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CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

“What’s with the civvies?” Aisha looks Rav over, taking in his chinos and polo shirt with a raised eyebrow. “Don’t tell me standards are slipping in Homicide.”

Didn’t I mention? I’ve been suspended. Yeah, he’s not explaining this to her. “I’m here in a personal capacity. Bearing gifts.” He hoists a bag of bagels and a cup carrier.

“Is that bubble tea? Gross.”

He can’t disagree. He has no idea why he bought it, except that he’s already had way too much coffee.

“I’ll take a bagel, though.” Without waiting for an invitation, she grabs the bag and starts rooting around inside, which feels very on-brand for a hacker. “What, no cream cheese? Hold on, I think I have some in the fridge.” She starts for the kitchen. “So, you were pretty vague on the phone last night. Is this about the Russian hackers? Because I told you, you’re gonna have to be patient.”

“It’s not about the Russians. I need you to locate a cell phone.”

“Pass,” she says from behind the fridge door. “I don’t spy on ordinary citizens.”

“There’s nothing ordinary about this guy. He’s wanted by the FBI.”

“And?” She returns with a tub of cream cheese and some napkins. “Haven’t we all been wanted by the federal government at some point?”

“Uh, no?” Jesus Christ. “Look, the bigger question is whether you can actually do it.”

“If you’ve got access to their credentials, it’s just a matter of logging in. And it so happens I have photos of a certain Fuse executive in a very compromising—”

“ La-la-la! ” Rav jams his fingers in his ears. “Still a cop, remember?” Barely, but he doesn’t need to add accessory to blackmail to his list of sins.

“Hey, is that the new Marquesse smartwatch?” She grabs his wrist and ogles it. “Man, that is one sexy wearable. Analog beauty, digital brains. Can I see it?”

Bloody hell, she’s got the attention span of the dog from Up . “Aisha, if you help me out here, I’ll let you play with my watch all day long. Can we please focus ?”

She rolls her eyes and licks cream cheese off her fingers. “My thing is exposing oppressive institutions, not helping them. Why would I hack some dude’s phone on behalf of the NYPD?”

“Because he might be a murderer, and he’s threatening someone I care about.”

She plucks a finger noisily from her mouth. “Could’ve opened with that,” she mutters, dropping into a chair and rolling it over to her desk. “Name?”

“Joseph Miller.”

“The stalker guy? Ah, I get it. The someone you care about is Jack Vale. I thought you two looked awfully friendly in that photo. Kind of ironic, isn’t it?”

“What?”

“That bogus interview implied there was something going on between you two, and it turns out—”

“It turns out that was a complete fabrication,” Rav says coolly, “and anything that may have happened subsequently is neither here nor there.”

“ Touchy .” Her fingers fly over the keyboard, composing an email. “Let’s say we do find his phone, then what?”

“I’ll pass the information to the FBI. Anonymously ,” he adds when she gives him a horrified look. “The feds can’t act on it if they think the evidence was obtained illegally, so it’s best for everyone if they get an anonymous tip.”

She’s attaching files to the email now, a series of JPEGs Rav is grateful he can’t see. “Gotta say, this is way more interesting than insider trading. Russian hackers? Rock stars and homicidal stalkers? Keep bringing me the good stuff, Trivedi, and this could turn into a beautiful relationship.”

“As long as you’re in it for the right reasons,” he says dryly.

“Pretty sure you’re in no position to be getting all sanctimonious, there, Detective No-Badge.” She waggles a finger in the general direction of his belt, where his shield would normally sit.

Damn, she’s observant.

She fires off the email, and they settle in to wait. Rav lets her play around with his smartwatch while he scrolls restlessly through his phone, trying to ignore the deluge of Nicks-related content his dash is pushing at him. They’re all over his social media feeds, his mentions, even the headlines. He clicks his screen off and grabs the bubble tea, sullenly sucking globs of tapioca and stewing in FML until a message arrives in Aisha’s inbox. The Fuse executive will play ball. Whatever she’s got on him, it must be good. “Please tell me he deserves this,” Rav says uncomfortably.

“Trust me, he does.”

Thirty minutes later, Aisha has everything she needs to run Find My Phone on Joe Miller’s device. “There,” she says, pointing at a flashing dot on her screen. “Looks like he’s in the East Village. Or at least, he was.”

“What do you mean?”

“See this black icon? That means the battery is dead. Technically, we’re looking at this phone’s last known location.”

“Meaning it might not be there anymore.” Rav swears under his breath, but it’s all he has. He borrows one of Aisha’s burner phones and calls the FBI tipline, leaving a detailed message with GPS coordinates.

“So,” Aisha says after he hangs up. “What now?”

What indeed? Rav knows what he should do: go home and wait. “The thing is, it’s not my case anymore.”

“Uh-huh.” Aisha’s dark eyes hold his.

“The Bureau wouldn’t thank me for interfering.”

“More than you already have, you mean.”

“More than that, yeah.” He rubs a hand over his neatly trimmed beard. “But it couldn’t hurt to keep an eye on the building, right? That way, if he leaves, I could tail him. See where he went.”

“Just a concerned citizen.”

“Exactly. A concerned citizen.”

“Sounds reasonable to me.”

“Yeah,” Rav says, grabbing his jacket. “Totally reasonable.”

“Totally,” Aisha says, and she grabs hers, too.

Twenty minutes later, they’re standing across the street from a narrow brick apartment building with a pizza place on the ground floor. “This is it,” Aisha says, consulting the tablet in her hands. “We’ll have to get closer before I can tell what floor he’s on, though.”

Now that his caffeine buzz is wearing off, Rav is having second thoughts. As badly as he wants to see Miller in custody, he’s acutely aware that any fuckup on his part could make a conviction less likely. There’s not much point in bringing the guy in only to see him cut loose on a technicality. “Maybe this wasn’t such a bright idea.”

“Getting cold feet already?” Aisha tsk s. “See, this is why it’s better to be a private contractor.”

“Why are you even here?”

“On a police stakeout? Why wouldn’t I be? This is awesome .” She yanks a pair of binoculars out of her messenger bag and scans the building.

“Okay, one, it’s not a police stakeout. Two, stakeouts are not awesome, they are incredibly tedious and boring. Please put those away. People are staring.”

She ignores him. “What we need is to figure out if he’s actually in there.”

“And how do you propose we do that?”

“Hold on, I think someone’s coming out.” She thrusts the binoculars at Rav, and the next thing he knows she’s darting across the street, heading for a cluster of food delivery scooters parked on the sidewalk. The delivery guys loiter under a tree, chatting and listening to music, and they don’t even notice when she nicks an oven bag from the back of one of their bikes. She hurries up to the door of Miller’s building just as a guy and his dog are on their way out; she smiles, flourishes the oven bag, and she’s in.

Rav swears under his breath. He waits until the guy with the dog turns a corner before scurrying across the street. “This is a bad idea,” he hisses as Aisha opens the door for him.

“Quit whining and follow me.” She’s got her tablet out again, eyes glued to the screen. “Ugh, this place reeks. Take out the garbage once in a while, why don’t you?”

It does reek, badly. Rav is careful not to touch any surfaces, shouldering open the door to the stairwell.

The app leads them to an apartment on the third floor. “Looks like this is it,” Aisha whispers. “Make yourself scarce.” She poses the oven bag like she’s delivering a pizza and gets ready to knock.

Rav is about to duck back into the stairwell when a familiar odor pricks his nose, barely discernible beneath the stench of rubbish. “Aisha. Do you smell that?”

“Yeah,” she says grimly. “I do.”

Not garbage. Decomposing flesh.

Rav’s brain whirrs for a second. If he were on duty, he might be able to argue probable cause, but as it stands, he’d be breaking and entering. Besides, the feds will be here any minute. “We should get out of here.”

“Hang on.” Aisha taps at her tablet. “I’ve got the Wi-Fi password from Miller’s phone. I’m just checking to see if there are any devices in there I can—here we go. Webcam. Give me one second…”

Rav watches over her shoulder as an image fills her screen. It’s a bookshelf, but as Aisha moves her fingers, the view starts to shift. She scans left and right, and then she tilts the camera at the floor.

“Damn,” she says.

It’s a body, all right. A man, from the look of it, but he’s hidden from the shoulders up. “We need to go,” Rav says. “Right now.”

Aisha doesn’t argue. She stuffs her tablet back in her bag, and they hustle down the stairs.

It’s just after eight that evening when Rav’s phone rings, and he’s a little surprised to see the name on the screen. “Will. Hi.”

“Hey.” An awkward pause. “How’re you holding up?”

“Okay, I guess. You?”

“Yeah, I’m good. So listen, I thought you’d wanna know that the FBI raided an apartment in the East Village this afternoon, looking for Joseph Miller.”

Rav is on his feet in an instant. “And?”

“He’d already skipped out, but they found a body in the apartment. Looks like it’d been there for a few days. One to the head, one to the chest, probably a .40 caliber.”

Just like Richard Vanderford. Holy shit. “Have they ID’d him?”

“A known associate of Miller’s, guy by the name of Greg Watson. They used to be roommates.”

He killed his own roommate? This keeps getting weirder. “What about Miller’s phone? Was it still there?” Rav’s brain is running so far ahead that it takes him a moment to realize his mistake.

“Guess I don’t need to ask where the anonymous tip came from,” Shepard says dryly. “Can’t say I blame you. The feds were sitting on their asses.”

It feels like a thaw, however modest, and it gives Rav the courage to say what he needs to. “Listen, you should know… This thing with Jack. It wasn’t just some fling, at least not for me. I had feelings for him. I don’t know if that makes a difference.”

“It does.”

There’s a long silence. Rav doesn’t know what else to say. Part of him wants to keep apologizing, but he suspects that comes from a selfish place. A need for absolution, or at least forgiveness. It wouldn’t be fair to push for that. If Will decides to forgive him, it needs to be on his own terms.

“I should go,” Will says, “but there’s something else you should know. It won’t be official until ballistics comes back, but Agent Rice is confident they’re looking at the same perp for the two murders—Vanderford and the roommate. They figure it happened on Saturday, probably late in the day.”

“Jack was with the FBI on Saturday afternoon. Nash, too.”

“Exactly. As alibis go, being in an interview room with the investigating officers at the time of the murder ain’t bad. Plus, they’ve got no motive for the roommate. Bottom line, they’re off the hook.”

Rav sinks onto the sofa. It’s finally over.

“I don’t know if it’ll change anything with your disciplinary situation, but at least you know Vale is in the clear, for good this time. Thought maybe that would make you feel a little better.”

“It does. Thanks, Will.”

“Hang in there, man.” And then he’s gone.

Rav pulls up his contacts and scrolls down to V, but he changes his mind. Hearing Jack’s voice will just make him feel worse. He calls Charlie Banks instead.

“Shit, that’s a load off my mind,” the manager says after Rav fills him in. “It’s awful about the roommate, but I can’t pretend it doesn’t help us out to have an ironclad alibi. We might even have a shot at keeping this whole mess out of the headlines. Ryan’s gonna plead to misdemeanor obstruction, but I’d be surprised if that gets much attention.”

Misdemeanor obstruction. Wow. Rav underestimated Joanne Reid.

“And they were acting on your tip?” Banks says.

“They were acting on an anonymous tip.”

“Gotcha. But how did this anonymous person find Miller’s hidey-hole?”

“They were able to track his phone. It looks like he ditched it several days ago, but hopefully the FBI will find something on the device that leads to him.”

“So Vanderford was in bed with Joe Miller.” Banks grunts. “Gotta say, I did not see that one coming.”

Rav still doesn’t see it, but he keeps that to himself. Let the band have this moment.

“Thanks, Detective. We owe you one.”

“Someone would have called the police eventually, when the smell got bad enough.”

“Yeah, but I’ve watched enough TV to know that time counts in these things. And it’ll help my guys sleep at night, knowing they’re in the clear for good, so thank you. I know you stuck your neck out for this.” Banks pauses. “I’ll make sure he knows it, too,” he adds quietly before signing off.

About half an hour later, Rav gets a text from Jack.

Just heard the news

I don’t know how to thank you

I don’t know what to say at all

There’s no point in drawing this out. Better to rip it off like a Band-Aid. Rav types:

We’ve already said it .

Goodnight, Jack.

He lets out a long, slow breath. Then he powers off his phone and goes to bed.