Overhead space heaters recessed into the apartment canopy took the chill out
of the morning air on the Upper East Side. Heat and Roach waited behind the potted
firs that flanked both sides of the lobby entrance. A black luxury town car sat
poised in the circular cut-stone drive with the engine shut off. Detective Feller
had replaced the car service driver and the motor block ticked as it cooled. “Lobby
now,” he whispered into his walkie-talkie. “Doorman first, suspect behind.”
Raley and Ochoa nodded an acknowledgment to Heat from behind their cypress. She
heard the automatic inner door of the vestibule slide open and put her hand on her
holster. Then the outer doors parted at the shiny brass frame. The uniformed doorman
led the way, waving the town car up for his tenant. As soon as the second man passed
by, the detectives stepped in from both sides, bracing and cuffing him.
“Hey! What the bloody hell is this?”
Heat said, “You’ll be riding with us today, Mr. Maggs.”
Carey Maggs sat with his hands clasped before him in a relaxed fashion on the table
of Interrogation One. “You can’t simply detain me without cause. I may not be a
United States citizen, but I am afforded due process.” He may have possessed the
cultured air of Oxford and worn the bespoke threads of a millionaire businessman,
but when Nikki responded to his protest with stone silence, the Brit reacted the way
they all did when they were dirty, from gang bangers to sous chefs. His eyes roved
to the magic mirror, either to wonder who lurked behind it, watching, or to check
himself out to see how he was doing—or both. Maggs didn’t appear as uncomfortable
with her silence as she would have liked, and he brought it back to her, sounding
anything but fazed. “I’ve heard about these sort of bully-boy tactics on the news,
but I must say, Detective Heat, I never expected this sort of grot from you.”
“Well, I guess we all hold a few surprises.”
“Perhaps you could end the suspense a bit and tell me why you snatched me up like
some common criminal and brought me here.”
Heat held her cards. Experience had taught her not to get ahead of things, to let
this interview build, in spite of the crushing time pressure she felt. If she jumped
right to the information she needed—the when and where of the bioterror event—
Maggs would smell her desperation, and the power balance would tip to him. If she
kept him worried about how much she already knew, he might give up more, and sooner.
So Nikki didn’t answer his question. Instead, she adopted a detached mode to match
his.
A moment passed. She withdrew a photo of Petar Matic from the file in front of her.
“When we last spoke on the telephone, and I asked if you could identify the man in
this picture, you stated that you didn’t know his name but that you had seen him
lurking near your apartment the week Ari Weiss stayed with you. The week my mother
was murdered.”
He didn’t bother to look at the picture. “That’s correct.”
“You also said you were suspicious of him and called the police to report it.” He
flicked his brows and shrugged, showing agreement. “We’ve run a computer check of
records at your neighborhood’s precinct, the Nineteenth. There’s no record of any
call, any complaint, any visit to your building.”
“Maybe the police didn’t log it. Or, who knows…?” At last she could see the
slightest fissure in the fa?ade of calm as he improvised. “Maybe I didn’t actually
call it in myself. I may have left it to the doorman, yes.”
“Which is it, Mr. Maggs?”
He shrugged. “Eleven years is a long time, love.”
Heat smiled at the man across the table she believed had ordered her mother killed
after she uncovered his terror plan. “You don’t need to tell me.”
Her smile unsettled Carey Maggs. Heat liked that. But just as she was about to move
to her next question, the door burst open and Bart Callan strode in followed by
Yardley Bell. “Heat, we’re tagging in,” said Callan.
“Excuse me,” said Nikki, rising. She opened her arms, gesturing them out.
Carey’s eyes widened. “Who the hell are they?”
Nobody left. Anything but. “I’m Special Agent Callan and this is Agent Bell,
Department of Homeland Security. We have some questions for you about your terror
plot.”