Heat noted the small corkboard, askew on the wall, with a tropical sunset photo push-pinned into it above a trio of faded rectangles where these shots had been posted. Only one woman was common to both pictures. Black, mid-twenties, beautiful. The third shot was a solo of a black man, also mid-twenties. It had been taken on the Coney Island boardwalk, and he had his shirt off. On one of his shoulders the Haitian tattoo faced the camera.
“We’ll get this to Forensics to verify the tattoo match,” said Raley, anticipating her.
“Anybody in the building know her or see her recently?” asked Heat. Her answer came with a big Roach grin that said yes. “It’s almost like you guys know what you’re doing.”
Wilma Stallings, an elderly housekeeper from an apartment up the hall had identified Jeanne Capois when Roach knocked on doors during their routine canvass earlier in the day. She repeated to Heat and Rook that she hadn’t heard any of the commotion because, at seventy-eight, she’d become hard of hearing. QVC blasting in a back room might also have been a factor. “Such a shame. Mr. David was a wonderful man. I told the other detectives he should have just let them take what they wanted. Are you sure you won’t sit? The couple I work for is away at their place in Stowe.”
They followed her to the living room and Nikki doubled back over ground Roach had covered with her, to get her own take on the missing woman and her life. Wilma had last seen Jeanne Capois about ten the evening before. “She seemed upset. Usually that young lady had a bright smile and all the time in the world. But when I saw her in the hall she was poking that elevator button like it was video blackjack. And not so much as a hello in return.”
“Did she have anything with her,” asked Heat.
“No, just her purse.”
“Did it seem particularly full or unusually heavy?”
“What a peculiar question.…No, not that I noticed.” Of course, Heat was fishing to see if Jeanne Capois’s hurry was all about getting some unknown object out of the apartment. That is, assuming that’s what the invasion was all about.
“Did she have any visitors recently or talk about anyone bothering her?”
The old woman shook her head.
Rook asked, “Do you know how she came to this particular job?”
“Oh, yes. An agency.” Then she stared and stared. So long, in fact, Nikki wondered if she was having some sort of episode. Then she came back from the ozone and said, “Happy Hazels. Knew I’d remember it.” She grinned and held up a hand, which Rook high-fived. Then Wilma squeezed her eyes tight behind her thick glasses and slapped her knee joyfully. “I’m on a roll. Something else came to me. Those young detectives showed me a photograph.”
Nikki had snapped a shot with her iPhone of the Coney Island man, Fabian Beauvais. She held it out to Wilma and traded a quick hopeful glance with Rook. “Yes, that one. I just remembered. I have seen him before, after all. This fella brought Jeanne to the apartment one night last month. Or June. I don’t know. Mr. David was away in Florida, I know that.”
Nikki calmed herself in the face of the old housekeeper’s big connection. She handed the photo to her for closer inspection. “But you are completely sure it was he?”
“Absolutely.” She tapped an arthritic finger on her temple. “Sometimes it comes late, but it always comes right.”
“How did they act? Did they seem to know each other well?” asked Rook.
“They had their tongues down each other’s throats.”
“Well enough then,” he said.
First thing the next morning, Heat addressed her squad from the Murder Board. “Thanks to a photo hit from a witness found by the Detectives Roach, we now have a solid link between Fabian Beauvais and the home-invasion homicide of Shelton ‘Shelly’ David.” Raley and Ochoa sat hunched in their chairs, each swollen-eyed and wearing the previous day’s clothes. In the gap between photos of the two dead men she posted a blowup of Jeanne Capois, vignetted from the Battery Park selfie. “Roach?”
Raley side nodded to his partner and Ochoa stood to tag in on the briefing. He ran down the findings at the crime scene, including the odd sock of a home invasion without an apparent theft.