“Or intimidation?” she asked. Heat’s phone vibrated.
“Either way, see? It worked. He kept it on him.” He tapped her notepad with his forefinger. “Meanwhile, I’m out thirty-two large. Get that down.”
The buzz was a text from Ochoa. She showed it to Rook and they both immediately stood to go. “You guys got a plane to catch or something?”
Nikki flipped her spiral notebook closed. “I may be back in touch, Mr. Nicolosi.”
Fat Tommy mopped his mouth with a soiled handkerchief and called after them as they bounded up the creaking stairs. “Wouldn’t wait too long.”
The Crime Scene Unit hadn’t even gone in yet. When Nikki and Rook stepped off the elevator onto the twelfth floor of the medical tower where Lon King kept his practice, the CSU team was just bootying up in the hallway. Snapping on blue nitrile for the second time that morning, Captain Heat self-consciously returned their salute with a gloved hand and went inside.
Detective Ochoa saw them enter and handed off the sobbing receptionist to the uniformed policewoman he’d requested from the Nineteenth. As he crossed over to her, the sight of the young woman smacked her with a sudden rush of dread. Heat had been there for an appointment just two weeks before. How awkward would it be if the receptionist, Josie, recognized her and said something? Nikki positioned herself with her back to the lobby desk and drew Ochoa and Rook into the adjoining room. She knew it was only a stall. Heat would somehow have to try to deflect the receptionist’s familiarity, but later. Her immediate concern was what Ochoa could tell her about the burglary, in hopes it would give up a clue to finding Lon King’s killer.
“So here’s how it came down,” began the detective. “I got here at ten of nine and waited in the hall for King’s receptionist…Josie,” he said after consulting his notes. “I ID’d myself, told her I needed a moment of her time, she unlocked the door, we came in, and, as you saw, the news hit her hard.”
“The breakin wasn’t apparent right away?” asked Heat.
“It was and it wasn’t. The girl was distracted—obviously—by the ton of bricks I dropped on her. So it wasn’t until a few minutes into my interview, after she started to recover, that she noticed some of the things in the place were out of whack. We did some room-to-room checking, and that’s when we knew there’d been a B&E overnight.”
Nikki surveyed the room they were standing in, the one King used for counseling sessions. She’d been in there fewer than ten times over the last three years, yet it appeared as tranquil and welcoming as ever. “Doesn’t appear tossed to me.” Then she added, “Going from memory.”
“You’d have to know what to look for.” Ochoa walked them past the psychologist’s overstuffed chair to the small desk off to the side. “Josie said there was a laptop there that’s gone.”
“Any chance the doctor could have taken it with him or come back for it?” asked Rook.
“I wondered the same. She says no. The MacBook stayed there all the time. He didn’t like lugging them and always used the cloud or thumb drives. To that point, the rest of the room is neat, no hacked-open pillows or tossed books off the shelves, right? But check it out…” Ochoa carefully slid open the single desk drawer by its edges instead of the handle, using the fingertips of his gloved hands. The slim drawer was a mess: spilled paperclips ripped from a box, a tangle of pencils and pens upended out of a teak tray, a torn deck of gold Kem playing cards, even a matchbox from The Dutch had been poked open and shaken empty.
Heat said, “A search for thumb drives?”
“A safe bet,” said Ochoa. “Josie says he kept them in this drawer, but in one of those leather zip pouches from that froufrou stationery-geek catalog.”