Sampson Stallings worked with silent intensity in flowing, sure-handed strokes. Heat had to fight the same urge she battled whenever she walked by the row of souvenir street caricaturists on the east side of Central Park; the overwhelming desire to stand behind him and stare over his shoulder. But she respected the artist’s solitude and, in mere minutes, he had finished. Stallings carefully tore the sheet off his gummed pad and presented it to the detectives. As Rook came up behind Heat for a glimpse, both reacted immediately. “It’s him,” said Rook. “The dude we surprised in the basement on York Avenue.”
When they got back to the lobby, Rook admired on his iPhone the photo Heat had just broadcast of Stallings’s intruder sketch. “You know,” he said, “if it weren’t for the grief part, I would have asked Sampson to give me the original. With a signature, of course.”
“Nice. The day after his partner is murdered.”
“I did respect the grief part, remember? I distinctly said that. Why are you being so crispy with me?”
“Because you’re being so—obstructive.”
“How? What did I do?”
Nikki clenched her teeth, then thought, No, out with it. “Your question about King getting offered a bribe.”
“That was a perfectly proper question.”
“You’re not working with me, Rook. No, worse. You’re working against me. If you know something, share. What’s more important, your article or finding the killer?”
As he pondered his answer—hesitating in a way that further pissed Nikki off—his phone chimed. He checked the screen and grinned. “My Hitch! is arriving.” They turned toward the street, where a giant plastic thumb could be seen approaching, floating above the trellises in the community garden. “I push a button, and a car comes. This could be what the Internet is all about.”
“So you’re not going to help? Not going to answer?”
“Nikki, this is all going to work out for both of us, you watch. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have some legwork to do.” And then he was gone. Without a hitch.
“What do we know, Miguel?” called Heat from the doorway as she strode into the homicide bull pen. Detective Ochoa snagged a deli coffee from his desk and met with her at the Murder Board, which she scanned for fresh ink.
“All right, as you can see we have the sketch you just got from Sampson Stallings out to all units, plus media.”
“I knew that when I sent it out,” she said, making a mental note not to send her anger at Rook sideways to others. Especially not Ochoa. A little more softly, she asked if he agreed that this was the runner they had encountered the day before charging out of Lon King’s medical tower.
“Most definitely. Oh, and since you wanted to hear something you didn’t know…” His cheeks dimpled—obviously he was slightly amused by his little bit of pushback—then he continued, “An eyewit on York Ave gave us a partial plate on that MKZ he fled in. Crunched it down and traced it to a gypsy cab reported stolen from East Harlem yesterday morning. Traffic Division spotted it, abandoned, blocking a hydrant down in the Alphabets.”
“Any chance for prints?”
“Forensics is dusting now. It’s going to take some time to isolate all the prints. They said it was like Hands on a Hardbody down there.”
“Well, we now have a face to go with those hands. Maybe we’ll get a positive. What about Tim Maloney?”
“Still no handle on him, Cap,” he said, addressing her by rank for the first time. “We’ve still got units watching his place, but no activity. I even sent a bogus mail carrier to knock on the door. Nothing. He could be in there, just trying to jerk our chains, but we can’t go for a warrant.”
“No, not without probable,” she agreed. “What’s your deployment?”
“We’re down an asset, as you know, with my most able street detective on Rook’s tail. That means spreading things a little thinner.” He pointed to Rhymer’s initials in a circle beside the Spuyten Duyvil–Harlem River notation on the board. “Raley sent Opie out with Harbor Unit to troll for eyewits or any sightings of King’s kayak, night of his murder.”
Heat read something dark in Ochoa’s expression. “Something wrong, Detective?”
“It’s nothing. Just a little disagreement with my pard.”