Minutes passed, maybe even an hour. When Nikki got into this flow, she not only lost time, she hid from it. She reached for her notebook and wrote one word: “Jobs.”
What came to her was more than just that both victims had been either mutilated or killed by an instrument related to their work: the restaurant inspector by an oven; the TV reporter by a coaxial cord, the kind used to connect cable TV. Those similarities were already top-lining the squad conversation. This was something not as obvious, but close enough. She called Roach, Feller, and Rhymer back to the precinct.
Far from being annoyed at getting boomeranged in, the four detectives gave off the edgy vibe of anticipation, and when Heat began, “It’s right in front of us. Both vics were in the business of consumer protection,” she saw their eyes come alight. “I want to find out if they knew each other or if they knew someone in common.” From there on, the meeting was short. She put Roach on contacting Olivia Conklin, Feller back on his beat at the Health Department, and Rhymer on Maxine Berkowitz’s coworkers and friends. “Check e-mails, texts, phone records, everything that leaves a trail,” she said, and watched them cancel their evenings and hit the phones with renewed purpose.
Back early the next morning, with little to go on yet much to cover, the day for all of them became the essence of good detective work: drudgery. The hours of phone calls and computer checks got broken up only by meeting up to compare notes after pounding the pavement for face time with shop owners, park nannies, and doormen who’d seen nothing out of the ordinary. The true chore of Nikki’s day came when Captain Irons arrived in the late morning, camera-ready with a fresh white uniform shirt in dry cleaner plastic, just in case someone needed a statement. After satisfying himself nobody had tried to kill his lead homicide detective in the last twenty-four hours, he asked for a briefing of both active cases. Wally was more an administrator than a cop, and his eyes glazed over as she filled him in on the details. When she finished, his first question was his go-to: “How much overtime is this gonna drain from my budget?”
Always prepared for that resistance, Nikki managed to sell the precinct commander on the long-term savings of bringing in more manpower, and came out of his glass office with an OK to bring in one of her favorite detective teams, Malcolm and Reynolds.
Rook checked in from a taxi heading from Charles de Gaulle Airport to his hotel in Paris. It was night there, New York plus six, and he said he’d left word with Anatoly Kijé, his old Russian spy friend, hoping they could meet for a late dinner-slash-debrief.
“You mean the same Anatoly Kijé whose henchmen kidnapped us from Place des Vosges just so he could be sure we weren’t being followed?”
“Ah, memories,” said Rook. “Don’t you wish you’d come?”
“So you know, Rook, I don’t consider it a Michelin Tour just because my nose is pushed against one of their radials in the trunk of a car.”
They hopped off the line with the promise to catch up later that night so Heat could grab a call from OCME. Lauren Parry’s prelim on Maxine Berkowitz bore out the COD as asphyxia by strangulation. “The killer took her from behind with a cord. And Forensics is committing to that coaxial cable found in the park. The makeup residue on the insulation is an exact match to the victim’s.”
“Save me a call to geekland, Lauren. Any prints on the cable?”
“None,” said the ME. “And no sign of struggle. He chloroformed her and strangled her when she was out.”
Nikki jotted that down then riffled pages in her spiral until she came to notes on her other case. “OK to switch gears?”
“Detective Heat, you have got more corpses to ask about than anyone I know.”
“You should give me a rewards card.”
“Cold, girl.”
“As ice. What about my poison vic from the Starbucks?”
“Same as what Salena Kaye used to kill Petar. A fast-acting cocktail of strychnine and cyanide, plus a few additives, including a lab-modified derivative of bismuth subsalicylate, which is what turned the tongue black. It’s not a poison, it’s mainly for show.”
“You’ll forgive me if I don’t applaud.”
“Nikki,” said Dr. Parry, “this is potent stuff. She knows her chemistry. You watch yourself.”
Heat awoke with a start on her couch at six-fifteen the next morning to the Norwegian duo Röyksopp singing “Remind Me”-the ringtone Rook had installed to ID him on her cell. It took Nikki so long to orient herself and find the phone, she was afraid he’d dump to voice mail, but she caught it in time. “You were going to call me last night,” she said.
“And bonjour to you, too. Things got very busy over here. You won’t be sorry.” Rook’s voice sounded clear, next-room clear. And there was something in it. Exhilaration, maybe.
She moved aside the sheet music she had fallen asleep studying, another futile attempt to break her mother’s code. “Tell me.” Wired to be a note taker, Heat reached for the pen and spiral pad she kept on her coffee table, clearing the night from her throat.
“I made contact with Anatoly Kijé.”
“Did his goons slip a bag over your head and drop you at Deux Magots?”
“Even better. He met me alone on the banks of the Seine. Just me and an old KGB warhorse. Isn’t that cool? Like walking into a le Carré novel.”
Nikki drew the picture in her mind and smiled. “I’m warming up to this.”
“Just wait. First off, Anatoly ID’d the doctor in Joe Flynn’s old photos. François Sisson. Turns out Sisson was a real doctor over here until he became one of the operatives in Tyler Wynn’s old CIA network. Ready for this? François Sisson turned up on a slab in a Paris morgue the day after helping Wynn play his death scene for us.”
“Poison?”
“Let’s call it lead poisoning. One slug behind his ear.”
“I’m still waiting for the good news,” she said. “Sounds to me like you got your George Smiley jollies then hit a dead end.”
“In Paris, yes. But things are a bit different down here in Nice.”
Heat looked at her watch; it would be just past noon in France. “What the hell are you doing in Nice?”
“Talking to you from my room at the Hotel Negresco. Want to know why? Because I just came from a meeting at a beach club called Castel Plage. It’s up the Promenade des Anglais between here and Le Château. By the way, that’s French for-”
“Rook, I know what château is French for. Spit it out.”
“OK, you ready for this? I just had brunch with none other than your elusive Syrian security attaché, Fariq Kuzbari.”
Nikki set her pen down and just listened. Rook explained that, after his meeting by the Seine, he hopped the overnight high-speed train to Nice, where the Syrian security man had agreed to meet him. He dropped his bag at the Negresco and then walked the promenade along the bay to the Castel Plage, where Kuzbari waited for him at a secluded table on the beachside patio. “You know, Fariq’s a lot nicer guy when his men aren’t holding guns on you.”
“Rook.”
“Sorry.” He paused and, in the background, she heard the outdoor sounds of Nice: seabirds; motor bikes; a cruise ship’s horn. She wished she were there. “Kuzbari told me that your mother was not spying on him while she was tutoring his kids.”
“And you just believe that?”
“I’m only telling you what the man said, and the man said if anyone would know he was being spied on, it would be he. But Kuzbari did tell me something, and it’s big. Remember that week the PI said your mom spent at that conference center in the Berkshires with Kuzbari and his family?”
Nikki remembered it very well from Joe Flynn’s 1999 surveillance report. And recently, when the Syrian and his security goons accosted her on the street in SoHo, she made sure to ask him about it. “I remember Kuzbari was more concerned about denying any hanky-panky. What did he tell you?”