“I would have,” said Nikki, “except apparently, Gilbert knew before I did. Hang on, what’s he saying?”
Up on the TV, Gilbert was addressing a reporter who was offscreen. “There never was anything to this, so it never concerned me—beyond my thoughts and prayers for the victim of this crime,” he said. “I hope the NYPD will now be able to concentrate its resources on bringing the true killer of Fabian Beauvais to justice while I concentrate on the looming storm headed our way.”
Rook scoffed in Nikki’s ear. “Where’s the patriotic music? This guy should have some John Williams or Aaron Copland backing this.” His cynicism was welcome, but little comfort to Heat. Rook not only didn’t believe the commissioner was responsible, his own investigation may have created the first tiny crack leading to the collapse of her case. For her own sanity, she tried to put that in her back pocket for now. Gilbert himself made it more difficult to do so.
“Commissioner,” asked another reporter, “A source told me you had planned to sue NYPD for wrongful arrest. Is that still in the works?”
Keith Gilbert smiled a wan smile and slowly wagged his head from side to side. “Let me say this. Now is a time to be present-and-future focused. Ultimately, the NYPD and the DA did the right thing. This didn’t add up, and they knew it. Even a top investigative journalist, Jameson Rook—who, ironically is the romantic partner of the lead detective of this case—raised huge doubts as recently as today on a blog posted on First Press-dot-com.”
Her detectives, nearly in unison, rotated a 180 to regard Nikki. She turned from them and whispered into the phone, “…What?”
Rook cleared his throat. “Ah, maybe this would be a good time for me to hang up.”
“Don’t you dare.”
“Nikki, there is nothing in that post we haven’t already discussed. And, just so you know, I did not publish it. The magazine did without telling me as a teaser because this is such a hot case. You believe me, don’t you?”
What could she say? Something to start another argument? “I can see how that could happen,” is where she found both truth and neutral ground.
“I’ll help you forget all about this at dinner, I promise.”
“That would be a welcome change.” And then she added, “Whatever you’re making, just no crow, all right?”
When she had gotten out of her car an hour before upon returning from the Hamptons, Nikki felt every ache, scrape, and bruise from the prior evening’s street fight, and had planned to call it an early end of shift. The intervening events changed all that, so she convened her crew for a regroup session.
“We’re back to the Murder Board and, I guess, the drawing board, too,” she observed, but without a bit of whimsy. The four detectives seated around her weren’t smiling, either. “Before we break camp, let’s share what we’ve got.”
She began by filling them in on the missing gun and her theory about Conscience Point. From there Nikki shared the medical examiner’s certainty that the scratch marks on the late Roderick Floyd would most likely confirm her hit squad member as one of Jeanne Capois’s killers. Heat also mentioned her frustration at trying to link the quasi-SWAT crew that went after her and Capois to the gangsta pair that shot at Fabian Beauvais. When she admitted she was open to the fact that any one of them could have done Beauvais, Roach looked to each other, not at her. Oh, well.
Detective Raley recapped his efforts trying to get a line on Opal Onishi, whose Chelsea apartment Heat had found empty that morning. “Got her DMV photo,” he said, handing the picture of the young Japanese-American woman for Nikki to add to the gallery on the Murder Board. “Age twenty-six. No arrests. No warrants. I went back to her crib and the neighbors said she cleared out late Monday night.”