Driving Heat (45 page)

Backhouse shoved the pad away. But then, just when it seemed he was finished, he said, “I’d rather just tell it. Do you still have your recorder?”

“Unless I dropped it in the car last night—just kidding.” Rook took his Sony digital out and turned it on so Wilton Backhouse could tell his whole story for the record.

Cop humor. There is nothing like it.

After Heat and Rook had wrapped the interrogation and entered the homicide bull pen for the first time that morning, every detective there was wearing a teeny Band-Aid on his or her forehead.
Such is the wry coping mechanism of your police professional. Even after a beloved comrade’s life-or-death ordeal—or, maybe, especially after one—sarcasm trumps
sentimentality.

Heat played the game, showing her love by ignoring the display until they all just broke into laughter. So much better than people with guns, hugging.

A full recap wasn’t necessary, since the squad had already witnessed the lengthy debriefing of Wilton Backhouse from Observation. In a rare display that could only be considered a mercy
kiss for going the extra distance after his ordeal, the detectives gave props to Rook for his interview.

Holding up his end in the sardonic spirit of the day, Rook thanked them by saying, “You know, I’d like to think there’s more at stake here than achieving justice. It’s
really about getting me that next Pulitzer.”

“That would be a lot funnier if it weren’t true,” said Feller.

Raley asked, “Does this mean we owe Tangier Swift an apology?”

“Yeah, but instead of flowers, I’d like to send Mr. Swift a dozen of these.” Rook flashed the finger with the arm that wasn’t in a sling. “And don’t tell me
this is my Area Fifty-one wacko speculation. Wilton Backhouse denied kidnapping me, and I believe him.”

“Well, he sure doesn’t have the infrastructure,” said Ochoa. “Look who he settled for: Maloney.”

Rook nodded. “But who does have it? Exactly. I don’t have proof yet. Meanwhile, I’ll just bide my time and enjoy my legally prescribed painkillers.”

They took a short break. Those without wounds removed their bandages, coffeed up, and gathered around the Murder Board for that delicious moment when the scribbles up there started to make
sense. Rhymer said, “Sorry, but I was driving back from Forensics and missed the first part of the confession. Did Backhouse say why the two different MOs? You know, the car crash for one and
the drone for all the others?”

Heat nodded. “Actually, Opie, there were three MOs. They killed Lobbrecht first at the hangar on Staten Island because they knew he’d be there. Lon King was a different story.
Remember Maloney had been stalking him and knew about his kayaking. They came up with the drone idea to get him, and that worked so well, they used it for Abigail Plunkitt, too. Then they
experimented with a higher caliber on Nathan Levy and missed. So Backhouse did him face-to-face, knowing he’d duck away from a drone, but not from his friend. That’s why Levy’s
window was rolled down and there was no lubricant on his pickup’s door. Backhouse met him for a chat, and popped him close range, small caliber, just no quadcopter.”

“Makes sense,” said Detective Rhymer, “because Forensics just found GSR on a shirt in Backhouse’s laundry hamper.”

Ochoa added that to the Murder Board. “One more nail.”

“Which leads me to an imaginary fist bump to you and Detective Aguinaldo for working that apartment,” continued Nikki. “Finding that piece of the glove compartment tipped the
scale.”

“Any sign of Lon King’s missing patient files?” asked Rook.

“So far, MIA,” said Feller. “Not at his apartment. Not at his office. Not at that Craigslist special in Astoria he rented under a fake name.”

A familiar thorny knot tightened in Nikki’s gut. It surfaced every time she thought about her intimate counseling sessions floating out there somewhere.

“Hey, I know where they are,” said Detective Ochoa, trying to keep from grinning. “In the trunk of Captain Heat’s car with that prisoner, what’s his name, George
Gallatin.”

As the meeting broke up, she heard Feller say, “Poor dude’s probably in New Mexico by now, looking out that back window, praying for a rest stop.” Their laughter made Heat
recall the old saying, “In all humor there is a grain of truth.” Heat knew one thing for sure: Until she uncovered it, this case was far from closed.

After getting an update from Detective Raley on his special assignment,
Nikki released her King of All Surveillance Media to continue
his mission. Sean headed downtown to One Police Plaza; she went to the ladies’ room to change her dressing.

Afterward, she went to Rook’s desk in the bull pen to offer to change his gauze and found him pounding keys on his laptop. “Surfing for alternate honeymoon locales? Pyongyang?
Chernobyl? Perhaps a Barney the Dinosaur cruise?”

“No cruises, remember? I’m typing up my notes for
Confessions of a Blown Whistle
.” He paused and flicked a glance to read her reaction. “Or whatever I call it.
Eventually.”

He resumed typing. At the next desk, Opie made a call and, while he waited, took out a cloth to clean his iPhone.

Nikki said, “I wanted to check your dressing.”

“Already done.”

“You should go home.”

“You first.” His attention then became riveted on Rhymer’s ritual of spraying the microfiber cloth and buffing the glass.

Her gaze followed his to the detective’s polishing, then back to Rook. “What?”

“What if I told you I might be able to figure out the number of the Black Knight so we can trace it and get a line on whoever it was who kidnapped me? That’s what.”

Within the hour a service aide from Forensics had delivered George Gallatin’s
cell phone, sealed in a plastic bag. Heat signed
the chain of evidence voucher, pulled on a pair of crime scene gloves, and set the handheld on her desk in front of Rook. “CSU double confirmed when I asked for this that the SIM card history
is wiped.”

“Indulge me,” he said. With his one gloved hand, he spread out the papers he had been doodling on the past few days in his effort to remember the phone number he had seen Gallatin
tap to call Black Knight. “As you can see, I’ve got most of the digits of the phone number filled in on this page.”

She pointed to several of his scratched-out attempts. “Except for these two blank spaces.”

“Yes. But here’s the thing. I don’t remember those two missing numbers, but I do know he only touched the glass one time for each of those numbers when he dialed. The others
were repeated. So,” he said as he picked up the cell phone, “if I am right, and if Forensics didn’t clean or smudge this screen, I should be able to see which numbers were
single-tapped and fill in my blanks. It’s like
Wheel
, only instead of buying vowels, I’m going for digits.”

“Question. What if Gallatin called Black Knight more than once?”

“You know, Smarty gave a party and nobody came.”

“But what if he did?”

“Then it would still work.” He paused and added, “In theory, because the two digits I need would still have fewer fingerprints on the glass.”

“What if George Gallatin also used it to call someone else, like his bookie or a sex hotline? Wouldn’t that mess up the screen?”

Rook stopped but didn’t look at her. “Would you let me have my moment?”

“Sorry.”

He resumed, carefully tilting the glass to find the sweet spot of the reflection. Looked over his shoulder, Nikki could see that the dusting powder left by Forensics had actually made the
fingerprints easier to pick out on the surface. “Humph,” Rook said and set it back down. He closed his eyes, doing some inner-vision reenactment thing that involved humming. Then he
broke into a grin. “Got it!” She regarded him skeptically. “No, really, I do.”

The cyber attack was still impeding the department’s databases, so Heat
called Special Agent Jordan Delaney to run Rook’s
phone number for her. The FBI man was barely cordial but ultimately professional. In spite of his annoyance that she had poached his federal prisoner, who had then escaped, Delaney called Nikki
back to report that the number she had given him did not exist.

“I highly doubt that,” said Rook. “I’ve heard of numbers that are out of service. Or unlisted. But nonexistent? No way.”

“Then why don’t you call it and see who answers?” she said.

“Thank you, I will.” He got out his cell phone but then changed his mind. “If my caller ID shows up, it’ll be a tip-off. And suppose I use Gallatin’s phone. If they
pick up and hear me, then what?”

“Rook, you’re talking yourself out of your own fix. What am I supposed to do here?”

He thought a short moment and said, “Indulge me?”

Heat listened to the groaning steel of the decrepit barge as it rocked at
its mooring and smelled the musty decay wafting from
somewhere in the dark recesses where she and Rook waited belowdecks. “We’re going to get our wounds infected down here.”

“We’ve only been here an hour, Nik. I spent two nights down here.”

She corrected him. “Ninety-three minutes. We’ll give this twenty-seven more, that’s plenty indulgent.”

“Deal,” he said. “But I have faith.”

“In a number the FBI says doesn’t exist?”

“Then why does it say ‘Delivered’ under our balloon?”

Sending a text message from Gallatin’s phone to the mystery number was the compromise she had reached with Rook. Although she wouldn’t admit it out loud, Nikki did feel a bit of a
thrill from his sense of adventure and out-of-the-box thinking. To tell him would only encourage more. Not so thrilling, in her view.

She held up Gallatin’s burner again, which was powered up, but back in its plastic evidence bag. The screen did indicate delivery, right under their message, which was short and plenty
concrete: “Urgent. Meet me at the barge. Hurry!”

Concerned about tying up resources on something so iffy, Heat decided she and Rook would wait in the barge hold alone. To be prudent, however, she had had Detective Feller follow them as backup,
and he was parked a block away in the staging area they had used to rescue Rook just a few days before.

Nikki made another check of her Omega. Twenty-five minutes of dank eternity to go. Rook touched her shoulder. But she had already heard it—the scrape of a shoe topside. She hand signaled
him to move back out of the dull light that was filtering down through the overhead ventilation grate.

The next footfall was softer but closer, on the corrugated steps leading down from the hatch.

Heat stepped back into the shadows opposite Rook and eased her Sig out of its holster. She held it against her thigh, pointed at the floor. She counted five more footfalls on metal, and then
whoever it was stopped, probably at the bottom of the stairs.

Then the footsteps resumed. Once again, a soft tread, but definitely drawing closer. Heat brought her gun up, then cupped and braced against a steel stanchion. A dark shape emerged from the blue
shadows into the dusky light and stopped.

Yardley Bell had answered the text.

I
n the hollow silence that followed, broken only by another moan of steel plates chafing against the wharf, Heat studied Bell, keeping her gun sight
on the secret agent’s torso while she scanned for a weapon. As she did, Yardley fanned her arms out from her sides. At first Nikki thought it was a freak of timing, but when Yardley spread
her fingers to show that her hands were empty, Heat knew it wasn’t a coincidence at all. Yardley Bell did little by coincidence. This was pure situational aptitude.

“Jamie, Nikki, I know you’re here.”

While Heat processed how to play this, Rook emerged from his hiding place against the far bulkhead. He got just to the edge of the dim spill of overhead sunlight and stopped. “You?
You’re Black Knight?”

“Rook, step back,” said Heat, holding position. “Yardley, keep them where I can see them, just like that.”

Rook stayed where he was. Agent Bell did as she was instructed and even pivoted a few degrees in the direction of Nikki’s voice, presenting her the widest possible target, in full
compliance. “My piece is staying where it is,” said Bell. That could be interpreted that two ways: either as a warning not to take it, or an assurance that she wouldn’t bring it
into play. Or both.

Heat read the moment and moved into view. She lowered her Sig Sauer but didn’t holster it.

“When I got the text message, I thought about ignoring it.” Yardley regarded her ex, who still hadn’t absorbed the surprise. “Then I figured I owed it to you after all
you’ve gone through…to let you know it’s over. And that you’re safe.” The faraway sound of a motorcycle rumbling past on the street drew Bell’s attention, and she
turned her chin over one shoulder. “I shouldn’t be here.”

“Funny, I thought the same thing about four in the morning when I woke up with rats racing across my pant leg.”

“None of that was my doing. I heard about the operation after the fact.”

“If not you, then who did it?” asked Nikki. Now that Rook’s text bait had panned out after all, she was determined to exploit the opportunity all the way to an arrest. If not
of Yardley Bell, then someone.