“Of course, it’s an obvious possibility,” she said. “I’ll tell you this for sure: I want some face time with the CEO of that company.”
Rook scoffed. “You’ll never get it. I’ve been banging on that door for the past month. Tangier Swift has got more stone walls around him than Fortunato.” As he surveyed a sea of blank stares, he added, “‘The Cask of Amontillado’? Edgar Allen Poe? Anyone?”
“Breaking news.” Nikki turned around from stuffing files into a shoulder bag to find Randall Feller wandering into her fishbowl office, reading something on his cell phone. “This a bad time?” asked the detective.
“Not for breaking news.” She slid her laptop into its neoprene sleeve. “I’m off to One PP in a few minutes. My first CompStat review.”
“And not in uniform. Bold start, Captain Heat.”
That morning when she got dressed, Nikki had shrugged off the worry about going to her inaugural CompStat in civvies. She decided that her casework for the day, not some administrative meeting, however venerated by the brass, should dictate her wardrobe. Besides, she had heard how stressful the CompStat gatherings were and wanted to be comfortable. They involved more than just reporting figures: you had to defend your numbers as a yardstick of accountability for performance. Rumor had it that a precinct commander had fainted the year before while being harangued by the commissioner about insufficient activity in some of his arrest categories. Forty-eight hours in, Heat didn’t own the Twentieth’s performance numbers yet, and therefore she wasn’t stressed enough to pass out. But if she were to faint, better to suffer the indignity of being revived in jeans and a sweater than in uniform. “If I get fired, it’s been a great two days. Whatcha got?”
“Our Forensics team at the Staten Island test facility says the test-car misfire is looking good for sabotage.” While he read, Feller’s fingers sprang up one after another to enumerate each bullet point. “One: car was seated and locked into firing brackets on catapult, against procedure. Two: catapult monitor showed a false Safe Mode reading on the master control panel. Three: color-coded wires were apparently tampered with and reversed. When Fred Lobbrecht plugged the blue one in, it ignited the nitro and fired the vehicle, turning him into a human crash test dummy.”
Heat knocked on her window. All heads turned in the bull pen, but she beckoned only to Raley and Ochoa to come in. When they had joined the meeting, she said, “I want you to assign someone to get to Fred Lobbrecht’s home immediately. Do a search for anything related to this rollover investigation.”
“Done,” said Raley. “You go, Feller.”
Heat gestured to the door, sending Feller scooting off on his assignment.
“And I have the DA cutting a warrant for his office and lab at Forenetics,” said Ochoa, with an inflection that to Heat’s ear suggested competition rather than teamwork.
“Sounds like you two have it worked out.” She paused, appraising the pair. “Why don’t you work out whatever else you need to work out?” With that, she slung her bag over her shoulder and strode out past them.
Detective Aguinaldo called Heat’s name when she was halfway through the precinct lobby on her way downtown. “Kind of on a mission, Inez.”
“You’re going to want to hear this, Captain. I had an idea about Tangier Swift. I didn’t want to speak up until I had something.”
The weight of bagfull of CompStat files was digging into Heat’s shoulder, so she set it on one of the cheap plastic chairs near the soda machine and gave the detective her full attention.
“He used to own a mega-estate in Southampton,” Aguinaldo continued. “My old stomping grounds. One of those humongous seaside honkers near Beckett’s Neck off Gin Lane?”