Deadly Heat

“Epic fail,” added Feller.

Raley and Ochoa came in from their all-nighter at Hinesburg’s apartment. Benigno

DeJesus followed them in his navy evidence collection unit windbreaker carrying two

cardboard boxes of items he and his crew had collected there. He said they were

headed to the lab and then to Internal Affairs. But since he also had to bag and tag

Hinesburg’s desk, he’d brought along the apartment boxes to give Heat a chance to

look them over before they went downtown. “Just wear gloves,” he said.

Rook and the squad gathered around as Nikki lifted the lids and carefully picked

through the contents, replacing each in its carton following examination. She

scanned the stack of open mail and bills, finding nothing useful. Underneath a

toiletry kit of noncontroversial prescription meds, she found an evidence-bagged

pocket pistol and held it up. “A Smith & Wesson M&P9 Shield,” said Detective

DeJesus in his precise, curator’s manner.

Through the cellophane bag, Heat examined the 9mm, a favorite for deep undercover

work because of its subcompact size. Feller scoffed. “Hinesburg had backups for her

backups—for all the good they did her.” Nikki pondered that thought then returned

the pistol to the box.

“Anybody check this computer?” she asked, holding up a brand-new laptop.

Detective Raley hinged it open and, while it booted, said, “Spent a couple hours on

it. Nothing juicy saved on the drive, that I could find. No maps, no calendar

entries for Saturday. But she had a link to a cloud e-mail service with the ‘keep

me logged in’ box checked, so I was able to access it. Mostly Web shopping

receipts, but there was one sent e-mail Hinesburg must have forgotten to delete.”

He paused while it loaded. “Check it out.”

He turned the screen to Nikki, and she read it twice out of disbelief. The recipient

’s e-mail address was some alphanumeric scramble, not a proper name, but the Web

domain ended in .fr, signifying France. The subject line read: “Heat.” And the

message itself said: “Arrives today. Hotel Opera, Rue de Richelieu.”

Rook said, “That was our hotel. And the date she sent this is the day before you

and I went to Paris last month. Where we met Tyler Wynn.”

“Ready for the real smoking gun?” said Detective Ochoa, who excused himself and

reached past Heat into the second box. He came out with a vanilla cell phone and

held it up.

“Is this what I think it is?”

Ochoa handed it to her. “Can you believe it? Genius actually kept the burner cell.

Slipshod and half-assed to the end.”

While Heat opened the Outgoing Calls list, Raley pulled a slip of paper from his

vest pocket. “The last two outgoings match these phone numbers I pulled. They fit

the times for the warning calls that went out to both Salena Kaye and Vaja

Nikoladze. You’ll see there’s two other numbers in Recents. One was Tyler Wynn’s

apartment. The other, I tried calling to see what it was but got a disconnect.”

Heat said, “I recognize this number… At least it looks familiar.” With a furrowed

brow she took out her own cell phone and scrolled a few seconds until she found what

she was looking for. She grabbed her keys and raced to the door, calling out,

“Roach, Feller. Get your cars and follow me—now.”





NINETEEN