Deadly Heat

by Richard Castle

  “Tell me this really didn’t happen,” said Rook. “You let a serial killer touch my pillow?”

  Heat laughed for the first time in days. When her laughter choked in her throat and she stifled tears, he held her, and Nikki let herself fold into him, wrapping her long arms around his back and pressing a cheek against his chest just for the grace of hearing a loving heart.

  A throat cleared behind them. Benigno DeJesus, from the evidence collection team, stood in her open apartment doorway. Behind him waited his crew, also suited up in lab coveralls, footies, gloves, scrub hats, and masks. Rook said, “Love the costumes, kids, but the last trick-or-treaters got all the gummy bears.”

  DeJesus hadn’t pulled his mask up yet, but even that wouldn’t hide the grimness he exuded because of the nature of this visit. He greeted Nikki warmly, although they didn’t even attempt to shake, each being an old pro at the contamination drill. “I’m glad it’s you,” Heat said, and not for the first time. She’d never worked with a better forensics detective than Benigno, and had requested him when she put in the call.

  “Let’s start by hearing about your night.” He hauled a grid-ruled pad out and made a quick, expert sketch of the hall, living room, and kitchen. “Tell me everywhere you went and anything you touched, however trivial, from when you got home until now.”

  She gave Detective DeJesus the narrated tour, awkward about having the witness shoe on her foot for a change. He made occasional marks on the pad, and when they had finished with the bedroom, including reference photos of the string, which still topped the pillowcase, he asked her if she noticed anything out of place. “That includes before or after you arrived.”

  “Before?” asked Rook. Then it sunk in. “Holy shit…” The possibility dawned on him, as it had on Nikki upon discovery of the string, that Rainbow might have been in the apartment, hiding, when she got home with her Duke’s takeout and waited for her to go to bed, even placing his call from a closet or the bathroom.

  “Nothing caught my attention before,” she said. “And this morning, except for my security cam being disabled—which was the first thing I checked on—nothing. Absolutely no disturbances.”

  “If there’s anything to be found, we’ll find it.” And they both knew that was bankable. Heat and Rook left for the precinct while the evidence techs got to work. Nikki paused in the hall for a parting glance into her apartment, imagining the serial killer roaming those floors while she slept. When they got on the elevator, she told Rook now she knew what people meant when they said they felt as if someone had walked across their grave.

  Rook pushed the lobby button. “Let’s walk on his instead.”

  Some wiseasses must have raided the precinct’s emergency supply closet, because when Heat and Rook stepped into the bull pen, every detective sat hunched over a desk with a head on a pillow. Their gallows humor felt warmer than any hug they could have given Nikki. It called for a like response.

  “Just as I thought. Killers are out there roaming free because you’re all sleeping on the job.” To signal the transition from play to work, she brought her latte up front without bothering to stop at her desk, and they all gathered for the morning debrief. Joke enjoyed; joke over.

  “Obviously we have some Rainbow discussion on our agenda,” she began while they slid their chairs around the Murder Boards. “But first, a follow-up about the bomb at Tyler Wynn’s. Detective Hinesburg, did you connect with the bomb squad and Forensics?”

  The detective’s face blanched. “Uh…”

  “Not filling me with confidence, Sharon.”

  “No, no, I did talk to them,” she said, reaching to the floor and into her enormous purse. “You just caught me off guard and I wasn’t sure I had my notes.”

  Heat waited for her to come up with her spiral pad. “And you were going to ask whether the trigger for the device was a timer or remote.”

  “Timer,” she said without opening her notebook after all.

  “Thank you.” Nikki posted that on the Tyler Wynn section, then rolled that board aside. As Raley and Rhymer wheeled the serial killer boards in to replace it, Heat gave her squad the details of the call from Rainbow and of the creeping of her bedroom. “The hard drive connected to the lipstick cam above my front door is gone, and my building super did not let anyone in.”

  “Dude’s putting it in your face,” said Ochoa.

  Detective Feller made a pistol of his fingers. “I’d like to put one in his.”

  Moving things forward, Nikki said, “In case anyone hasn’t noticed, he didn’t kill me when he had ample opportunity. I say Rainbow is strongly motivated by his head games.”

  “He’s competing. Wants to prove he’s smarter than the famous Detective Heat.” When Malcolm said that, alluding to her celebrity, Heat exchanged a short glance with Rook. “Probably gets off on it. If he outsmarts you…” The detective realized where that thought led and stopped there, finishing with a “Sorry.”

  “No worries, Mal,” said Heat. “I think we all know the stakes.”

  “And look how he’s just taunting you,” Detective Reynolds said, arching an indignant brow. “I mean even those mismatched socks on Joe Flynn? The odd socks?”

  “Yeah, we all sort of got that. The price of having your life appear in print.” Nikki didn’t peek to Rook that time. She turned to Feller. “Randall, any idea yet how he managed to find out Joe Flynn had a connection to me?”

  “Not yet. Working it, though.”

  Raley said, “This Rainbow must be some kind of evil genius. I mean what sort of brainiac could make all those links from Conklin all the way to you?”

  “I don’t think he did,” answered Rook.

  “Uh, Mr. Pulitzer?” said Malcolm. “I believe the strings say otherwise.”

  “It depends on what end you’re looking at, doesn’t it?” Rook moved to the Murder Boards. “Sometimes when I played Six Degrees of Marsha Mason, I’d cheat. I’m not proud of that, but I did. And when I cheated, know how I did? I didn’t pick a celebrity and work my way up to Marsha Mason. I started with Marsha Mason and worked backwards.” He paused and could see they were starting to follow. “Rainbow knew he wanted to match wits with Detective Heat all along, so he started with her and drew his links the other way.” To illustrate, he pointed at Nikki, then to each victim, but in reverse this time. “From Heat to Flynn to Bedbug Doug to Berkowitz and Conklin… it gets easier when you work backwards. By the time you get to Conklin, he’s almost a random choice.”

  Rhymer said, “But not so random. Take a look. From Conklin to Flynn, every person on that board, without exception, is some kind of investigator. Restaurants, consumer watchdog, art recovery… This guy has a thing for targeting inspectors. Maybe to show he’s smarter.”

  “That makes sense, homes, it does,” said Ochoa. “But I don’t care how smart he thinks he is. We keep digging, we’re going to find out where he fucked up and nail his ass.”

  “I’ll tell you where he messed up,” said Heat. “Coming after me.”

  After the squad broke up to jump on its assignments, Nikki quietly put in two calls: one to Bridgeport, Connecticut, the other to Providence, Rhode Island. The lead detectives in each department had the same reaction when she spoke to them. Chagrin that they had never put it together that the serial killer’s victims had been inspectors of various types. From insurance claims adjustors to an HR administrator who did background checks, they all fit the profile. The homicide detective in Providence said, “What’s this guy trying to do? Prove he can outsmart Sherlock Holmes?”

  Captain Irons rolled in mid-morning from his weekly CompStat meeting down at 1PP. The CompStat sessions were an accountability ritual during which the city’s precinct commanders presented their crime statistics to NYPD commissioners, then got publicly maligned, cajoled, and scoffed at before their peers. As harrowing a process as it could be, the Iron Man came from administration, not the street, so Wally generally survived the Police Plaza gauntlet, because the game pl
ayed to his only strength, looking good on paper.

  Nikki watched him drop his briefcase and doff his coat, knowing it would be a matter of minutes before he saw the report of her night visit from Rainbow. She found Rook fridge surfing in the kitchenette and asked, “Want to take a ride to the coroner’s?”

  He turned and grinned. “Shotgun.”

  They crossed Central Park on the 81st Street transverse, only to endure the cross-town crunch. “Where are we with Puzzle Man?” she asked.

  “Haven’t heard.”

  “Shouldn’t you check in?”

  “You don’t push Puzzle Man.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t want to find out,” said Rook. “Puzzle Man… he’s such an enigma.”

  Shortly after Nikki cranked the turn south on Second Avenue, her phone rang and she popped in her earbud. “My DHS conference call,” she told Rook. “Be quiet and don’t make me laugh.”

  “Heat? Bart Callan. We’re patching in Agent Bell.”

  “I’m on,” said Yardley, sounding crisp, even for her.

  Callan began, “This will be brief. Consider it a gentle heads-up for you about team protocol.”

  Nikki felt her pulse elevate and wondered if she should pull over for this. “OK…”

  “Vaja Nikoladze,” said Bell. “You were explicitly embargoed from contact and yet, what did you do? Made contact.”

  “He called to complain. Now, we can call this a mulligan,” said Agent Callan, either trying to keep things from boiling over or to play Good Agent to her Bad Agent, who could tell? “Maybe you’re used to a structure that’s a little more elastic—”

  “Oh, grow a pair and cut the shit, Bart,” snapped Yardley. “Heat, you are not, repeat not, to fly against a directive again. Once more, and we freeze you out like January in Adak. Clear? Good. I’m off this call.”

  “Awkward,” said Agent Callan. “But don’t invest personally. Let’s just stay in step moving forward, all right?”

  But Heat had already hung up. She flung her earpiece at the dashboard and seethed.

  “Problem, Detective?” said Rook.

  Nikki whipped her head to him. “Your girlfriend, Writer Boy.”

  “Do I have to sit in your hallway with a shotgun all night?” asked Lauren Parry when Heat entered the little side office outside the autopsy room. “Because if you won’t get yourself a protection detail, that’s what I’m going to do.”

  “I keep telling her, Doc,” added Rook as he slipped in.

  Nikki said, “You talked to Miguel, didn’t you?”

  “Damn straight I talked to Miguel. And the handsome and tasteful Detective Ochoa and I agree you are crazy for not getting some firepower on your back, girl. That’s because we have, what? Common sense.” Heat wondered if there existed a single space in all of Manhattan where she could find peace that morning. Dr. Parry must have read her stress level because she notched back the pitch. “All right then, I’ve had my say. Now let’s move on to a more pleasant subject, the new autopsy I did on Ari Weiss.” She pointed through the window into B-23, the basement autopsy room.

  “He’s here?” asked Rook. “I’ve never seen an exhumed body. Can I see?” He didn’t wait for permission but rushed up to the glass.

  Lauren smiled. “I’ve seen four-year-olds do this at the car wash, but that’s a first here.”

  The supine corpse of a man occupied the nearest table. Rook turned back to the ME. “I was hoping for something more gross.”

  “Then come back in fifty years. A body that’s been hermetically sealed in a good casket in a dry environment will be well preserved.”

  “Even after eleven years?”

  “Even after eleven years.”

  “You’re no fun,” said Rook.

  In contemplative silence Nikki stared through the window at the body of Tyler Wynn’s former associate. The man her mother had been grooming as an informant and who—much too coincidentally to suit Heat—died shortly after she did. “Have you got a confirmation of Weiss’s blood disorder?” she asked Lauren.

  “The babesiosis? We could wait for the lab or I could tell you my guess right now. Let me show you why I asked you to come down.”

  They suited up and followed the medical examiner into the big room. As they got closer, they could see that, although it had begun to skeletonize in places and showed a bit of tissue decomposition, the body remained remarkably intact. “You know me,” said Lauren, “I’m never one to go out on a limb without test results.”

  Heat said, “Yes, but you do love to milk every bit of suspense you can out of something.”

  Even behind her mask, they could tell the ME was smiling. “It’s people. I just love live people.”

  “Consider us sufficiently tantalized,” said Heat.

  “Fine. I predict the lab report will say Ari Weiss did not die of blood disease, but from blood… loss.” With a flourish, Parry snapped the sheet covering Weiss’s torso. When Nikki saw the large stab wound, it took her back to her mother’s own knifing, and the implications hit her with a rush.

  They hit Rook, too, but he was slightly more demonstrative. “Best. Exhumation. Ever.”

  The Caller ID on Nikki’s cell phone displayed “WHNY TV.” She slid into the driver’s seat outside OCME and held the phone up to Rook. “Not sure I want this.”

  “I’d take it. I believe Channel 3 does its Dialing for Dollars contest about now between Grace Under Fire reruns. You could win cash and valuable prizes from their proud sponsors.”

  Figuring she’d have to deal with the interview request sooner or later, Heat pressed Accept. “Detective, it’s George Putnam,” said the Channel 3 news director. “You know that little stunt you pulled the other night, hijacking Greer Baxter’s segment?”

  “Listen, Mr. Putnam,” said Nikki, as she keyed the ignition and gestured for Rook to buckle up, “I’m not going to apologize for using the media to aid an investigation.”

  “I’m not looking for an apology. I’m calling because someone responded to your plea. He doesn’t sound like a crank, and he says it’s urgent. Hold on, I’m conferencing him in.” After the briefest pause, Putnam said, “You’re on with Detective Heat. Tell her what you told me.”

  The man’s voice sounded subdued, just above a whisper. “Hey, I can’t talk too loud. She’s here.”

  “Who?” asked Heat, unconsciously lowering her tone to match his.

  “The lady whose picture you showed on TV. I’m manager at Surety Rent-a-Car on Fulton. She’s at the counter now.”

  Heat checked over her shoulder and gunned the car out into traffic. “You sure it’s her?”

  “No. But it sure looks like her.”

  “What’s she doing?”

  “Asking to rent a truck.”

  In spite of the gymnastics required to access on- and off-ramps, the FDR won the toss for fastest route from Kips Bay to Lower Manhattan. Heat figured whatever time she lost in backtracking to get on and off the highway, she more than made up for by circumventing the one-ways and surface snarls.

  She pushed it, racing there Code Three, to the delight of her ride-along journalist. When they passed the South Street Seaport to turn up Fulton, Heat killed the siren so—if the woman really was Salena Kaye—they wouldn’t tip her off to their arrival. While Nikki concentrated on her wheel work, she handed Rook the phone to speed-dial Bart Callan at Homeland Security, who put out the call to his agents to meet and intercept.

  Rook spotted the Surety Rent-a-Car sign ahead on the right, adjacent to an underground parking garage. “I’m serious,” said Heat, “stay with the car.” With that she notched it in park and hopped out right in the middle of the street, leaving the engine running and the gumball flashing as she jogged two doors up the sidewalk and into the garage entrance with her hand on her hip.

  An Asian man in a long-sleeved shirt and a tie pushed open the glass door to the rental office as Heat approached. “Detective, that way. She saw you.” He pointed urgently
into an alcove of putty-colored cinder block in the corner of the garage, where a motorized overhead wheel spun, feeding a bright yellow upright conveyor belt down a three-foot hole in the concrete floor. Heat paused.

  A man lift.

  She had seen these things before; man lifts were in use all over the city at construction sites and parking garages. She’d never been on one and had never hoped to be. Not since she was a uniform and had to guard the remains of the parking attendant who fell off one. What she really remembered was the poor guy’s elongated blood smear circulating on the continuous-loop belt until somebody turned it off.

  Nikki checked the street, hoping to see some DHS backup. Then she addressed the man lift. The next toe-step fed by. She grabbed the guard handle, and got on.

  Falling didn’t worry her as much as the vulnerability. Disappearing down a hole in the floor was one thing. Riding feet first through a hole in the ceiling to the level below with your back exposed to an open garage made you a sitting—or hanging—duck. So Heat flouted OSHA safety rules and one-handed the grip, turned out from the belt instead of facing it, and held her Sig in the free hand. Heat hopped off on Level 2, found cover behind a metal trash can, and scanned the line of parked rentals under the humming fluorescents.

  Out on Fulton, horns blasted. Rook accepted car horns as just the brass section of the New York soundtrack, but when he turned and saw the long line jammed by Heat’s hasty parking job, he got out, waved to the queue as he came around the trunk, and got in the open driver’s side door. “Technically, I am still in the car.” He put the transmission in drive and eased the Crown Victoria to the side, still double-parked, but leaving sufficient room for others to pass.

  Before Heat made a move, she looked up. The last time she’d found herself in a parking structure with Salena Kaye, she’d dropped on Nikki from above. Know your enemy, she thought, then crept forward, easing the soles of her shoes on the concrete, both to hear better and not to be heard as she ducked down to see under the cars.

  A sound.

  One tiny piece of grit, cracking under a shoe.