“Sir, are you all right?” Her eyes darted to the patrolman standing behind him. “Are you sure you don’t want medical help?”
“No, no, please, I’m not hurt, it’s not that.” He turned his face from hers and said in a low voice, “I have been a doorman at this building for over thirty years. I have never seen a week like this one. Mr. Starr and his poor family. Your detective talked with William, you know, the day-?shift doorman, about that day. He’s still afraid he’ll be fired for letting those fellows slip in that morning. And now here I am. I know it’s not the fanciest work, but this job means something to me. We’ve got some characters living here, but most folks are very good to me. And even if they aren’t, I’m always proud of my service.” He said nothing for a moment and then looked up to Nikki and his lip was quivering. “I’m the gatekeeper. More than anything else I do, it’s my responsibility to make sure bad people don’t get in here.”
Nikki rested a hand on his shoulder and spoke gently. “Henry, this is not your fault.”
“How is it not my fault? It was my watch.”
“You were overpowered, you’re not responsible, can you see that? You were the victim. You did everything you could.” She knew he was only half-?buying it, knew he was replaying the night, wondering what else he could have done. “Henry?” And when she had his attention again, Nikki said, “We all try. And try as we might to control things, sometimes bad things get in and it’s not our fault.” He nodded and managed a smile. At least the words Nikki’s therapist had once used with her made someone feel better.
She arranged for a patrol car to drive him home.
Back in the precinct, Detective Heat drew a vertical red line on the whiteboard to create a separate but parallel case track for the burglary. Then she sketched in the timeline of events beginning with the departure of Kimberly Starr and her son, the time of the blackout, the phone call from the relief doorman, the arrival of the van and its crew, and their departure just before the end of the blackout.
She then drew another red vertical to delineate a new space for the Jane Doe murder. “You’re starting to run out of whiteboard,” said Rook.
“I hear you. The crimes are getting ahead of the solves.” Then she added, “For now, anyway.” Nikki taped up the lobby surveillance photo of the Doe. Beside it, she taped the impound lot death shot Lauren had taken of her an hour before. “But this one is leading us to something.”
“Too weird she was in the lobby the same morning Starr got killed,” said Ochoa.
Rook rolled a chair over and sat. “Quite a coincidence.”
“Weird, yes. Coincidence, no,” said Detective Heat. “You still taking notes for your article about Homicide? Get this one down. Coincidences break cases. You know why? Because they don’t exist. Find the reason it’s not a coincidence, and you can pretty much get out your handcuffs, because you’re going to be slapping them on somebody damn soon.”
“Any ID yet on the Doe?” said Ochoa.
“Nope. All her personal effects were gone, car registration, license plates. A squad from the Three-?Two is Dumpster diving for her purse in a radius around West 142nd and Lenox, where they towed her car from. When we break here, see how they’re doing on the VIN.”
“Got it,” said Ochoa. “What’s keeping our fiber test?”
“It’s the blackout. But I asked the captain to roll an M-80 under somebody’s lab stool at Forensics.” Nikki posted on the board a photo of the hexagonal ring Lauren found. She taped it beside the matching bruise pictures of Matthew Starr’s body and wondered if it was Pochenko’s. “I want those results like yesterday.”