Raging Heat

by Richard Castle

  Across the room, Detective Rhymer stepped through the glass doors accompanied by two uniformed policewomen escorting Alicia Delamater. His spurned mistress gave him a hard glare that he broke off to sweep the area. All he saw were too many underlings. And press.

  “Not in here.”

  “No,” said Rook. “You can’t have a situation in the situation room.” And then, to explain, “Strangelove. The movie, not you and Alicia.”

  Gilbert put a hand on the shoulder of a woman who wore a headset. “Josephine, take over for a few, OK?” Then he turned back to Heat. “There’s a more private room.”

  Nikki said, “I know.”

  Keith Gilbert speed walked to a side door then up a short corridor as if he could, through swiftness, shake the police and the ex. But when he opened the door to the conference room he lurched to a halt. Because inside, Nikki Heat had arranged a tableau to greet him. Detectives Raley and Ochoa had entered moments before to set up the monitors and audio playback in the high-tech boardroom, and stood with arms folded. At the far end of the long mahogany table sat a pair of urban mercenaries in orange, flanked by standees Randall Feller, plus two uniformed NYPD officers holding M16s pointed to the floor. It wasn’t lost on Heat that they were guarding the very man who had put the mourning bands on their badges.

  The dumbfounded commissioner remained in the doorway as Detective Rhymer, Alicia Delamater, and Rook filed in. Gilbert turned to the aide at his elbow and said, “Get Lohman.”

  “Good idea,” said Heat. She gestured to the chair of honor and closed the door when Gilbert sat on the edge of the cushion, not quite ready to lounge back in the command pose he customarily adopted on that leather throne. “I’d want Frederic Lohman, too. I’d want the whole Dream Team. My guess is that it will take your lawyers a bit of time to get here. But look who I’m talking to. You’ve got all the latest data, so you know they’re a long way off.” His expression changed as if solving a puzzle and he started to rise. “And if you try to leave, we can always conduct this out there.”

  “That’d make some campaign ad,” said Rook.

  The commish sat down. Detective Heat left her spot by the door. “Alicia, I want to thank you for coming.”

  “Like I had a choice when your detective and those other two showed up at my hotel this morning.” She indicated the policewomen whose backs were visible through the glass as they stood sentry outside.

  “Legally, you could have refused,” said Gilbert. It sounded like parental disapproval wrapped in a scold.

  “Yeah? Well maybe I’m glad I’m here.”

  Perfect, thought Heat. Just what she’d counted on. Animosity, still raw and smarting. Once she knew Delamater had hidden the gun, Nikki hoped Alicia would still be pissed enough to give up her old flame as Beauvais’s shooter. Especially in exchange for dropping charges on illegal possession of a firearm. Get ’em while they’re hot, thought Nikki. She set a clear plastic evidence bag containing the Ruger on the table. Both Gilbert and Delamater went a shade paler.

  Alicia whispered an “Oh my God.…”

  “Where’d you find that?” said Gilbert as he cleared some phlegm. “Certainly not at my house.” So this is how bad it gets when it goes bad, thought Heat. If there had been a bus in that room, Ms. Delamater would be wearing tread marks. But then, Nikki—and everyone—got a surprise. Everyone, that is, except Keith Gilbert.

  “Oh.…” Alicia’s mouth quivered as she lost her words.

  Gilbert tried to shut her up. “Alicia. Stop. Right there.” To Nikki’s dismay, the lost woman responded to being directed, and began to consider his instructions. She might have just done that, stopped and asked for a lawyer. Except Keith had to add one more thing. “I’m serious, bitch. You’ve fucked up enough already.”

  Alicia reacted with a small jolt, as if slapped by an invisible hand. Then a resolve came over her and she rotated her head to Heat. “I was there that night.”

  “At Conscience Point?” Nikki gave her a sympathetic face to counter Gilbert’s bullying. “It’s OK, let it out, Alicia.” Rook offered a handkerchief from his pocket, which Delamater took without noticing, and dabbed her eyes.

  “Yes. I was there for his meeting—”

  “Alicia.”

  “No, I want to say this.” Her stance was so firm, it went beyond plea bargains or concerns about hiding a gun. “I was at Conscience Point for his meeting with Fabian.”

  “Beauvais?” asked Nikki for the record.

  “Right. Keith told me about the blackmail. I didn’t know what it was about, just that Fabian was putting the screws to him about some shit he’d dug up, and he wanted hush money.”

  Heat gave Gilbert a preemptive glance and said to her, “You’re doing fine, keep going. You followed him in your car?”

  “No.” Nikki, Rook, and the other detectives flicked eyes at one another. This was veering from the scenario they had painted. “I was already there. Waiting.”

  “Alicia, I’m pleading with you, you don’t have to do this.”

  “Mr. Gilbert, let her speak.” Heat went back to her. “Alicia, why were you there waiting?”

  “Because I had the gun.”

  That surprise sent more furtive looks around the table. “You brought the gun for Mr. Gilbert?” asked Heat.

  “No, he didn’t even know I’d be there.”

  “Why don’t you just tell me what happened.”

  Delamater nodded. Done with tears, a resolve had come to her as if this was her pivotal moment to say what she needed to, or regret it every eternal dawn of her life. “I knew he was meeting Fabian, so I got there early. I parked on the lawn behind the marina offices so they wouldn’t see my car and waited in the dark under the stairs.

  “Fabian got there first, about a half hour before he said. He sat across the parking lot on the steps of the rec center like he told Keith he would.” She tilted her head Gilbert’s way. “When Keith pulled up and got out with the money, ten thousand, I think it was, and Fabian came forward…I stepped out and fired.”

  “Oh, Alicia, don’t,” moaned Gilbert.

  Heat asked, “How many shots?”

  “Two. It was dark. I was nervous, and I missed. Fabian ran. Keith yelled at me.” She mimicked him disparagingly, “‘What the fuck did you do?’ then he drove off to catch him. But he got away.” That made sense to Heat, and would explain the second car the Conscience Point resident had heard speeding off. It was Alicia Delamater’s.

  A troubled silence hung in the room. Even the hardened prisoners at the other end of the table seemed riveted. But the same way something noisy refuses to get ground in the garbage disposal, elements of this story felt way off to Heat. It was out of whack enough that she wondered if this was some fabrication the two had cooked up. Didn’t Beauvais say Gilbert shot him? But then again, Heat could understand how darkness and surprise might have led him to that assumption. She’d known seasoned cops to get it wrong in the fog of war. Nikki wished she had more time to reflect, but concern that Delamater would lose her impulse to unload her soul forced her to take a leap and trust her instincts.

  “There’s something I don’t understand,” said Nikki. “Why in the world would you do something as drastic as that?”

  Gilbert jumped in. “Are you listening? The guy was shaking me down.”

  Heat ignored him and persisted. “Killing someone—with such premeditation. That is big. You would have to have a very strong reason.” She avoided the word motive. No sense sobering her with legalities. Alicia didn’t answer, just panted as if steeling herself for the next round.

  In that interval, another piece of story grit rejected itself, and Nikki addressed it. “Also, can you help me with this? If you did go there with the intent to kill Fabian Beauvais, why didn’t you just do it when he got there early?”

  “Jesus fucking Christ. It was all to protect me, don
’t you get it?”

  “You egotistical son of a bitch!” blurted Alicia. “I wasn’t trying to protect you. I was trying to kill you.” Heat had certainly figured Delamater to have been part of the incident in that marina parking lot. But as an eyewitness, at best; an accessory, at worst. Shooting the gun, and not just hiding it, was bombshell enough. But this. This was a twist even Heat had not seen coming. From his face, neither had Keith Gilbert.

  “Fuck it. If I’m getting arrested for shooting at someone, at least it’s going to be for the right person.” Alicia continued to rail, imploring Heat to understand, “Keith and I reconciled after the restraining order. At least I thought we had. But then he cut me off when he officially decided to run for senator. Then he called me that thing again.” Nikki silently pronounced the words as Delamater said them aloud. “A political liability.”

  “Leesh,” said Gilbert in a bedroom voice, “we don’t need to—”

  “Suddenly, I’m fucking off the boat.” Alicia clapped her hands together. “Just like that.”

  Rook jumped into the conversation. “So you used the payoff as a setup to kill Keith and make it look like Beauvais did it?” He turned to Nikki. “Sorry, I just kinda got caught up in this.”

  Heat said, “Was that the idea, Alicia?” And when she nodded, Nikki asked, “And you wounded Fabian by accident, or were you going to kill him, too?”

  “I didn’t need to kill him. Who’d believe him? I mean, come on.” The ugliness of the statement matched the actions.

  “Alicia, Goddamn it, I helped you.”

  “You helped yourself, as usual. You weren’t protecting me. You kept quiet because if it ever got out what happened, all the questions would hurt your stupid campaign. So don’t fucking insult me.”

  Stunning as it was, this version worked for Heat. She could even picture how Alicia got the Ruger. Back when Detective Aguinaldo responded to the prowler call at Cosmo, and Gilbert had his gun out, Delamater was there. Which made it feasible that she not only knew he kept the .38 locked in a desk, but she saw him get the key from the cabinet. Sneaking onto the property weeks later to get it would have been no problem. Even Topper the guard dog wouldn’t stop Alicia because he knew her.

  The pragmatist in the commissioner weighed in. “Detective, I think what’s happened here is that I am now exonerated from any wrongdoing in the shooting of this illegal. In fact, I’m technically the victim, aren’t I?”

  But the wounding of Beauvais represented only one piece of the entire case jigsaw, and Heat moved forward to the next. “Except with Fabian Beauvais running around as a loose end, you had to do something about that.” Heat’s attention turned to Zarek Braun and Seth Victor, who remained stoic. “Am I right?”

  “Bullshit.” Gilbert flung a hand in the direction of the prisoners. “Why are these guys here, anyway?”

  “Are you saying you don’t know them?” asked Heat.

  “Nope. Don’t.”

  “Are you certain?”

  Gilbert leaned toward them and glowered. “I have never seen them before this moment.”

  Nikki moved on. All things in time. “What was Fabian Beauvais’s shakedown about?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “Mr. Gilbert, we know that a complaint got called in to the Midtown North Precinct by your security at your corporate office building when your extortionist, Fabian Beauvais, was seen trespassing.”

  “Trivia like that wouldn’t come to my attention.”

  “I expect not. But the reason for his trespassing was that he routinely stole documents for use in ID theft and fraud. I want to know what he scored that made you want to pay him off, and when that failed, to kill him.”

  “You’re back where you were, Heat, clutching at straws.”

  Watching Keith Gilbert rock back in his executive chair, the picture of confidence and self-possession, sage words reverberated from her past—the wisdom of her beloved mentor, Captain Charles Montrose, who once said, “Nikki, never underestimate the ability of the devils among us to see only the saints in themselves. How else could they go about their day?” Heat decided it was time to hold up a mirror.

  “Fabian Beauvais was planning to get married. His fiancée’s name was Jeanne Capois. She’s dead now. Murdered.” Nikki briefly took in Zarek Braun. The man in charge of that killing registered nothing. “But before she died—and, probably why she died—Jeanne sat for some interviews with a documentary filmmaker. She had some interesting revelations.”

  Detective Raley started the video selects he had copied to the thumb drive. The beauty of Opal Onishi’s interview technique was that it required no setup. Even edited down to four minutes of essentials, Jeanne Capois’s story was self-contained. Her lovely image filled the flat screen and, thus, the entire conference room as she recounted the journey she and Fabian had made from Haiti to America by way of the filthy, crowded, suffocating hold of a cargo vessel.

  The core of her narration spoke of hopes raised, then dashed, then crushed over weeks that turned into months of squalid living conditions, debasement, and cruelty from their various overseers before landing in New York for hopeless days and nights of soul-robbing labor in exchange for a shitty meal and a putrid mattress in a locked room. “At first, I always asked the others,” she said, “‘Why don’t you run?’ and they would all say the same: ‘Even if we could get away, where would we go?’” Their bondage came from deadbolts and violence, for sure. But penniless foreigners, illegals in a strange land with no connections, were doubly captive.

  “Fabian said he would make us free, and I believed him. My Fabby, he has intelligence and courage. So we did our labor. And we kept doing it, waiting for our chance. I was afraid they would put me into prostitution like the other girls, but they kept me in the entrepôt—the, um, warehouse—sorting papers and putting the tiny shred pieces together to make documents. I was worth more than sex work because I could read.

  “We did that all last year. Then Fabian—he’s so smart—he got trusted with an outside job. With one of the crews that harvested paper from trash at office buildings. So he did that and then somehow got a side job butchering chickens to make enough to get us away. We have no money, though. I clean an apartment for a nice old man But my fiancé, he says he found out a way to make a big lot of money to get us home to Port-au-Prince and have our lives back.

  “From anyone else, I would say big talk. But Fabian is smart and has that courage. He said he knows who runs the boats that brought us all here, and he is going to make him pay for him not to go to the police. He found out he is a powerful, rich man named Keith Gilbert. I hope Fabian knows what he is doing. Sometimes, I think he is too smart.” Her chuckle was the last thing on the screen before it went blank.

  When all eyes in the room went from the flat screen to Gilbert, he dismissed their stares. Alicia’s especially bored into him in disgust.

  “Oh come on, are you serious? I deny that.”

  “It’s from the mouth of one of your human traffic victims,” said Rook.

  “You print that, I’ll sue.” He turned to Heat. “You try to take that to court, you’ll get laughed out. It’s hearsay. Reality-show theater. Where’s the proof? It can’t be substantiated.”

  “What if it could be?” asked Alicia. His head whipped toward her, but she was leaning the other way, sober faced, to address Heat.

  “If it could be, that would be important,” said Nikki.

  “Let’s talk about this then. I’m in trouble, I know it. I didn’t kill anyone. I’m so sorry I hurt that man, but I didn’t kill him, did I?”

  Nikki had been in these conversations so often, she could lip-synch them. So she began. “Are you saying you want some kind of deal?”

  “If I told you what Fabian was blackmailing him with, would that be worth something?”

  “Do you know what it was?”

  “
She doesn’t. This is bullshit.”

  “Would it help? What if I said I knew where the documents were?”

  Heat said to Alicia, “Ms. Delamater, if you have material evidence to lead to an arrest and conviction in this case, I will offer you a deal.”

  “What kind?”

  “Fuck you both.”

  “I will personally speak to the DA about making the most liberal deal possible. I can’t promise you what, but I can promise it will be the best they can do.”

  They waited as Alicia, the cast out mistress and political liability, weighed all that. “They were shipping manifests.” She fixed an icy grin on her ex-boyfriend, who rolled his eyes. “Shipping manifests, including names of men, women, and children I realize now must have been slaves, or whatever you’d call them.” Gilbert dismissed her with a loud exhale, but she went on. “There is also accounting of how much was paid per unit. That must mean people.”

  “You’re guessing.”

  Unfazed by him, no longer under his thumb, Alicia continued. “There was more. Not only manifests but an accounting printout of bank transfers going back over nine years. I spent a whole weekend reading them after you shut me out, Keith.”

  “What kinds of transfers were they?” asked Heat.

  “They all came out of the big fund generated by moving the units. Units, God, that’s sick. But the payouts were a million here, a half mill there—millions and millions over time to accounts with weird names. Let me think. Most of the payments went to one called Framers Foremost.”

  “Alicia,” snapped Gilbert.

  “Framers Foremost?” said Rook. “That’s a super PAC named after the framers of the Constitution. They’re a clearinghouse that bankrolls political candidates.” He turned to Gilbert. “So that’s it. You were using your ships for human trafficking so you could generate income off the books to launder into a political war chest. Brilliant!”

  And then Rook realized what he had said. “I mean, in a completely evil-genius sort of way. Ah…Heat?”

  “Is that why you were doing all this, Mr. Gilbert? To skirt election laws to launder your campaign funds as soft money to PACs?”