“Oh, yes, and get this,” she said. “The serial numbers trace to cash used in a DEA sting years ago.”
Ochoa asked, “How does a stash from a fed drug deal end up in a priest’s attic?”
“Do we know who the DEA deal was with?” said Heat.
“Yeah, an Alejandro Martinez.” Hinesburg consulted her notes. “He cut a plea bargain for a deuce in Ossining and he’s out. Clean jacket since his release in ’07.”
Nikki crossed over to the board and started to write his name next to the notation for the found money. “Let’s see how clean this Alejandro Martinez is. Bring him in for a chat.”
They had just scattered to work their assignments when a familiar voice called from the door to the bull pen. “Delivery for Nikki Heat?”
Jameson Rook stepped in toting dry cleaning on hangers looped over his hand. “You know, I can’t just drop everything and keep coming here every time you get all bloody.”
Heat looked at the clothes from her closet, then at Rook, and then to Roach, arching a brow at them. Ochoa said, “We figured, you know, that he’d want to know how your day was going.”
Rook asked, “Did you really stab him with an icicle?” When she nodded, he said, “Please, tell me you said ‘Freeze,’ because that would be only perfect.” Rook was grinning, but there was worry behind it. He put his free arm around her waist. “Detective, you doing OK?”
“Fine, I’m just fine. I can’t believe you did this.” She took the clothes from him.
“Think they match. . . . You seem to have this sort of practical monochromatic thing going in your closet, not that I judge. All right, I judge. We need to take you shopping.”
She laughed and pulled a couple of items from the selection he’d brought. “These will do just fine.” She kissed his cheek, forgetting herself in a rare office display. “Thanks.”
“I thought you had protection. What happened to your Discourager?”
“Poor Harvey, you should have seen him. Mortified. In all his years he never got blocked like that.”
“How . . . discouraging. Whatever’s going on, you need better. When I went by your apartment, there was a car sitting up the block watching, I know the look.”
Nikki got a fresh chill and draped the clothes across the back of her chair. “How do you know it was watching?”
“Because when I walked up to it, he sped off. I yelled stop, but he kept going.”
“The yelling stop, that never works,” said Raley.
“Did you see him, get a description?” Ochoa had his pad open. Then he said, “You didn’t get a description, did you?”
“No,” said Rook. And then he took out his Moleskine notebook. “But would a license plate help?”
* * *
“Got it,” said Raley, hanging up the phone. “Vehicle you saw was regis tered to Firewall Security, Inc., a domestic protection division of . . . are you ready? . . . Lancer Standard.”
“We should get on them. Get over there right now,” said Rook. “These have got to be the guys who ambushed you. It adds up, the surveillance, the military tactics, let’s go.”
Nikki finished putting on her clean blazer and said, “First of all, there is no ‘we’ or ‘let’s,’ Rook. Your ride-along days are through. And second, there’s nothing to go on. Third, if they are up to something, I don’t want to let on that I know. . . .”
Rook sat down. “When you get to the fifteenth reason, let me know. I believe this is like Little League; isn’t there a mercy rule?”
She put a hand on his shoulder. “You’re not totally wrong. Of course this guy Hays and Lancer Standard have my attention, but let’s go about this the right way.”
“Did you say ‘let’s’? Because I heard ‘let’s.’ ”
She laughed, shoving him so he spun a rotation in the chair. Then Nikki felt Ochoa’s presence, standing in the middle of the bull pen, ashen. The smile left her face. “Miguel?”
The detective spoke in a voice so low it would not have been audible if the room hadn’t gone completely silent. “Captain Montrose. . . . He’s dead.”
EIGHT