“Knock-knock,” said Roach in unison at her door.
“Did you guys rehearse that, or are you just that joined at the hip?”
“Totally ad-libbed,” said Ochoa.
Raley shivered. “Kinda creeps you out, don’t it?”
The pair didn’t make a move when she gestured to her guest chairs. “Thanks, we’re on the fly,” Miguel said. “Just wanted you to sign off on something. The security video just arrived from Lon King’s medical building and I wanted to pull Sean off screening river cams and put him on that.”
“It’s the hot lead,” added Raley, selling Heat with another one of her own detective’s edicts: In any investigation, always follow the hot lead.
“Go for it.” Then, as they started off, she stopped them. “What do we hear about Lon King’s family?”
“Detective Aguinaldo just got off the phone with his partner,” said Ochoa. “He is a portrait artist who does official likenesses of governmental leaders. You know, those stiff oil paintings you see in state houses and courtrooms? She tracked him down in Vermont, where he’s doing Senator Leahy, and said he would be returning to the city on the next jetBlue. She’s going to meet his plane at JFK.”
“Keep me looped,” Heat said. Then she added, “By the way. What’s the freshness date on the recordings from the medical building?” Heat tried to sound nonchalant, asking a mundane procedural question to camouflage her concern that her own face might appear on Raley’s monitor and spark some personal awkwardness.
“I talked to the private contractor who set up the building’s system,” said Raley. “It’s not high-risk retail or a bank, so they went economy. There’s only ten days’ worth of room on the drive before it resets and records over itself. So it shouldn’t take me too long to scrub through, if that answers your question.”
“It does.” The date of her last appointment fell outside the window. She relaxed. “Thanks, Rales.”
But Nikki’s sense of relief did not last. Later that afternoon, Detective Raley returned while she paced her office on a phone call, executing an order from the deputy commissioner to lend fifteen of her patrol officers to the Critical Response Unit, to monitor the protests that had broken out after the arrest of a Syrian college student engaged in counterfeiting. The detective hand-signaled that he’d come back, but she didn’t like the tension she read on him and pointed to a chair. Sean sat and waited out her call.
When she at last put down the phone, two more lines rang. Nikki ignored them and gave Raley her attention. He rose and said, “I think you should see something.”
Heat followed him to the former storage closet Raley had converted into his makeshift screening facility and closed the door. After he had taken a seat at his worktable, she stood behind him to surf the image frozen on his monitor. It was of an empty hallway; the date and time stamp in the lower left corner showed it to be from 9:14 A.M., six days prior. “What floor are we on?”
“Twelve. Lon King’s hallway. Ready?” He didn’t wait for an answer, but double-clicked the trackpad. The video unfroze. There was no sound, but time code started to roll, counting seconds and video frames. The elevator arrived and a man walked out, advancing with full face in clear view of the camera. He entered the psychologist’s office without hesitation and closed the door.
“Roll it back,” said Heat, unable to keep the rasp of sudden dryness out of her voice. The detective rewound four seconds and froze the image on the screen. Even with the graininess of the security video there was no doubt that Lon King’s visitor was Jameson Rook.