“I’m not holding back, Detective. Data is sparse.” She arched a brow at
him, and he said, “But I’ll happily go over it again. I was FBI then and was made
point liaison with your mother when she reached out to the Bureau to say she knew of
a threat to security within our borders. She told me she had been developing an
informant within a terror group, and we funded her two hundred grand to bribe her
insider in exchange for proof and details of the plot. We gave your mother the money
for the transaction the day she was murdered.”
Heat had already known that much. But she now wanted to ask some new questions.
“Did you know who her informant was?” When the agent shook no, she said, “I
believe it was a man name Ari Weiss. Deceased now, so no help. But he was college
friends with a Brit living here named Carey Maggs.” She searched his face for
recognition of either name and got none. “Would it be a pain to ask you to run a
check on Maggs for me?”
“You think he might be involved?”
She shrugged. “Doesn’t seem to be. But I like both belt and suspenders, you know?
” Callan twisted open his gold Cross ballpoint and wrote the name down. When he’d
finished, she asked, “What about the two hundred thou? Did it ever surface? I know
you guys had to mark the bills.”
He wagged his head again. “End of our intel, end of story.” Then he added, “Well,
it was the end of the trail until you exposed Tyler Wynn. Which is why I am renewing
my pitch to you. The memos out of DC call it cooperative interface. Join me, Nikki.
I have resources. We’d make a great team.” He started to reach a hand across the
table, but she casually slid hers onto her lap.
“Thanks, but I do better independently.”
He waved his hands back and forth between the two of them. “Then what do you call
this?”
“Cooperative interface. And your NYPD appreciates it.”
Out on Madison Avenue, she declined his offer of a ride, even though it would have
afforded her a measure of security with Salena Kaye on the hunt for her. The agent
said fine, but reminded her that if she ever wanted a sparring partner, he’d be
game. From her taxi, Nikki glimpsed him getting into a black Suburban with US
government plates, and figured Bart Callan could give her quite a workout.
Detective Heat closed her eyes and ran her math. The equation began with Callan’s
intel that her mom had been cultivating an informant. He couldn’t name the insider,
but with the new connection Nikki had drawn from her mother to Ari Weiss as a member
of Tyler Wynn’s circle, she didn’t have to be at a blackboard in Good Will Hunting
to surmise that Cynthia Heat had not been spying on Dr. Weiss—she was cultivating
him as a snitch.
She pulled up his obituary on her iPhone. The date of his passing from a tick-borne
illness was January 2, 2000. Only six weeks after her mother’s death.
As soon as she locked her apartment door behind her, Heat speed-dialed the home of a
judge she’d met at one of Rook’s weekly poker games. After Judge Simpson razzed
her about giving him a chance to win his money back, Nikki asked him a favor: to
write a court order for the exhumation of Ari Weiss.
R?yksopp startled her from the computer screen. After Rook’s call that morning from
Nice, his ringtone, a song from a caveman commercial, seemed newly appropriate to
Nikki.
“It’s late there. I was afraid you’d be in bed,” said Rook.
“I’m going over squad reports on my serial killer.”
“I’m in London. Heathrow, actually. Workin’ my way back to you, babe.” The
joker, trying to laugh it off, she thought during the long silence she fed him.
“Should be there by sunup, your time. I’m flying Virgin.”
“I doubt that.” Another dose of awkward pause.
“Nikki, I guess I can see why you got all bent about Yardley, but you’re reading
way too much into this.”
“Am I?”
“Yes.” They listened to each other breathe. Then he said, “They’re calling my
flight.”
“How long is it?”
“Let’s see, uh… a little over seven hours.”
“Good,” she said. “Use it to work on your empathy.”