In a rare and blatant move of tactical Irons avoidance, Nikki Heat skipped going back to the station house after completing the search of Salena Kaye’s apartment that evening. The last time she had called in, Detective Feller told her that the captain was in his glass box highlighting CompStats but had regularly scoped the bull pen to check her desk. Whatever he wanted, it would have to wait. Nikki had a date with the keepsake box.
After confirming that the APB had gone out on Salena Kaye and satisfying herself that Malcolm and Reynolds had the forensic examination of Carter Damon’s van covered, she took her reclaimed photos and cabbed down to Tribeca to meet up with Rook at his loft.
He had gone there an hour before to keep an appointment with a locksmith, and when Heat arrived, Rook handed her a shiny brass key to fit his new deadbolt. “I’d like to think a new lock makes a diff,” he said, “but the way things have been going, I might as well just leave the front door wide open and slap Post-its where to find the good stuff.”
“One good thing,” she said. “Now that we know it was Salena, we don’t need to worry that Forensics didn’t find any prints.”
“Maybe they didn’t score any fingerprints, but they did find my little Scotty dog under the couch.”
“Yay, Forensics.”
“It must have gotten knocked off the table and rolled under there when Salena planted this.” He held up a small black box with a wire dangling from it.
“A bug? So she not only had access to our Murder Board and stole these pictures, she planted a bug?”
“Now I’m all paranoid about things I might have said.” And then he added with a sly grin, “During the massage, I mean.”
“I’ve heard you in your ecstasy, Rook. I’d be paranoid, too.” Then Heat set up shop at the dining room table, opening the lid of the keepsake box and poring over the photos.
The first pass through was to eyeball for jewelry. If that bracelet with the one and the nine charms held any meaning, the first clue would be to see if her mother, Nicole, or anyone else in the pictures wore it or something similar. But after scrutinizing every picture, they had seen no similar bracelets or jewels of unusual note.
Next she set about arranging the pictures in separate piles. When Rook couldn’t detect a pattern to her stacks, he said, “Pardon me if I’m in violation of using your registered trademark, but what are you doing, looking for an odd sock?”
“No, actually I’m looking for the opposite of that. I’m playing around with various sequences and configurations to see what matches instead of what doesn’t. Just letting instincts dictate piles. For instance, these are turning out to be a bunch of poses with tutor patron families. I’ll make that one stack.”
“Got it,” he said. “And these here … What, solo shots of your mother and a piano at various homes?”
“Right, there you go.” Nikki continued sorting and resorting, creating categories of pictures including poses with Tyler Wynn and her mom, Oncle Tyler with Nicole, Tyler with other groups, and then the last stack of remainders—constituting all the solo shots of members of the Nanny Network in those comical, goofy poses, gesturing like spokesmodels.