Frozen Heat (2012) (16 page)

As she tiptoed through the entryway with her back hugging the wall, Nikki’s cross trainers crunched on bits of glass from lamps and a mirror shattered by the lead spray. She pressed herself against the cold plaster beside her front door to listen. After half a minute, she heard soft retreating footfalls on the carpet. Then a pause before a squeak of hinges and the hollow slam of a metal door. Heat pictured it as the service stairwell up the hall to the left. The elevator was still out and the shooter was avoiding the main stairs. Or wanted her to think so.

Heat heard a knob turn and a door hitting its security chain. A woman’s voice she recognized as her neighbor Mrs. Dunne’s said, “I don’t see anything, Phil. Smells bad, though. Come here, is this gunpowder I smell?” Nikki took it as a sign the shooter had left the hall, but she entered it cautiously, gun at the ready.

She walked to the right first to make sure he wasn’t faking her out and hiding in the open main staircase. After she’d cleared that, Nikki moved back with her Sig up in both hands, toward the service door with the creaky hinges. Nikki stepped over two spent shotgun shells and then saw Mrs. Dunne’s face pinched in the open sliver of her door. Heat put a finger to her lips to signal a shush, but the woman spoke in a whisper as loud as her normal voice. “Are you all right, Nikki?” When she didn’t reply, the old lady said, “Want me to call 911?” Nikki nodded, just to get her out of there, and Mrs. Dunne said, “OK,” and finally went.

The prospect of using that squeaky door didn’t thrill Heat, but she didn’t have much alternative if she wanted to pursue. Questions pinged in her head in milliseconds. What if he was waiting there to cut her in half when the door opened? What if he wasn’t alone? Should she take the main stairs instead and hope to cut him off on the sidewalk? Her questions all led to bad options and caution signs. She pressed her ear to the metal. Listening told her nothing about what lay on the other side, and time ticked onward. The caution signals flashed again. Nikki ignored them.

She took a step back, hit the push bar with her hip to fling the door open, and rolled onto the landing, coming up in a squat with her weapon raised and her lower back to the cinder-block wall.

It was dark in there. Except for ambient light from the first floor, all the overhead bulbs were dead. Unscrewed, she figured. Whoever had done this had a plan.

Nikki listened for anything. Breathing, movement, footsteps on the metal stairs, a stomach gurgle … but heard nothing. Nothing but the
plink
of water hitting the landing beside her. Water? Even if the roof leaked, it hadn’t rained in days, and there were no exposed pipes in that stairwell. Heat felt the corrugated metal landing until the tip of her finger found the drip. She rubbed her fingertips together. They were sticky. Not water, she thought. Blood. Dripping from above.

She could wait him out or take him out.

Since he was lurking, expecting her to go down the steps, Heat decided to try to draw his fire and hit him before he could re-rack. A good strategy as long as she was quick, had a clear shot, and he didn’t have another gun. To fake him out, she would turn the darkness he had created to her advantage. She felt along the threshold beside her and located the heavy wooden wedge the super used for a doorstop. Rising up, but stooping to keep underneath the protection of the metal staircase, she walked toward the turn in the landing as if to go downstairs. Instead, she lobbed the wedge down.

He fired immediately at the decoy. Heat swung around the railing and fired two shots upward but must have missed because she heard him scampering up the stairwell toward the roof, two floors above. As she followed, Nikki heard the metal door above her open and slam.

At the top she confronted another damned door with more vulnerability on the other side of it. By then he could have set up a hide behind a vent or a chimney and be waiting to saw her off. But when she listened, she could hear him beating feet away from her across the flat of the rooftop. She ripped the door open and raced out, praying he didn’t have a partner.

Detective Heat got her first look at the shooter as he reached the far side of the rooftop and turned to descend the front fire escape. Male about five-ten, strong build—possibly Caucasian—but no features to ID. He wore a gray hoodie topped with a black Yankees cap, and a dark mask or scarf over his nose and mouth. Nikki also got a look at the shotgun, a short barrel with a pistol grip that he held in gloved hands. He rested the stock on the lip of the roof and took aim from the ladder. She dove behind a chimney. He fired and peppered the brick with the spray of lead.

At risk of losing him, Heat dashed for the other fire escape, the one on the back of her building. Lucky was one thing, but the exposure from descending open stairs above a man with a shotgun would be pressing her luck, and that would be stupid. And deadly.

She rode the bottom ladder down on its springs and made a short dismount four feet to the service alley and flattened against the side of the building. Heat made a fast recon around the corner and pulled back. He wasn’t waiting for her; the narrow driveway between apartment buildings was empty. Then she heard running. Nikki peeked again and caught a flash of him sprinting by on the sidewalk. She charged up the service drive after him.

When Heat passed through the gate at the top of the incline and looked up the sidewalk, it was empty. He couldn’t have rounded the corner at Irving Place already. She sprinted down to it, passing into the construction zone for the building being renovated there. Slowing at the end of the sidewalk, she knelt at the corner wall formed by the temporary plywood work barrier and carefully looked down that stretch of sidewalk but saw no one. Where could he have gone? She remembered the outhouse back near the construction trailer. Heat backtracked to it, approaching it cautiously. But it had a padlock on it. So did the trailer door.

She went back to the corner and turned south toward East 19th Street, moving vigilantly under the corridor of scaffolding that wrapped around the building. Sirens approached, but Nikki couldn’t chance losing her man by breaking off the chase to go back and meet them. When she reached the corner at 19th, she stopped again, and once again saw no shooter. A man walking a Chihuahua and a golden retriever approached from the west, but he told her he hadn’t seen anyone matching the description. She asked him to go to her building and tell the police where she was, and he did. After the dog walker moved on, she waited. Nikki was just about to give it up and go back herself when she heard it.

Above her, one of the scaffolding planks creaked and a sprinkle of dust cascaded down onto the ground beside her. Unless New York was experiencing another aftershock, her killer was hiding above her, using the scaffolding as an elevated escape route.

Heat ducked between the lattice of support tubes and backed out into the street to see if she could spot him. No, her view was blocked by a waist-high plywood debris shield. The protective barrier ran continuously along the second floor of the scaffold, halfway to Park Avenue South, providing perfect cover for him all along the block. Making soft steps, she reversed course on Irving Place. Halfway back up the street, Nikki Heat started climbing pipe.

On the second-floor level Heat pushed through the nylon catch-netting, quietly rolled herself over the plywood barrier, and squatted behind a tool storage cabinet that sat chained to a stanchion. She braced her gun and peered around the metal Jobox. There on the scaffolding, at the far corner of the building, knelt the dark figure with the shotgun, waiting. She had gotten as far as “Drop i—” when he fired and lead shot hit the toolbox like a hail of bullets. When Heat looked again, he was gone.

Through the ringing in her ears, Nikki could hear the pounding of his feet as he ran away on the wooden slats. She followed. Pausing before she rounded the corner, Heat reconned and glimpsed him at the end of the plankway just as he jumped down the debris chute to the sidewalk below. Heat got to the opening, and just as she measured the risk of leaping down it right into his line of fire, his shotgun blasted, tearing a hole through the floorboards a yard from where she stood. She heard the metallic
snick
of the pump racking a new round. Nikki jumped to the other side of the chute. The next blast chewed through the exact spot she’d just moved from. He pumped in another round. Not sure where to stand, whether to just run away or to take her chances with a chute slide with her gun blazing, she heard a helicopter drawing near. He must have heard it, too, because someone from a window across the street yelled, “There he is. See? He’s getting away.”

Heat crossed her arms in front of her and jumped feet-first into the chute. She popped up, gun ready, over the rim of the debris bin and caught sight of him halfway to Park Avenue South, cradling his shotgun.

She vaulted the container and gave chase. He was wounded, so Nikki made good time on him. As he reached the intersection, she called, “NYPD, freeze!” Nikki had a perfect bead on him, a high-probability shot, too, but a laughing group of college students rolled out of the Magic Bottle and she held back. Resuming her chase, she sprinted to the corner and spotted him heading north, running against the downtown flow of cars. The traffic light was with Nikki. She crossed the street easily and followed him, cop and killer both hugging the curb of the center divider. At 20th Street she saw the front of her building jammed with emergency vehicles and flashing lights. A blue-and-white was making a turn to join the party, and she called out, “Police, here!” They didn’t notice her and drove on.

But the shooter heard her. He twisted for a look over his shoulder, saw Heat gaining, and made himself a moving target, weaving between the planters spaced along the median, then switching to the uptown lane, then hopping back over to the downtown side. Crossing the intersection at East 21st, Nikki got cut off by one of those stretch Humvee party limos when the driver realized too late he didn’t have the steering radius to make his turn. He flipped her the bird as she palmed her way around the hood of his vehicle, and by the time she had, her shooter had bought almost a block on her.

But he began to slow. On one of his over-the-shoulder glances, Heat could see a growing red stain on the chest of his gray hoodie. At 22nd, he gave up the run but not his flight. He aimed his shotgun at a taxi driver waiting at the stoplight, who bailed out instantly, hands up. Her suspect got behind the wheel and floored it through the red, clipping the tail of another cab crossing by, but recovering after a fishtail and bearing down on Nikki.

Heat took a side step up on the center divider, but he came for her anyway, roaring right at her spot on the curb. She braced for a shot, and when he saw that, he jerked his wheel hard right to spoil her aim, then slung the barrel of the shotgun out the side window, ready to deliver a blast as he went by. Instead of diving for cover, Nikki brazenly held her ground, made sure she had a clear field behind him, and squeezed off three rounds as he sped past. Two in the windshield missed him as he lurched the steering wheel evasively again, but the third shot, right through the open side window as he passed her, landed home. She saw the fabric rip where the neck of his hood met his shoulder, and his head wrenched suddenly to the side. He wove crazily in his lane but righted himself and continued speeding downtown. Nikki memorized the cab number and started walking back to her place.

For the shooting report, she also made note of where she was standing. Right across from the Morton Williams supermarket, exactly where her nightmare began ten years ago.

When Heat had finished her statement to the detective from the Thirteenth Precinct, Lauren Parry took a break from her work over Don’s body and handed her a glass of orange juice. “Found this in your fridge. Drink it. It’ll get your blood sugar back up.” Nikki took a small sip and put the glass down on the end table. “You didn’t drink any of that. What’s wrong, you feeling nauseous? Any chest pains? Dizziness?” The medical examiner checked her pulse. Satisfied Nikki wasn’t in shock, she handed her friend a box of sanitary wipes. “I’ve got to get back to my prelim. You clean up.” She gestured to the dried blood and tissue caked onto Heat’s legs and arms, adding as she stepped away, “Don’t forget your face, too.”

Nikki did none of that; only set the box of wipes down beside the orange juice and stared, eyes glazed, at the corpse of her friend. Voices pulled her attention to the doorway that stood open to the hall. Detective Ochoa came in first, grim-faced but sharing a low, discreet wave to his girlfriend, Lauren. His partner followed, Raley also glumly taking in the scene. Heat got up to meet them, and on her way over, Raley turned to look behind him. He said quietly to someone in the hall, “You sure you want to do this right now?” Rook appeared in the door and nodded to him.

As Nikki approached, he took her in his arms and pulled her to him. She wrapped herself around him and squeezed hard. They clung tight to each other a good while. When they finally separated, he still held her, resting a palm on each arm. “Thank God, you’re OK.” And then his gaze drifted over her shoulder to the body on the floor, naked except for the paper modesty towel Lauren had just finished draping over the groin. “Who’s this?” Rook asked.

Nikki sucked air deeply in through her nostrils, wondering where to begin. Before she could, the lead investigator stepped over. “Wondering the same about you. I’m Detective Caparella, Homicide.”

“Oh, Detective,” said Nikki. “This is my friend, Jameson Rook.”

Caparella noticed they were still holding hands and looked from him to her to the body. “Think I’d like to get a statement from you, if that’s all right, Mr. Rook.”