“Good lord, Detective, it was near Thanksgiving. Same week as Ari was staying
with us. And same week as…”
“It’s all right, Carey, I know what else happened that week.”
Heat could hear the strain in Maggs as he absorbed the startling news she’d dropped
on him about his old friend. But she pressed forward. He could recover later. Right
now, she needed a new lead. “Carey, I want your help with something, if you’re up
for it.” He sounded emotional but croaked out a yes, so she asked, “You mentioned
Ari wasn’t real social or political. Do you recall if he had any colleagues in the
science world with whom he was close? Was there anyone in particular he talked
about, or teamed with on any special projects?”
After some thought, Maggs said, “None that stuck in my brain. Sure, I’d cross
paths with his crowd for a beer or to watch football at Slattery’s, but to me they
were, basically, this blur of boffins.”
She didn’t want to lead him with a name, so she asked, “Do you recall any
foreigners?”
He laughed. “You’re joking, right? That was most of them.”
And then she said it. But Maggs didn’t recall any Vaja Nikoladze by name, so she
texted him his photo, too, and waited for him to look at it. “Sorry. He meets the
boffin test, but I don’t remember him hanging out with Ari.”
Nikki chalked up another disappointment, but at least she’d gotten her ID of Petar,
firming up his connection to Ari Weiss’s murder.
Rook convinced her to step out with him for a quick bite at the new Shake Shack that
had just opened on Columbus, but they didn’t get that far. In fact, Detective Raley
called them to a stop in the precinct lobby. “What’s up, Sean? You spot something
on the Coney Crest tapes?”
“No, still screening them. But Miguel and I just got a hit on something else. Trust
me, you will want to see this.”
“I think the Shake Shack will have to manage without us,” said Rook.
When Heat came back into the bull pen, Ochoa had the results up on his monitor at
Roach Central, which is what the pair had dubbed the corner where they had pushed
their desks. “OK,” he said as Heat sat in his chair, “we’ve been scouring the
NYPD license plate surveillance cams from last month for any sign of that van that
was hauling around the body of your mom’s spy partner. We track the van, we find
the lab, right?”
“We do,” said Rook.
“We hope,” said Heat.
“We scored,” said Ochoa. “Big-time. Here’s the first hit. And yes, it’s from
the night she was killed. ” He clicked the mouse and a blurry image of the plate
came up. The location read, “E-ZPass Lane 2, Henry Hudson Bridge.”
“Is this right?” asked Heat. “All the way up there?”
Roach nodded in unison. “It’s correct,” said Raley.
“But we wondered the same thing,” added Ochoa. “We asked ourselves, What’s the
van—and the body—doing coming down into the city from way up there? So we ran some
further checks.”
“I love you, Roach,” said Heat.
Raley continued, “We combed a net of traffic cams at on-ramps in Westchester County
and north.”
“It wasn’t as hard as it seems, since we knew the general time and exact date.”
Ochoa clicked again and the screen filled with four shots of the same plate at
different locations. “So, backtracking, here’s where we see the first appearance
of the van on its drive south toward New York City.” He double-clicked the top
image. When it opened, the location stamp made Heat gasp.
FIFTEEN
That maroon van could have been coming from any number of places when it got
photographed getting on the Saw Mill River Parkway at Hastings-on-Hudson, but Nikki
Heat could only think of one. Rook said it out loud. “Vaja.” In a single mouse
click all the reasons—all the instincts—she’d had about holding on to the
biochemist as a person of interest seemed to be borne out. Heat only prayed it wasn
’t too late.