Frozen Heat (2012) (38 page)

“No, I think the mud pie will get you first, Captain,” said Rook.

Irons chuckled and said to her, “Jamie’s been like this all night. What a kidder.” Then he frowned. “In all seriousness, Detective, in light of recent events that I shouldn’t need to remind you of, what the hell are you doing exposing yourself to such a risky meet, alone and at night?”

“I appreciate your concern, sir, but I am working a case, and that’s not going to stop at sundown. Plus, my meeting was with someone I knew, who happens to be an ex-cop, so it didn’t seem like a risk to me.”

“Now what does it seem like?” asked Rook.

“A setup.”

“Who’s the ex-cop?” asked Irons.

“Carter Damon. He was lead on my mother’s case.”

“Oh yeah, I remember him. From the Thirteenth.” Irons surveyed the crime tape and the fractured planter beside Nikki’s tipped-over chair. “Let me ask you this. He ever show up?”

“No, sir.”

“You find that curious?” He inclined his head to Rook and muttered, “You should be getting some of this down.” Rook just winked and tapped his forehead with his finger.

Nikki said, “I found it curious enough to call the One Twenty-second in Staten Island to send some uniforms to drop by his house.”

“Already? Quick thinking,” said Irons, which only made her fume. She was so close to insubordination, it was lucky he spoke again before she could. “They get him?”

“No. And there’s an accumulation of mail and newspapers at his door.”

“Want me to put out an APB for Carter Damon?”

“Already done, sir.”

“Well, then.” The captain stood jangling pocket change, then pulled back his cuff to see his watch. “You know, Rook, since everything’s in hand here, we could—”

“Thanks the same, but you’ve already given me a lot to think about for one night. And I should probably hang out with Detective Heat.”

“Sure thing,” he said. The captain waited an awkward moment then got in his car. After he put it in gear, he powered down the passenger window and called across the front seat, “Alert me, twenty-four-seven, if there are any developments.” Then he drove off.

“Who talks like that?” said Heat.

“A man hoping to be quoted.”

She hated leaving Rook, so warm and naked under those sheets the next morning. He didn’t make it any easier. “Sure, use me and go to work. I feel so cheap.” And then he added, “There’s a twenty on the dresser. Get yourself something nice.” That’s when the pillow landed on his face.

Before Nikki got into the shower, she did her ritual check of personal electronics. She came back into the bedroom holding her cell phone. “Rook, listen to this. I got a text from Carter Damon at four-fifteen this morning. It says, ‘Heat. I am so sorry.’”

“For setting you up to be killed?” He looked at the text and handed the phone back to her. “Who says manners are dead?”

Nikki had already put in a good two hours when Rook strolled into the bull pen at nine. “Just got word from Detective Malcolm on Nicole Bernardin’s cremation,” she said. “Order came in from a mortuary that went out of business last year.”

“Let me guess. Seacrest Mortuary?”

“No, but I hear what you’re getting at. How bad is it, Rook, when even your wack conspiracy theories are nothing compared to this case?”

“Guess I just need to get wackier.” He handed her a Starbucks. “Here. Now try not to get a bullet hole in this one.”

“You know, I’m not one to give anyone the finger, even in jest, but I’m considering breaking my rule. You’re just that special.” She took the cup and saluted him with it. “What’s the story in Tribeca?” she asked.

“Fingerprint techs were still dusting my loft when I split. They’ll be most of the morning, but basically, they’re telling me not to hold my breath. Except for one set of yours, from opening it, there are no prints to get off the filing cabinet.”

“Wiped?”

“With extreme prejudice—a phrase that now seems apt. Same with the front doorknob and the door to the office. No prints even to lift.”

“I’m trying to reconstruct the pictures in that box to figure out what someone would want, but I’m drawing a blank. I should have kept them in a safe.”

“Like that would have stopped these guys.” He sat on her desk and she pried a sheet of paper from under one of his cheeks. “Carter Damon ever get back to you?” She shook no. “Send flowers? Edible Arrangement? A bullet with your name on it?” This time she did sneak him the finger. He smiled. “There’s hope for you yet, Nikki Heat.”

“I tried calling Damon. No answer and his voice mail box is full. I put Malcolm and Reynolds on checking his gym, his barber, the usuals. They also ran his ATM and credit cards for activity. Nothing. He’s off the grid.”

“You think he might have just set you up, or was he your sniper?”

“At this point, anything’s possible. But why? Because I pissed him off at lunch at P.J. Clarke’s? And why the text apology?” Her phone rang. It was Detective Ochoa.

“Tell me the lab did not lose that brass.”

“No, Raley and I camped out to make sure of that. In fact, I’m calling because we scored some nice, juicy prints and we have an ID on them.”

“That’s fantastic,” she said. “Bring him in.”

“I’m not thinking he’s your man.”

She slumped back in her chair. “Let’s hear it.”

“Raley, you on?”

His partner came on, conferenced in. “Yeah, so here’s the deal. I met with the guy we ID’d. He runs an indoor gun range in the Bronx. He’s a decorated combat vet with a stellar record. Nice guy, too.”

“None of that rules him out as our sniper.”

“True, but this does. He got paralyzed by an IED in Iraq and he’s in a wheelchair.”

“Then how did his prints get on those shell casings?” Nikki pondered that for a moment. “Sometimes these shooting ranges recycle spent brass and reload them. Your vet friend. Does he sell reloads?”

“Uh, yeah, in fact I saw a sign. You think our sniper bought his ammo from him?”

“I’m hoping so, Rales. I’m also hoping his name shows up in his sales records.”

Shortly after Rook relocated to his squatter’s desk to type up some of his field notes from the previous day’s interviews, Sharon Hinesburg came in and turned on her computer. At first, Nikki tried to ignore her, but the scent of a fresh mani-pedi made her cave. She picked up the sheet of paper Rook had been sitting on and stepped over to her. “Good morning, Detective,” she said.

“We’ll see.” Hinesburg opened her desk drawer carefully so she wouldn’t trash her new manicure.

“Listen, I’ve got everyone else deployed so I need you to run a check on someone for me.” She handed her the page. “His name’s Mamuka Leonidze. He may be out of the country. Notes are all here.”

Hinesburg flashed a brief, condescending smile. “Sorry. I already have an assignment, direct from the precinct commander. The OCME gas truck?”

“And how’s that going, Detective?”

“Slow.” She handed the sheet of notes back. “Give it to Rook. He’s not doing anything. He’s just writing.”

The administrative aide called across the pen, “Detective Heat, Feller on your line. Says it’s important.”

Heat let go the standoff with Hinesburg for the moment and grabbed the call. “You’ve got to be kidding,” she said, loud enough to get Rook to saunter over while she scrawled an address. “Be there in fifteen.” She hung up, tore the top sheet off the notepad, and said to him, “They found Carter Damon.”

“Where?”

“Floating in the East River.”

Lauren Parry had already set up shop on the East River piers off the FDR when Heat arrived. The traffic control uniform moved the sawhorse and waved her and Rook through, and she parked her Crown Vic between Randall Feller’s and the white OCME van. Detective Feller, who was a hundred yards out on the elbow of the L-shaped pier with Lauren and the body, spotted Heat and walked to the parking area to meet her. When he arrived, he pulled off his wraparounds and hooked the sunglasses by the temple in the V of his T-shirt. He wore a sober look, a stark contrast to his customary crime scene grabass face. Heat picked up on the change in him right off.

“Tell me what you know,” she said.

With years in the street and an orderly mind, he didn’t need to consult notes. “Harbor Unit hauled him out of the drink about an hour ago. A pilot for the helicopter service that leases the pier spotted him on approach and radioed it in.” Nikki could see the small blue airport shuttle chopper tied down on the pad at the end of the wharf, farther out in the channel. “Harbor said they’d been on the lookout for a floater. Middle of the night, a motorist called Bridges and Tunnels to say he saw somebody go off the Brooklyn Bridge.”

“Kersplat,” said Rook, getting a reproachful glance from Nikki.

“The eyewit says he wasn’t alone, someone was up there with him.”

“Did he say there was a struggle, or was Damon a jumper and somebody tried to stop him?”

“Unclear. Detective Rhymer is en route to get that statement now. Should be a solid witness, though. A cardiologist driving in for an early surgery at Downtown Hospital. Opie will brace the doc soon as he finishes his operation.”

Like Nikki, Rook must have also been thinking of suicide and the apology text she’d received at four-fifteen
A.M.
“What time did this come down?” he asked.

“About four-thirty.”

“Let’s go check in with Lauren,” said Heat, and she started to walk out onto the pier. Feller and Rook kept up and she asked, “Any note on him?”

“No but one thing you need to know, and it’s big. He’d been shot.”

That stopped Nikki in her tracks. The other two stopped with her. Rook said, “I wonder if he was shot by the sniper who tried to get you last night.”

Detective Feller said, “Definitely not.”

“You sound mighty certain,” said Heat.

“Because I am. Detective, I know who shot him.”

“You know who shot Carter Damon?” Feller nodded. “Who?”

“You.”

The two bullet holes in Carter Damon had Nikki Heat’s name on them. The medical examiner had already cut the shirt off his corpse, and both upper-body entry wounds matched with the rounds she’d put in him the night of Don’s killing.

Lauren Parry squatted in a catcher’s stance on the deck of the pier, where his body had been placed by the Harbor Unit, and indicated the wounds with the tip of her stick pen, beginning with the one in the left side of his neck where it met the shoulder. “Let’s start with this one here.”

“That’s from the shot I got off through the passenger window of the taxi.”

“When I do the postmortem, my money says this one was nearly fatal. You were on the curb, as I recall from your Shooting Incident Report, so this would have come down at an angle, probably getting awfully close to the subclavian vein or the jugular, or both. If you’d outright hit one of those, he’d have died in minutes, if that long. So, I’m thinking a tiny nick, and assume he did a lot of slow bleeding over the past few days. But I’ll know better down in B-Twenty-three,” she said, referring to the autopsy room number.

Heat knelt on one knee beside her and pointed to the second wound, the one on his chest. “What are those marks around the entry hole?”

“Good eye. Those marks you see are from sutures. They must have torn open when he hit the water coming off the bridge.” She put her face an inch from the wound. “Uh-huh. I see thread fragments.”

“But we checked ERs,” said Nikki. “No reports of him, anywhere.”

Rook said, “Are you saying this guy stitched himself up? Talk about macho. Take that, Chuck Norris.”

Lauren said, “I highly doubt he did this himself. This is a professional-looking job.” Then, when she saw Nikki duck over the other bullet hole, she added, “I couldn’t see any evidence of work done on the other wound.”

“Why one and not the other?” asked Detective Feller.

“The other wound is high-risk because of proximity to veins and arteries. Whoever took care of him knew to leave it alone.”

“So,” Nikki said, “Damon got some kind of aid, but off the books.” She stood and stretched her back. “And he wasn’t dead when he went in the river?”

“Doubtful. See all the bruising here?” Lauren traced her finger along the discoloration on his face and chest. “That seems consistent with impact when he hit the water. And I just saw evidence of clotting where the sutures tore on wound two. That wouldn’t happen if he’d been dead. I’ll be able to check for mast cells to confirm when I get back to my microscope. Also, I’ll check his lungs in the post. If he was alive, he’ll have river water in them.”

As the detectives and Rook left for their cars, Lauren held Nikki back to speak in confidence. “I’m still stressing Nicole Bernardin’s messed-up tox test.”

“Obviously not your fault, Laur. And Irons is on it now.”

“Is he? I had Security pull our surveillance tapes so they didn’t get recorded over, but when I called Captain Irons to arrange getting them, he said to call Detective Hinesburg and I never got a call back.”

“Typical,” said Heat. “I’ll put Raley on it. He’s King of All Surveillance Media, you know.”