Nikki smirked at the woman with her heaving leopard print vest strategically
thrust against Rook’s upper arm. “I was there for that shot. That was taken
outside the pizza place where we worked Roy Conklin’s crime scene.”
“AKA Rainbow victim number one,” Malcolm observed. Then, with some friendly push-
back on his partner, he added, “In the interest of staying curious, if Rainbow had
this iPad, why would he search that picture?”
Detective Ochoa saw something and pulled the tablet away from Raley for a closer
look. “Whoa, whoa, check this out.” Ochoa zoomed in, resized the photo, then held
the screen up to Heat. He had blown up the shot and centered it on a face in the
crowd. The one any analyst would say belonged to a moody loner. The only person not
cheering or waving for the picture. Instead, Glen Windsor stared right at the lens,
boring into it with a look of amused contempt. Heat felt like the locksmith was
looking right at her.
Because he was.
The busy squad room kicked up to a new level of activity. Heat sent Malcolm and
Reynolds to round up some patrol officers and stake out Windsor’s Locks, a
surveillance task that did double duty since Glen Windsor also lived in an apartment
above his shop. Their orders were to keep him under a lid until Heat got a warrant.
She wondered how this had slipped through the cracks. It was standard procedure in a
homicide investigation for the police to take crowd photos and then study them for
suspicious persons or known faces. Before Nikki berated herself too much for not
spotting Windsor—whom she certainly would have recognized as Rainbow’s sole
survivor—she told Rhymer and Feller to pull up the CSU crowd pics from the four
Rainbow victims: Roy Conklin, Maxine Berkowitz, Douglas Sandmann, and Joe Flynn.
Heat and Rook joined in with the squad, divvying up the CSU shots and poring over
them again on their monitors.
After careful scrutiny of all four crime scene crowds, face by face, the squad
reached the same conclusion: Glen Windsor was nowhere to be seen in any of those
photos.
“I don’t get it,” said Rook. “Why is he in my picture and none of the others?”
“Because the dude’s savvy,” said Feller. “He knew when to duck the official
police photographer.”
“You’re right,” said Heat. “We didn’t spot him when we looked before because he
didn’t want us to.” She held up the iPad with the picture taken by Rook, with Glen
Windsor’s photo bomb. “He didn’t want us to find this until he wanted us to find
this.”
Detective Rhymer studied the Rainbow shot again and declared it freaky. “It’s like
arsonists who stand in the crowd because they get off sexually watching the blaze.”
“Except he doesn’t look turned on,” said Ochoa. “He looks…”
“Defiant,” said Heat.
“Windsor is definitely taunting you with this,” agreed Raley.
Rook said, “Just like he taunted you at Joe Flynn’s boat.”
“With the orange string leading to my picture? Yuh, I kinda got that.”
“No, I mean the odd sock.” Rook paced off his nervous energy. “Remember we all
said Rainbow was mocking you for your quote in my article by putting odd socks on
Joe Flynn? This guy wasn’t just mocking you, Nikki, he was handing you a clue.”
“Holy crap, of course,” said Raley. “Of all Rainbow’s victims, what’s the odd
sock?”
Heat kicked herself for not seeing it herself, and sooner. “The odd sock—is the
only one who didn’t die.”
“Dude set us up,” said Ochoa. “He turned on just enough gas in that building to
make it look like Rainbow attacked him. Probably left the back door open so he
wouldn’t suffocate. And to make it look like Rainbow got away.”
Rhymer asked, “How do you account for the string and the clue on the rooftop. Pre-
plant?”
“Count on it,” said Heat, rising and adjusting her holster. “We probably can’t
get a warrant based on the fact that we saw him standing in a crowd, but let’s
bring Glen Windsor in. Maybe he’ll let us take a picture with him.”