Stallings nodded and gestured to the running clothes he was wearing. “This morning, I got up and laced up my New Balances.” As if to excuse this self-indulgence, he explained, “We all handle our shit differently. When he got stressed, Lonnie paddled. Me, I pound pavement. He used to call it my cleansing run. So I went out, did my route—well, as much as I could.” His lip trembled again. He diverted their attention by gesturing across the river. “I do a circuit from here to the tram to warm up, then along the East River Walk over there just past Gracie Mansion, and back. It all came crashing down on me on the tram and I couldn’t stop weeping. I got off and hopped on the next one back. When I went to put my key in the door, it was ajar.” He measured a quarter inch with his thumb and forefinger. “I thought, maybe I got distracted from the trauma and all, and got careless, but when I pushed the door, some guy’s right there. He trips me and shoves me to the floor and books it down the stairwell. I’m pretty fast, but by the time I got it together to chase him, he was gone.”
“And nothing’s missing?” she asked.
Stallings shook his head no. “Before you arrived, the detective and I did a walk-through of the whole place. I don’t see anything disturbed, and the burglar didn’t have anything in his hands.”
Nikki asked him for the beginning and end times of his run and, after she made a note, asked, “You called it your circuit. Was it your routine every day?”
“Yeah, five days a week. I’m sort of compulsive about it.”
“So, it’s possible,” said Rook, “that someone was watching this place to get to know your routines and thought he had time to get in and out. But you surprised him by cutting it short, and he didn’t have time to get what he wanted.”
“Or he got it, and it was in his pocket,” added Heat. “Do you know where Lon kept his flash drives?”
Stallings escorted them to the second bedroom, which was King’s office on one side and Stallings’s painting studio on the other, and which smelled pleasantly of resin and oil paint. At the desk, he reached to open a wooden Levenger box, but Heat stopped him and gestured to the RIPSD detective, who was already wearing gloves. He lifted the lid. The box was empty.
“He kept a dozen or more thumb drives in there,” Stallings said. He surveyed the desktop. “His iPad Mini’s missing, too, now that I really look.”
“Our lab will dust soon as they get here,” said the detective. “And ask Mr. Stallings to write up a methodical inventory.”
Stallings drew his brow low, trying to digest the concept. “Why would someone be watching this place, our routine, coming in here? He was the man who killed Lonnie, wasn’t he?”
“Mr. Stallings, is this the man who was in your apartment?” Heat brought up Maloney’s pic on her BlackBerry and held it out for him to study. The RIPSD detective moved closer to shoulder-surf it.
“No, definitely not him.” But when Nikki started to take her phone away, he said, “Wait, wait.” He examined the picture again and handed it back. “I have seen him, though. Lonnie and I went out for duck last week at Le Colonial, you know, on East Fifty-Seventh? We had a window table, and I saw a guy walk by—this one—and start staring in from the sidewalk. When Lon spotted him, the guy just made that double finger point thing to his eyes, and left.”
“Did Lon say who he was?” asked Heat.
“All he said was ‘ex-client.’” He snickered. “Paging Dr. Taciturn. I used to tell him that if he was any more chill, I could use his face as a canvas.”
“His name’s Timothy Maloney. Did Dr. King ever mention that name?”
“Not that I recall.”
Heat turned to the Roosevelt Island detective. “He’s ex-NYPD. I’ll email you this pic and his sheet. Meanwhile, we should get out a description of the intruder.”
“Going to need some NYPD co-op, Captain, if you don’t mind. The building’s cams are down for upgrade and we don’t have a sketch artist.”
Nikki turned to Sampson Stallings. “Actually, I believe you do.”
Smiling his first true smile in a day, one fueled by purpose, the renowned portraitist sat at his drafting table, opened his Strathmore pad to a fresh page, and began work on what could be his greatest work of all: the one that could lead to his partner’s killer.