Driving Heat

by Richard Castle

  “Tangier Swift’s PI?”

  “None other,” said Rook.

  Ochoa turned from the picture to Heat. “That’s large.”

  “Extra,” she said. “I want Vreeland brought back in. It doesn’t make him the killer—necessarily—but it is our first nexus between Tangier Swift, Lon King, and Nathan Levy.”

  “Two of our homicide victims,” said Raley.

  Heat’s brow pulled into a vertical crease. “Two of our victims…” she said, but it sounded unsure enough to be a question.

  “Just got the call,” said Feller. “They found Nathan Levy’s body in his truck fifteen minutes ago.”

  “Poetic.” That was Rook’s first word when they got to the crime scene. And he wasn’t too wrong, Nikki thought. An automobile test driver killed behind the wheel might qualify. Except the only rhyme Heat saw was the hole in his forehead, same as two of the other vics.

  Heat had gotten there quickly, even before the Medical Examiner, which gave her a clearer view of the site, a self-pay parking lot under the Highline, not far from Chelsea Piers. The patrol team that spotted the performance pickup truck had not only been alert, they were well trained. Rather than contaminating the scene, which happened with maddening frequency, they hadn’t done anything more than glove up and open the driver’s side door to see if he was alive or not. After that, the officers caution-taped the driveway to secure the zone and did the best possible thing. They waited.

  “So the door was closed when you got here?” Heat asked, ever thorough.

  “Yes,” answered the patrolwoman. “But the side window was down.”

  Nikki walked back and forth, surveying the open door and the rolled-down window, then peeked inside. “Was the ignition turned on like it is now?”

  “Huh, I didn’t notice.”

  Beginner’s eyes, Heat told herself. She always came to her scenes as if she were just learning how to do this. Nothing got taken for granted that way. Veterans had a nasty habit of overlooking things. She made a note of the engaged ignition and that the battery seemed dead. The setup suggested Levy probably had been sitting there listening to the radio when he bought it. The seatbelt was unfastened and retracted. As for the body itself, it was facing the open window, but tilted back and away toward the passenger side—an obvious consequence of the gunshot.

  Rook said, “May I state the obvious? Unless you can convince me this is a suicide, Mr. Levy’s not looking so good as our killer.”

  Nikki sing-songed, “He’s ba-a-a-a-ack.” But did it with her inside voice—wise, given the setting and the pair of uniformed witnesses.

  “Know what else? I also don’t think he’ll be throwing those at Mardi Gras this year.” Heat followed his gesture to the colorful plastic beads hanging from the rearview mirror. Within the red, green, purple, and yellow strands, something caught her eye. Using her capped stick pen in her gloved hand, she leaned into the cab and lifted a white latex bracelet by one end.

  “What is that, a hospital bracelet?” he asked.

  Heat turned her head to the side so she could read the band. “With Nathan Levy’s name on it.”

  Rook’s conjecture about Levy’s poor viability as a suspect was reinforced, albeit without the wiseass factor, back at the precinct by Detective Aguinaldo. “When he took off on the run, I decided to establish Mr. Levy’s whereabouts during the time frames of our various homicides. You want to hear?”

  “I have a feeling there’s no stopping you,” said Heat, impressed with the initiative. Inez, a talented detective, clearly was pushing harder, trying to make up for her stumble in overlooking a search of Abigail Plunkitt’s rooftop.

  “During the spans of time around King’s and Lobbrecht’s deaths,” Aguinaldo said, “Levy was up in Monticello, New York, at a meeting about a job as a driving coach at the private racetrack and resort up there.”

  “That’s only ninety minutes away,” said Feller.

  “Yes, but he had an early interview and spent the night at the Courtyard by Marriott in Middletown. I’ve confirmed he was physically present at both places. That leaves the period in which Plunkitt was killed. He was away during that time frame, too. He told his next-door neighbor he was in Atlantic City getting physical therapy on his leg.”

  Detective Rhymer said, “Hold on. Who goes all the way down to AC for physical therapy?”

  Aguinaldo grinned. “I checked. The physical therapy wasn’t exactly covered under insurance, if you know what I mean. There’s security footage of him in the lobby of the place. On two visits.”

  “Ah,” said Rook. “Nathan’s massage had a happy ending. His life, not so much.”

  Heat tore a page out of her notebook. “Detectives Raley and Ochoa.” The pair, who were sitting on opposite sides of the group, raised their heads. “I copied this off a hospital bracelet I found hanging in Levy’s truck. Note the patient.” She handed it to Ochoa, who was nearer. He read it and passed it on at a signal from Raley. “It’s from an ER up in Cortlandt, which is Westchester County. He was there in February, about a month and a half ago. I’m not sure what this will give us—maybe why the limp—but place a call, and let’s find out.”

  “On it,” said Raley. “As long as we’re gathered, we have a few updates for you. First of all, CSU found George Gallatin’s cell phone on the floor in the modular trailer at the Channel Maritime.”

  Rook grew very excited. “That’s great. We can get that number for Black Knight.”

  “‘Come back here, you bastard!’” called Feller in a passable Monty Python impression. “It’s only a flesh wound!”

  “You mock me, but I’m telling you, I heard Gallatin say he was calling Black Knight.” He turned back to Raley. “All we have to do is check the Recents. The number will be there.”

  “Sorry. History’s been cleared. You’re going to have to keep noodling. Or give it up.”

  “No, I’m too OCD for that.” Nikki could see Rook’s eyes glaze over as he tried to conjure up a replay of that phone dialing.

  Raley consulted his cheat sheet. “We also got word about Eric Vreeland.”

  “I already know I’m not going to like this,” said Nikki.

  “Well, then you won’t be quite so disappointed when I tell you. It’s going to be tough to have him drop by for an interview. His office said he was away on vacation. We checked with Customs and Immigration and they report that Vreeland exited the country on a flight out of JFK yesterday for Croatia.”

  “Croatia,” said Rook with appreciation. “Have you ever been? Croatia has everything. Castles, beautiful woman…Stunningly. Beautiful. Women. Oh, and no extradition agreement with the United States.”

  “The perfect vacation spot for a Person of Interest in a multiple homicide,” observed Heat. “Terrific.”

  As everyone scattered on their assignments, Heat returned to her desk, which had taken on the appearance of an urban curbside on recycling day. The collateral effect of the cyber attack was the rapid, seemingly endless generation of paper. The height of the stacks, however neat, could be measured with a ruler, and they formed a bulwark around Nikki’s blotter. On the upside, they served as a graphic example of how the digital age had cut environmental waste. Plus it gave her a degree of privacy in her goldfish-bowl office.

  The captain compliantly went about her administrative duties: meetings with the union steward, the vending machine supplier, and the lead officer in the precinct’s Traffic Division about staggering the maintenance of the Cushmans. None of these made her feel like she was fighting crime.

  Detective Raley showed up at her door, a welcome interruption, with the word on his call to the ER up in the Hudson Valley. “Records indicate Nathan Levy showed up there in the middle of one night complaining of severe pain from an injury to his right leg. He reported that he whacked it on a table. His chart said he had a large amount of swelling and bruising. They did an X-ray that showed he had a hairline fracture of his tibia, right below the knee. They treated him, gave him some
crutches, and he self-released.”

  Nikki sat back and crossed her arms. “That must have been some table.”

  “Yeah, doesn’t pass inspection to my nose, either.”

  “What do we know about our patient?”

  “Our boy liked his cars,” said Raley.

  “And to drive them fast.”

  “I’ll contact State and County up in that area and see if they worked any accidents around that date.” The detective got up from the guest chair. “Not quite sure what it means to us.”

  “Never know until it does,” said Heat. “Or doesn’t. But let’s at least close the loop.” Then, before he left, she snagged him. “Hey, Rales? Things any better between you and Miguel?”

  He almost answered, but left it with, “I’ll make those calls now,” and went back to his desk in the squad room.

  The Office of Chief Medical Examiner had been slammed by the hacking event just like other city MISD services, so Lauren Parry called Heat personally with her postmortem results on Nathan Levy. “By the way, how many more of these cranials am I going to be doing?”

  “Working on it. Hopefully the last one.”

  “Good, ’cause I need another one of these like I need a—”

  “Lauren, stop. You stop. If you were about to say ‘hole in the head,’ cease. I have all I can stand of that with Rook.”

  “Oh, and now you’re complaining about him instead of getting hammered in your bathtub? Besides, I’m working morning and night with dead bodies down here, and I have one chance for a little human interaction, and you cut me off.”

  “Damn right. You want to amuse me? Brief me on your post.”

  Dr. Parry’s narrative regarding Levy echoed her reports on Lon King and Abigail Plunkitt, as expected. Small entry wound made by a .22-caliber slug, severed brain stem, no exit wound. Also, as with the other two, indication of a close-range weapon discharge, as evidenced by gunshot residue and muzzle burn.

  “What about the condition of the bullet?”

  “Not bad. I already gave the slug to ballistics.”

  “Thanks,” said Nikki. “I’ll task a detective to go over to Jamaica and get the report personally. Last time they practically used a carrier pigeon.”

  “Still beats my intranet. Other items of note that you’ll see in my write-up: I saw a recent hairline fracture—”

  “Of the right tibia? Just below the patella?”

  “OK, now that’s just weird. How’d you know that?”

  “See, that’s how you create human interaction, Doctor. Take note.” After a chuckle Heat told her about the ER report she had just received, and the ME agreed that, although it was not impossible, such a fracture was unlikely to be the result of walking clumsily into a piece of furniture.

  “Question,” said Nikki. “Oil residue. Any sign?”

  “No, and I was looking for it, especially after we found traces on the other two.”

  “I’m asking because I looked real closely at the door of his pickup, and I didn’t see any. I’ll check with Forensics.”

  “I already have. No oil residue.” After a long pause, Parry asked, “You still there?”

  “Yeah, I’m just thinking about that.”

  “One of your Odd Sock moments?”

  “When something breaks a pattern, that’s what we call it around here,” said Heat. “A pleasure interacting with you on a human level, Doc.”

  After Nikki hung up, she started feeling unsettled. And she liked that. Things that didn’t feel right had a funny way of turning into clues.

  About an hour later, as Heat was returning from briefing the new patrol squad she had formed to discourage smart-phone thefts on subway platforms, Raley waved her into the bull pen. “I made the rounds of NY State Police and county traffic enforcement in Westchester and Putnam, which would be nearest the ER in Cortlandt. It’s mostly a lot of the garden-variety rural stuff. Rear-end taps, flat tires, engine stalls, missing license plates, broken headlights, kids driving on lawns, failures to yield, and drunk drivers. But there was a fatality.”

  Without realizing it, Nikki took a seat at her former desk. Rook came over and sat on it. Old habits. “Where and what?” she asked.

  “A stretch of the Cold Spring Turnpike between the Taconic and Route 9.”

  “I’ve been there,” said Rook. “They call it a turnpike, but that’s a backcountry road.”

  “Quite isolated,” continued the detective. “And a lot of twisty-turnies. The fatality involved a single-car accident. The driver was alone. She somehow veered off the road and smacked head-on into a tree.”

  “Impaired?” asked Heat.

  “No. And the autopsy showed no physical issue like heart attack, aneurism, or anything like that.”

  Heat’s mind raced to a hundred places all at once. “And it was a solo event.”

  “That’s the conclusion. Staties are sending me the MV-104, but that’s their finding. They said things like, it could be a deer reaction or a coyote swerve. Or a distraction. Except the driver had her cell phone inside her purse, and there were no messages or calls preceding the crash. Also no suicidal indicators.”

  Rook swiveled on the desktop to face Nikki. “Do you think this could have anything to do with Nathan Levy? Let me rephrase that. What do you think Nathan Levy had to do with this? Like, instead of a deer or a…I dunno…a rabid woodchuck, or Toonces the Driving Cat…was he the one who made the driver lose control?”

  Raley chimed in. “My contact at the state troopers said their investigation had ruled out a phantom vehicle.”

  “But still,” said Nikki. “A little coincidental, wouldn’t you say?”

  Bobbing his head, Rook added, “And I know what you say about coincidences. They’re like seagulls. You’ve never seen one that didn’t lead someplace fishy.”

  Nikki winced. “I never said anything like that.”

  “I’m a writer. Take the sound bite, OK? All yours.”

  Heat instructed Raley to put in a call to Inez Aguinaldo, who was up in Throggs Neck scrubbing through Nathan Levy’s house with the Crime Scene Unit. He briefed the detective on the ER report and the fatal solo crash that had happened the same night. “Which we aren’t buying it as solo,” Heat said.

  “I’ve already asked Forensics to check his F-450 for damage or recent repairs. Why don’t you have somebody up there with you in a bunny suit take a close look at his BMW?”

  Aguinaldo called back less than a half hour later. It wasn’t difficult for the CSU tech to note that the M3 had a replacement front spoiler bumper cover and brand-new wheels and tires on the front, as well. There was no other evidence of bodywork. The airbags had not been deployed; however, it did look like the factory glove box door had been replaced. “I searched his desk in the living room and dug out a receipt for the work. It was done last month at a specialty Bimmer shop here in the Bronx. The owner remembered the job and said it was a flatbed truck-in.”

  Raley clicked his pen. “From where?”

  “I’ve got the address. It’s a wreck-and-tow service up in Peekskill.”

  “Hard to ignore how this hooks up,” Raley said when he rushed back into Heat’s office. “Levy’s damaged car gets towed from Peekskill—the town that’s right in-between where the accident happened and the hospital where he dropped into the ER.”

  Not yet knowing if this was a meaningful development or just a seductive trail leading into a dead end, Heat was too seasoned to get excited. And yet, she did give herself permission to feel at least intrigued by the news.

  “Next step is to get in touch with the tow company,” she said.

  “Going to call them now. I just wanted to loop you in first.”

  “Hang on.” Nikki had an idea forming and took a moment to reason it through before she spoke it. “I think we need to get some eyes on this situation instead of just calling.”

  Raley awakened his phone to check the time. “I could be in Peekskill before lunch. You want me to go up there?”
/>
  “No.” When he gave her a puzzled look, she tapped her knuckles on her window. Inside the bull pen, Detective Ochoa turned from the Murder Board and came in. “I want you guys to fire up the Roach Coach for a field trip. Your partner has the details.” She watched the two of them sweep each other with side-glances.

  At last Ochoa spoke. “You think that’s a good use of our time?”

  Heat already had thought about it. She had witnessed how focusing on the search for Rook had rallied them. Another mission might be just what these two needed: a couple of hours in the car. Together. Raley and Ochoa, just like before. Before her promotion had made them competitors instead of partners, instead of Roach. “Actually, I think it’s the best use of our time.” Then she added, “I want you fellas to do what you do best. Get a sense of things, up close and personal.”

  “Oh, I get it,” said Ochoa. “This some takeaway of yours from the cyber attack? Be more hands-on?”

  “Something like that.”

  On their way out the door, Raley said, “We’re all over this. Like a seagull on a tuna boat.”

  “Careful, or I’ll make you take Rook, too,” she called after them.

  The young woman with the sad eyes said, “I’m sorry, Nikki, I truly am. You know I’d like to help you, but I can’t.” They were sitting in Lon King’s office. Correction: his former office. Josie Zenger had taken the far end of the couch and twisted to face Heat. The receptionist and office manager for the practice had avoided the shrink’s beige lounge chair on the other side of the coffee table. It remained, and would remain, empty as long as it was there, Heat thought. That was a safe assumption. King’s desktop, always uncluttered, was cleared and dusted, its contents—everything from surface knickknacks to storage drawers—had been boxed and labeled by Josie and now sat in a double row of containers under the window, every one numbered and marked. The books and awards from the shelves must have been in there, too. If it weren’t for the carpet, the room would echo.