Driving Heat

by Richard Castle

  The whistle-blower across from Heat said, “Where’s your pal, Jameson Rook?” The question hit her like a jolt of electricity. “He hasn’t been scared off my story, has he? This needs to get out. Lives are at stake, do you get that?”

  Heat kept it together while listening to Backhouse whine, thinking, who was more keenly aware of lives being at stake at that moment than she was? Rook was out there somewhere, and she didn’t even know if he was alive. But after witnessing the prof’s jumpiness, she thought better of agitating him with the real reason the journalist wasn’t there, and answered with truth by omission. “No, trust me, Rook is still completely immersed in this story.” Heat wanted to get Backhouse’s impressions of Fred Lobbrecht’s sudden wealth, but decided to hold off on that topic and switch first to Backhouse’s own area of focus. “Can you help me drill down more on Tangier Swift?”

  “You kidding? Let’s do some fracking.”

  “What do you know about his relationship with a congressman, Kent Duer?”

  “The defense industry hawk? Not much. Why?” He started bouncing ever so slightly on the yoga ball while Nikki described her encounter at The Greenwich. When she had finished, he spotted an elastic band dangling from a pen in his pencil cup and used it to put his hair back in a ponytail as he spoke. “I don’t have any specifics, but here’s all you need to know. Tangier Swift is an empire builder. His whole reason to get up every morning is to surpass the legacy of Steve Jobs. He’s got a hard-on to expand his tech impact across every possible platform, so I’m sure he’s doling out campaign contributions with both fists to grease the skids. With Tangier, it’s all about ego.”

  Heat’s gaze moved from Wilton Backhouse to his Julian Assange poster; she decided that the CEO of SwiftRageous didn’t hold the monopoly on narcissism. “This may be sensitive,” she said, “but I need to ask you about Fred Lobbrecht.”

  He finished fooling with his hair and regarded her warily. “Yeah…?”

  “We reviewed his financials, and there’s evidence Mr. Lobbrecht suddenly came into some money last month. A lot of money.”

  Backhouse’s expression changed from caution to revelation as he whispered, “Fuck…”

  “What do you know about this?”

  “God, it’s just like Nate suspected. Levy thought Fred Lobbrecht was dirty.”

  While relived memories appeared to play across the young professor’s face, Nikki flipped up the cover of her spiral notebook. “Explain why Levy thought that.”

  Her question brought him up short, and he shook his head slightly. “I don’t want to get into it. It’s nothing. Forget I said it.”

  “Wilton. Look at me. Do you really think I am going to forget you said anything?” She waited, and made it clear she would wait as long as it took while he bobbed up and down on his bouncy chair.

  At last, he blinked. With a resigned sigh, he said, “I didn’t want to go there, but there was some ugly shit going on between Lobbrecht and Levy.”

  “How ugly?”

  “Butt ugly. It was over solidarity, whether our Splinter Group should go forward with our whistle-blow. Fred had been all gung-ho, then suddenly got all ‘Let’s put on the brakes, here.’ Nathan got royally pissed and accused Lobbrecht of being on the take. Freddy punched him out and Levy threatened to kill him, after all they’d been through, sticking their necks out.”

  “Nathan Levy clearly threatened to kill him?”

  “Exact words.”

  “Did anyone else witness this?”

  “Lobbrecht. But he’s dead. Levy, of course. And Abigail Plunkitt. Abby had to help me pull the two of them apart. Ask her. I don’t think she’s going to forget that.”

  “And where was this? At Forenetics?”

  “At work? Oh, hell, no.”

  Heat thought back to her interview with Backhouse after the drone attack in Washington Square. “Sounds like you, Lobbrecht, Levy, and Plunkitt were all together in one place. Was this at your Splinter Summit in Rhinebeck? You did say things got rough that weekend.”

  He nodded. “You have some memory.”

  “It’s yours I’m interested in. When was this again?”

  Backhouse narrowed his eyes and searched the acoustical tile overhead. “Six…seven weeks ago?”

  “Is that scuffle how Nathan Levy hurt his leg?”

  “I told you, it was one intense fight.” Backhouse tapped his watch and rose to go to his lab.

  “One more thing before you take off.” Nikki took out her iPhone. “Look at these and see if you recognize any of these three men.” He gave a quick study to each face she showed him: Timothy Maloney, no. Joseph Barsotti, no. Eric Vreeland, no. “You’re sure. Do you need more time?”

  “Not really. They don’t look familiar.”

  “I’m especially interested in this one,” she said, holding up Eric Vreeland’s headshot. Nikki held back his association as Tangier Swift’s fixer, but told Backhouse, “This man was seen in the vicinity of Nathan Levy’s home after his drone attack.”

  A look of concern clouded his face. “And this fucker’s out there somewhere? Why don’t you bust him?”

  “We did bring him in for questioning. His…um, lawyer got him released.”

  “You people are inept.” He gathered his laptop and papers again and opened his door. “You are not making me feel any safer, do you know that?” Then he did a hallway check and strode away before Nikki could give him an answer. Which was just as well, because she didn’t really have a good one.

  First thing before she got on the elevator, Heat made another scan of her emails and texts for word on Rook. The passage of time brought a fresh stab of worry with every hour. Knowing that everything that could be done was being done was not enough. On the ride down, Nikki shut her eyes, seeking calm, reminding herself what she and Roach had said in the bull pen, that keeping busy working the homicides was the same as looking for Rook, because she was convinced they were related, even if not sure how.

  Armed with new information about Levy’s death threat, Heat speed-dialed Inez Aguinaldo to have her ask Abigail Plunkitt about the incident in Rhinebeck. While the phone rang, the captain decided that, whether it was in her precinct budget or not, she’d put the detective on a plane to Florida that afternoon if her witness was incommunicado somewhere in the middle of the Everglades.

  When Detective Aguinaldo answered, there was some urgency in her voice. “I was just taking out my phone to call you, Captain. Abigail Plunkitt is not in Florida. She’s here in New York. Dead.”

  The traffic officer recognized Heat’s car as a plain wrap when she pulled up, so without having to badge herself through, Nikki got waved to a spot in front of the coroner’s van on East 3rd Street, down in the Alphabets. A patrolwoman stood at relaxed sentry beside the front door of the apartment building, an unremarkable tan-brick structure sandwiched between a laundromat and a cross-fit gym advertising its grand opening. The uni gave Heat a smart nod as the captain signed in to the crime scene. Following a five-story climb up through the old walk-up, Heat stepped out through the propped-open service door onto the rooftop.

  Across the flat expanse, which had been painted white, per the latest eco-trend, Lauren Parry and a crew from the Office of Chief Medical Examiner had set up shop near the victim. Detective Aguinaldo stood with them, taking notes. Nikki paused, performing her usual ritual of respect and remembrance, then let her eyes soak up the area as she approached the body.

  Every murder scene is memorable in its own way. The lasting impression made by Abigail Plunkitt was that she didn’t appear dead at all from the rear, but simply like a woman seated in her patio chair, enjoying the view of the Lower East Side. The laid-back quality was furthered by the glass of red wine on the teak end table beside her and the Kindle that lay sleeping on her lap. Only when Heat came around for a front view did it all change. Dried blood formed a line descending from a small hole where her eyebrows met above the bridge of her nose. The rust-colored stream traced the channel f
ormed between her right cheek and nostril, around her mouth to her jaw, then down her throat onto her pale-yellow tee, where it had been absorbed and spread by drizzle two nights before into an oxidized tie-dye. In that sense, this murder scene was not unique at all. “Same COD as Lon King down at the river,” said Heat.

  Dr. Lauren Parry peered up at her from her kneeling position beside the corpse. “Normally, I’d say don’t rush to judgment, but I can’t say I disagree.”

  “But you’ll need to run your tests.”

  “I will.” The medical examiner stood and approached her. “Right now, I’m more interested in you.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Any word?” Then she read her friend’s face and let it go. “OK, but anything you need. Anything.” Sympathetic enough not to push it, Parry focused on the prelim of Abigail Plunkitt. “Obviously small-caliber, single GSW, same POE as King’s. Based on his condition, I did a quick field test and see definite signs of residue from gunpowder. The lab will be more definitive, probably reveal some trace metals.”

  “So, another close-range shot.”

  “Bet on it.”

  Nikki turned a 360, then tilted her head to examine the victim’s lap. “You’re going to find residue from lubricant on that Kindle’s screen.”

  “Already have.”

  Heat studied the condition of the body, whose bloating and discoloration spoke of a long passage of time. “What’s your ballpark on TOD?”

  “Going out on a limb, Nikki, I’d say three, probably four days.”

  “Same day as Lon King.”

  “Pretty near.”

  Heat turned to Detective Aguinaldo. “Guess we know why she was unreachable.”

  “We checked her apartment, we checked her car, we checked her friends.”

  Nikki reflected for a beat and said, “I guess we learned something then.” She left it at that. Inez would be chewing herself up; Heat didn’t need to add to the new detective’s own postmortem. “Let’s move on. What we need to find out now is whether Nathan Levy is the next victim, or our prime suspect.”

  Detective Rhymer’s field report over the phone from Throggs Neck tipped the balance of that scale. “Damn near got myself creamed coming up here,” he said. “I’m driving on Schurz, about a block from Nathan Levy’s house, when this souped-up 450 comes barreling up the wrong side of the street at me. I swerved, and so did he at the last second, missing me by an inch. I made Levy as the driver and started working a three-pointer when the cruiser detailed to him blows past me running a hot code, nearly taking my rear bumper as a souvenir.”

  Heat’s pulse quickened. Things are breaking, maybe I’ll finally get some answers, she thought. “How long ago was this?”

  “By now, ten, no, eleven minutes. He led the blue-and-white out on the Neck and lured them into a cul-de-sac off Soundview Terrace. Levy chewed some lawn making his turn, but the unis got boxed. By the time they came out, he was a ghost. Local knowledge and a test driver—I guess you’re gonna end up with some Fast and Furious.” Nikki remembered Levy’s built-for-the-job physique and could picture him muscling that performance pickup anywhere he wanted, at any speed he chose. “Called in a BOLO, of course,” added the detective. “Could be anywhere by now, though.”

  Thoughts bounced in Nikki’s head, and one of them settled in the clear. “Let’s update that BOLO. Radio in a Do Not Apprehend. If they spot him, have them maintain a tail. Just in case Levy is involved with Rook’s disappearance, he might lead us to him.”

  “Copy that.”

  “And the instant they spot him, I want to be notified. I want to be there, understood?”

  Now that Levy looked good as a potential suspect, Raley and Ochoa were already busy shoveling deeper into his past. They were making calls, trying to run him for any jail time or arrests.

  “While you’re at it, a guy who drives like that is going to have some moving violations,” said Heat once she got back to the station. “Run them—even parking tickets, now that I think of it. See what addresses he got pinched at. Maybe there’s a pattern to a neighborhood or borough where he hangs out.”

  “On it,” said Raley.

  Ochoa sucked his teeth. “So frustrating. If the databases were up, we could run this stuff in the time it took to print. Instead, we’re calling multiple jurisdictions and waiting for them to do hand searches.”

  Heat fixed him with a firm glare. “Then that’s what we do, Miguel. We do whatever it takes.”

  “Look what just came in from Ballistics.” Detective Raley rose from his desk holding up a printed report.

  Nikki rushed across the bull pen to him, her internal voice pleading with every step, Please let this help, please let this help…

  “It’s the finding on the slug found in the garage door frame at Nathan Levy’s house,” he said. “It was a .38.”

  “Not a .22?” she asked. “Lon King was killed with a .22. Prelim on Abigail Plunkitt is also a .22.”

  “Same with the drone slugs recovered at Washington Square,” added Ochoa.

  “But Levy claims the drone shot at him,” said Ochoa. “But that’s out of pattern if it’s a .38. Which means either his drone weapon got swapped—”

  “Or he’s lying, and staged the potshot,” added Raley.

  Heat held up the interoffice envelope which, from all the signatures on it, looked like it had been in circulation since the Kerik era. She read the date of submission, and her chest became a furnace of rage. “Two days it took this to reach us! Goddamnit, if we’d known about this discrepancy even thirty-six hours ago, we could have been all over this guy. Now”—she crumpled the envelope and tossed it in the trash—“right now. Somebody find out if Nathan Levy is registered to own a gun—especially a .38.”

  Back in her fishbowl, she called Detective Feller, who was patrolling the waterfront in a Zodiac borrowed from the Harbor Unit. He had been working a slow recon of Long Island City all morning and had gotten the notion to mix it up and check the Gowanus Canal, which was where she caught him, motoring in the Brooklyn channel’s 4th Street Basin, with no luck, so far. With the ballistics foul-up fresh in mind, she double-checked him on running the skiff through the boat registry.

  “Affirm. Boat registration is handled through DMV, and they’ve still got tech capability—but no matches. I also put it through New Jersey, Connecticut, and Rhode Island. No hits there, either. At least not yet. Of course, it could always be unregistered or stolen. If the RTCC was up, we could do a quicker check. But I have some Harbor Unit pals on it.”

  “How much more do you have to cover?”

  “I never knew there was this much waterfront in this city. It’s slow going,” he said, “but I’m working it, boss. I’ll freakin’ swim it, if I have to.”

  Nikki paced her office, frustrated, panicked, desperate to do more than wait and hope. But what could she do? Thoughts of Rook pummeled her, attacking from every direction. Where he might be. What he was doing. What was happening to him. Whether he was alive. Instead of helping herself, all she was doing was dragging herself deeper into her own vortex of despair and speculation. “Stop,” she said aloud. “Stop right there.”

  What Heat needed was to be useful. And busy. What bases weren’t being covered? All of them were; what she lacked was results. She flopped in her chair and put her face in her palms to think in isolation. What any detective does is follow the hot lead. What was it that Randall Feller had just said? The boat. That was the last sighting of Rook. But with five hundred miles of New York City waterfront, even if you carved out everything but Queens, Brooklyn, and Lower Manhattan, that was still quite a haystack in which to find a needle. Assuming the boat was even in the water anymore, and not trailered somewhere inland. Or out of state. If they got lucky with registration, they might get a line on it. But how long would that take?

  She balled up her fists against her temples. Think, Nikki, think. When the hot lead is at the end of a cold trail, and the technology you always used as a crutch go
es belly up, what can you do? She thought of her combat training. When disarmed, trapped, or overpowered, what is your strategy?

  Embrace the obstacle.

  She stood up, crossed to the bull pen, and stuck her head in. “Call me if anything pops.”

  Raley looked up from his desk. “Where are you going?”

  “Back to school,” said Heat.

  Throughout her senior high years, Nikki Heat had clocked as many as eight to ten hours a week in the last quiet place on earth, the Rose Main Reading Room of the New York Public Library. A cathedral of books, she thought then. Standing in the entry, peering into the vast North Hall, with its long oak tables and stately brass lamps surrounded by walls lined with yards and yards of literature, she thought that now. Heat knew that many greats of letters from Singer to Doctorow had quietly labored under that fifty-foot-high muraled ceiling. She also knew that the true power of the research branch, now named the Schwarzman Building (same lions, new name) came from the librarians who catalogued publications, sought answers, fetched materials, and advised readers, writers, dilettantes, scholars—and teenage girls who just wanted to know.

  Carolyn Jay, who had been an inspiration and spirit guide to adolescent Nikki, had become a bit thinner and more angular and had more salt than pepper in her hair than last time they had seen each other, but the playful eyes above the wry smile had not changed, even behind those eyeglasses, which were also a new addition. When Carolyn saw Nikki and came around the dark wooden counter of the research call desk, they embraced as old friends, and it was the librarian who turned heads by being too loud in her joyful greeting. “Let’s go down to my office where we won’t bug anybody,” she said in mock indignation.

  The room behind the heavy oak door with the “Staff Only” sign was just as Heat remembered it: a bull pen, smaller, but not unlike the one uptown at the Twentieth. A common space for lots of work and sporadic privacy, with eight mass-produced desks arranged to face the walls. Mrs. Jay still had the same spot, frozen in time. Same single shelf of books overhead, same lamp, same single plastic cup of water next to the pencil mug. The upgraded computer took up less of the desk surface, but that was about it. Heat began by asking about the computer. “Are you guys cyber challenged like we are?”