A few weeks ago, Nikki had stumbled upon a series of strange pencil notations
her mother had left embedded in her sheet music. She believed it was a coded
message. The dots, lines, and squiggles followed no pattern she recognized. Nikki
had Googled Morse code, Egyptian hieroglyphs, the Mayan alphabet, even urban street
graffiti, all to no avail. To satisfy her police objectivity, she’d even researched
to determine if the symbols were simply shorthand for how to play the music. All she
found was another dead end.
She needed help to crack it, but, acutely mindful of its sensitivity—this code
could be why Tyler Wynn had her mother killed—Heat knew she had to keep it secret.
Absolutely secret. She weighed the notion of telling Rook about it, knowing Mr.
Conspiracy would throw his body, soul, and hyperactive imagination into breaking
that code. But Nikki decided to hold on to it herself, for now. This wasn’t just a
secret.
This secret was deadly.
After their meeting at Quantum Recovery, Heat signed her and Rook out at the lobby
security desk. She took a step toward the Avenue of the Americas exit but sensed
Rook lagging. “Change of plan,” he said. “That call? Jeanne Callow, you know, my
agent?”
“Gym rat, too much makeup, Jeanne the Machine, that Jeanne Callow?”
He smiled at her snarkiness and continued, “The same. Anyway, I’m going to hoof it
to her office on Fifth so we can plan publicity for the new article.”
A familiar claw dug into Nikki’s diaphragm, but she smiled and said, “No problem.
”
“Catch up with you at your place tonight?”
“Sure. We can go over these pictures?”
“Um, yuh. We can do that.”
Heat drove back to the precinct alone, reaffirming her instinct to withhold the code
from Rook.
Nikki shot a tense look from her desk across the bull pen and once again felt torn
between her big case and another homicide. The team of detectives she’d called in
on the Conklin murder sat cooling their heels because she was late for her own
meeting. Desperately trying to get a lead on Tyler Wynn, Heat had thought she could
squeeze in this call before the squad briefing but found herself stalled by a
gatekeeper. “This is my fourth attempt to reach Mr. Kuzbari,” she said, trying not
to let her anger seep through. “Is he aware this is an official inquiry from the
New York Police Department?”
Fariq Kuzbari, security attaché to the Syrian Mission to the UN, had been one of her
mom’s piano tutoring clients. Heat had tried to interview him weeks ago, but he and
his armed goons rebuffed her. She wasn’t about to give up. A man the likes of Fariq
Kuzbari could well shed some light on a spook colleague the likes of Tyler Wynn.
“Mr. Kuzbari is out of the country for an indefinite period. Would you like to
leave another message?”
What Nikki would have liked to do was throttle her desktop with the phone and shout
something very undiplomatic. She counted a silent three and said, “Yes, please.”
Heat hung up and caught a few antsy glances from her squad. On her way to the front
of the room, she started wording her apology for keeping them waiting, but by the
time she reached the whiteboard and turned to face them, the homicide squad leader
had decided her call and the delay were police business. Screw John Lennon, she
thought. Then Detective Heat dove right in.
“OK, so we’re looking at Roy Conklin, male, age forty-two…” Heat began, running
down the basics from the crime scene. After placing on the board blowups of the
victim’s ID photo and a color head shot cropped from the Health Department Web
site, she continued. “Now, there are a few wrinkles in this death, to say the
least. Beginning with the condition and placement of the body. A pizza oven is not
involved in your everyday homicide.”
Detective Rhymer raised a hand. “Do we know yet whether he was killed in the oven,
or if it was used just to dispose of the body?”
“Good question,” said Heat. “OCME is still testing to determine both cause and
time of death.”