Authors: Richard Castle
Deadly Heat
To KB:
May the dance never end and the music never stop.
NYPD Homicide detective Nikki Heat double-parked her gray Crown Victoria behind the coroner van and strode toward the pizza joint where a body waited. A uniform in short sleeves finger-looped the caution tape for her to duck under, and when she straightened up on the other side, Heat stopped, letting her gaze fall down Broadway. At that moment, twenty blocks south, her boyfriend, Jameson Rook, was taking bows at a Times Square press event to celebrate publication of his big new article. An article so big the publisher had made it the cover story to launch the magazine’s Web site. Heat should have been happy. Instead she felt gut-ripped. Because his big article was about her.
She took one step to go inside, but only one. That corpse wasn’t going anywhere, and Heat needed a moment to curse herself for helping Rook write it.
A few weeks before, when she gave him her blessing to chronicle her investigation into the murder of her mom, it had seemed like a good idea. Well, maybe not a good idea, just a prudent one. Heat’s dramatic capture of the surprise killer after more than a decade became hot news, and Rook put it bluntly: Somebody would write this story. Would she prefer a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist or some tabloid hack?
Rook’s interviews were intense and took both days of a weekend. With his digital recorder as sentry, Heat started with Thanksgiving eve, 1999. She and her mom were about to bake pies, and Nikki called her from the spice aisle of the supermarket, only to hear her mother get stabbed to death over the phone while she ran home, frantic and helpless. She told Rook about changing her college major from theater to criminal justice so she could become a cop instead of the
actress she’d dreamed of becoming. “Murder,” she said, “changes everything.”
Heat shared with him her frustration in the quest for justice during the decade that followed. And her shock a month ago when a break came and a suitcase that had been stolen from her mother’s apartment the night of her murder turned up at one of Nikki’s crime scenes—with a woman’s body inside it. The path to solve the fresh homicide of the lady in the luggage put Heat on an unexpected journey into her mother’s hidden past. The trail led to Paris, where Nikki was stunned to learn that Cynthia Heat had been a spy for the CIA. Instead of the piano tutor she pretended to be, her mom had used music instruction as a cover to gain access to spy on the homes of diplomats and industrialists.
Nikki learned all this at the deathbed of her mother’s old CIA controller, Tyler Wynn. But, spies being spies, the old man had only faked his death to throw her off. Nikki discovered this the hard way when her mom’s mentor showed up, gun in hand, to relieve her of the secret, incriminating documents Cynthia Heat had died over. Why? Because Cynthia Heat had discovered that her trusted friend, Tyler Wynn, was a traitor.
During the interview, Nikki confessed she didn’t have to imagine her mother’s sense of betrayal. She had felt it herself when her college boyfriend, Petar, stepped out of the shadows beside Wynn, holding his own gun on her. And, more deeply, as the old spy slipped away with the pouch of damning evidence and a final instruction to Nikki’s ex, to kill her—just as Petar had killed her mother.
At that point, Rook had paused his Olympus recorder to change batteries, but really to allow Nikki to gather herself emotionally. When they resumed, she admitted that, in her heart, she’d always assumed once she captured her mom’s murderer, the wound could finally scar over. Instead, everything tore open and bled. The pain didn’t lessen, it seared. Yes, she managed to arrest Petar, but the mastermind who called the shots had escaped and gone off the grid. And Petar would be no help tracking him. Not after one of Wynn’s other accomplices brazenly poisoned his jail cell dinner.
Heat opened up to Rook with an intimacy she couldn’t have imagined a year ago when she got saddled with the celebrity journalist for a research ride-along. Pre-Rook, Nikki had always believed that there were two pairs of natural enemies in this world—cops and robbers, and cops and writers. That belief softened in last summer’s heat wave, when they ended up falling in love working their first case. Softened, maybe, but even as lovers, cops and writers would never have it easy. And this relationship constantly tested them.
The first test had come last autumn when the product of Rook’s homicide squad ride-along got published as a national magazine cover story, and Nikki’s face stared out at her from newsstands for a month. That attention made her uncomfortable. And seeing her personal experiences turned into prose gave Nikki an unsettling feeling about her role as Rook’s muse. Was this life they were living theirs, or just source material?
And now with his new article about to hit the Internet with a splash, what were once mere misgivings about going public had erupted into full-blown anxiety. This time it wasn’t about fearing the glare of personal publicity, but her worry that it would harm her active investigation. Because for Detective Heat, this case didn’t have loose ends; they were live wires, and Nikki saw publicity as the enemy of justice. And at that moment, a mile away in Times Square, the genie was about to come out of the bottle.
Nikki was glad she’d at least held one big secret back. Something so explosive, she hadn’t even told Rook.
“Coming in?” Detective Ochoa jarred her back to the present. He stood holding the glass door of Domingo’s Famous open for her. Heat hesitated, then let go of her preoccupation and crossed the threshold.
“Got one for the books here,” said Ochoa’s partner, Sean Raley. The pair of detectives, nicknamed Roach, a mash-up of their names, led Heat past the empty Formica tables that would have been filled for lunch in a few hours if it hadn’t been for the murder. When they got to the kitchen, Raley said, “You ready for a first?” He put his gloved hand on the topmost door of the pizza oven and drew it down to reveal the victim. Or what remained of him.
He—it looked like a he—had been shoved in there on his side, bent to fit, and baked. Nikki looked at Raley then Ochoa then back to the corpse. The oven still gave off a hint of warmth, and the body in it resembled a mummy. He had been clothed when he went in. Remnants of scorched fabric dangled off his arms and legs, and shrouded patches of the torso like a disintegrated quilt.
Raley’s look of dark amusement faded and he stepped to her. Ochoa joined him, studying her. “You gonna be sick?”
“No, I’m fine.” She busied herself gloving up with a pair of blue disposables, then added, “I just forgot something.” Nikki said it dismissively, like it was no big deal. But to her, it was. What she had forgotten was her ritual. The small personal ceremony she went through on arrival at every homicide scene. To pause silently a few seconds before going in, to honor the life of the victim she was about to meet. It was a ritual born of empathy. A rite as common as grace before a meal. And today, for the first time ever—Nikki Heat had forgotten to do it.
The slip bothered her, yet maybe it was inevitable. Lately, working routine homicides had become a distraction that kept her from focusing fully on her bigger case. Of course she couldn’t share that with anyone on her squad, but she did complain to Rook how hard it was to try to close a chapter when people kept opening others. He reminded her of the words of John Lennon: “Life is what happens to you while you are busy making other plans.”
“My problem,” she’d said, “is that death happens.”
“Kitchen crew found him, when they opened for lunch prep,” began Raley.
Ochoa picked right up. “They thought it was hinky that the oven felt warm. They popped the oven door and found our crispy critter.” Roach exchanged self-satisfied grins.
“You do know that just because Rook isn’t here, you don’t have to guest-host.” She held her palms to the oven. It felt warm but not hot. “Did they turn it off?”
“Negative,” said Raley. “Cook said it was off when they came in.”
“Any idea who our vic is?” she asked, peering inside the oven. The heat damage would make him hard to recognize.
Ochoa flipped to his notes. “We assume the victim to be one Roy Conklin.”
The medical examiner, Lauren Parry, rose up from her lab kit. “But that’s a guess until we can run dental records and DNA.”
“An educated guess,” said Ochoa. Heat read the gentle tease of Dr. Parry, his not-so-secret girlfriend. “We did find a wallet.” He indicated the stainless steel prep table and the evidence bag on it holding the disfigured leather block and a buckled New York State license.
“And the weird gets weirder,” said Raley, taking a Mini Maglite from his vest pocket and focusing it on the corpse. Heat moved closer, and Raley said, “Weird enough?”
Nikki nodded. “Weirdest.” Around the victim’s neck hung the laminated ID of Roy Conklin, New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene.
Ochoa moved beside her. “We already put in a call to DHMH. Ready for this? The body in that oven is a restaurant health inspector.”
“That’s definitely a violation.” All heads turned toward the familiar voice. And the wisecrack. Jameson Rook strolled in, a vision to Nikki in his perfectly cut navy Boss suit and a purple and white spread-collared shirt—plus the charcoal and purple tie she’d chosen for him. “This joint will have a Grade-B in the window by tonight, you watch.”
Heat came up beside him. “Not that I don’t appreciate your help, but what happened? Don’t tell me you got bored by your big red-carpet event.”
“Not at all. I was going to stay for the after-crowd handshakes, but then Raley texted me about this. And thank God he did. Why hang around for another grip-and-grin when you’ve got a chance to see…” He peered in the oven. “Hot damn. An alien from Area 51.”
Roach appreciated the gallows humor. Lauren Parry, not so much. “What’s that on your shoulder, glitter?” said the ME. “Out, before you contaminate my area.”
Rook grinned. “If I had a nickel for every time I’ve heard that.” But he stepped out to the dining room and left his coat on the back of a chair. He returned just as a pair of techs from OCME were removing
the body from the oven. Ochoa handed him a pair of blue nitrile gloves to put on.
“Check out this badge,” said Raley. Heat got on one knee beside him for a closer look. Conklin’s ID badge and its lanyard showed absolutely no signs of scorching or melting.