“Levenger?” said Rook, a little too quickly.
Ochoa shook his head and groaned, “Oh, man. So busted.” Then the detective led the way out of the room. “Let’s see if Josie’s up for showing you the rest.” Since the encounter would come sooner or later, Nikki followed behind to get it over with. She had a homicide investigation to conduct and couldn’t do the job if she hid from witnesses for personal reasons. It might have been better, though, she thought, if only Rook hadn’t been along today.
“Josie,” said Detective Ochoa, “this is my precinct commander, Captain Heat.”
Lon King’s receptionist looked up from a deep-trauma stare at Nikki. The two women made eye contact and, in it, Heat saw clear recognition. But then came something unexpected. The young woman extended a hand to shake and said only, “Hello.” While she watched Josie give Rook a similarly polite, neutral greeting, Heat wondered, was it training or common sense not to out the client of a psychologist? Whether it was due to professionalism or courtesy, Nikki was grateful for the discretion and embarked on the rest of the tour undistracted.
As with the counseling room, the other areas of the office suite had been disturbed, not ransacked. Whoever did it wanted something specific. This was a surgical strike. “Josie, did Dr. King keep any drugs here? Prescription meds, I mean?” asked Nikki.
“No, he counseled only and didn’t prescribe. Not even any samples.”
The spilled playing cards in the desk made Heat think about the jumbo debt to Fat Tommy. “What about money? Did he keep any cash here, perhaps in a safe or locked drawer?”
“There’s a metal box in the file room, but that’s petty cash.” When she took them into the back room and put on gloves to open the file drawer, the petty cash box indeed turned out to have been pried open, however the variety of small bills and receipts was still inside, albeit stirred. Then Josie’s face lost color. “This is too creepy,” she said. “This drawer was completely full of files. Patient files.” Heat, Rook, and Ochoa drew around her as she pulled the drawer out. It hit the end of its runners with a hollow bonk. Empty.
After the four of them had pulled open every drawer of all the filing cabinets, they determined that exactly half the files were gone, encompassing patients with last names beginning A through M. The N-to-Z cabinets seemed full and undisturbed, at least at a glance. Heat’s gaze came to rest on the yawning Hastings-to-Henderson drawer, the one where her file would have resided—and felt a gnaw.
Rook’s eyes lifted to hers, and when they met, they both looked away.
Back out in reception, the lead CSU tech, an Australian transplant named Murphy, gave Heat and the others his prelim. “All right, then, here’s your quick-and-dirty, just to get us started, mind you. Your intruder, or intruders, were pro or semi-. Door lock shows no signs of forced entry. Inside, not much of a pillage, is it? More of an incursion, really. Here’s the tally: A-to-M surname files stolen; laptop missing, as noted; the hard drives have been expertly removed from the two desktops; and lastly, the Dragon speech recognition app, probably used for postsession notes dictation, has been removed from both computers, as well. All up, I’d call this a fairly neat operation, with whoever pulled it off taking his sweet time after closing yesterday with loads extra to fill the shopping trolley before dimming the switch and fucking off.”
“Do they have a security camera?” asked Ochoa.
“Sure enough, mate.” Murphy pointed up to a lipstick cam. Its lens had been blacked over with spray paint.
“Maybe it caught something before they disabled it,” said Heat. “Josie, did you guys record your video on-site or at a security company?”