Driving Heat (12 page)

“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.”

“For putting Rhymer on river watch?”

“For not talking to me first. Sean made the assignment before I got in, and didn’t consult. I get here, Opie’s gone, and my so-called squad co-leader has also assigned
Detective Aguinaldo to run license plate checks from the Roosevelt Island Bridge cam.” Ochoa shook his head mildly to himself and said, “Glad you asked?”

Nikki felt the heft of one more rock getting piled on her shoulders to go with the burden of the others: problems with Rook; pressure from the chief of detectives; hassles with IA; a nut-job
ex-cop who might have killed her shrink and seemed to have slipped off the grid; and now a turf battle between her squad co-leaders. Day two was shaping up to be an extension of day one. “Is
this an issue I need to step in on?”

He shook his head no. “We’ll work it out. You just caught me while it was still up my ass. Pretend you didn’t hear it.”

“Where’s your partner now?”

“In his kingly realm.” The detective tilted his head to indicate the closet Raley used to screen video. “He’s scrubbing this morning’s F train and tram cams for the
dude in the sketch.”

“How about you? Free for a detail?” Heat couldn’t let go of Rook’s question to Stallings about whether Lon King had been offered a bribe in exchange for information about
a patient. As irritating and undisciplined as he could be, Jameson Rook was a talented investigative journalist with two Pulitzers, both well earned. Whatever story he was working on, Nikki’s
own investigative antenna told her that his question had been a giveaway, and that the angle he was working involved money and corruption. So, if Rook was taking advantage of information he was
gathering from her case, turnabout would be fair play. “Miguel, I’d like you to run a complete financial check on Lon King.”

He nodded with some uncertainty, but opened his notebook. “Sure. What am I looking for?”

“What else, the Odd Sock. Something out of pattern. Especially big infusions of cash. He would, I imagine, be running low because of his gambling losses. A spike is going to tell us
something.” And because nothing and no one could be ruled out, she added, “And do a check of his partner, Sampson Stallings. He’s an artist, so his income pattern may be more
erratic, but give it an X-ray, anyhow.”

Randall Feller checked in later on from the field, and he wasn’t happy.
“Captain Heat, I’ll let you guess where my
tail-and-surveil of Jameson Rook has taken me.”

“I don’t know, Detective. Has he bought you a Mister Softee cone because he made you again?” Nikki played it as a joke, but only as cover for her genuine concern and curiosity
about what Rook was up to.

“No, I have not been detected. My subject is too focused on his mission.”

“Out with it. Where is he?”

“On Warren Street down near City Hall.” While Nikki mentally street-viewed the area, trying to conjure up a notion of what that mission could be, Feller filled in the blank.
“He’s in a pen store.”

“You’re kidding.”

“I am outside the shop window now.”

“The Fountain Pen Hospital,” she said. Heat could picture Feller’s view because she had been there so many times before to Rook’s Mecca for vintage and collectible
fountain pens. “He’s at the repair counter, right?”

“You don’t need me. You have, what, psychic powers?”

“I wish. Last week he was cleaning his limited edition Hemingway Montblanc, and it rolled off his desk and landed point first on the floor. Rook is dropping off his prize pen to get a new
nib.”

After a long pause filled with the
doop-doop-doop
of a truck backing up, the detective said, “I don’t wanna second-guess, but is this really the best use of my time while
we’re working a homicide? I mean, your boyfriend’s getting—a nib replacement?”

“First of all, you are second-guessing. And also, he’s not my boyfriend, he’s my fiancé. Stay on him.”

“You got it.” He didn’t sound thrilled.

“And Randy? Keep out of that window. Wouldn’t want you getting made or anything.”

About an hour later, a call from downtown pulled Heat out of a visit to the
Burglary Squad room, where the new captain was getting
her update on their activity. She strode into her office and waited with a gnawing in her gut for the operator to transfer. As it finally rang, Nikki rested her hand on the receiver and cycled
through the ramifications of blowing off the senior administrative aide to the NYPD’s deputy commissioner for legal matters. It had been he who had championed her through the system to become
a captain and precinct commander. Maybe he was just phoning to wish her well now that the placement was official. One ring before the voicemail dump, she lifted the horn. “Captain
Heat.”

“I understand you’re off to a shaky start,” said Zach Hamner. No Hello. No Good afternoon. No Did I interrupt anything? None of that. Zach, the Hammer, was living up to his
blunt-instrument nickname from his opening volley. Heat imagined sex with him must be very much about getting it done. She couldn’t believe she was wondering about sex with what amounted to a
reptile in a suit.

“Thank you, Zachary. Nothing more bolstering than a call from you.”

“If you want touchy-feely, try Media Relations. Here in Legal it’s all tough love.” She could picture him at his desk down at One PP, smugly enjoying his self-defined status as
department ball-buster—the guy they send when they just want it done. Never destined to be the front man, Hamner would always be Merlin, one of those pasty slicks with passive faces and thick
briefcases who lean forward to whisper strategic answers in the ears of the top-liners. “I’m getting some negative reports and, since I feel a personal responsibility for getting you
appointed, I’m doing a little intervention.”

“Lucky me.”

“Where do I start? Dissing Internal Affairs? No, how about embarrassing the chief of detectives?”

Nikki realized that she should have let the call go to voicemail. “The chief and I hashed that out yesterday, Zach. Old news.”

“More like a close call. Think. Be proactive. On this level accountability goes up the chain and information is the currency.”

“You should stitch that on a sampler.”

“Heat. Do I sound like I’m looking for entertainment?” Heat rocked back in her executive chair while he delivered his department-line reprimand for mixing it up with Detective
Lovell at IA. It was useless to argue, so Nikki signed papers while he rambled on. “And what were you doing being seen in uniform, consorting with a known mobster?”

She stopped signing and stood up. “I was not consorting, I was interviewing him as a potential suspect in the murder of Lon King.”

“You couldn’t haul his ass into the box? You were seen going into his illegal gambling parlor in broad daylight.”

“That’s where he was.”

“Heat, you’re a precinct commander. PCs can’t mingle with mobsters. It’s not PC.” As with so many administrators and gray bureaucrats, The Hammer had no idea what
police work was all about. She thought of giving him a lecture about that when Ochoa showed up in her doorway with an urgent look.

“Zach, listen, something just came up on a case, I’ve got to go.” And, having a second thought, she added, “Thanks for the good advice,” just before she hung
up.

“We have a new vic,” said Detective Ochoa.

Nikki came around the desk, sliding an arm through a sleeve of her blazer. “Where?”

“Staten Island.”

That slowed Heat down. “Not our precinct, why’s it our victim?”

“Because Feller called it in.”

Heat’s face lost some color as she processed the connection, not liking anywhere it was leading. “Feller…?”

“He was tailing Rook. Rook found the body.”

H
eat let Ochoa drive, which bought her valuable time to pound out administrative emails and work her phone during the otherwise dead hour getting
from Manhattan to Staten. “Two-minute warning,” said the detective as he steered off the SIE into the bleak terrain surrounding the Goethals Bridge. Nikki set aside her multitasking,
surveyed the patchwork of scrubby marshland and the hard-core industrial zone lining the banks of the Elizabeth River, and wondered what the hell Rook had been doing out there.

If Staten Island was a bedroom community, this was its mud porch. On her right sprawled a massive containerized cargo depot. To her left, the corroded cylinders of a gas tank farm rose at the
edge of tidal wetlands marked by acres of cord grass and cattails, hardy survivors of the chemical age. Across the river, a refinery plus even more and even bigger tank farms girdled the New Jersey
Turnpike. “If you lived here, you’d be home now,” Heat said.

True to Ochoa’s estimate, about two minutes later the Roach Coach drew up to the gate of an isolated, cyclone-fenced industrial site between the swamp and a graveyard for old school buses.
Back in the 1920s this property had been an airstrip. Flat, and with plenty of land remote from residences, Edda Field became a favorite of private pilots and hobbyists until it closed in World War
Two, when civilian flying over the East Coast was forbidden. By the time the ban was lifted, newer airfields, closer to town, with blacktop runways instead of gravel and turf, had opened. Within a
few years, the strip was defunct. It was eventually sold to a movie company that used its giant hangar to shoot noir detective films, until the studio head pulled his own caper and left for Rio de
Janeiro with the company profits and a stuntman. Then the real estate sat idle, a magnet for weeds, illegal dumping, and taxes until the mid-nineties, when the vast acreage and the enormous hangar
caught the notice of a forensic consulting company that purchased the land and developed the site as its vehicle safety proving ground.

Once they had passed the guard shack, Ochoa was able to cut across painted rows of empty parking spaces, making a beeline for the half-dozen NYPD blue-and-whites and plain wraps rimming the
hangar. Detective Feller stood inside the semicircle of police cars, clowning with a homicide team from the 121st Precinct. He glimpsed Nikki when she got out of the Roach Coach, quickly broke away
from the group, and crossed to meet her, adopting a more sober tone with every stride closer to his captain.

“Help me, Detective,” she said when the gap between them closed enough so that only he could hear. “I want to learn what’s funny about a dead body. Day I’m having,
I could use a laugh.”

Sheepish, Feller tried to minimize his lack of decorum at a murder scene, something Heat had cautioned him about so many times in the past. “This? This was nothing. Just fostering
relations with the homeys, you know, since we’re visiting their turf.”

“I see. Professional interaction,” she said. But he heard her don’t-bullshit-me subtext loud and clear. Point made, she let the matter drop, especially since Ochoa was joining
them. “What are we looking at?”

“Body’s in the hangar.” He indicated the triple-wide garage door cut into the side of the hulking gray warehouse. The van from Staten Island’s Medical Examiner’s
office sat to the side right underneath the Forenetics, LLC company logo.

“Now there’s a picture,” said Ochoa. “Definitely not one you want on your corporate homepage.”

“What about Rook? Where’s he?” Nikki asked, feeling one part concern, one part annoyance, not necessarily in that order.

Feller tilted his head toward his Taurus twenty yards away, where Rook sat in the open passenger door with his head between his knees. “As you might have guessed, he found the vic. And
even I won’t fault him for ralphing. One of the ME assistants almost barked up his bran muffin when he went in there.”

Rook tilted his gaze upward when he heard Nikki approaching, then let his head sag into his palms.

“You all right?” she asked, resting a hand on one of his shoulders to give it a gentle squeeze.

“Yup.” But when he got to his feet to prove it, his face blanched and his eyes drifted under half-closed lids. “I’m good. Really.”

Not entirely proud of herself for doing so, Nikki decided to exploit Rook’s moment of vulnerability. “So tell me how it came down. What were you doing all the way out here at this
place? Foren”—she looked up at the sign—“Forenetics?”

But even with his defenses down, Rook’s instincts as an investigative journalist kept a toehold. “Nothing out of the ordinary, really. I sort of had an appointment.” He took
the bottle of water Ochoa held out and cracked it open.

“With the victim?”

He took a sip and nodded. When Rook saw that he wasn’t going to get away with a mere head bobble, he allowed, “Yes. I had an appointment. With Fred Lobbrecht. He works here.”
He blanched again at an inner vision and corrected himself. “
Worked
here.”