“Just as I thought. Killers are out there roaming free because you’re all
sleeping on the job.” To signal the transition from play to work, she brought her
latte up front without bothering to stop at her desk, and they all gathered for the
morning debrief. Joke enjoyed; joke over.
“Obviously we have some Rainbow discussion on our agenda,” she began while they
slid their chairs around the Murder Boards. “But first, a follow-up about the bomb
at Tyler Wynn’s. Detective Hinesburg, did you connect with the bomb squad and
Forensics?”
The detective’s face blanched. “Uh…”
“Not filling me with confidence, Sharon.”
“No, no, I did talk to them,” she said, reaching to the floor and into her
enormous purse. “You just caught me off guard and I wasn’t sure I had my notes.”
Heat waited for her to come up with her spiral pad. “And you were going to ask
whether the trigger for the device was a timer or remote.”
“Timer,” she said without opening her notebook after all.
“Thank you.” Nikki posted that on the Tyler Wynn section, then rolled that board
aside. As Raley and Rhymer wheeled the serial killer boards in to replace it, Heat
gave her squad the details of the call from Rainbow and of the creeping of her
bedroom. “The hard drive connected to the lipstick cam above my front door is gone,
and my building super did not let anyone in.”
“Dude’s putting it in your face,” said Ochoa.
Detective Feller made a pistol of his fingers. “I’d like to put one in his.”
Moving things forward, Nikki said, “In case anyone hasn’t noticed, he didn’t kill
me when he had ample opportunity. I say Rainbow is strongly motivated by his head
games.”
“He’s competing. Wants to prove he’s smarter than the famous Detective Heat.”
When Malcolm said that, alluding to her celebrity, Heat exchanged a short glance
with Rook. “Probably gets off on it. If he outsmarts you…” The detective realized
where that thought led and stopped there, finishing with a “Sorry.”
“No worries, Mal,” said Heat. “I think we all know the stakes.”
“And look how he’s just taunting you,” Detective Reynolds said, arching an
indignant brow. “I mean even those mismatched socks on Joe Flynn? The odd socks?”
“Yeah, we all sort of got that. The price of having your life appear in print.”
Nikki didn’t peek to Rook that time. She turned to Feller. “Randall, any idea yet
how he managed to find out Joe Flynn had a connection to me?”
“Not yet. Working it, though.”
Raley said, “This Rainbow must be some kind of evil genius. I mean what sort of
brainiac could make all those links from Conklin all the way to you?”
“I don’t think he did,” answered Rook.
“Uh, Mr. Pulitzer?” said Malcolm. “I believe the strings say otherwise.”
“It depends on what end you’re looking at, doesn’t it?” Rook moved to the Murder
Boards. “Sometimes when I played Six Degrees of Marsha Mason, I’d cheat. I’m not
proud of that, but I did. And when I cheated, know how I did? I didn’t pick a
celebrity and work my way up to Marsha Mason. I started with Marsha Mason and worked
backwards.” He paused and could see they were starting to follow. “Rainbow knew he
wanted to match wits with Detective Heat all along, so he started with her and drew
his links the other way.” To illustrate, he pointed at Nikki, then to each victim,
but in reverse this time. “From Heat to Flynn to Bedbug Doug to Berkowitz and
Conklin… it gets easier when you work backwards. By the time you get to Conklin, he
’s almost a random choice.”
Rhymer said, “But not so random. Take a look. From Conklin to Flynn, every person
on that board, without exception, is some kind of investigator. Restaurants,
consumer watchdog, art recovery… This guy has a thing for targeting inspectors.
Maybe to show he’s smarter.”
“That makes sense, homes, it does,” said Ochoa. “But I don’t care how smart he
thinks he is. We keep digging, we’re going to find out where he fucked up and nail
his ass.”