When the thumb drive opened up, she double-clicked on a file, and as it loaded, she said, “I pulled this off Morris Granville’s cell phone.”
The image loaded. It was amateur cell quality, but the picture told the story. It was a shot of a wet street outside Club Thermal. Reed Wakefield and Soleil Gray were getting inside a stretch limo. Esteban Padilla, dressed in a black suit and red tie, held an umbrella over the open door. And inside the limousine, a giggling Toby Mills held a hand out to help Soleil get in. In his other hand was a joint.
As Mills weakened and his hands began to shake, Heat said, “Cassidy Towne. Derek Snow . . .” When he bowed his head, Nikki tapped lightly on the monitor. When he looked back up at the image, she added, “And think about this, Toby. Everyone here is dead—but you. I want you to tell me what’s wrong with this picture.”
And then the phenom began to weep.
Toby Mills had entered Stuyvesant High that night in the backseat of a black Escalade with a million-dollar check. He left in the backseat of a police car in handcuffs. The charges, for now, would be tokens just to hold him: lying to a police officer; failure to report a death; conspiracy; conspiracy to obstruct justice; bribery. From the confession he had made to her after he broke down and wept, it wasn’t clear yet to Detective Heat if meatier charges would be brought. That would be up to a grand jury and the DA. And most importantly, if she could find a way to connect the pitcher to the Texan.
The stalker’s cell phone picture would be compelling evidence. In her own way Nikki was in debt to whatever sickness in Morris Granville had taken the picture and kept it since May. When she asked him why he hadn’t come forward with it before or tried to capitalize on it, he said he wanted to protect his idol, Toby Mills. So, she had said, that raised the question, “Why show it to a cop now?” To that, Granville said, as if it was obvious, “He had me arrested.” And then the stalker smiled and asked, “If he goes to trial, will Toby be there when I testify?” Heat reflected on the stalker mentality and those of them who loved their victims so much that when they couldn’t get near, they destroyed them. Some killed them. Apparently others got them arrested. It was all about seeking relevance in an unrequited relationship. Choose your poison.
In Toby Mills’s version of the events following Club Thermal, the three of them rode around Manhattan with one objective: partying. Reed and Soleil already had a leg up, and Toby, who wasn’t due to pitch until a Monday start at home against the Red Sox, was in the mood that Friday night to blow it out after a losing road trip that had just ended in Detroit. He laughed at the MLB random drug tests. Mills and many other players either banked or bought urine to keep the commish out of their downtime. Mills had with him a small gym bag full of recreational narcotics and was a generous host. He told Heat that while they were parked briefly at the South Street Seaport, watching the East River, Reed and Soleil started getting serious about their reunion sex, and since everyone was tired of riding around in the car anyway, they all went back to Reed’s room at the Dragonfly House to continue the party there. Toby, who in normal circumstances would have been the third wheel, had the drugs, so he was most welcome. He confessed that a part of him was hot for Soleil, and he even said to Nikki that he had thought, “What the hell, who knew where the night would lead?”