Irons kept his appearance basically ceremonial. When Heat had briefed him a
half hour before, she gave him the fundamentals: cause of death, time of death, and
how the body had been discovered. He used his airtime as a plea for eyewitnesses to
come forward, as she had coached him to do. Nikki had not, however, told Irons about
the string. Or that this likely was the work of a serial killer. She would do that
first thing in the morning. But for now she held it back simply because she did not
trust her commanding officer’s big mouth.
After dishes, they uncorked an Haute-C?tes de Nuits then time traveled to 1999. Joe
Flynn’s surveillance photos of her mother made it an emotional trip for Nikki. The
private eye’s telescopic lens captured Cynthia Heat just as her daughter remembered
her: sleek, elegant, and poised. Nikki’s dad had commissioned the tail, suspecting
his wife of having an affair, and not without cause. Cindy Heat’s moves were all
about hiding a secret life—from her husband and from her own kid. Nikki and her
father never discussed it. They were each afraid to give it voice, but they both
suspected her of hiding something. Both had no idea it was a double life as a CIA
operative spying on the families that hired nice Mrs. Heat to tutor piano. Nikki
reflected on the irony that a husband’s worry about a cheating spouse led him to
hire a private investigator whose creeper photos might now give up clues to a rogue
ex-CIA conspiracy.
Nikki had loaded the thumb drive Flynn gave her onto Rook’s MacBook Pro and,
shoulder-to-shoulder, they watched the slide show on its monitor. Once Nikki got
past the nostalgia of seeing eleven-year-old images of her mom, she focused on the
other faces. Some pictures were peep-shots taken through windows into homes; most
were taken on Manhattan sidewalks as the tutor-under-surveillance arrived or
departed with binders of sheet music under one arm. Heat recognized the Jamaican,
Algernon Barrett, who had been ducking behind his lawyer’s skirts to avoid her. One
shot captured Cynthia with the brewery tycoon Carey Maggs, sitting on the planter
outside his apartment building, laughing at something his little boy must have just
said. More pictures of the same ilk flashed by. Vaja Nikoladze’s Rudolf Nureyev mop
of hair dated the photo of him chatting with Cindy Heat on the gravel drive of his
Hastings-on-Hudson property. A Georgian shepherd pup sat obediently by his left leg.
Rook fast-clicked through a series of duplicate shots, but when Nikki said “Whoa,”
he paused the slide show and they stared at the familiar face of the man in deep
conversation with Cindy Heat on a Midtown sidewalk. They didn’t know his name, but
they would never forget him. He was the doctor who, three weeks prior at a Paris
hospital, had helped Tyler Wynn fake his death in front of Heat and Rook. “Holy
fuck,” said Rook under his breath.
“Curiouser and curiouser,” agreed Nikki. “One more picture, let’s see it.”
Cynthia Heat was not in the next shot, but the French doctor was—in the front seat
of a parked car with another man they didn’t recognize. Rook said, “Looks like our
French doc spent enough time around your mom to earn some photo ops.” Nikki jotted
down the date and time of the picture so she could call Joe Flynn to ask if he had
an ID on either man. When she finished, she found Rook staring at her. “I have an
idea you are going to hate.”
“You’re right,” she said, “I hate it.” Nikki settled onto the couch in his
great room with the million-dollar view of the Tribeca skyline and added, “What
world do you live in that you think I could just drop everything and go to Paris?”
He brought over the bottle of wine and their glasses, and while he set them on the
coffee table, she continued, “If this is some covert plan of yours to whisk me away
to safety, it’s a debatable strategy, Rook. I can get poisoned at a zinc bar on the
Left Bank just as easily as at the Gramercy Starbucks.”
“First of all, this isn’t some covert plan. It’s just something I’ve been
thinking about secretly.” He realized what he had just said and held out her wine.
“Let me finish. What I mean is that ever since Tyler Wynn escaped, I’ve been
considering a trip back to Paris to see if I can pick up his trail on his old
stomping grounds. Maybe even recontact my Russian spook pal, Anatoly. That’s not
covert; those are just inner thoughts I didn’t express.”