“If you’ll give me a chance to help you, I can make sure this goes a lot easier on you, especially if you stop now.” Heat knew their situation was beyond grim, but the only hope she could see was to engage them on some human level, taking a page from the hostage handbook. Unfortunately, one of the men in the front seat had also read it.
“‘When engaging the hostage taker, speak calmly and do your best to establish rapport in a way that does not agitate the HT.’ Pretty good, huh? Know what? I should be a cop.” He cackled, loving his own joke.
“Can we just…you know, drive?” said Backhouse.
As they rode from Long Island City south into the back streets of Greenpoint, Nikki switched her focus, trying to get a grasp on the pair’s relationship, which seemed more pragmatic than truly friendly—as if Maloney was the professor’s hired gun and accomplice, but it ended there. Part of her evolving strategy concerned finding some way to come between them in order to undermine their unity. Finding that wedge might save her life and Rook’s. She also wanted to prove a hunch that had been simmering ever since she had interrogated Joseph Barsotti.
Rook seemed to be pondering the same question. “Question, Professor?” Backhouse didn’t reply, so naturally Rook continued as if he had. “I’m playing my Six Degrees game back here, wondering how a police detective meets a forensic engineering consultant. And the Kevin Bacon I come up with is Fred Lobbrecht, am I right?” He got silence in return but kept on. “I mean, you knew Fred Lobbrecht professionally. But how would Detective Maloney meet him? You don’t travel in the same social circles, I’m guessing. Unless…” Rook’s experience had brought him to the same conclusion Heat was sniffing: that Wilton Backhouse had been the unidentified visitor in the psychologist’s waiting room when Barsotti walked in on Maloney’s tirade. And that was where the college professor had found his lethal TA.
Anger flared within Nikki. If she had gotten that damned administrative subpoena, she wouldn’t be sitting there handcuffed and shot, a captive in the back of her own car right now. She pushed that thought aside and continued trying to engage her kidnappers. “Wilton, I’ll bet Fred Lobbrecht had you come in to talk with his shrink, same as he did with Rook, am I right? You and Tim crossed paths in the waiting room. You saw opportunity to use him and struck up your little friendship.”
Backhouse held his tongue. Maloney was another story. He flared. “Hey, I’m not being used.” Then he calmed down a bit and chuckled. “I make friends very easily. I’m handsome enough, I’m strong enough, and darn it, people like me.”
“Hey, Tim,” said the professor. He shook his head to say, Cool it.
“So you guys met up that day and what, Wilton, you saw a prime candidate to help you deal with some problems?” asked Heat. “Like Lon King?”
“Lon King was a fucked-up individual,” snapped the ex-cop.
Nikki kept her focus on Backhouse. “Because Lon King knew too much about something? Wilton, I can’t hear you.”
Maloney sighed. “I should have shot them back at the house.”
“Drive,” said Backhouse.
“But what did he know about? What did Fred Lobbrecht tell Lon King that meant they both had to die? And then the others. Abigail Plunkitt. Nathan Levy.” She watched the pair up front exchange glances but hold their silence. “I have a theory,” she said, “but I’d love to hear it from you.”
“I have nothing to say.”
“That’s a switch for you, Backhouse.” Rook leaned forward as best he could to peer around the headrest. “I thought you were the marquee headliner. The mouthpiece of the whistle-blowers. The next Assange or Snowden. That’s how you told me you saw yourself.”
“I never said that.”
“Want me to get my notes? The address is in Tribeca. I’ll direct you.”
“He’s right,” said Heat. “You’re quite the showman. Starting with that phony drone attack in Washington Square.”
Rook agreed. “All staged to make us see you as a victim like all the others and deflect suspicion. Like the last faked attack in your office. The envelope, please.”
“Hey, you swallowed it,” said Backhouse.
Nikki shrugged. “At first.”