Raging Heat

FIVE

They surrendered their fireside table, checked out of the room — unused — and drove west, pausing only for a pit stop in Sagapanack for takeout at Townline BBQ. “So much for our romantic dinner,” she said.

“I don’t think of it so much as a romantic dinner as an incursion. But that’s fine. Rain check tomorrow night,” said Rook as they joined the red ribbon of taillights on 495. “How do you feel about an intimate rooftop supper for two? I’m sure Alton Brown has something in his Good Eats repertoire. I’ll look in the index under ‘Fussy, and Travels Well Up a Fire Escape.’”

“Or you could just consult Alicia Delamater. I’ll bet she’s carried more than one covered dish across the lane to Casa Cosmo.”

“I’d say a hot dish. Sure explains why Keith Gilbert said his wife never goes there.”

“Come on, Rook, it’s obviously the other way around. The wife never goes there, so it’s the perfect place to stash his mistress.”

“Not so stashed, as it happens. That’s the way it is with secrets; we both know that. Sooner or later, it all comes out.”

There it was, served up like a big softball: Nikki’s opening to come clean about the task force and relieve the pangs that had troubled her all day. She almost seized it, but held back, telling herself it was too speculative, to wait and see. In truth she knew it wasn’t the job’s hypothetical nature, but its disruptive one. Her emotions were swirling enough about his potential marriage proposal, why open the touchy subject of a new gig involving lots of absences for international travel?

“Wonder if it’s possible Fabian Beauvais sniffed out Gilbert’s illicit relationship and that’s what bought him a skydive without a parachute,” he said. “Like, could that money be a blackmail payoff?”

“What is that, theory number ten?” Even though Heat teased him, she had already added that notion to her growing list of maybes. But Nikki kept that list stowed away. She had seen too many detectives fall in love with one theory too soon and shut the door to all the other possibilities.

“An observation?” she said. “Keith Gilbert has to know by now that we were nosing around out there. If his caretaker didn’t tell him, Alicia certainly did. That was almost three hours ago, and yet, no reaction. No call, no text, no thunder from the department’s brass mountain.”

“You know, Detective, it gets curiouser and curiouser. I had no idea when I pitched this case as a story to First Press it would end up being so juicy. An alien crashing to earth from the heavens now could herald the fall of a rising political star. Writes itself, doesn’t it?” And then he quickly added, “They don’t, just so you know. They never do.”

If Detectives Raley and Ochoa felt tired, it didn’t show on them when Heat and Rook ducked under the caution tape and entered the apartment on West End Avenue later that night. The exhilaration of piloting their own case had made the day timeless for Roach, who were on opposite sides of the living room, each conferring with a different CSU tech near bright portable work lights that made it feel more like noon than midnight.

“Oh, sure, you guys flit off to the Hamptons on a mini-vacation and leave the heavy lifting to us,” said Ochoa as the four of them gathered near the bloodstain.

Heat wanted to get right to the potential tattoo connection, but engaged in the ritual cop game of playing against emotion in response to the masked thanks he’d just offered for the opportunity. “Yeah, well, until you rudely interrupted, we were hobnobbing with J-Lo and Jerry Seinfeld and Martha Stewart. We only came back to laugh at all the evidence you two overlooked.”

Protocols met, Roach began the recap with a tour. The shambles matched Roach’s phone description. The luxury apartment looked as if a bear had gotten into a cabin and clawed every possible hiding place for food. Bookcases, clothing armoires, and furniture had all been scraped, dumped, or slashed. Valuables — and there were plenty left behind by the burglar or burglars — had been photographed, inventoried, and filed in banker’s boxes labeled NYPD Forensics. CSU technicians were still dusting for prints and plucking fibers in the maid’s quarters when they got there.

Heat asked, “Did we flip the mattress like that?”

“Found it that way,” answered Detective Raley. And then, sensing the graveness that descended on his squad leader as she stooped to inspect the modest personal belongings scattered on the floor — a hairbrush, a small crucifix, store-brand makeup, and a shattered votive candle — he added more gently, “We found bimonthly stubs in the victim’s checkbook made out to her. The name’s Jeanne Capois.”

“Yeah, I got it on your missing persons call alert.” She rose up and went to the window. “Was this locked like this?”

Ochoa nodded. “And no sign of exit.”

“Any blood in here?”

The tech in the hairnet and sterile suit said, “No. But still checking.”

Nikki said, “What about the picture?”

“Pulled these off the floor underneath the box springs.” Ochoa held out three cellophane evidence envelopes. The first two contained group photos of friends: one at a nightclub; another from Battery Park with Lady Liberty in the background. “Must have gotten knocked off the bulletin board.”

Heat noted the small corkboard, askew on the wall, with a tropical sunset photo push-pinned into it above a trio of faded rectangles where these shots had been posted. Only one woman was common to both pictures. Black, mid-twenties, beautiful. The third shot was a solo of a black man, also mid-twenties. It had been taken on the Coney Island boardwalk, and he had his shirt off. On one of his shoulders the Haitian tattoo faced the camera.

“We’ll get this to Forensics to verify the tattoo match,” said Raley, anticipating her.

“Anybody in the building know her or see her recently?” asked Heat. Her answer came with a big Roach grin that said yes. “It’s almost like you guys know what you’re doing.”

Wilma Stallings, an elderly housekeeper from an apartment up the hall had identified Jeanne Capois when Roach knocked on doors during their routine canvass earlier in the day. She repeated to Heat and Rook that she hadn’t heard any of the commotion because, at seventy-eight, she’d become hard of hearing. QVC blasting in a back room might also have been a factor. “Such a shame. Mr. David was a wonderful man. I told the other detectives he should have just let them take what they wanted. Are you sure you won’t sit? The couple I work for is away at their place in Stowe.”

They followed her to the living room and Nikki doubled back over ground Roach had covered with her, to get her own take on the missing woman and her life. Wilma had last seen Jeanne Capois about ten the evening before. “She seemed upset. Usually that young lady had a bright smile and all the time in the world. But when I saw her in the hall she was poking that elevator button like it was video blackjack. And not so much as a hello in return.”

“Did she have anything with her,” asked Heat.

“No, just her purse.”

“Did it seem particularly full or unusually heavy?”

“What a peculiar question.…No, not that I noticed.” Of course, Heat was fishing to see if Jeanne Capois’s hurry was all about getting some unknown object out of the apartment. That is, assuming that’s what the invasion was all about.

“Did she have any visitors recently or talk about anyone bothering her?”

The old woman shook her head.

Rook asked, “Do you know how she came to this particular job?”

“Oh, yes. An agency.” Then she stared and stared. So long, in fact, Nikki wondered if she was having some sort of episode. Then she came back from the ozone and said, “Happy Hazels. Knew I’d remember it.” She grinned and held up a hand, which Rook high-fived. Then Wilma squeezed her eyes tight behind her thick glasses and slapped her knee joyfully. “I’m on a roll. Something else came to me. Those young detectives showed me a photograph.”

Nikki had snapped a shot with her iPhone of the Coney Island man, Fabian Beauvais. She held it out to Wilma and traded a quick hopeful glance with Rook. “Yes, that one. I just remembered. I have seen him before, after all. This fella brought Jeanne to the apartment one night last month. Or June. I don’t know. Mr. David was away in Florida, I know that.”

Nikki calmed herself in the face of the old housekeeper’s big connection. She handed the photo to her for closer inspection. “But you are completely sure it was he?”

“Absolutely.” She tapped an arthritic finger on her temple. “Sometimes it comes late, but it always comes right.”

“How did they act? Did they seem to know each other well?” asked Rook.

“They had their tongues down each other’s throats.”

“Well enough then,” he said.

First thing the next morning, Heat addressed her squad from the Murder Board. “Thanks to a photo hit from a witness found by the Detectives Roach, we now have a solid link between Fabian Beauvais and the home-invasion homicide of Shelton ‘Shelly’ David.” Raley and Ochoa sat hunched in their chairs, each swollen-eyed and wearing the previous day’s clothes. In the gap between photos of the two dead men she posted a blowup of Jeanne Capois, vignetted from the Battery Park selfie. “Roach?”

Raley side nodded to his partner and Ochoa stood to tag in on the briefing. He ran down the findings at the crime scene, including the odd sock of a home invasion without an apparent theft.

“And you don’t think the ransack was just to cover the murder of the vic?” asked Randall Feller.

Ochoa nodded. “We were liking that. Even had Opie do the drill on the old broker through his First Precinct contact. That’s still in progress, but the game changed when we drew the missing maid’s connection to Splat Man.” Even without turning he could feel Nikki’s disapproving stare boring into him and amended, “I mean, Mr. Beauvais.” Then he faced Heat and added, “We’ve pulled Detective Rhymer off the Wall Street assignment so we can detail him to track Jeanne Capois.”

Raley joined in: “Logic being, she’s now the hot lead. Whether she has information, is in danger, or is a player. Just wanted you to know.”

Heat said the wisest thing she could have to them. “Your case, your call.”

Detective Rhymer reported that he had already started working the same agencies he’d contacted on his ID search for Beauvais. “Got her picture out to airports, transit, and subways, too. The Happy Hazels voice message says they don’t open until seven-thirty. I’ll pay them a visit then to see if they have any alternate addresses or emergency contacts on file for her.”

“Still no video around West End Avenue of the home invaders?” Heat asked Raley. And when he shook no, she said, “Have you thought about re-scrubbing those security cams for Jeanne Capois to see where she might have gone after leaving the apartment?”

“I have now.” The room chuckled, but then immediately quieted when they all saw Rook entering the bull pen for the day. He was carrying his coffee and her vanilla latte. And he was beardless.

He read the silence and said, “I miss something?”

“Yeah, like half your face, homes,” said Ochoa. “Did you at least save a lock for me?”

During the burst of catcalls and rowdiness, he handed Nikki her Starbucks and she mouthed, “I like it,” which made him smile — with lips she could actually see now. After West End Ave., they’d gotten to his loft after 1 A.M., too wired to sleep, so they carried glasses and a bottle of Hautes-Côtes de Nuits to the bathtub. He mentioned that, on the plane, he had seen a Bond Girl shave Daniel Craig in a preview of Skyfall and, after their second glass, Nikki straddled him with a razor. It wasn’t the warm water and the Burgundy that excited her (well, maybe a little). It was the thrilling intimacy of the act and Rook’s complete trust as he rested his head back on the edge of the tub while she ran sharp steel down his throat to his naked chest. Their kiss at the end gave her his old mouth back, and they finally found sleep after surprising each other with a newfound intensity.

“Welcome back, face,” she said as Rook rolled a chair over to join the meeting. Heat briefed the group on Keith Gilbert’s unannounced visit then connected the dots from the chicken slaughterhouse to the Hamptons, including the encounters with Alicia Delamater, who claimed Beauvais worked for her, not her lover.

“Nice and tidy,” said Detective Feller, giving voice to all their instincts. “Not saying there isn’t something there, but for me, coincidence is like air freshener. It only masks the odor. The trick is to know of what.” He recapped his walking tour of Flatbush, “making friends with the islander folk, and handing out business cards to anyone who’d talk to me. No hits on the mug shot or the sketches, although my gut tells me a few people recognized the dude. I’ll work it some more today.”

Heat said, “Take the picture of Jeanne Capois along, too.”

“Maybe I should stop at CVS and get one of those cute little photo albums.” His Galaxy buzzed. He checked it and held the screen out to her. “Three-four-seven area code. Could be a callback from Flatbush. Better take it.” Feller hustled off to his desk across the room for quiet. With no new clues or theories developing, Nikki released the squad to work their assignments. She refreshed her computer and found a new e-mail from Forensics at the top of her stack.

“Rook, check this out.” She turned to summon him but he was already right there on her shoulder. “You’re very stealthy when you’re clean-shaven, you know that?”

“I am all sleekness like the fabled ninja. I am made of wind and smoke, not flesh and bone. Well, except for that little trick in the bathtub, if you catch my reference.”

Nikki covered her ears. “Ew? Please? Ew?” She rotated the monitor so he could read the report along with her. Forensics had labbed clothes from Fabian Beauvais’s SRO. One pair of jeans was dappled with dried spatters and abrasion transfers of a hardened resin commonly used to shellac exterior wood as a weather seal.

“You know what this means, don’t you?” said Rook. “He shellacked shingles by the seashore. Which means Alicia Delamater lied. Her faux Moroccan eyesore is all stone with no exterior wood to speak of.”

“Slow down there. He could have picked up that shellac anywhere, not necessarily from singles on the shea — forget it. You know what I mean.”

“I do. You’re applying the transitive law of mathematical logic to tell me that C minus A does not equal B if C is not the sea. Get it? Sea?” Heat elbowed him. “Hey, read what else they found.”

But in her eagerness, she quoted the next section for him. “Spectral analysis revealed nonparallel rows of indentations, including several slight punctures of the denim at the calf of one leg. See: attached photo.”

She opened the attachment and both reacted to what they saw: “A dog bite.”

“Not a bite, exactly. Having just received one of those message-chomps myself, I’d say that’s a warning hold from Topper. What are you doing?”

Nikki talked while she typed. “Replying to Forensics. To see if they can detect or ID any dog hairs by breed.”

“While you’re at it, you might also ask if they can test the bite for a possible DNA match to my German shepherd pal.” She shrugged why not? and keyed that in, too. “The manager at the slaughterhouse said Beauvais was injured. Is it possible it was from the dog?”

“Always possible. But no mention of blood. Not on these pants, anyway. I’ll have them double-check all his other clothes.”

“Yeah, I’ll bet those lab types love it when street detectives tell them to be thorough.”

A telltale rustle of plastic announced the arrival of Wally Irons carrying a crisp white uniform shirt and blue jacket in dry cleaner bags. The camera-ready captain always kept spare wardrobe handy in the event of a news conference or photo opportunity. But instead of unlocking his office, he entered the bull pen and came directly to Heat’s desk.

Normally obsequious to the press, he didn’t even acknowledge Rook. “Guess what I’ve been doing the last fifteen minutes, Detective. No, I’ll tell you. Sitting in my car in the parking lot getting an earful from the Office of Emergency Management. And why? Because some pissant tropical storm near Jamaica just bumped up to a Category One hurricane, and there seems to be a strong sentiment that a witch hunt being conducted by my precinct is distracting key planners from readying this city for a potential landfall.”

“And let me guess. One of those key planners is Keith Gilbert?”

“You tell me, Heat. Have you been stomping around outside your jurisdiction, dogging the heinie of a respected Port Authority commissioner when this entire region is about to go on storm watch?”

So there it was. Nikki wondered how it would come down. She’d half expected another drop-in by the commish. Or a phone call. But the squeeze came through channels. Back channels, actually, utilizing a high-level proxy to apply Gilbert’s pressure. “Sir, I object to the term witch hunt.”

“Tell the mayor’s man from OEM. He’s the one who used it.” Wally shifted the clothes hangers to his other hand and examined the pink indents the hooks had left on his porcine fingers.

“Storm or no storm, sir, I am conducting an investigation into a suspicious death, which has now been linked to a homicide.” She paused to let that seep through the crust and mantles of Wally’s skull. “I have no doubt that Commissioner Gilbert finds it unsettling to have the police looking into his potential involvement in this matter, but you know how it goes here, Captain. We always follow the evidence wherever it leads without fear or favor.”

She could see that registered as a platitude on the political survivor standing before her. But the other edge of the sword facing Wally was to keep his skirts clean if some future probe into his handling of a murder case put him on the record as an obstructionist. Heat was savvy enough to see that and applied her own pressure from that angle. “Sir, are you telling me to cease my investigation because it involves a highly placed member of government?”

This time Irons did seem quite aware of Rook. He glanced from the journalist back to Nikki and said, “Absolutely not. I’m apprising you of all angles…as you move forward.” The words fell dead from his tongue. But all Heat needed was to hear them.

“Most appreciated, Captain.” Heat and Rook flashed celebratory faces behind his back. “Oh, and Captain Irons? I’d also like you to sign off on getting a warrant to search Keith Gilbert’s phone records.”

“OK, Heat, now you’re pushing it.”

“But, sir, if I’m going to—”

“No way,” he snapped, cutting her off. “I said you can pursue your investigation. But I am not waking the lion by getting any warrants against the commissioner, not after the phone call I just had.” The Iron Man started off but had an afterthought and U-turned back to them. “In case you haven’t considered it, OEM is in overlap mode with Homeland Security and other agencies. This all works because we’re all in the same sandbox and we all talk to each other.”

“Sir?”

“I’m sure Counterterrorism is in the mix some way.” He gave her a meaningful stare. Butterfly wings brushed her stomach in fear that he would take this conversation to the next step and out her secret in front of Rook.

Nikki shifted, physically placing herself between Rook and Irons, trying to alter the dynamic. “Thank you again.”

“I’m just saying. Careful where you poke.” Panic rose in her. And then out it tumbled. “You just might kiss off that job offer for the international task force.” He nodded and clucked his tongue, then headed for his office, sorting out keys.

Rook’s face, so much more readable without the beard, drew into itself. “What job? What was he talking about?”

Heat led him into the break room where they sat at the lone table. Given the circumstances, she might have been more at home in one of the interrogation boxes. At least Nikki didn’t have to see herself in a mirror while she confessed. He watched her passively while she told him about the true reason for the Internal Affairs tail and the conversation it led to with Zach Hamner at One PP. “I really want you to know this has been tearing me up. I don’t keep secrets from you, but this just came up on the heels of our…thing…about you being gone so much that I…didn’t feel comfortable telling you just then. It was wrong of me for a lot of reasons, including this. This is worse.”

But she did hold one other secret, after all. Her accidental discovery of the ring receipt. That one, Nikki could better forgive. Or, at least, rationalize.

“Let’s get past you holding this back. For now,” he said, and a measure of relief filled her. It was only temporary. “What’s your thinking about taking this job?”

“It hasn’t been formally offered.”

“Nikki. You know it’s coming. It’s why you lied to me.”

“I didn’t lie.”

“By omission.”

“Is this what you call getting past this?”

“Where do you stand? Are you thinking about it? I’m sure it’s a big promotion. Very exciting. Lots of responsibility, lots of fulfillment…” He let it hang there for her to fill in the Mad Lib.

“Lots of travel.” She bobbed her head gravely. “International travel. I’d be gone a lot.”

“But I’m asking, will you be?” The question hung there in the space between them. Because they were built of fabric that dictated rising to calls and making personal sacrificing for duty, both knew where she was leaning without the words being spoken. Indeed, it was the whole reason she’d hidden the offer from him in the first place.

For Nikki Heat, the die was cast. She’d crossed the Rubicon the day her mom was killed and she decided to be a cop. “There’s a part of me that would like to hear some congratulations.”

The face that had trusted her so completely, so memorably, in the tub when she shaved him now clouded. He quietly replied, “I think the time for that would have been yesterday when you hung up from the offer and told me all about it.” And then he added, “But honestly, I do hope it’s good for you.”

Heat’s phone buzzed. She showed him FELLER on the caller ID, and he left her there to take it. Nikki’s heart clinched watching his back going through the door to the bull pen without a wisecrack or a funny face for her. Or even a glance.

“I’m about to hit the tunnel to Hipsterborough.” Detective Feller harbored an open contempt for the millennials who had annexed Brooklyn, as he put it, “spoiling a perfectly decent working borough that doesn’t need any more artisanal pickle stores or boutiques mixing home-crafted microbrews with curated vinyl LPs.” His car window was down. She could hear he was moving fast. “Got a call from a guy who knows a guy I talked to on my canvass in Flatbush. Thinks he saw those two goons we chased. They were asking around for Fabian Beauvais a few days ago.”

“That’s great, Randall.”

“We shall see. These folks weren’t such big talkers yesterday.”

“Use your innate charm.”

“More fun to beat it out of them, but OK. I’ll keep you looped.”

Heat pressed END and went into the squad room to share the news with Rook. She found him packing up his laptop and notes over at his squatter’s desk.

“Going somewhere?”

“Actually, yeah. I have lots of work to do on this article, and I’m not getting any writing done here. I’ll catch up with you later on.”

Nikki wanted more. Wanted conversation. Wanted a smile. Wanted it all back, clean. But standing there in shame and awkwardness, all she could manage was, “Sure. Your place? Mine?”

“I don’t know. Let’s check in.” The idea of the rooftop and candles became a hope that sank, plummeting without comment, featherless.

Heat tried calling Rook when they found the body of Jeanne Capois, but his phone went straight to voice mail. Not the sort of news you leave on a message, so she let it go with, “Big development. I’ll be in the field on my cell.” She resisted saying call me. Too needy.

Detective Ochoa spotted her and strode toward her unmarked Taurus when she pulled up in front of the prep school on West End Avenue. Nikki paused for a ritual breath then met him on the sidewalk. “School custodian made the find,” he said, escorting her to the black iron gate between the granite school building and a mixed-use apartment with a dental practice on the ground floor. “Garbage pickup is today. He was rolling the trash barrels to the walk, and there she was, dumped behind them. Lauren says there’s so much blood, no doubt she was done here.”

Dr. Parry crouched over the corpse, running tests and directing the CSU tech where to take photos. “This is a bad one, Nikki.”

“Sadistic shit,” said Detective Raley. He knew Heat wasn’t big on profanity but let it out. “Sorry for that, but this is pretty fucked up.”

Nikki leaned over the ME for a peek and quickly turned away. “This goes beyond blood loss from a beating,” said Lauren. “My totally prelim cause of death is asphyxia. See the choke marks on the neck? As yet, I see no signs of sexual assault, so I can only imagine it was either deviant behavior or torture.”

Ochoa said, “Based on the ravaging of the apartment she lived in, my money’s on torture.”

“Mine, too,” said the medical examiner. “Come closer. See the fingertips? That damage was caused by pliers — see the grooves made by the grippers inside the pincers? And her eyes…It looks like some sort of toxic or corrosive liquid was poured into them. The bright stain on her blouse could be from automotive antifreeze. I’ll test it.” Heat turned away again, standing up straight to look at the bright yellow leaves waving on the fall trees while she contemplated the horror of Jeanne Capois’s last moments alive. “She also has abrasions around her mouth where they must have gagged her. There are also numerous burns about her breasts and the soles of her feet.”

“What about these here?” asked Nikki. “The marks just above her wrists.”

“These are consistent with some sort of restraint biting into her skin.”

“Like disposable cuffs?” Ochoa said it, more than asked it. All three detectives went right to the bloody zip ties recovered from the vendor outside the planetarium where Fabian Beauvais crashed.

Lauren Parry, the scientist among them, said, “It’s highly possible. To be certain, I’d want to examine more carefully back at OCME.”

“Disposable cuffs it is,” said Ochoa.

“Can you venture a time of death?” asked Detective Heat.

As the medical examiner slipped brown paper bags over the victim’s hands to preserve DNA and particle evidence, she said, “The body’s been here two nights, I’d say. As for the hour, that’s tricky. I’m going to need my lab work to give us a window. That would make it the night of the home invasion, if it tests out.”

Nikki looked down at Jeanne Capois’s soft, kind face; such a contrast to the brutal agony she endured. What was her life like? The photos found in her room portrayed a joyful, young woman with lots of friends, a smile that lit up the world, and a boyfriend. A boyfriend who had also died in a most horrific fashion. Heat thought about an immigrant woman in her twenties, coming to New York, as so many did, to gain a toehold on the American Dream. And this is where it ended. In an enclosure where they kept the trash. Destined for a stainless steel table in the basement autopsy room on East Thirtieth. How did this happen? What was she into? One thing Heat knew for sure: Given the timing and her relationship with Fabian Beauvais, there was something more to all this than a first-genner seeking a better life.

The detectives huddled on the sidewalk while the OCME van backed up to the gate of the garbage area. Even though the prep school closed for the day following the discovery, technicians tented the area for privacy while the body got loaded. “TOD before or after the apartment ransack?” Heat asked.

“I could see it either way,” said Raley. “Scenario-one, they nab her after she leaves the building at — what time did the elderly housekeeper say?”

“Ten P.M.”

“Right. And they bring her here — or catch her hiding out here — and go to work on her, trying to get her to give up whatever it is they wanted to find.”

Ochoa shook his head. “But then why go and rip the hell out of the apartment?”

“Maybe she didn’t tell them what they wanted,” said Heat. “Or she lied.”

The metal legs of the Stryker collapsed as the gurney got loaded. And they all just stopped talking and thought about the strength of will that woman must have had in the face of a professional interrogation job like that.

“Gentlemen, still your case. What next?”

Ochoa started without hesitation. “I want to get a bunch of unis to comb the four blocks between here and that apartment to see if anybody saw or heard anything that night. If she was being chased, she had to make some noise. Had to make some here, too, even if they gagged her.”

“And since I am still reigning as the King of All Surveillance Media,” said Rales, “I’m hunting me some cams.”

Heat remained at the crime scene. It had become the hot lead. Nonetheless she was careful not to bigfoot Roach, and stood aside to let them organize deployment of Detective Rhymer, the uniforms, and the plainclothes borrowed from Burglary. She did suggest putting a detail on the homeless people who routinely set up cardboard cartons for sleeping on the steps of the church at the corner. They were the owls of the night, and their misfortune did not make them any less important as eyewitnesses.

While examining a piece of torn cloth found by a CSU tech, her phone vibrated and she jumped.

“Detective Heat? Inez Aguinaldo from SVPD.” In other words, not Rook calling back. “I wanted to follow up on those checks I said I’d make for you. Is this a good time?”

“I’m at a homicide site, but I can talk.”

“Then I’ll keep it brief,” said the lead detective from Southampton. “First of all, I checked records of calls and complaints since last April near Beckett’s Neck. One of the calls, I personally responded to after we got an alarm for an intruder at Keith Gilbert’s home. When we arrived Mr. Gilbert was with a woman who was clearly spending the night.”

“Alicia Delamater?”

“Yes. Gilbert was holding a gun — which we verified as legally registered — on the intruder who turned out to be a very drunk mystery writer from up the neck who said he found the wrong house.”

“So many look alike around there,” said Heat.

“The rest are only a few routine traffic stops — all local residents. Another complaint for a dispute at the home of the same mystery writer — this time he keyed the paint on the car door of his editor — plus some loud music complaints for a sorority beach party that got out of hand.”

“The Thriller flash mob?”

“You are certainly tapped in.”

“I heard about it from Keith Gilbert.”

“So did we that night.” She laughed. “Let’s just say the Thriller was gone. And pretty quickly. I also showed the sketches and the mug photo to the local patrol officers. That’s the beauty of a small town. My patrol sergeant is away on vacation, so I’ll have to show him when he gets back, but I got no hits on the pair of bad guys. One patrolman said he may have seen the man in your photo walking to the late train to New York a while ago, but he can’t be certain. It was nighttime and he found him staggering along the road. The officer thought he was drunk, but the man said he had a bad case of the flu. He seemed lucid, although difficult to understand because he had a foreign accent, so he was a catch and release.”

“That could be Beauvais. When was that?”

“Nine days ago. Is this helpful?”

“You know how it goes, Detective Aguinaldo. You never know until you know.” Heat thanked her for her cooperation and hung up to snag an incoming call.

Detective Feller began without a hello. “’K, here’s the deal. The night manager of a diner that serves Island food on Church Ave. here in Flatbush got braced about six days ago by the pair of goons from our sketches. I didn’t talk to him yesterday, but I did speak to his cousin who works the day shift, and he passed my card along to this guy.”

“Did he know Beauvais?”

“Says he doesn’t. Told them that, too, and they thought he was bullshitting them, so they got a little rough with him. So when they left, he wrote down their plate. Just for safekeeping.”

Heat said, “I wonder if it’s one of the getaway cars from the SRO.”

“It’s not. I ran it.”

“Randall Feller, you rock.”

“Just wait. The plate came back belonging to a Chevy Impala. Ready? It’s registered to the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.”

After telling Detective Feller to stay in Flatbush to continue working the Haitian community, Nikki sat on the galvanized metal steps beneath the school’s service door for a moment to take stock of this new information. She wasn’t sure where it would lead, but Heat knew something bigger than she could yet see was going on. And now this Port Authority connection made it increasingly more difficult not to leap to the conclusion that beckoned her with increasing urgency.

Nikki fogged out the work of the CSU team before her. Shut out the street noise and chatter. Quieted, undistracted, creating solitude amid the chaos, she conjured a mental picture of the Murder Board six blocks away and, in reviewing every development that surfaced in this case, she began slapping imaginary Post-its on the eight-by-ten photo of one Keith Gilbert.

Whose Hamptons’ address and phone number did they find with all that money in the Haitian’s closet? Slap. Whose dog most likely left those bite marks on Fabian Beauvais’s jeans — the jeans splattered with shellac that probably came from the renovation at Cosmo? Slap. Whose Southampton neighbor-slash-mistress far-too-coincidentally claimed to employ Beauvais? Slap. Whose organization owned the car driven by the two thugs searching for Beauvais — who also fled his SRO in Flatbush? Slap. In Heat’s imagination, enough pastel sticky notes ringed the head shot to make it look like Gilbert wore a Hawaiian lei.

But that was far from a collar.

Knowing where this all pointed wasn’t enough to act upon. These were indicators, for sure. Incriminating? Not yet. Forget the fact that she had not discovered a motive. Or even a mode of Beauvais’s death to establish means. Heat did not have one solid connection implicating Keith Gilbert in anything more sinister than hiring an illegal day laborer to reshingle a second home.

That was, until Detective Rhymer’s urgent text.

“I found it here inside this one,” said Rhymer when Heat arrived. He indicated the yellow sidewalk box dispensing freebie catalogs for the Gotham Writers’ Workshop. The plastic newsstand was wedged between a red one with free copies of the Village Voice and the blue container for handouts of Big Apple Parent. “I said, ‘OK, what if she wasn’t captured but was on the run, in a panic,’ you know? Since we didn’t find her purse at the murder scene, I thought maybe, if she didn’t drop it, or if the bad guys didn’t take it, maybe she stashed it on the fly. I walked the beeline from the home-invasion building, checking tree limbs, trash cans, even the roofs of parked trucks. Two blocks into it, dang.”

His Southern accent came out on that last word, making Heat think of little Opie Rhymer, a boy in the hills with a bloodhound. With work like this, maybe he didn’t need one.

Ochoa had pull up the Roach Coach and, with gloved hands, he carefully placed the contents of Jeanne Capois’s purse on the hood. Raley powered up the inexpensive pay-as-you-go cell phone inside it as Heat and Rhymer looked on. The purse items seemed to be standard fare, including a lipstick and compact, hair scrunchies, chewing gum, a MetroCard, ring of keys, grocery list, a few random business cards, and a stick pen. Her wallet still had cash in it: just a few dollars and some U.S. and Haitian gourde coins mixed together. In the photo windows were a picture of a middle-aged couple, most likely her parents, and a smiling shot of Fabian Beauvais standing proud over a barbecue of grilled fish.

“Uh, Detective,” said Raley, holding out the phone, “you’re going to want to look at this.” Nikki took it from him and shielded the screen from the sunlight so she could read the text he had opened. The message read: RUN. KG THING GO BAD. RUN NOW! JE T’AIME. FAB.

The other two detectives came around to flank her so they could get a peek. Opie let out a low whistle. Ochoa kept his usual cool. “Huh, he said. “I might call that a nexus.”

Heat read the text again and turned to her team. “I think it’s time to have another chat with Keith Gilbert.”