode across the stage directly to her and said, "Did you catch my stalker?"

Without hesitating and without lying, Heat said, "Yes. Let's find a place to talk."

Heat had arranged to have use of a room nearby and she escorted Toby Mills into a computer lab and gestured to a chair. He noticed Raley and the two waiting uniform cops on the way in and got a funny look on his face when one uniform stayed inside while the other closed the door and posted himself outside with his body blocking the little window slit. "What's going on?" he asked.

Nikki replied with a question. "Isn't Jess Ripton here? I'd expect he'd be all over an event like this."

"Right. Well, he was going to come but called to say he had a sponsor fire to put out and to start without him."

"Did he say where he was?" asked the detective. Heat already knew The Firewall wasn't at his office or his apartment.

Mills looked up at the classroom wall clock. "Ten of nine, he's probably having his second dirty martini at Bouley."

Without being told, Detective Raley moved to the door. He gave a soft two-tap as he opened it, and the cop in the hall stepped aside to let him out.

The departure of the plainclothes cop wasn't missed by Toby. "This is starting to weird me out a little here, Detective."

That was pretty much the effect Heat was hoping to have on the pitcher. Her instincts were on alert that Ripton had broken form and wasn't there, but on the plus side it gave her a chance to apply pressure on Mills without the security blanket of his handler. "It's time, Toby."

He looked perplexed. "Time? Time for what?"

"For us to have a talk about Soleil Gray." Nikki paused and, when she saw the blinks come to his eyes, continued. "And Reed Wakefield." She took another beat and, when she could see him dry swallowing, added, "And you."

He tried his best, he truly did. But as sophisticated as were the circles a multimillionaire athlete in Gotham traveled in, Toby Mills was at heart still the kid from Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, and his upbringing made him a poor liar. "What about Soleil Gray and… Reed? What have they got to do with this? I thought this was about that creep following me and my family around."

"His name is Morris Granville, Toby."

"I know that. But he's always just 'the creep' to me. Did you get him or not? You said you got him."

"We did." She could see he wanted her to continue, and so she didn't. Toby Mills wasn't a star now, he was her interrogation suspect and she was going to run the board, not he. "Tell me how you knew Soleil Gray and Reed Wakefield."

His eyes darted to the door where the uniform waited, then back to her. And then he studied his shoes, looking in them for the answer to give now that he had no script from The Firewall.

"Soleil and Reed, Toby. Let's hear it."

"What's there to know? I heard about her today. Man…" And then he tried out, "I read in the paper you were harassing her. Were you chasing her today, too?"

Heat did not rise to his bait, let alone acknowledge it. "My question remains, how did you know Soleil and Reed?"

He shrugged like a child. "Around, you know? It's New York. You go to parties, you run into people. 'Hey, howarya,' like that."

"Is that all you knew of them, Toby? 'Hey, howarya'? Really?"

He checked the door again and pursed his lips repeatedly the way she had seen him do on TV once when he had walked the ninth man to load the bases and the top of the order was coming up with no outs. He'd need different skills to get himself out of this jam, and Toby wasn't sure he had them; she could smell it on him. So with his confidence flagging, she said, "Let's take a ride. Want to put your hands behind your back for me?"

"Are you serious?" He met her gaze, but it was he who blinked. "I met them around. You know. Parties, like I said. Reed, I guess he played in my charity softball game for the Oklahoma tornado victims in summer '09. Soleil, too, now that I think about it."

"And that's it?"

"Well, not totally. We hung out with each other from time to time. The reason I hesitated to talk about it is because it's embarrassing. I'm past all of it now, but I kinda got a little 'off the chain' when I first hit New York. Hard not to. And maybe I did do some partying with them back then."

Heat remembered Rook saying that Cassidy Towne had written up some of Mills's wild nights in "Buzz Rush." "So you're saying that was a long time ago?"

"Ancient history, yes, ma'am." He said it fast and smooth, as if he had passed the dangerous shoals and come out into calm waters.

"All before your charity game summer before last."

"Right. Way back."

"And you didn't see them after that?"

He started shaking his head for show, even as he pretended to be thinking. "Nope, can't say as I saw much of them later. They broke up, you know."

Nikki seized the opening. "Actually, I heard they got back together. The night Reed died."

Mills kept a game face but couldn't keep the blood in it, and he went a little pale. "Oh, yeah?"

"I'm surprised you didn't know that, Toby. Seeing how you were with them that night."

"With them-I was not!" His shout made the officer at the door straighten up and stare at him. He lowered his voice. "I was never with them. Not that night. Trust me, Detective, I think I'd remember that."

"I have an eyewitness who says otherwise."

"Who?"

"Morris Granville."

"Oh, come on, this is crazy. You're going to take the word of that psycho over mine?"

"When we picked him up, he told me about Club Thermal and how he saw Soleil and Reed." Heat leaned forward in her chair, toward him. "Of course, what I knew in the back of my mind was that the only reason I could think of for Morris Granville to be outside Club Thermal that night was because he was stalking you."

"Sounds like a load of bull. The guy's lying to get some kind of deal or something. He's just lying. The creep can say anything, but without proof, forget it." Toby sat back and crossed his arms, attempting to signal that he was all done.

Heat slid her chair over to the computer beside him and inserted a memory key. "What are you doing?" he asked.

When the thumb drive opened up, she double-clicked on a file, and as it loaded, she said, "I pulled this off Morris Granville's cell phone."

The image loaded. It was amateur cell quality, but the picture told the story. It was a shot of a wet street outside Club Thermal. Reed Wakefield and Soleil Gray were getting inside a stretch limo. Esteban Padilla, dressed in a black suit and red tie, held an umbrella over the open door. And inside the limousine, a giggling Toby Mills held a hand out to help Soleil get in. In his other hand was a joint.

As Mills weakened and his hands began to shake, Heat said, "Cassidy Towne. Derek Snow…" When he bowed his head, Nikki tapped lightly on the monitor. When he looked back up at the image, she added, "And think about this, Toby. Everyone here is dead-but you. I want you to tell me what's wrong with this picture."

And then the phenom began to weep. Toby Mills had entered Stuyvesant High that night in the backseat of a black Escalade with a million-dollar check. He left in the backseat of a police car in handcuffs. The charges, for now, would be tokens just to hold him: lying to a police officer; failure to report a death; conspiracy; conspiracy to obstruct justice; bribery. From the confession he had made to her after he broke down and wept, it wasn't clear yet to Detective Heat if meatier charges would be brought. That would be up to a grand jury and the DA. And most importantly, if she could find a way to connect the pitcher to the Texan.

The stalker's cell phone picture would be compelling evidence. In her own way Nikki was in debt to whatever sickness in Morris Granville had taken the picture and kept it since May. When she asked him why he hadn't come forward with it before or tried to capitalize on it, he said he wanted to protect his idol, Toby Mills. So, she had said, that raised the question, "Why show it to a cop now?" To that, Granville said, as if it was obvious, "He had me arrested." And then the stalker smiled and asked, "If he goes to trial, will Toby be there when I testify?" Heat reflected on the stalker mentality and those of them who loved their victims so much that when they couldn't get near, they destroyed them. Some killed them. Apparently others got them arrested. It was all about seeking relevance in an unrequited relationship. Choose your poison.

In Toby Mills's version of the events following Club Thermal, the three of them rode around Manhattan with one objective: partying. Reed and Soleil already had a leg up, and Toby, who wasn't due to pitch until a Monday start at home against the Red Sox, was in the mood that Friday night to blow it out after a losing road trip that had just ended in Detroit. He laughed at the MLB random drug tests. Mills and many other players either banked or bought urine to keep the commish out of their downtime. Mills had with him a small gym bag full of recreational narcotics and was a generous host. He told Heat that while they were parked briefly at the South Street Seaport, watching the East River, Reed and Soleil started getting serious about their reunion sex, and since everyone was tired of riding around in the car anyway, they all went back to Reed's room at the Dragonfly House to continue the party there. Toby, who in normal circumstances would have been the third wheel, had the drugs, so he was most welcome. He confessed that a part of him was hot for Soleil, and he even said to Nikki that he had thought, "What the hell, who knew where the night would lead?"

Where indeed?

He told Nikki that what happened at the Dragonfly was all an accident. Up in Reed's suite they played a game reciting famous movie titles, substituting the word "penis" for key nouns-Must Love Penis. ET the Extra Penis. GI Joe: The Rise of the Penis-while Toby laid out the portable pharmacy on the coffee table. Heat pressed him for details, and he listed pot, cocaine, and some amyl nitrate poppers. Reed had a stash of heroin that didn't interest Toby and a bunch of Ambien he said he used to help him sleep. He also said it was awesome for sex, and he and Soleil both downed some with vodka straight from a bottle they kept jammed into a room service ice bucket.

While Soleil and Reed went into the bedroom, Toby said he put on some music to drown out their screwing and watched ESPN with the sound off.

When he heard Soleil screaming, he thought it was her orgasm at first, but Mills said she ran out into the living room naked, out of control, shouting, "He's not breathing, do something, I think he's dead!"

Toby went in the bedroom with her and flipped on the lights, and Reed was all gray-faced and had saliva bubbles in the corner of his mouth. Toby said they both kept yelling his name and shaking him and got no answer. Toby finally felt his wrist and couldn't find any pulse, and they both freaked.

Toby speed-dialed Jess Ripton and got him out of bed. His handler told him to calm down and to keep quiet and stay put in the room. He told him to turn off the loud music and not to touch anything else and just wait there. When Toby asked if they should call an ambulance, Jess said, "Fuck no," not to call anybody or even think about leaving the room. He amended that, directing him to call his limo driver and tell him to be out front and ready to go when he was, but not to say why or sound upset when he called. Jess said he would get there as soon as he could and would call when he was coming up. He warned Toby not to open the door for anyone else.

But when Toby finished his call with Jess, he went to tell Soleil what was happening and she was hanging up the house phone in the bathroom. Two minutes later Derek Snow came to the door. Toby said not to let him in, but Soleil didn't listen and said the concierge would help, that they knew each other. As Nikki knew, Soleil had shot him in the leg only months before and had paid him off handsomely. Many relationships were built on less.

Derek wanted to call 911, but Toby was insistent and started to think he'd have to do something about this concierge. But Soleil took Derek aside and promised him a lot of money to be cool. When Derek asked what he could do, Toby told him to chill and just wait for his man to get there.

It turned out Derek was cooperative, and while Soleil finished getting dressed-not an easy feat considering all she had ingested-Snow helped Toby pack the drugs back into his gym bag. Twenty minutes later, Toby's cell phone rang. Jess Ripton was on his way up. When he came into the room, he told them it was all going to be OK.

Jess wasn't prepared to find Derek there, but he took him as a fact to deal with and put him to use, ushering Toby and Soleil out of there using the stairwell. On their way out, Jess told Derek that only he should touch doorknobs and to come back up after he delivered them to the limo.

Toby concluded his confession by saying that when they got outside the Dragonfly, Soleil was still freaked and didn't want to ride with him. The last he saw of her she was running off crying into the night. Then he told the limo driver to take him home to his family in Westchester. On Chambers Street, outside the front door of Stuyvesant High, Heat was about to get into her car when the Roach Coach pulled alongside her and stopped.

"Still no sign of Jess Ripton," said Ochoa out the passenger window. "Not at Bouley, not at Nobu, or Craftbar. We checked all his other usual haunts and watering holes Toby gave us. Nada."

"Think he's helping Jess duck us?" asked Raley.

"Always possible," said Nikki, "but I think Toby wants his Firewall about now, not to have him be MIA like this. A good indicator is that I let him try to call Jess, thinking he'd need his handler."

"Generous of you, Detective Heat," said Ochoa.

"In a self-serving, clever, tricky way. Thanks. Anyway, all Toby got was Ripton's voice mail. We have someone staking out his apartment, but let's also detail somebody else to roam on this overnight. I'll ask Captain Montrose to pull a detective off Burglary who can keep making the rounds to Ripton's usuals. Parking garage, his gym, his office."

Raley said, "But don't you think if Ripton's trying to go off the grid, he's too smart to go to any of those places?"

"Probably. Might be wheel-spinning, but we have to check anyway," said Heat.

Ochoa nodded. "Man, I know somebody's got to do it, but it sounds like a pointless exercise for some poor dude."

Raley laughed. "Give it to Detective Schlemming."

Roach scoffed, shook their heads, and muttered his nickname. "Defective Schlemming."

"Sounds about his speed," said Heat.

Ochoa's face grew serious. "I think we ought to quit picking on Schlemming. I mean, come on, just because a guy rear-ends the mayor's limo trying to shoo a bee out of his car is no reason to- Aw, hell, yes it is."

"Can I tell you something?" said Raley. "All those bodies. It's hard for me to buy Toby Mills as the contract killing type. And I'm a Mets fan."

"Come on, partner, you ought to know one thing by now and that is that you can never know. His Yanks contract, all those endorsements? That's millions of motives for Toby Mills to clamp a lid on that mess."

"Or Ripton," countered Raley. "He has a stake, too. Not just because he was the cleaner at Reed's hotel that night, but Toby's image is his meal ticket also. You agree, Detective?" He leaned over from the steering wheel to look across Ochoa out the side window to Heat. She was busy scrolling on her cell phone. "Detective Heat?"

"Hang on, just reading this e-mail from Hinesburg. It's a forward from Hard Line Security of the list of the Texan's old freelance clients." She continued to scan and then stopped.

"Whatcha got?" said Roach.

"One of his clients? Sistah Strife."

"Should that mean something?" asked Raley.

"It sure does. It means Rance Eugene Wolf and Jess Ripton both worked together for Sistah Strife."

As Raley and Ochoa departed, Heat called in to elevate the search status for Jess Ripton to an APB with an alert that his known associate was a professional killer. Spent and aching from the ordeal of her day, she got into her Crown Victoria and felt her body begin to melt into the driver's seat from fatigue. Tired as she was, she felt bad for Rook that, in his journalistic diligence, he had to miss the Toby takedown. She tried his cell phone one more time to fill him in. The iPhone sitting on Rook's desk sounded with Nikki Heat's ringtone, the theme from Dragnet. The writer sat and stared at it from his chair as it continued to loop its ominous "Dum-dah-dum-dum… Dum-dah-dum-dum…" The screen header he had entered for her flashed "The Heat," and her ID badge photo filled the screen.

But Rook didn't answer the call. When it finally stopped ringing, a melancholy swept over him as her image faded and the screen went blank. Then he shifted uncomfortably against the duct tape lashing his wrists to the armrests.