“I’m just saying, step back. Maybe things look one way, but mean another. Isn’t it possible that Keith Gilbert had nothing to do with Fabian Beauvais’s death but was merely orbiting the periphery?”
Instead of opening up to possibilities, a gloom enveloped her. Nikki had grown accustomed to, and even grudgingly enjoyed, Rook’s diverting conspiracy speculations. It was like listening to his brain popping popcorn. But this had a different tone. His assertion that something bigger might be going on didn’t pass the Redenbacher test. This felt like a challenge to her whole case.
And not diverting at all.
Detective Feller sat waiting on the other end of a blinking light for Heat when she and Rook came into the bull pen. While she took the call, Rook dropped his messenger bag on his borrowed desk and drifted over to the Murder Board to survey the updates.
“Know what this case is for me?” began Feller, who was checking in from the Port Authority’s Central Automotive Headquarters in Jersey City. “Bridges and tunnels and bridges and tunnels. Oh, and tunnels.”
“Boo hoo. I’ve got two dozen phone messages sitting here from reporters, all of whom want me to be their confidential unnamed source on Gilbert’s arrest.”
“Conference them all with each other, that’s what I’d do. Then stand back and watch the lightning bolts arc out of the phone.”
“You about done?” she said.
“About. Got a bit of the unexpected over here. Motor pool ran the registration through their system, and there is no record of anyone signing out that Impala for the last month.”
“How can that be?”
“Because—are you ready? The car’s been stolen.”
“Stolen when?”
“Well, now it gets strange. They just discovered it and reported it today.”
Nikki finished the call, sidled next to Rook and uncapped a marker to post the stolen status of the Impala. When she had finished he said, “Are you tense?”
“No, why?”
“Did I detect a certain extra degree of squeak in your block lettering, or is that my imagination?”
“Could be,” she said. “Lord knows it’s plenty fertile.”
Before Rook could respond, Wally Irons leaned in from the doorway of his office. “Detective? Gilbert’s attorneys are in Interrogation-One with him now. Everybody’s ready to roll.”
Heat entered the box alone. Captain Irons, who she had invited out of protocol, was too big a coward to sit in (thank God), and Rook, who very much wanted—and expected—to take part, got some bad news from Nikki outside the interrogation room door. With such a high-profile, high-stakes case, the lead detective could not afford to put a foot wrong. Topping the list of stumbles would be allowing a reporter to take part in the formal homicide interrogation of a government official in the watchful presence of his opportunistic Dream Team.
The first thing she noticed was Keith Gilbert’s smile. Far from looking like a man who had just had his necktie, belt, and shoelaces taken away, he gave off a relaxed, nearly genial vibe. Nikki took the lone chair that stationed her back to the mirror of the observation room. Across the table from her, flanked by his trio of suits, Keith Gilbert looked more like a tycoon judge on Shark Tank than a murder suspect. Detective Heat decided she would have to change that.