“Got something for you on our poisoned food,” said Detective Feller when she came back into the bull pen. “The delivery kid from the deli where Holding places our orders got spiffed a twenty at his bike rack by someone who said they’d handle this one.”
“Excellent. Did he give you a good description?” she asked.
“Yes, and when I heard it, I showed him this.” Feller held up the APB pic of Salena Kaye on his cell phone. “Positive ID.”
“I’ll see that and raise you one,” said Raley, coming through the door clutching a photo print. “Just pulled this still from my surveillance screening of the OCME cams. Check out who dropped off the bad gas at the loading dock.” He held up the shot for them all to see: Salena Kaye in a delivery uniform and baseball cap.
Rook joined them from his desk and said, “That is one naughty nurse.”
“Yeah,” said Raley. “Too bad this surveillance tape has been sitting around unscreened for a couple of days. If we’d only seen this day before yesterday, we might have gotten her before she rabbitted.”
“Or got Petar,” added Feller.
“Refresh my memory,” said Rook. “Who was it who said he wanted to take point on the gas truck, personally? Then delegated it to his secret weapon?”
Nikki took the still from Raley and walked it into Irons’s office and shut the door. Less than three minutes later, the captain must have decided not to summon the press, after all. He grabbed his coat and left in a hurry.
Exhausted, but unwilling to go home with things in such flux, Heat spent the night at the precinct. Rook came in at daybreak with a latte and fresh change of clothes for her. “Did you get any sleep?” he asked.
“Ish,” she said. “Tried to grab a few winks in one of the interrogation rooms, but, you know.” She took a sip of her coffee. “My dad’s an early riser, so I called him a little while ago to fill him in, so he wouldn’t hear it on the news first.”
“How’d he take it?”
“Closed, as ever. But at least he didn’t screen me out when he saw the caller ID, so that’s a start.”
Rook thought back to the brittle exit from her father’s condo after she had asked him for the bank statements. “You’re either stronger than I thought you were or a glutton for punishment.”
“Aside from all the personal crap? I really thought I had this case locked down.” She led him to the twin Murder Boards. Both were brimming with new notes she had made on them in the predawn hours. “I thought once I nailed the killer, I’d be done. But Petar ended up—well, he ended up just the consolation prize.”
“You know, Nikki, that’s the tragedy of all this. I was feeling that your old boyfriend and I were just starting to bond.” He looked at her innocently. “What, too soon?”
“A little,” she said, but smiled in appreciation of his usual effort to try to make her laugh, in spite of. “This nerve’s still a bit exposed. But don’t give up, OK?”
“Deal.”
She contemplated one of the boards with a bleak sigh. “This one …” Nikki tapped Tyler Wynn’s name, now featured prominently. “He called the orders. Because of him, my mother died, Nicole died, Don died.”
“Carter Damon, also.”
“Right. And why?” She shook her head. “Damn, I really thought I’d be done.”
Most of the squad gathered early. Clearly, sleep was not anybody’s priority. Roach came in a little later, but only because they had paid a visit to the MTA headquarters on the way in to check surveillance video from the 96th Street station. “They’re making dubs for us now,” said Detective Raley, “but we logged Nicole Bernardin going over the platform toward the Ghost Station with the leather pouch and then coming back without it the same night she died.”
“Any idea what was in it?” asked Rhymer.
“None. I never even touched it.”
Detective Feller joined them. “Any guess who Nicole left it for?”