“I’ll tell you where he messed up,” said Heat. “Coming after me.”
After the squad broke up to jump on its assignments, Nikki quietly put in two calls:
one to Bridgeport, Connecticut, the other to Providence, Rhode Island. The lead
detectives in each department had the same reaction when she spoke to them. Chagrin
that they had never put it together that the serial killer’s victims had been
inspectors of various types. From insurance claims adjustors to an HR administrator
who did background checks, they all fit the profile. The homicide detective in
Providence said, “What’s this guy trying to do? Prove he can outsmart Sherlock
Holmes?”
Captain Irons rolled in mid-morning from his weekly CompStat meeting down at 1PP.
The CompStat sessions were an accountability ritual during which the city’s
precinct commanders presented their crime statistics to NYPD commissioners, then got
publicly maligned, cajoled, and scoffed at before their peers. As harrowing a
process as it could be, the Iron Man came from administration, not the street, so
Wally generally survived the Police Plaza gauntlet, because the game played to his
only strength, looking good on paper.
Nikki watched him drop his briefcase and doff his coat, knowing it would be a matter
of minutes before he saw the report of her night visit from Rainbow. She found Rook
fridge surfing in the kitchenette and asked, “Want to take a ride to the
coroner’s?”
He turned and grinned. “Shotgun.”
They crossed Central Park on the 81st Street transverse, only to endure the cross-
town crunch. “Where are we with Puzzle Man?” she asked.
“Haven’t heard.”
“Shouldn’t you check in?”
“You don’t push Puzzle Man.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t want to find out,” said Rook. “Puzzle Man… he’s such an enigma.”
Shortly after Nikki cranked the turn south on Second Avenue, her phone rang and she
popped in her earbud. “My DHS conference call,” she told Rook. “Be quiet and don
’t make me laugh.”
“Heat? Bart Callan. We’re patching in Agent Bell.”
“I’m on,” said Yardley, sounding crisp, even for her.
Callan began, “This will be brief. Consider it a gentle heads-up for you about team
protocol.”
Nikki felt her pulse elevate and wondered if she should pull over for this. “OK…”
“Vaja Nikoladze,” said Bell. “You were explicitly embargoed from contact and yet,
what did you do? Made contact.”
“He called to complain. Now, we can call this a mulligan,” said Agent Callan,
either trying to keep things from boiling over or to play Good Agent to her Bad
Agent, who could tell? “Maybe you’re used to a structure that’s a little more
elastic—”
“Oh, grow a pair and cut the shit, Bart,” snapped Yardley. “Heat, you are not,
repeat not, to fly against a directive again. Once more, and we freeze you out like
January in Adak. Clear? Good. I’m off this call.”
“Awkward,” said Agent Callan. “But don’t invest personally. Let’s just stay in
step moving forward, all right?”
But Heat had already hung up. She flung her earpiece at the dashboard and seethed.
“Problem, Detective?” said Rook.
Nikki whipped her head to him. “Your girlfriend, Writer Boy.”
“Do I have to sit in your hallway with a shotgun all night?” asked Lauren Parry
when Heat entered the little side office outside the autopsy room. “Because if you
won’t get yourself a protection detail, that’s what I’m going to do.”
“I keep telling her, Doc,” added Rook as he slipped in.