Heat Rises (8 page)

The room fell silent, the quietest that bull pen had been since Nikki had arrived to turn the lights on that morning. She knew what each squad member was going through. Each was reflecting on the last minutes of Father Gerald Graf’s life on that St. Andrew’s Cross. Heat looked at them, knowing that even in this group of smart mouths, there was no amount of cop humor that would overcome the compassion they felt for another human’s suffering.

Mindful of the collective mood, Nikki resumed quietly. “Like any assault, perps use pattern behavior. I’m already looking into other assaults like this, especially involving electrical means.”

“Detective Heat.” All heads turned to the voice at the back of the room. For many, it was the first they had actually heard that voice in a week.

“Captain?” she said.

“I’d like to see you in my office.” And before he stepped inside it, he added, “Right now.”

Nikki wheeled her leg around, caught him on the back of his upper calf, and he went down. Don landed hard on the blue wrestling mat in the gym and said, “Jeez, Nikki, what’s eating you tonight?” She extended a hand to hoist him up, and midway through the lift, Don thought he’d get cute and flip her. But he telegraphed his move with his eyes and she cartwheeled to his weak side, still holding his hand, twisted his thumb, rolled him on his stomach, and parked a knee on his back.

That afternoon, when she had gotten the text from her onetime personal combat trainer and now regular sparring partner, Nikki declined Don’s offer. Her day had been a meat grinder, and all she wanted to do was get home and sink into a bath, hoping an early bed would let her escape the burden of the case, and of Rook, in sleep. But then came that last meeting with Montrose. Heat came out of there feeling caged, frustrated, and above all, conflicted. First thing she did was grab her cell phone and text the ex-Navy
SEAL
that she wanted a workout after all.

Poor Don was on his feet about two seconds before Heat dropped him again.

The meeting had been with a Montrose Nikki didn’t know. He closed his door, and by the time he had walked around behind her to his desk, he had accused her of losing focus on the case. She listened but couldn’t take her eyes off the Band-Aid on his finger, wondering whose blood was on that priest’s collar if it wasn’t the priest’s.

Don went to the corner of the gym and toweled the sweat off his face. Nikki hopped on the balls of her feet in the center of the mat, energized, eager to resume.

Her captain had said, “We agreed this afternoon that you’d keep working the bondage line on this case. What happened? Did you eat some funny mushrooms for lunch and get it in your head to change it up?”

Who was this man, she wondered, talking to her like that? Her mentor, advisor, and protector all these years. Not so much the father she never had but certainly the uncle.

Don tried to fake her out. He shook his arms loose, going all rubbery, working on the tightness to catch her sleeping. But then he lunged, going low with his left shoulder to her waist, trying to straight-out tackle her. She sidestepped and laughed when he caught nothing but air and landed on his face.

“I started getting information that opened my thinking, Captain,” she had told him, all the while wondering what to tell him and what to hold back—something that had never occurred to her to do with this man.

“Like what? Talking to all his parishioners to see who thought his sermons lacked humor? Interviewing the members of his Knights of Columbus? Going to the archdiocese?”

“There’s that money we found,” she said.

“There’s the agreement we had,” he said. Then Montrose had calmed a little, and a glimpse of the old the skip came to visit. “Nikki, I’m accountable for supervision here and I see you spinning your wheels on side shows. You are a great detective. I’ve told you before. You’re smart, intuitive, you work hard . . . I have never seen anyone better than you at finding the odd sock. If there’s one aspect of a case or a crime scene that doesn’t ring true, seems slightly out of whack, you see it.” And then that phase was over. “But I don’t know what the hell to make of what you’re doing today. You’re half a day late to interview a key witness, and that’s after your poor judgment sending Hinesburg. That’s right, I said it, your poor judgment.”

Don’s feet bicycled the sky on his flight over Heat’s shoulder. She rounded her back and dropped on one knee as she released him, keeping her head down and tucked toward her tummy in the follow-through. Twisted that way, she couldn’t see him land. But the floor shook.

“I agree I should have been to the rectory sooner.” Heat had halted there, saying no more about it. She reflected on her
OCME
round trip, heavy traffic included, getting delayed by that phone call from the administrative assistant at 1PP, and of course, that file she stopped to read about the old homicide. But to go further, to explain herself, would only be to sound defensive. This was hard enough. Hard enough trying to pretend she hadn’t seen what she saw in that file. That the lead detective on the 2004 Huddleston murder had been Detective First Grade Charles Montrose.

“Yes, you should have been there but you weren’t. That’s not like you, Detective. Are you distracted by all this business of your promotion?” Then after he had let that work on her, he leaned forward on his blotter, hands clasped so she couldn’t avoid seeing the Band-Aid right there. And then he lobbed out, “Or is it that you were too busy with other things? Like blabbing to newspaper reporters.”

Station House Privacy Rule #1: There is no privacy in a station house.

“Let me assure you of one thing, Captain. The extent of my conversation with that reporter was basically different ways to say, ‘No comment.’ ” She held his gaze so he could see the truth written on her. In that moment, she also made a decision. She concluded that this was not the meeting to ask him about the old Huddleston case. For now, as far as her boss was concerned, she had never even asked for that file. Whatever storm this was, she just hoped it would pass so she could focus on the work and operate in the open again in her own house.

“Make sure you keep it that way,” he had finally said. “I know what the press can be like. Especially the Gotcha Press. You don’t think I have them all over me? And the community pressure? And the jerkoffs downtown? I’ll tell you what I don’t need, Detective Heat, and that’s one more reason for someone to climb up on my ass, and it better not come from you.” His tone had been measured, which made his words sting all the more. “Know this. I will pull you off the case if you don’t focus. Stay on the
BDSM
path and nothing else. Am I clear?”

She had no words and only nodded.

When she reached for the doorknob, he added, “Blow this case and it’ll be bad for me. Bad for you, too.”

Heat left wondering if that was advice or a threat.

Don, who had asked her to spar that night, had made an additional in vitation. And that was to sleep together. They had a history of that, but it had become a dimming one. Somewhere along the line, years back and without much fanfare, Nikki’s Brazilian jujitsu trainer had become her trainer with benefits.

When it started, they were perfectly matched for that. Neither was in a committed relationship; they liked each other, were intensely physical, and equally happy to let their grappling go no further than the gym or the bedroom. Their sex was occasional, energetic, and mutually passionless. It all changed for Nikki when Rook came into the mix. It wasn’t even about serial monogamy for her so much as something else. Something she couldn’t—or wouldn’t—exactly put into words. Since the heat wave, Don and Nikki had confined their wrestling to the mat. He had floated invitations from time to time, which she had declined without explanation, also part of their unspoken rules.

That night, after the drubbing she gave him, before they parted for their respective locker rooms, he asked her again. And this time, for the first time in a long time, Nikki was tempted. No, more than merely tempted. She came very close to a yes.

On the walk back to her apartment, she sorted through her feelings. Close as she had come to saying, “My place,” she had taken it right up to the line in her imagination and declined. The month without Rook had been a long one emotionally and physically. She could have easily had a night with Don, and neither he nor Rook would have had a say in her choice. But her no came from the same place as all the ones that preceded it. But why? Was she in a committed relationship now with Rook? She might have answered that differently before he went away. And certainly it loomed as a bigger question after the Le Cirque shot and all it meant. The issue for her was what kind of relationship, if any, she would have with Rook when—if—they did see each other again. Sleeping with Don that night would have been revenge sex. Which Don sure wouldn’t care about, even if he knew. But she would. That wasn’t her reason, though. Her no to Don had been about postponing a definition.

Or perhaps it was more transparent than that. Maybe she knew the last thing she wanted was to have one more complication added to the stress of her life. Hell, of her day. What she needed was a night of letting go, of lightening up.

She already had the bath in mind, lavender bubbles for sure. One more thing would give her the head break she needed. On Park Avenue South, Nikki stopped at the newsstand at the end of her block and snatched up tabloids and celebrity mags. Hok, the news vendor, gave her a special hello, the one with the wink he started giving Heat the day she was on the cover of
First Press
with Jameson Rook’s exasperating story, “Crime Wave Meets Heat Wave.”

Counting out the change for Hok, who smiled brightly when he got exact change, Nikki smelled fumes from an idling engine. “Hok, how do you stand that?” He made a face and fanned the air in front of his nose. She looked in the direction of the exhaust. It was coming from a big
SUV
a few paces down the sidewalk. She turned back to give the vendor his coins when the phrase “penis car” entered her thoughts. She turned again toward the
SUV
. It certainly looked the same as the one she had encountered on her walk to Andy’s Deli—graphite gray with wide tires—but something was different. The plates. She had clocked those plates as Jersey. This had New York State tags. Hok offered her a plastic bag, which she waved off. She stepped from the newsstand and was surprised to see that the
SUV
was gone. Nikki stepped to the curb in time to see its headlights disappear as it backed down the street against traffic and disappeared into a side street.

Backward?

Nikki turned in a circle, getting a look at her surroundings. She saw nothing unusual. Nothing else unusual, that is. She was only a block from her place. Heat unfastened her coat, took off the glove on her right hand, and started walking with her eyes and ears on alert.

Her street was quiet. No cars at the moment, and in the stillness of the sub-zero night, she paused briefly to strain her hearing for any sense of a low engine rumble. Nothing. She moved quickly up her front steps to the vestibule, keys already in hand.

Vestibule, clear.

Heat unlocked and let herself in. Following an instinct not to get trapped anywhere, she bypassed the elevator and climbed the stairs to her floor, pausing occasionally to listen and then moving upward.

On her floor, she swept the length of the hallway in both directions. It was empty. She let herself into her apartment, threw the deadbolt behind her, and exhaled. Nikki quizzed herself. Was this paranoia? Stress response at the end of an exponentially crap day? Or did she have a tail? And if so, why? And who?

At the hall closet, looking for a hanger for her coat, she heard a noise from around the corner in the kitchen. A small sound. Perhaps the squeak of a shoe?

Heat unholstered her Sig. Holding it in her right hand, she moved forward, carrying her coat in her left. Nikki stopped, drew a slow breath, mentally counted three, then whipped the coat around the corner. She followed it in a low crouch with her gun braced in both hands, calling, “Police, freeze.”

The man wrapped up under her coat stopped struggling with it and raised his hands up inside it. Heat knew before he even spoke. Nikki pulled the coat off his head, and he smiled sheepishly. “Surprise?” said Rook.

“Drop your hands, Rook, you look ridiculous,” said Heat. “What the hell did you think you were doing?”

“Racing to your loving arms. At least I thought I was.”

“I could have shot you, do you know that?” she said as she holstered her Sig.

“It just occurred to me,” he said. “That would have put a damper on my homecoming. Not to mention meant a ton of paperwork for you. I think we’re both better off you didn’t.” He made a step from the kitchen to embrace her, but when she crossed her arms, he stopped. “You saw the paper.”

“Of course, I saw the damn paper. And if I hadn’t, half of New York City was very happy to keep shoving it under my nose. What the hell is going on with you?”

“See, this is why I came over. So I could explain this face-to-face.”

“This ought to be good.”

“OK,” he said. “My agent and I had a very important business dinner last night. A major studio has optioned my piece on Chechnya for a movie.” When Nikki didn’t seem so excited by that, he continued, “So . . . since I had
just
gotten back to town . . . we went to dinner so I could sign the contracts. I had no idea anybody was going to take a picture.”

“And when exactly did you ‘just’ get back?” she asked.

“Yesterday. Late. I trailed that money and the arms shipment all the way from Bosnia to Africa to Colombia to Mexico.”

“Good for you,” said Heat. “Now, that covers the last thirty days beautifully. What about the last thirty hours?”

“My God, once an interrogator . . .” He chuckled and met an ice wall. “I can tell you about that.”

“I’m all ears, Rook.”

“Well, you know about the dinner.”

“At Le Cirque, yes, go on.”

“The rest is simple, really. Mostly I crashed. I think I slept thirteen, fifteen hours straight. First real bed in weeks.” He was talking faster then, eliminating pauses that made him vulnerable. “And after, I’ve been writing like crazy—phone off, TV off—writing. Then I came right here.”