“Yes, I know. I just want to ask them if they kept documentary photos of the collection I can use to hunt it down.”
“Oh, oh, pictures, right. Never thought of that. Good idea. Got a pen?”
“Ready.”
“It’s GothAmerican Insurance here in Manhattan.” She heard sharp keystrokes and he continued, “Ready for the phone number?”
After she took it down, Nikki said, “May I ask you one more question? It will save me a call later.”
She could hear the smile in his voice when Noah answered, “I doubt that, but go ahead.”
“Did you cut a check for Kimberly Starr to buy a piano recently?”
“A piano?” And then he repeated, “A piano? No.”
“Well she bought one.” Heat looked at the CSI photo in her hand of the Starr living room. “It’s a beaut. A Steinway Karl Lagerfeld edition.”
“Kimberly, Kimberly, Kimberly.”
“These list for eighty thousand. How could she afford that?”
“Welcome to my world, Detective. Not the craziest thing she’s done. Want to hear about the speedboat she bought last fall in the Hamptons?”
“But where did she get the money?”
“Not from me.”
Nikki checked her watch. She might be able to get to the insurance folks before lunch. “Thanks, Noah, that’s all I need.”
“Until next time, you mean.”
“Sure you don’t want to set up a desk over here?” she said. They were both laughing when they hung up.
Heat punctuated her “Yesss!” with a fist-pump when Raley finished his call to the archives manager at GothAmerican. They not only routinely maintained photographic documentation of insured art collections, they held them for seven years following the cancellation of a policy. “How soon can we get them?”
“Faster than you can microwave my leftovers,” said Raley.
She pressed her detective. “Exactly how soon?”
“The archive manager is e-mailing them to me as an attachment now.”
“Forward it to Forensics as soon as it comes.”
“Already had GothAmerican do a cc to them,” he said.
“Raley, you are the czar of all media.” Heat clapped him on the shoulder. She grabbed her bag and hurried out to Forensics, brushing past Rook on his way in without seeming to notice him.
The world still hadn’t caught up to Heat speed. When Nikki was closing in, it had little chance.
Detective Heat returned to the bull pen from Forensics an hour and a half later wearing the game face Rook had seen when she was staging for the body shop raid.
“What did you learn?” he asked.
“Oh, just that Matthew Starr’s art collection was all forgeries.”
He sprang to his feet. “The whole collection?”
“Fakes.” She slung her bag on the back of her chair. “The ones in the insurance pictures are real. The ones in Barbara Deerfield’s camera? Not so much.”
“That’s big.”
“It sure provides a motive for someone to murder an art appraiser.”
He gestured, punctuating with his forefinger. “I was thinking the same thing.”
“Oh, you were, were you?”
“I am a trained journalist. I’m capable of reading clues, too, you know.”
He was getting cocky and she decided to have some fun with him. “Great. Then tell me who had the motive.”
“You mean who murdered Barbara Deerfield? Pochenko.”
“On his own initiative? Doubt that.”
He pondered and said, “What do you think?”
“I’ll tell you what I think. I think it’s too early to go shooting my mouth off.” She went to the board and put a check mark beside her notation to screen the insurance photos. He followed her like a puppy and she smiled to herself.
“But you’re on to something, aren’t you?” he said. She just shrugged. “Do you have a suspect in mind?” Nikki flashed a grin and walked back to her desk. He trailed her and said, “You do. Who is it?”
“Rook, aren’t you doing this whole ride-along so you can get into the mind of a homicide detective?”
“Yeah?”
“Just telling you wouldn’t be helping you. Know what would help you? For you to think like a homicide detective and see what you come up with on your own.” Nikki picked up her desk phone and pushed a speed-dial button.
Rook said, “That sounds like a lot of work.”
She held up a staying palm while she listened to a ring at the other end of the line. He brought his knuckle up and pushed it to his lips, agonized. She loved driving Rook crazy like this. It was fun, and besides, if she was wrong, she didn’t want him to know.
Finally, someone picked up. “Hi, it’s Detective Heat at the Two-Oh. I want to arrange for transport of a prisoner you’re holding. His name’s Buckley, Gerald Buckley…. Yeah, I’ll hold.”
While she was waiting, Rook said, “Aren’t you beating a dead horse? That guy’s not going to tell you anything. Especially with that ambulance chaser of his.”
Nikki beamed a smug grin. “Ah, but that was yesterday in Interrogation. Today, we’re going to stage a little theater.”
“What kind of theater?”
“A play. As in,” she switched to an Elizabethan accent, “ ‘The play’s the thing, Wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the king.’ ” Then she added, “That would be Buckley.”
“You really wanted to be an actress, didn’t you?”
“Maybe I am,” said Nikki. “Come along and see.”
Heat, Roach, and Rook were waiting in the hallway at the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in Kips Bay when the corrections officers delivered Gerald Buckley with his attorney in tow.
Nikki looked him up and down. “Coveralls flatter you, Mr. Buckley. Rikers all it’s cracked up to be?”
Buckley turned his head away from Heat the way dogs do when they’re pretending they didn’t deliver the nearby turd to the new carpet. His lawyer stepped between them. “I’ve advised my client not to answer any further questions. If you have a case, bring it. But no more interviews unless you have lots of time to waste.”
“Thanks, Counselor. This isn’t going to be an interview.”
“No interview?”
“That’s right.” The detective waited as his lawyer and Buckley traded confused looks, then she said, “Step this way.”
Nikki led the entourage, Buckley, his lawyer, Roach, and Rook, into the autopsy room where Lauren Parry stood beside a stainless table with a sheet over it.
“Hey, what are we doing in here?” said Buckley.
“Gerald,” said the lawyer, and he pursed his lips. Then she turned to Nikki. “What are we doing in here?”
“They pay you to do that? Repeat what he says?”
“I demand to know why you dragged my client down here to this place.”
Nikki smiled. “We have a body that needs identification. I believe Mr. Buckley may be able to provide it.”
Buckley leaned toward his attorney’s ear and got as far as muttering, “I don’t wanna see any—” when Heat signaled Lauren Parry, who whipped the sheet off the table and revealed the corpse.
Vitya Pochenko’s body was still clothed as they had found him. Nikki had phoned ahead to debate the subject with her friend, who felt that naked-for-the-autopsy was an impactful display that was tough to beat. Heat managed to persuade her that the Great Lake of dried blood on his white T-shirt told a better story, and so that was the presentation the M.E. made.
The Russian lay on his back, eyes left open to make the maximum impression, the irises fully dilated, leaving only pupil, the effect exhibiting the darkest window to his soul. All color was gone from his face except for blotches of deep empurplement near one jaw, where gravity had pooled blood in the direction of his bench slump. Then there was that gruesome butterscotch and salmon burn welt covering one side of his face.
Nikki watched the color drain from Gerald Buckley’s cheeks and lips until he was only about two hardware-store paint chips from matching Pochenko.
“Detective Heat, if I may interrupt,” said Lauren, “I may have a determination on the caliber of the weapon.”
“Excuse us just one moment,” Nikki said to Buckley. He took a hopeful half step to the door, his disbelieving eyes still riveted on the body. Ochoa stepped to corral him and he stopped without contact.