“Rhymer.”
“Sorry. They managed to score one hit for a HopStop search she made.”
“What’s HopStop?”
“A website that gives you directions when you tell it where you want to go. It gives you subway, bus, taxi, and walking info, including distances and times. Am I making sense?”
“You could star on Big Bang Theory. What was she searching?”
“Directions to a restaurant on the Upper West Side.”
“When?”
“The night she was murdered.”
“Drop whatever you’re doing, Opie. Go now to that restaurant. Go right now and show her picture, learn everything you can.”
“Feller and I are en route as we speak.”
“If this pans out, I suppose I’ll owe IT, big time.”
Rhymer said, “Maybe a lipstick smooch to go under the autograph.”
“OK, now you’re creeping me out,” she said, then hung up.
As Heat turned off the rural two-lane, her tires crunched the long pebble drive leading to Vaja Nikoladze’s Victorian country house, and the sound of barking dogs rose from a kennel behind a stand of rhododendrons in the side pasture. She parked beside the blue hybrid, nosing up to the split-rail fence that separated the driveway from the back field. When they got out, Heat and Rook paused to admire the green sweep of meadow leading down toward the line of hardwoods whose foliage shimmered under the midday sun. They couldn’t see it, but between those trees and the cliffs of the Palisades just beyond, the Hudson River flowed.
Rook said, “Look out there where the field ends. Is that the most realistic scarecrow you’ve ever seen, or what?”
“I’m going with ‘or what?’ That’s no scarecrow. That’s a man.”
And, just as she said it, the stock-still figure in the distance began walking toward them. He moved steadily through the meadow, with a dancer’s grace and economy, in spite of his trail boots and heavy Carhartt jeans. The man never looked behind him or to the side. But they never had a sense he was looking at them, either, even though a broad smile cut across his face when he drew near. His hands, which he had been holding cupped in front of his belt buckle, as if in casual prayer, rose up to his chin and a single forefinger extended. He was signaling them to remain quiet.
When he was one yard away, Vaja Nikoladze stopped and whispered in an accent that sounded Russian to their ears. “One moment, if you please. I have her on a sit-stay.” Then he rotated. Turning his back to them to face the meadow, he raised one arm straight out to the side, held it there for five seconds, and then swung his palm swiftly to his chest.
The instant he did, a very large dog began bounding across the pasture to him at full speed. He held his place as the Georgian Shepherd, about the size and color of a small bear, charged at him. At the last moment, and without so much as a hand signal to command it, the dog stopped and dropped to an alert sit, her front paws aligned with the toes of his boots. “Good girl, Duda.” He bent to pet her broad face and scratch under her ears as her tail wagged. “Now, go to place.” Duda stood, turned, and trotted, cutting a straight line for the kennel, and went inside.
“How awesome is that?” said Nikki.
“She has promise,” he said. “With more training, she may be a winning show dog.” He stuck his hand out. “I am Vaja. You are Nikki Heat, yes?”
Because it was such a warm spring day, he invited them to sit on the gallery that wrapped around the back of the house. They declined his pitcher of iced tea and settled into teak rocking chairs while he perched up on the rail to face them. His dangling feet not only made Nikoladze appear shorter in spite of his elevation, but boylike instead of the fifty Heat made him to be.
“Up in town at the institute they told us to find you here,” began Nikki. “You’re taking a personal leave?”