“Huh, did I? I’d have to look it up, but glad I could help him out.” The lawyer stood up. “Hey, listen I’m late for some rent hearing up in Mott Haven. Can we do this some other day? Maybe make an appointment next time.” Whether the rent hearing was real or a fabrication, there wasn’t much she could do about it, with apologies and good-byes, he applied another dose of cologne to her hand and hustled out the door.
Out on the sidewalk, Heat watched him speed off in his silver Mercedes G-Class SUV. Nikki figured, for a storefront immigration lawyer, Reese Cristóbal was doing pretty well.
Back at the Twentieth, Heat discovered Feller had just returned from New Jersey, so she was able to gather her full squad for a late briefing. She shorthanded the release of Gilbert and skirted the captain’s banishment of Rook from the precinct. Word on that had circulated on its own, and her crew had enough compassion—or sense—not to comment on it. “I’m not suggesting the killers are cops,” she said after relaying the fiber news from OCME and Forensics. “They could be security cops, mall cops, or just buffs who bought from an army surplus. Detective Rhymer, I’d like you to show sketches of our two goons at army-navy shops. I know the clothing could have been bought online, but street-level is a good start.
Feller asked, “What about PAPD?”
“Smart. And since Port Authority is becoming your thing, why don’t you make a friend at PAPD who’ll run Beauvais and Capois through their data bank to see if there are any hits. Arrests, tickets, citizen complaints filed against a cop, basically anything. Roach, have you gotten any traction on those MetroCard swipes in Chelsea?”
“Indeed,” said Raley. “When we went through Jeanne Capois’s purse a second time, we found something on the back of a grocery receipt in her wallet. She had used it to jot down an address in Chelsea on West Sixteenth Street.”
Ochoa added, “It’s an apartment not far from the subway stop.”
“And, ironically, the Port Authority Inland Terminal Building. Before you get excited, it’s no longer owned by Port Authority, but by Google. I Googled that, increasing a seemingly infinite loop of irony.”
“Before you get pulled into a time warp, Rales, why don’t you give me that address? I’ll pay a visit tonight on my way home. I’d like you and Ochoa to go interview Beauvais’s friend Hattie Pate at the address Rook left.”
Before she released them for the night she voiced what swirled within all of them. “I don’t need to tell you this case is far from cleared. I won’t say it’s in jeopardy, but we can’t sit on what’s up here.” She indicated the Murder Board over her shoulder. “Let’s pretend this is square one and get more.”
“Higher, farther, faster,” said Rhymer.
Ochoa shook his head. “Don’t. Just don’t.”
She gave the taxi driver the address in Chelsea and settled into the seat burdened by a downer day and her own bleak thoughts. The surprise turn the case had taken and its collateral fallout was bad enough. The underpinning that kept her brain swirling had a name, and it was Jameson Rook. After the years of intimacy and happiness they had enjoyed together, not to mention the deep respect she had for his character, she had cause to believe him when he said he hadn’t shared any inside information with Gilbert’s man. Then how did this happen?
She took out her phone and opened up the text message Rook had sent her shortly after he left the Twentieth. BTW SINCE YOU BROUGHT UP VOODOO, I ALSO DID SOME RESEARCH ON THAT EARLIER TODAY. NOT AS FRINGY-SATANIC AS PEOPLE THINK. ONE OF THEIR BELIEFS IS THAT THERE ARE NO ACCIDENTS OR COINCIDENCES. EVERYTHING HAPPENS FOR A PURPOSE—R.
Nikki wondered what purpose she could she find in this. Not in sending the text, that was obviously a makeup ping. But what reason was there to find in Rook’s dissent and intrusion? Even if he hadn’t been the direct cause of Gilbert’s release without bail, he’d been more than a loose cannon. She couldn’t escape that recurring feeling he was working against her.
Ever since news of the task force job came out.
Heat didn’t want even to think he would be trying to undermine her chance for the task force for his personal reason of keeping her in New York.