“It still leaves the open question of, what was a Port Authority car doing there?” said Ochoa.
“Well, the link to Gilbert is pretty cozy.” Heat flicked a thumb to the plate number on the whiteboard under the sketches of the two men. “We’ve sent the plate out on the alert system, so if we get a ding, we may get our answer.”
Detective Rhymer had made contact with the staffer at Happy Hazels, the agency that placed Jeanne Capois as the housekeeper. “Nothing earth-shattering. Kinda sad, though. They loved her, and had all good things to say. Also Fabian was more than a boyfriend. The both of them apparently came from Haiti at the same time and were engaged. But they said the only thing Jeanne cared about was to somehow get back home for the wedding.”
“I found an anomaly of sorts on Jeanne Capois’s MetroCard,” said Raley. “Her pattern on days off was to take the Three line from the Seventy-second Street station to Saratoga Avenue in Brooklyn, which was the nearest station, I guess, to her fiancé’s place near Kings Highway in Flatbush. You could set your clock to that, twice a week, for half a year. But a few weeks ago, she started using the card to round trip it on the One train from Seventy-ninth and Broadway to the Fourteenth Street stop in Chelsea, then come back to the Upper West Side the same day.”
“Were these at repeating times and days?” Heat knew the value of breaks in habit. Big things like changes in lifestyle and income were key indicators to look for in an investigation, but you sometimes got the biggest breaks from the smallest things, like switching gyms or altering subway stops. “I’m wondering if she had some kind of appointment. Like maybe she was pregnant. Or had medical issues. Is there a clinic near there? Physical therapy, maybe?”
“The trips were all at different times, both day and night.”
“Tell you what I’d like to do,” said his partner. “I say we Roachify this.”
Heat cocked her head to Detective Ochoa. “Did you just say Roachify?”
“I did. As in getting all over this. I want us to go back through her purse, her room, everything, to see if something links up to Chelsea.”
“When you put it like that,” said Nikki, “I’d be foolish to say no.”
She had set her iPhone on her desktop and she caught the thing side-creeping across her blotter from the vibration when she came back from the restroom. Once again, not Rook. Detective Feller was calling in from Flatbush.
“Got one for you,” he began. “A detective goes into a bar.”
“Yeah?”
“And comes out with a clue.”
“I’m listening.” By reflex, she flipped to a clean page in her Clairefontaine notebook. Feller liked to clown around, but Heat knew he wouldn’t have called unless it mattered. Did it ever.
“There’s kind of a dive spot around the corner from Beauvais’s flophouse. I know it’s early in the day, and all, but I thought I’d go in and see what kicks. So the bartender doesn’t seem to want to talk but wants to at the same time; you’ve seen those types, right?” She had. “So I noticed there were some guys at the bar, chins over their beers, who he may not want to share in front of, so I ask him if he could come outside and give me directions to the BQE. When I get him alone, sure enough, he knows Beauvais from the neighborhood and says one night about a week ago he comes in about last call, acting like he’s drunk, but he’s not. He’s got blood on his shirt, and says he’s been shot.”
“Did you say shot, as in gunshot?”
“One and the same. Beauvais says no 911 call, refuses a trip to the ER, but remembers the barkeep has a friend who’s a doctor.”
“Did you get a name?”
“Already spoke to him. And guess what? He’ll cooperate,” said Randall Feller, keeping his record unassailable as Nikki Heat’s most-esteemed street cop. “I’m heading there to interview him now.”