“He’ll get away. What if there’s a tunnel?”
“Then we’ll send a dog.”
But adrenaline called her shots. Nikki slid her forefinger into the pull ring and threw the hatch back. She shined her light into the emptiness and shouted, “NYPD, show yourself.” A startled moan came from below.
“See anything?” asked Raley.
Heat shook no and swung a leg into the opening. “There’s a ladder.”
“Detective…” said the ESS commander. But too late. Overwhelmed by the drive to capture her suspect, Heat broke from procedure and descended. Ignoring the rungs, she slid down the outer rails, using the ladder like a firehouse pole. Nikki landed in a crouch, Sig Sauer ready in her right hand. She plucked the flashlight from her teeth and shined it across the cellar.
He stood completely naked in the center of the partitioned-off section of basement, staring at her with detached eyes that appeared to see and not to see. “NYPD, freeze.” Her suspect didn’t respond. Besides, he had already frozen, standing there motionless yet unthreatening as SWAT backup rained down to join her, training assault weapons with tactical-mount lights on him. “Hold fire,” said Heat.
She wanted him so dead, but she needed him alive.
All the flashlights revealed a sea of shoes surrounding him. Hundreds and hundreds of shoes: men’s and women’s, old and new, pairs and orphans-all in neat rows of concentric circles around the center, toes pointing at him. “So,” he said. “You came for my shoes.”
“What do you answer to, William or Bill?” Nikki waited again for him to speak and would wait as long as she had to. The suspect had remained silent since they sat down to face each other in Interrogation One ten minutes before. Mostly, he just studied himself in the observation mirror. Occasionally, he looked away, then back, as if to surprise himself. He rolled his muscular shoulders so that they flexed against the orange fabric of his jumpsuit.
At last he asked, “Is this mine to keep?” and seemed to mean it.
“William,” she said. “I’m going to call you what it says here on your rap sheet.” He broke eye contact and looked back in the mirror. Detective Heat studied the file again, although by then she had committed the salient facts to memory. William Wade Scott, male cauc, age forty-four. Basically a low-end drifter whose arrest record traced his movements through the Northeast following his dishonorable discharge on drug charges after Desert Storm in 1991. His beefs ran on the petty side, a ton of shoplifts and disorderly conducts, plus a few arrests that raised the bar, most notably a 1998 electronics store smash-and-grab in Providence that earned him three years as a state guest. Nikki tasked Ochoa to run a double-check with Rhode Island Corrections for the release date because that incarceration alibied him for her mother’s murder.
Behind the mirror in Observation Room 1, Detective Ochoa texted her, confirming William Wade Scott’s prison release in 2001-a year and a half after her mom’s killing. She read it passively, but Rook watched her fists ball under the table after she slipped her cell phone back into her pocket.
In the wake of so many setbacks on her mom’s case over the years, Nikki had hardened herself against despair, but this one stung. However, as ever, Heat’s response to disappointment was greater resolve. And a reality check. Did she honestly believe the killer would fall into her lap on the same day as the new lead? Hell, no. That’s what tomorrow was all about.
Rook turned to Raley and Ochoa in the Ob Room. “That still leaves him as a possible for the Jane Doe killing, doesn’t it?”
“Possible?” said Raley. “Yeah, possible…” The “not likely” was silent. After the raid in Bayside, neighbor interviews said the naked man in the basement was not the owner of the residence on Oceania Street but a homeless squatter, one of a number who had moved into nice, suburban neighborhoods throughout Long Island after residents simply walked away from upside-down mortgages. The block had filed several complaints about the man, but they grumbled that nothing had come of them. But Raley’s follow-up check on the absent homeowner suggested this vacancy hadn’t come from a mortgage walk-off. He pulled up an old 1995 New Jersey arrest against the owner for operating a hydroponic pot farm in the basement, which not only accounted for the floor hatch in his next residence-the Bayside house-but also his abandonment of the property to keep a step ahead of drug enforcement.
“OK,” said Rook, grasping for any good news, “there’s still the suitcase. He possessed the suitcase that connects to Heat’s mom. If he’s not the killer, maybe he knows him.”
Ochoa said, “She’ll get there. You watch. This is her art.”
“Why were you hiding from us in that basement?” Heat asked. No reply. “We identified ourselves as police. Why did you need to hide?”
He released his gaze from the mirror and smiled. “I don’t need to hide. I could get out of here now, if I wanted to.” Scott yanked up both wrists beside him, pulling his manacles taut and then releasing them. “These mean nothing to me.”
Nikki played along on the tightrope walk of trying to pull straight answers from a delusional, likely schizophrenic, man. But right then William Wade Scott was her best hope. If he wasn’t a good suspect, he might be a great witness. Acting unfazed, she moved a mental chess piece, a pawn. “Was it about the cigarettes you stole the other night?”
“This is all bullshit once I am taken up. You must know that.”
“Maybe I’m not as informed as you. ‘Taken up’?”
“To my vessel,” he said. “I received the special communication.”
“Of course. Congratulations, William.” Her affirmation surprised him and made him rivet her with a penetrating squint, listening intently. “Is that why you needed the suitcase? For your trip?”
“No, for the shoes! I found it and thought there’d be more shoes inside.” He leaned forward and winked. “They’ll be so pleased when I bring them shoes.”
She leaned forward, also. “But weren’t there shoes inside the suitcase? Didn’t you see shoes?”
“I… did.” He began to fidget but stayed with her. “But they were
… They were still on her.”
“On whom?”
“Her!” he said, then stooped over to grind his eye sockets with the heels of his palms. “I couldn’t take them off her.” He grew more agitated. “I couldn’t keep her.”
“Did you kill her?”
“No. I found her.”
“Where?”
“In the suitcase, pay attention.”
“Where did you find the suitcase?”
“Behind the nursing home around the corner.” He calmed and confided his big secret with a stage wink. “They throw out lots of shoes there.”
Heat made a hand gesture to the mirror, but inside the Ob Room, Raley and Ochoa were already on their way out the door for a return drive to Bayside and the nursing home.
“So when you saw her in the suitcase, why didn’t you take her back to where you found her?”
“The nursing home? Why? She was dead,” he said as if the logic of that should be obvious. “But I didn’t know what to do with her. A body is, well, it’s a complication to The Plan.” Nikki opted not to press and gave him plenty of line. He fidgeted some more and said, “I dragged her around all night. Then I saw it. A preservation vessel. It was perfect. Plenty cold inside. Even had a ramp.”
“You sure you don’t want to just crash?” asked Rook when he and Nikki got back to his loft. “It’s coming up on two A.M. No harm, no foul if you want a rain check.”
“I’m too wired to sleep. And besides, you promised me one of your Killer Caipirinhas, and I’m holding you to it, writer boy.”
“You’re on. Worth every bit of being held at gunpoint by an international arms dealer just to score his bartender’s recipe.” He opened the fridge to hunt fresh limes. She settled on the bar stool at the counter to watch the magic.
Long as the day had been, Heat’s fatigue couldn’t match her frustration. When Roach called in from the security office of the nursing home in Bayside, they had mixed news. Due to the late hour, they were fortunate to interview the same watchman who had been on duty the night before, when William Wade Scott said he found the suitcase there. Unfortunately, however, the facility had no surveillance cams at the disposal Dumpsters, which meant no pictures of the homeless man finding the suitcase and, worse, no shots of whoever left it there. The security guard did recognize the freeze of Scott rolling the luggage and verified seeing both him and the baggage leaving the property about two hours before Raley’s surveillance picture had been taken. He also said he saw Scott arrive empty-handed, validating his story that the case had been scavenged. Adding more cold water to the embers, he didn’t recognize the Jane Doe. Roach had called in the Evidence Collection Unit to survey the Dumpster area-a long shot that had to be covered-and then clocked out, telling Heat they’d return at sunup to interview staff and residents about the suitcase, Jane Doe, and whatever some nonagenarian insomniac might have seen staring out a window in the long night of the soul.