Detective Feller didn’t even need to be asked. He had made some good contacts in the Harbor Unit and Coast Guard earlier in the week in chasing down leads on Lon King’s kayak and volunteered to hop on them right away to check boat registries and set up patrols of the waterfront for a sky-blue skiff, especially concentrating on a zone from Williamsburg to Red Hook.
Heat called the description in to Ochoa so helicopters could cover the harbor as well as streets and backyards, in case the skiff had been trailered and hauled. The detective said he would alert cruisers to be especially watchful for the silver minivan in Brooklyn, in case that was its destination, as well.
On her drive back to the precinct, Nikki’s panic dueled with hope. But there was nothing like a lead to bring faith, so she clung to that. For dear life.
The King of All Surveillance Media had seen happier days. Heat popped into his screening room up the hall from the bull pen, where he was painstakingly scrubbing his copy of the footage from the Sidecar’s speakeasy cam, which so far had offered no good imagery of the abductors. The frozen frame on his monitor was of Rook, wincing in reaction as hands clutched him from behind. Nikki had to look away from that picture of him and hurried out.
She had just entered her office when Detective Rhymer beckoned her through the glass to come into the squad room.
Opie stood at his desk, indicating four thick manila accordion files stuffed with documents that were marked with a rainbow array of sticky tabs. “Roach assigned me to dig deeper into financial matters for our decedents. Lon King came out pretty much as projected. Big dips to cover gambling debts until there was no more to dip from. I’m sure he was living off his artist partner’s commissions. With the cyber snafu, I had to go old school looking into Fred Lobbrecht. That meant going the paper route. Hard copies, so nothing got sucked into the ether.” He patted the files. “Just came from his bank branch. Very interesting. Here’s a guy who went along and along on his state trooper salary. No spikes up or down. Nothing out of pattern—until…” He drew a printout from one of the accordion files and displayed it for Heat. “Until a month ago, when the last ten years of his mortgage suddenly get paid off.”
“A definite spike,” said Heat.
“The Odd Sock, Captain,” saidOpie, tossing Heat’s own lexicon back at her. “Now where do you suppose a guy who’s been a career state trooper gets that kind of money without buying a Pick 10?”
“I don’t know. Rich uncle? Perhaps one in the automotive biz?” Of course, a huge windfall never smelled right in a murder investigation. But what did it mean? A big lump sum could point to any number of things: a bribe, hush money, compensation to a mole among the safety watchdogs, even an extortion payment squeezed out of Swift by Lobbrecht. What Rhymer had turned up in that bank statement could even reframe the actions of some fellow whistle-blowers who had suddenly changed careers: one to decamp to the Everglades on a manatee rescue mission, the other to drive fast cars and live out a Clarence Clemons fantasy in Bronx rock ’n’ blues bars. Heat knew that kind of independence either comes from a life change or ready cash. It was time to go back to the whistle-blowers to ask a few more pointed questions about their dead colleague—and to see if they passed the smell test.
Detective Rhymer set out for Throggs Neck to reinterview Nathan Levy. Detective Aguinaldo was tasked to stir up Abigail Plunkitt, who still had not checked in from Florida. Heat made a call downtown to set up a forensic accounting study of both Tangier Swift and of his corporation, SwiftRageous, hoping to find some telltale payment that coincided with Lobbrecht’s windfall. It was going to take some time, they told her. The cyber intrusion had overwhelmed their office, but they would do their best. The bureaucratic response hit Nikki like a kick in the gut. Rook’s life hung in the balance. She damn well needed more than a checked-out worker bee doing her best. She hung up and dialed One Police Plaza to cash in the offer from Zach Hamner to kick some municipal ass.
After that, Heat headed to NoHo to see what there was to learn about Fred Lobbrecht at Hudson University.