Heat Rises (38 page)

Nikki reached into her coat, pulled out her empty holster, and held it up for them to see. “I was hoping.” That drew some chuckles. After she clipped her badge and her Sig Sauer to the old familiar places on her waist and adjusted them, Detective Heat said, “And now that I am officially a sworn officer, I would like to make an arrest.”

At first they acted like Heat was joking. Maybe this was a follow-up to the quip about her empty holster. But one by one they absorbed the seriousness of her expression, and Nikki found herself with the rapt attention of the conference room of police brass she stood before.

“The murder of Father Graf was a case with numerous complications. I won’t go into them all, you can read them in my report, but the essential obstacle we faced was an uncommon amount of resistance from within the Department.” Zach Hamner leaned forward, trying to whisper something to his boss, but Atkins shooed him away. The Hammer sat back with a deep frown directed at Nikki, which she returned until he melted off and stared at the papers in his lap.

“I developed leads that eventually brought me to a solid theory that the priest’s killing was tied to a narcotics bribery ring in the Forty-first.

“There’s great credence for this idea. You all know the names of the five who not only tried to kill me in Central Park as I dug deeper, but are also implicated in the Graf killing, the Montrose murder . . . ,” she paused to let the M-word sink in, then continued, “. . . as well as the sniper attack of Horst Meuller.” Heat counted each on her fingers, “Sergio Torres, Tucker Steljess, Karl ‘Dutch’ Van Meter, Harvey Ballance, and Dave Ingram. At one time, all served in the Four-one. The key to my theory about Narco bribes to that group was the stash of
DEA
money in the pastor’s attic.

“I was wrong.” She paused. “The
DEA
cash turned out to be for a human rights group the priest was involved in—unrelated to the case. So then what was the connection to these bad cops? If it wasn’t drugs, what was it? Well, it was another kind of conspiracy, and one that, sadly, reaches to the highest floors of this building.”

The heat came on and the hissing of the vent filled her pause.

“Let’s go back to Captain Montrose,” she said. “In 2004, he worked a famous homicide, the son of the movie star, Gene Huddleston. When the case cleared as a sour drug deal, Montrose never bought it and recently started to dig in again on his own.” Nikki turned to Hamner. “You know all about that, right, Zach? Did your pals in IA tell you he was sniffing around Huddleston when they checked him out?”

“Montrose lit up IA’s radar by acting out of pattern. Their probe was legitimate due diligence.” Hamner said it as if it was so
SOP
that it bored him.

“Clearly that’s not the only radar my skipper got on.” Heat turned back to the group. “I couldn’t access the official Huddleston case files, but I did have an entertainment insider,” she said, referring to Petar. “My source is highly credible and shared a number of secret rumors about this young man. The most strikingly relevant was that two years before his murder, Gene Huddleston, Jr., was in Bermuda on Spring Break and that he was one of the boys that raped your daughter, Phyllis.”

Yarborough gasped and her hand flew up to cover her mouth. Tears welled in her eyes.

“Detective Heat,” said Atkins, “this is feeling way out of line.”

“I’m sorry, sir, but there’s no easy way to go about this.”

“But it’s gossip,” said the Personnel chief. He handed Phyllis a tissue.

“Which I have independently verified,” Heat replied.

Deputy Commissioner Atkins said, “Go on.”

“Jeremy Drew, who confessed to the assault and murder of Amy Yarborough, was extradited in 2002 and began a life sentence in Sing Sing, where I visited him yesterday. In our meeting Drew confirmed for me what I had heard from my source. That the Huddleston family had paid several million to his parents, who were on disability. All in exchange for his silence about the participation along with him by Gene Huddleston, Jr., in the gang rape on the beach that night.”

“Why would he tell you?” asked the deputy commissioner of legal matters.

“His parents have passed away and he has had a religious conversion. This was his first opportunity to clear his conscience. By the way, I checked with Customs, and Huddleston’s passport shows he was in Bermuda then and left the island on the first flight out the morning after the discovery of Amy’s body in Dockyard.

“You know something, Phyllis? Even when I found out Jeremy Drew wasn’t alone that night with your daughter, there was a part of me that didn’t want to believe you were behind all this. But then I couldn’t get past the cruise Montrose booked. A guy in mourning taking a singles cruise? And in the middle of a career crisis while he’s also conducting a secret investigation? I called back the travel agent. The cruise was to Bermuda.”

As a roomful of the best police minds in New York were doing the motive math, Phyllis Yarborough jarred them by speaking. “Nikki . . .” She shook her head mildly in disappointment. Her voice was hoarse and papery. “I can’t believe this of you, overreaching like this. And so hurtful. Are you trying to make me twice a victim with some tabloid conspiracy theory about me?”

“I am sorry for the loss of your daughter, you know that. But this is not a theory anymore. The leather fragment from under Graf’s fingernail matches Harvey Ballance’s cuff case, and the button fragment from the crime scene is from one of his shirts. Harvey is in the hospital and he is talking. About you. And all the money you offered five cops in 2004 to take care of Huddleston.”

“Detective, come on,” said Yarborough, trying to reclaim her composure and distance, positioning herself as judge rather than the accused, “let’s stop all this, please? You know criminals talk all sorts of bull to cut deals. This is hearsay and conjecture. Whatever happened to the Nikki Heat who deals in proof?”

“Proof,” said Heat. She crossed to the door and rapped lightly. Lovell and DeLongpre entered. While the Internal Affairs detectives rounded the table toward the flat-screen on the side wall, Nikki swallowed thickly, revisiting her grim memory of the paramedics cutting Rook’s shirt off. Spotting the holy medal she had never seen before. And after, listening to his final, pleading voice mail urging her to call him back and saying that he had the video on him. Nikki saved that call, his last words before he was shot. Then she examined the St. Christopher, which was not just a medal but a locket. And hidden inside—a black microSD video chip about the size of a pinkie nail.

Lovell stood, having finished his
DVD
setup, and waited.

“Let me set the stage,” resumed Heat. “Memorial Day weekend, 2004, Alan Barclay, a news video shooter, followed Gene Huddleston, Jr., from a nightclub in the Meat Packing District. Huddleston was just out of rehab—again—and Barclay trailed him to the Bronx, hoping to score some salable footage of the bad boy making a drug purchase. Both he and Huddleston got more than they bargained for. Watch.” Lovell started the
DVD
as DeLongpre dimmed the lights.

The video began with the camera in motion. Jerky footage of a dashboard and then a blur as the videographer got out of his car—still rolling video—and crossed a dark street. This was the raw stuff they edited out of
Cops
.

A block later, the lens moved to a hiding place behind a low wall. The shaky picture settled as the shooter rested his camera on the top cinder block, using it as a brace. The lens zoomed in and focused on a car parked about thirty yards away in front of a warehouse. Under the orange sodium lamps it was easy to make out a man Heat recognized as Sergio Torres approaching the M5. Huddleston got out and they chatted. Their voices were too low to understand but their conversation was easy; Huddleston seemed familiar with Torres. Then everything changed.

Headlights approached from both ends of the block as two cars with police lights flashing roared in and screeched to a halt, sandwiching the
BMW
. One was a blue-and-white, the other a plain-wrap Crown Victoria. Huddleston shouted for Torres to run, but he didn’t. Instead, he grabbed the kid by his shirt and slammed him facedown over the hood of his M5, cuffing him while The Discourager approached from his cruiser and Van Meter and Steljess joined the party from the undercover vehicle.

Nobody seemed in a hurry. It had the menacing feel of something that had been worked out. Huddleston was the only one agitated, whining, “Aw, come on, don’t bust me, my dad’ll kill me,” and “Do you have any idea who my dad is?”

Steljess could be heard now, “Shut the fuck up,” right before he kicked him in the ass as he bent over the car. Huddleston shouted curses that were ignored as they hauled him upright by the cuffs and started to lead him toward the warehouse.

The bravado of privilege turned on a dime to fear. Huddleston freaked. “Hey, where are you—? Just take me to jail then . . . What are you doing?” He tried to make a break. “Hey?!” But the four cops held him in check easily.

The video shook as the camera adjusted its angle to track the group. When it settled again, they were nearing the warehouse under the graffiti-tagged sign for the uniform rental company that once operated there. The door opened from the inside and a man held it wide for them. Nikki didn’t recognize him but figured he completed the set of five—Ingram, the
SUV
driver she killed in the Transverse.

When Ingram pulled the warehouse door shut, Barclay kept rolling, but there was a lull. Heat used the interval to assess the room. Eyes were transfixed. Nobody made a sound. Phyllis Yarborough was the only one not staring. Her head was bowed to her lap.

Huddleston’s screams burst into the night, jarring everyone in the conference room. Bodies shifted, leaning in toward the flat-screen. In its own way, this point of view of a desolate industrial zone in the middle of the night, whose solitude was cut by shrieks and cries, seemed more chilling than watching his actual torture. But everyone there had heard about the
TENS
. And they all knew what was happening to the kid in there. And as bad as it sounded to them, it had to have been hell on earth inside. The uncomfortable minutes they endured as the electrocution continued must have seemed eternal to the howling victim.

In the eerie quiet when it was done, a dog barked in the distance. The door opened, and a sobbing Huddleston, limp and spent, was carried out. They bore him upright by the armpits with his toes dragging the ground behind him. Van Meter broke off from the pack and held a walkie-talkie up to his mouth. His words didn’t pick up, but there was a squelch when he was done. Seconds later another metallic Crown Victoria pulled up.

And Phyllis Yarborough got out.

They had him inside his car by then, Torres even using his gloved hands to buckle the seat belt. He stepped aside to let her stand facing Huddleston, who was beseeching her, “Please, help me, please . . .”

“Do you know who I am?” she said.

He peered at her and became suddenly animated. “Oh, fuck me, oh no . . .”

“Good, you do.” He cried and muttered drooling pleas, and when his words degenerated into quiet sobs, she said, “Take this moment to hell, you filthy son of a bitch.”

She stepped away, and Sergio Torres slammed the car door. They both joined the others on the other side of the car. “Kill him,” said Phyllis Yarborough.

Steljess opened the passenger door and leaned inside. Soon
American Idiot
came blasting hot from the car speakers. Under the blare of Green Day, the interior was illuminated by a muzzle flash and the glass blew out of the driver’s side window.

The video jostled as the camera moved from its perch on the wall. The next shot was a blur of motion as Barclay slowly backed away from his hideout. His foot must have knocked over a bottle. After the glass
tink
and roll came a shout from the cops. “Somebody’s there!”

Barclay didn’t hesitate but ran full-bore up the street, the video whooshing and shaking like earthquake footage as he sprinted. In the distance came their voices, blending together: “Street . . .” “Camera!” and “Stop!”

But Alan Barclay didn’t stop. The last of his video was the camera flying onto his passenger seat and rolling onto the floor as rubber squealed and the videographer escaped. He got away that night carrying the deadly secret he would hide until years later when Captain Montrose canvassed the old crime scene and an elderly night watchman at a bakery told him about the man he’d seen running away with the camera.

The lights came up and Yarborough was glaring at Heat.

“There’s your proof, Deputy Commissioner. Proof that you waited two years for the dust to settle before you got your revenge. Proof that you paid off those cops and then conspired all these years to keep a lid on it. And I’m going to make an educated guess that, along the way, you utilized your job as tech czar to monitor for any signs of discovery. Like Montrose reopening the old case; like me pulling Huddleston’s computer file; like hacking Jameson Rook’s e-mail and sending it to that reporter to get me suspended when I was getting too close. . . . After your boys weren’t up to the job of killing me.” Heat shrugged. “That part I don’t have to prove.

“You know, the first time I met you, I remember we talked about revenge and justice. And do you recall telling me that all your accounts were settled? I think we just got confirmation.”

“Damn you for this.” To Phyllis Yarborough it was as if she and Nikki were the only two in the room. Her indignation had been stripped away, leaving only the raw hurt and a wound, a decade old and still open. Her face was composed, but tears fell down both cheeks. “You, of all people, should know how it feels to be a victim, Nikki.”

Heat felt her own ache, sadly present every day. “I do, Phyllis,” she said softly. “That’s why I’m sending you to jail.”

A searing blue sky freshened Manhattan as a brilliant rising sun warmed the city for the first time in a week. It reflected on row upon row of badges facing the cathedral on Fifth Avenue, making the thousands of chests that wore them sparkle like a single vast treasure of radiant diamonds. New York’s Finest—plus cops from Port Authority and New York State—stood shoulder to shoulder, filling both sidewalk and street, their numbers obscuring pavement, windows, and walls.