He laughed. “Nikki, come on. Let’s not do theater here. What are you going to pull? Threaten me with the Zoo Lock-up?” Rook asked, referring to her technique of scaring naive and newbie interrogation suspects inexperienced with the criminal justice system into thinking that, if they didn’t cooperate, they would be locked into some subterranean Devil’s Island cage with society’s most violent, barbaric, and unclean criminals.
“Oh, I know the Zoo Lock-up wouldn’t bother you, Rook. In fact, you’d probably find it very colorful, make a lot of friends…perhaps even develop new articles to write for your magazine.” Heat cocked an eyebrow and smiled at him. “No, I think I would give you your own cell. A very quiet place. Far from others. Far from conversation. Far from your cell phone. Far from the Internet. Far from your ability to get out and interview subjects.” She could see his eyes widen.
“You wouldn’t.”
She smiled again. “Let me ask you a question. How’s your investigative report going to proceed when I hold you off the street for seventy-two hours, isolated from what’s going on, sequestered from information?”
She could see his wheels turning. It looked like she had him. But then he said, “That’s a nice bluff.”
“You willing to try me?”
“My lawyer would spring me.”
“If he could find you. You like to play games? I’ll play Hide the Client. It’s been done. The New York jail system is one massive bureaucracy.”
They held a mini stare-down. Before either could blink, Detective Raley pulled the door open and stood half in the sound lock. He wore his excited face and gave Heat a beckoning nod. When she joined him, he spoke in a low tone. “Thought you’d want to know right away. Got a hit on the gait analysis we did on that dude on security video at Lon King’s medical building.”
Behind her, Heat could hear a chair scrape the floor tile. When she flashed a quick glance to the magic mirror she caught Rook leaning over the table, straining to hear what they were saying. Not only, it seemed, was Raley her King of All Surveillance Media but his timing couldn’t have been better if his interruption had been planned. “Who’s our dude?” she said, then she made an obvious turn to shoulder-check Rook. “Wait. Let’s step out so we can have some privacy.”
Inside the Ob room, Raley showed Nikki the prison mug shot of the man matching the result of the gait analysis. Her first thought, a disappointing one, was that Joseph Barsotti was not the same man who had broken into Lon King’s and Sampson Stallings’s apartment that morning. But at least she had a name for one of the two unnameds circling this case. “Is this high-confidence?” she asked.
“Very. They had him banked in numerous surveillance videos—both RICO and NYPD Organized Crime Unit—walking the walk at meet-ups in Howard Beach, Belmont Park racetrack, even at a mob funeral. He pinged multiple matches for the swing phase of his stride and a telltale…let me get this right…” Sean paused to look at his notes. “Here it is: a ‘telltale circumduction of his right leg.’ That means he rolls it out slightly with each step.”
“You have an address?”
The detective shook his head. “Last residence is now vacant. We’re running down other leads. Including known associates. You ready for one of them? Tomasso Nicolosi.”
“Fat Tommy?” Heat raised her eyes to the glass and caught Rook, fidgeting, eyeing the door. “Good work, Rales. Let me know right away when you have a line on him.”
Heat strode back into the box and found Rook trying to act nonchalant but not pulling it off.
“Who was the dude with the telltale gait? My money’s still on John Cleese,” he said with that grin that usually melted her from half a block away.
But this was about as far from usual as they could get. Nikki remained circumspect. She gathered up the pad and pen she had left behind and said, “The booking sergeant will be in to process you in a few minutes.”
“Wait. You’re serious?”
“If it helps, there’ll be some good sex waiting for you when you get out. I still loves me a bad boy.”
Heat’s hand was six inches from the doorknob when he called out, “Wait.” His head was bobbing when she turned back. “OK,” he said.
Nikki sat across from him again. “I think your cooperation with my investigation will be noted as a timely show of good faith.”
“You’re twisting the knife.”
“I know.” She uncapped her ballpoint. “You want to be in the game, you can’t sub on the other team.”
Rook made a small nod to himself and began. “Just so you know, I have been holding back because I had a nervous source. I’ve gone through hell trying to secure his cooperation, and I didn’t want to jeopardize my access when it was in such a fragile state already.”
“Let me ask you, Rook. How many times have you sat in this very room and watched me conduct interrogations?”
“Lots.”
“Then you’ll understand when I say this. Get the hell to it.”
And so he did. “Maybe I can’t fit it into one-hundred-forty characters, but I’ll do my best. A few weeks ago, I got a tip on something big. I mean third Pulitzer big. A safety cover-up in the auto industry. Something that has cost lives. Many lives.”
As Nikki made a note on the top line of her pad, Rook’s visit to the auto safety proving ground snapped into place. She wanted to ask more but knew better than to interrupt, so she just wrote “Forenetics?” and let him continue.
“Over the past few years cars have been flipping or rolling over sporadically. Nik, imagine driving the open road—la, la, la—and, with no reason, the steering wheel jerks from your grip, the suspension on one side takes a huge bounce while the other side drops, and next thing you’re on the Tilt-a-Whirl. That’s what’s been happening. Causing accidents. Lots of injuries, lots of fatalities.”
“Why haven’t I heard this on the news?”
“Exactly,” he said. “Well, I am the news. And I am doing an exposé on it. Or trying to. And when I say it’s a huge story, here’s why: The defect is not limited to one automaker; it’s across car brands. But random. It’s Rollover Roulette for most makes, models, price ranges, foreign and domestic. My early research indicates it’s not the car itself and not the computer that’s the problem. The strong indicator is that it is the result of a mystery glitch in the software, in the app that tells the stability-control mechanism when and when not to fire. It’s a long story of who and how, but there is a very credible allegation from an industry safety expert that information about this defect is being suppressed. There is a cover-up afoot.” He paused to take a slug from his water bottle.
Heat so much wanted to ask what all this had to do with her shrink but again decided to leave it with a note to herself, a reminder to follow up. She printed the initials “LK” on the same line with “Forenetics” and drew a double arc between them, a rainbow over a question mark. She did, however, ask, “Was your expert the one we found today on Staten Island?”
“Getting to that,” he said. “The industry insider I’m talking about is the point man of an auto safety research team, and now that he has all the scientific evidence he needs, he is ready to blow the whistle on the cover-up. All very juicy. All the elements of a Jameson Rook First Press cover story that kicks off things like massive recalls and congressional hearings. But”—Rook flashed a smile—“in spite of your belief that I’ve never met a conspiracy theory I didn’t love—and oh, do I love them—as an investigative journalist it is my responsibility to fact-check all the angles. Not just the nuts and bolts of the story but the players. Stories like this are never about hardware or software; stories are about people. And motivations. So I have been performing my due diligence. And my research led me to one member of my whistle-blower’s safety team: Fred Lobbrecht.”
“The dead crash-reconstruction expert,” said Heat, drawing a circle around the company name, Forenetics.
“Fred was a tough nut to crack. He was extremely reluctant to talk with me. Even
off the record. As a reporter, I’m used to that, but he was skittish and high-strung, lots of insecurities—said he’d talk, then would cancel, that sort of thing. Week before last, he calls me up with a proposal. Would I consent to sit down with his shrink and let him sort of couples-counsel us through the process of making him feel OK about spilling secrets to a journalist?”
As one stunning piece of the puzzle fell into place, the connection between Rook and the two victims, Nikki felt a tiny spark of exhilaration. This was the first moment on this case when she had felt a sense of traction, even if she was still far from closure. Then came a second thought. “I just hit my first bump. Why was an auto-safety expert seeing a police shrink?”
“Because,” said Rook, “Fred Lobbrecht was an ex-cop. He retired a couple months ago from NY State Police, where he was on the force’s top Collision Reconstruction Unit—you know, the CRU, the Forensics squad that investigates accidents. And, I guess you didn’t know—why should you?—Lon King had contracts to provide counseling services to the NYPD, Port Authority PD, and to NY State, plus Westchester and Nassau counties.
“At first, I worried that Lobbrecht was just a neurotic flake and that this would be the unraveling of my story. But when I got into sessions with him and Lon King, it was clear he was solid and knew his shit. He was jumpy because he was a man with a code. And spilling secrets to me would be a violation of that code.”
“I understand that,” she said. “Even for the greater good. It’s a tough call.”
“Agreed,” said Rook.
But, thought Heat, it was clear that Rook only understood that code in the way all non-cops do.
“By our second session,” Rook continued, “I had gained his trust, just about come to a breakthrough. Then Lon King washed up in his kayak.”
“And his files were stolen, A through M, which includes—”
“Lobbrecht,” said Rook. “Notes and transcripts of our sessions, plus whatever else he told Lon King before I came into the picture.” He grimaced. “Day before yesterday, he told me to come to the proving ground on Staten Island and bring my digital recorder.”
Nikki thought about the timeline, since it was possible, given the TOD window, that Lobbrecht could have been killed before her shrink. “Did you call Fred to confirm your meeting after we found Lon King’s body?”
“Thought about it. Then I decided, no, it might give him a chance to cancel. So I just showed up.” He gave her a conciliatory look. “And now you know.”
Heat amended that. “And now we’ve started. I want to meet your whistle-blower. Now.”
“Hey, come on, he’s my secret source.”
“Whose life may be in danger, did you think of that?” She stood, preparing to go. “Besides, I want to question him myself. And because you’ve had the good sense to cooperate, Rook, you can come along.”
They drove to meet the whistle-blower in the new vehicle the motor pool had issued Nikki. After she adjusted the mirrors and the seat, Rook said, “So you get, what, a new car every day for life? Is this like winning the lottery?”
“Oh, yeah. And the department is very pleased I’m eating up the transpo budget.” When she had signed for it, the motor sergeant had told her that replacing flat tires was no sweat, but that they couldn’t have a captain driving the city in a vehicle with “Snitch Bitch” etched into all four doors.
Heat turned her replacement car onto the ramp for the West Side Highway, but not without craning to look over the concrete guard wall of the traffic circle to see the banks of the Greenway, which showed no sign of the previous morning’s crime scene shutdown.
“Funny thing,” said Rook, who was also rubbernecking the Hudson’s edge. “Just a touch more breeze from the north, or a skosh more ebb tide, and that kayak would have made landfall downriver in the Eighteenth or maybe the Tenth Precinct, and this would never have been your case.”
“Lucky me.” Nikki ruminated a bit before adding, “Otherwise, I never would have learned you were hiding all this from me.”
“Hey, now. I came clean. Don’t I get a good-citizen’s pass?” He gave her that damned charm face, which made her fix her eyes on southbound traffic so he wouldn’t be able to see how vulnerable she felt right then. She concentrated instead on processing the updates she had gotten at the Murder Board right before leaving the precinct.
Randall Feller had arrived, fresh from the proving ground on Staten Island, where the president of Forenetics and his operations staff had briefed him on the likely scenario that led to Fred Lobbrecht’s death. The vehicle prep was a ritual he always insisted on performing himself. Lobbrecht would arrive on the day before each test to ensure that the car was in the correct position to be engaged by the catapult and would set up the driver’s side of the car to receive the dummy, which he loaded in as the final checklist item. “Everyone agreed it’s pretty much a solo task,” explained Feller. “Mainly plugging in a gang of harnessed cables that snake through the backseat from the black boxes in the trunk and then connecting those color-coded leads into the matching colored sockets. Blue, to the dashboard; red, to the interior cameras; finally, yellow, to the dummy itself. Obviously, he never got to yellow.”
“Man…What a way to go,” said Ochoa, feeling the dread that was clawing at everyone else’s gut, too.
“Randy, did they say why the launch mechanism fired?” asked Heat.
“They have no idea. And our CSU is on scene and not letting anyone from Forenetics touch anything, for the obvious reason that one of them could be responsible, either by accident, or…whatever.” As the team digested that, he added, “Kind of ironic: a forensics consulting firm getting investigated by NYPD Forensics.”
Since everyone else on the squad had past experience with Stu Linkletter, it had fallen to the newest detective to liase with the Staten Island medical examiner. “Kind of a dick,” Inez Aguinaldo began. “Am I allowed to say that?” After unanimous agreement, she relayed the salient parts of the ME’s report. “Skimming past the abrasions, contusions, and fractures to the mandible, maxilla, and nose, as well as lacerations to the scalp and multiple skull fractures, the COD story is that the victim suffered fatal injuries to the brain, subgaleal, subdural, and subarachnoid hemorrhages, injuries to cerebral blood vessels at the base of the brain, and dislocation of the C-one and C-two vertebrae, with injury to the underlying spinal cord.”
“You hardly looked at your notes,” said Raley, impressed.
“I had medic training when I was an MP,” said Aguinaldo. “Dr. Linkletter wanted me to stress that this finding is still preliminary, since he hasn’t run blood and tox yet. He also wants to check the victim’s records to see if he had signs of depression that would indicate possible suicide.”
“Did you tell him those records were stolen from his murdered shrink?” asked Rhymer.
Detective Aguinaldo nodded and said, “I also told him suicide didn’t seem likely, because of one of his other findings.” She now had the attention of the entire bull pen, including Nikki, who felt pretty smart right then for having recruited Inez from a suburban police force in the Hamptons. “Mr. Lobbrecht had open compound fractures of his right distal tibia and fibula: his ankle bones.”
“Indicating he was trying to brake,” said Rook. “Like mad.” A silence fell over the squad as they all imagined that moment of launch followed by the poor man’s final seconds—all panic and futile action—rocketing closer to the wall of death…
“Nikki, Nikki!” cried Rook.
Heat slammed on her brakes, getting the finger from the driver of the gypsy cab she had just nearly rear-ended at a red light near Chelsea Piers. “Sorry about that.” She laughed it off. “Last thing I need is to requisition yet another car.” Nikki drove on, a lot more carefully, but still distracted. The puzzle pieces—“the jigsaw,” Rook had called it—were still not speaking to her. It all still felt like the early part of the investigation instead of the homestretch, but patience always served her well. Pushing evidence to
suit a theory only resulted in dead ends and time lost, not saved. This, like most murder cases, was one she had to loosen the reins on and ride to see where it led. Her challenge would be to get there in one piece.
The man in cargo shorts and a beard that might be described in Brooklyn’s outré circles as hipster-ironic pushed through the glass doors of the Hudson College Practical Science and Engineering Annex on Thompson Street and brushed past Heat and Rook without a glance of recognition, snapping as he went by, “Follow me, four paces, no closer.” He walked briskly, his long black hair brushing his shoulders as he led them past a twenty-four-hour underground garage, two Thai restaurants, a classic-vinyl-and-video shop, and The Little Lebowski, a paraphernalia and souvenir shirt boutique dedicated to The Dude, distinguished by a life-sized cutout of Jeff Bridges abiding on the sidewalk. He headed north at a brisk pace, rapidly traversing the block and a half to Washington Square Park, where he chose a spot on the convex curve of a serpentine stone bench that angled him toward the fountain. He crossed his bare legs and adopted an impatient pose while he picked something out from between his big toe and the footbed of one sandal.
“Nikki Heat, meet Wilton Backhouse,” said Rook.
She held out her hand, but he didn’t shake it. Instead, he remained intent on Rook. “I told you last time I didn’t want you coming to my office.” Then he seemed to become aware of Heat. He dropped the unidentified sandal matter he was twirling between his thumb and forefinger and shook her hand. Nikki resisted wiping the dampness off her palm afterward. It wasn’t easy. She noted that Backhouse’s forehead glistened at the hairline and that he had half-moon sweat marks under the arms of his red Cornell Engineering tee. Maybe, for him, it wasn’t too chilly for shorts. He appraised her briefly and announced his finding. “Yep. Cop.”
Since he wasn’t going to invite her to, Heat sat on the bench beside him. But not too close. It wasn’t hard to profile Wilton Backhouse in return: a lab geek with poor socialization. “Glad to meet you, Dr. Backhouse. And, as for dropping into your turf like this, that’s on me, not Rook.” He listened to her, studiously—that would be the word, Heat thought. But in spite of his rapt attention, he gave no interpersonal feedback, no clue as to what direction his response would take.