“Yeah, I—You wouldn’t joke. I mean, not about something like this.”
“Noah, I’m standing in the living room now. The walls are absolutely bare.”
Another long silence and she heard him clear his throat. “Detective Heat, can I get personal?”
“Go on.”
“Did you ever get hit with a big shock, and then, when you think you can’t deal with it, you work through it, and then—ahem, excuse me.” She heard him sip something. “And so you man-up and work through it, and just when you do, out of nowhere comes another crushing blow, and then another, and then you reach a point where you just say, What the hell am I doing? And then you fantasize about chucking it all. Not just the job but the life. Be one of those guys down on the Jersey Shore who make sub sandwiches in a hut or rent hula hoops and bikes. Just. Chuck. It.”
“Do you?”
“All the time. Especially this minute.” He sighed and swore under his breath. “So where are you with this? Do you have any leads?”
“We’ll see,” she said, adhering to her policy of being the sole interrogator in an interview. “I assume you can account for your whereabouts last night?”
“Jeez, you cut right to it, don’t you?”
“And now I’d like you to.” Nikki waited, knowing his dance steps by now: resist then cave to pressure.
“I shouldn’t be pissed, I know it’s your job, Detective, but come on.” She let her cold silence push him and he surrendered. “Last night I was teaching my weekly night course at Westchester Community College up in Valhalla.”
“And that can be verified?”
“I was lecturing twenty-five continuing ed students. If they run true to form, one or two may have noticed me.”
“And after that?”
“Home to Tarrytown for a big night of beer and Yankees-Angels at my local hang.”
She asked the name of the bar and wrote it down. “One more question, and I’ll be out of your life.”
“I doubt that.”
“Were the paintings insured?”
“No. They had been, of course, but when the vultures started circling, Matthew canceled the policy. He said he didn’t want to keep shelling out a small fortune to protect something that would just go to the bankruptcy creditors.” Now it was Nikki’s turn to be silent. “Are you still there, Detective?”
“Yes. I was just thinking Kimberly Starr is going to be here any minute. Did she know the insurance was canceled on the art collection?”
“She did. Kimberly found out the same night Matthew told her he canceled his life insurance.” Then he added, “I don’t envy you the next few minutes. Good luck.”
Raley wasn’t kidding about the earplugs. When Kimberly Starr came into the apartment, she flat-out screamed. She already looked ragged getting off the elevator and began a low moan when she saw the door hardware on the hallway rug. Nikki tried to take her arm when she entered her home, but she shook the detective off and her moan revved up into a full-blown 1950s horror film shriek.
Nikki’s gut twisted for the woman as Kimberly dropped her purse and screamed again. She wanted no part of anybody’s help and held up a straight arm when Nikki tried to approach her. When her screaming subsided, she sat hard on the sofa moaning, “No, no, no.” Her head rose up and swiveled to take in the entire room, all two stories of it. “How much am I supposed to take? Will somebody tell me how much I am supposed to take? Who goes through this? Who?” Her voice raspy from screaming, she went on like that, moaning the rhetoricals that any sane or compassionate person in the room would have been foolish to answer. So they waited her out.
Rook left the room and returned with a glass of water, which Kimberly took and gulped. She had gotten half of the water down when she started to choke on it and gagged it onto the rug, coughing and wheezing for air until her cough became weeping. Nikki sat with her but didn’t reach for her. After a moment, Kimberly pivoted away and buried her face in her hands, shaking with deep sobs.
Ten long minutes later, without acknowledging them, Kimberly reached across the floor to her bag, took out a prescription bottle, and downed a pill with the remains of her water. She blew her nose to no effect and sat kneading the tissue as she had just days before when she was digesting the news of her husband’s murder.
“Mrs. Starr?” Heat spoke just above a whisper, but Kimberly jumped. “At some point I’ll want to ask you some questions, but that can wait.”
She nodded and whispered, “Thank you.”
“When you feel up to it, hopefully sometime today, would you mind looking around to see if anything else was taken?”
Another nod. Another whisper. “I will.”
In the car on their short drive back to the precinct, Rook said, “I was only half kidding this morning about taking you to brunch. What would you say if I asked you about having dinner?”
“I’d say you’re pushing it.”
“Come on, didn’t you have a good time last night?”
“No, I didn’t. I had a great time.”
“Then what’s the problem?”
“There is no problem. So let’s not create one by letting it creep into the job, OK? Or haven’t you noticed, I’m working not one, but two open homicides, and now a multimillion-dollar art theft.”
Nikki double-parked the Crown Victoria between two double-parked blue-and-whites in front of the precinct on 82nd Street. They got out and Rook spoke to her over the hot metal roof. “How do you ever have a relationship in this job?”
“I don’t. Pay attention.”
Then they heard Ochoa call out, “Don’t lock it up, Detective.” Raley and Ochoa were hustling from the precinct lot to the street. Four uniforms were playing catch-up.
“What have you got?” said Heat.
Roach arrived at her open door. Ochoa said, “Burglary squad got a score on their door knock at the Guilford.”
“Eyewitness coming in from a business trip saw a bunch of guys leaving the building about four this morning,” continued Raley. “He thought it was weird so he made a note of the plate on the truck.”
“And he didn’t call it in?” said Rook.
“Man, you are new at this, aren’t you?” said Ochoa. “Anyway, we ran it and the truck’s registered to an address over in Long Island City.” He held up the note and Heat plucked it from his hand.
“Pile in,” she said. But Raley and Ochoa knew this was big and each already had a leg in a door. Nikki fired the ignition, lit the gum ball, and floored it. Rook was still closing his backseat door when she reached Columbus and hit the siren.
TWELVE
The three detectives and Rook maintained a tense silence as Nikki gas ’n’ gunned through crosstown traffic to the bridge at 59th Street. She had Ochoa radio ahead, and when they rolled up to the approach under the Roosevelt Island sky tram, Traffic Control had blocked feeder lanes for her and she roared onward. The bridge belonged to her and the two patrol cars running convoy with her.
They killed their sirens to avoid advertisement after they blew out of Queensboro Plaza and turned off Northern Boulevard. The address was an auto body shop in an industrial section not far from the LIRR switching yard. Under the elevated subway line at Thirty-eighth Avenue, they located the small group of patrol cars from the Long Island City precinct that were already waiting a block south of the building.
Nikki got out and greeted Lieutenant Marr from the 108th. Marr had a military bearing, precise and relaxed. He told Detective Heat this was her show, but he seemed eager to describe the logistics he had put in place for her. They gathered around the hood of his car and he spread out a plan of the neighborhood. The body shop was already circled in red marker, and the lieutenant marked blue Xs at intersections in the surrounding blocks to indicate where other patrol cars were staged, effectively choking off any exit the suspects might attempt from the location once they rolled.