Heat Rises nh-3

by Richard Castle

  Traffic was miserable all over the city. More people in more cars was a reliable by-product of any sort of weather, especially a bitter cold morning dipping to single digits with a swirling wind. It also made parking a challenge. The “Sorry Full” signs were out at all the NYU Med Center garages adjacent to the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner. On her cruise up First Avenue Detective Heat could see even the courtesy spots at the entrances were already taken by other cop cars. At 34th she circled back to her secret weapon, the fenced-in Bellevue Hospital lot sandwiched under the FDR. It meant a block’s walk in the arctic blast, but it was her only choice other than circling. The lot manager was too snug in his kiosk to step out when he saw her pull up. All she saw was fingers through his frosted window waving her in.

  Before she got out of her car, Heat stared at her smart phone. She scrolled through e-mails again. No, she hadn’t gotten one from Rook and missed it. Once more, she told herself, only once more. Heat pushed send/receive and watched the icon swirl. When it was done all it said was that she was still in emotional limbo.

  By the time Nikki ascended the short flight of steps into the OCME lobby, she had no feeling in her cheeks and her nose was a faucet. Behind the reception desk, Danielle gave Heat her usual sunny hello and buzzed her through the security door. When she entered the small squad room the NYPD maintained for visiting cops, three of the four cubicles were occupied by detectives speaking on phones. They had the thermostat cranked and Heat shed her overcoat. She looked at the parka mound on the back of one of the chairs and had opted for a hanger on the empty coat tree when her cell vibrated.

  The number on the ID wasn’t familiar, but the prefix was. The call was coming from One Police Plaza. In his text, Montrose had said he was at HQ. Nikki didn’t want to get into it with him while sharing such close quarters with her brother officers but figured she would at least make contact and set up their next call. “Heat,” she said.

  “Is this the famous Nikki Heat?” She didn’t know his voice, but it was all smiles and, for her taste, overblown for an opening line from a stranger.

  She adopted the neutral tone she used on telemarketers. “This is Detective Heat.”

  “Not for long, I hear,” said the caller. “Detective, it’s Zach Hamner, Senior Administrative Aide here in Legal. I’m calling to personally congratulate you on your lieutenant’s test.”

  “Oh.” She wanted to step out into the hall, but in deference to the grieving families and her own sense of decorum, Nikki maintained a strict personal policy against using her cell phone in the public areas of that building. So Heat sat in the empty chair and hunched into the cubicle, knowing it didn’t afford much privacy. “Thank you. Sorry, but you caught me a little off guard here.”

  “Not a problem. You not only scored well, Detective, but I see that your record is outstanding. We need good cops like you to rise in the department.”

  She cupped her hand around the mouthpiece. “Again, Mr. Hamner-”

  “Zach.”

  “-Zach-I appreciate the kind words.”

  “Like I said, not a problem. Listen, the reason for the call is that I want to make sure you drop by and say hello when you come downtown to sign for your copy of the results.”

  “Um, sure,” she said and then had a thought. “That’s at Personnel. You’re not from Personnel, though, are you?”

  “Oh, hell, no. I’m upstairs with the Deputy Commissioner of Legal Matters. Trust me, it all goes through my desk, anyway,” he said with an air of self-importance. “When can I expect to see you?”

  “Well, I’m at the ME’s now. I’m on a case.”

  “Right,” he said, “the priest.” The way he said it pinged Nikki with the strong impression Zach Hamner liked to show off his knowledge of everything. The guy with all the answers. The quintessential Essential Man. What did he want from her?

  She mentally rolled through her schedule. Autopsy… Montrose, hopefully… squad meeting… the rectory… “How’s tomorrow?”

  “I was hoping for today.” He paused, and when she didn’t reply to that, he continued, “I’ve got a full load tomorrow. Let’s meet early. Breakfast. You can sign docs after.” Feeling more than a little steamrolled, Heat agreed. He gave her the name of a deli on Lafayette, said he’d meet her at seven, and hung up after one more congrats.

  “Any word from the world traveler?” asked Lauren Parry. She looked up at her friend from her computer in the dictation office adjacent to the autopsy room. The ME wore the regulation protective moon suit, and, as usual, it was decorated with flecks of blood and fluid. She read Nikki’s reaction and picked up her plexi-shield mask off the chair beside her. “Sit?”

  “I’m good.” Heat, who had just put on the clean coveralls issued to visitors, leaned against the back wall of the narrow anteroom and stared through the glass at the tables lined up in front of her. The near one, Mat #8, held the sheeted body of Father Gerald Graf.

  “Liar,” said her BFF. “If that’s what good looks like, never show me bad.”

  Nikki returned her gaze to Lauren. “OK, let me amend that to say, I will be good. I guess.”

  “You’re scaring me, Nikki.”

  “All right, all right, then…” Heat filled Lauren in on her morning surprise: Rook’s triumphant return to Gotham to celebrate the completion of his assignment-a celebration that he had not included her in-and to add insult to injury, he still hadn’t even called to say he was back.

  “Ouch.” Lauren’s brow furrowed. “What do you think that’s about? You don’t think he…” She stopped herself and shook her head.

  “What?” said Nikki. “Hooked up with someone else? You can say it. Don’t you think I’ve already wondered that?” Nikki cleared away some dark thoughts. “Left long enough, you imagine all sorts of things, Laur. And then a month later you open the newspaper and see them come true.” She came off the wall and stood straight. “Enough. He’s back. We’ll sort it all out.” Her doubt was unspoken but loud. “Happy for you and Ochoa, though.”

  That brought Lauren up short. And then she smiled. Of course there was no hiding her romance from Nikki. “Yeah, it’s good with me and Miguel.”

  As they both walked to the door, Nikki said, “I could learn to hate you, you know.”

  Two other medical examiners had customers on the first and third tables and, as Nikki entered the autopsy room, she silently repeated the mantra she had learned from Lauren on her rookie visit years ago. “Breathe through your mouth, it’ll trick your brain.” And, as always, Heat thought, almost… but not quite.

  “A few hard-and-fast findings and then a few anomalies to show you,” said ME Parry as they approached Graf’s body.

  “Time of death window turns out to be as thought. Eight to ten. I’d call it closer to the late end of that.”

  “TOD could be nine-thirty?”

  “Ish.” She curled the page around the top of her clipboard, exposing supine and prone templates of a human body on which she had made notations. “Marks and indicators. Already covered the eyeballs, the neck, here and here.” She indicated each with her pen as she shared with Heat. “Multiple abrasions and contusions. Painful but none fatal. No broken bones. All pretty much consistent with the B and D experience.”

  Nikki was starting to think this may have been a session gone wild, after all, but kept her mind open.

  “Three little discoveries worth testing for any significance,” said the ME. She led Heat across the room to one of the storage cabinets. She slid the glass door aside and took one of the blue cardboard evidence buckets off the shelf. Nikki remembered how, after his first visit, Rook saw one and said he’d never buy a bucket of chicken again. Lauren took a small plastic vial out of the bucket with “GRAF” on the bar code and gave it to Nikki. “See that speck?”

  The detective held it up to the light. In the bottom of the container was a dark spot about the size of a bacon bit. “Found that under a fingernail,” Parry continued. “Under a microscope it looks
like a piece of leather, but it doesn’t match the leather on the wrist restraints or the posture collar.” She returned it to the bucket. “Gonna lab that puppy.”

  She then walked Nikki down to the dehumidifying closet where they placed victims’ clothes to dry, to preserve DNA for testing. Sheets of brown paper separated bloodstained clothes that hung there from numerous victims. At the nearest end, Heat could see Graf’s black clothing and his white Roman collar. “Funny thing about that collar. There’s a tiny bloody smear on it. Odd, considering that for all the abrasions on him, no skin was broken above his shoulders or on his hands.”

  “Right,” said Nikki considering the possibilities. “That could be blood from an assailant, or killer.”

  “Or dom or domme, who knows yet?” Lauren was right. It could have been from foul play but just as easily from a practitioner with a cut from the torture session who stashed the clothes and ran in panic. “We’ll also ship that down to Twenty-sixth Street for DNA testing.”

  Next Lauren called in one of the orderlies, who helped her roll the priest’s body on its side, exposing his back. It was a thatch-work of whip welts and bruises, the sight of which caused Nikki to draw a deep breath through her nose, which she immediately regretted. She held it together, though, and leaned close when the ME pointed to a geometric bruise pattern on the small of his back. “One of these contusions is not like the others,” said Lauren. Her eye for those details had helped Heat on numerous cases. Most recently, by spotting the marks left by a ring worn by a Russian thug who killed a famous real estate developer. This lower-back bruise was about two inches long, rectangular, and with evenly spaced horizontal lines.

  “Looks like a mark made by a small ladder,” said Heat.

  “I took some stills that I’ll e-mail you with my report.” Parry nodded to the orderly, who gently returned Graf to lie faceup and then left the room.

  “Sweet anomalies,” said Nikki.

  “Not done yet, Detective.” Lauren picked up her clipboard again. “Now, cause of death. I’m going with asphyxia by strangulation.”

  “You hesitated this morning, though,” Nikki reminded her.

  “Right. The signs were there, as I told you. The obvious being the circumstances, the leather collar, eyeball hemorrhaging, and so on. But I balked because I saw other indicators that could mean acute myocardial infarction.”

  Heat said, “The bluish color I saw near his fingertips and on his nose?”

  “Excuse me, who’s the ME here?”

  “I get the significance, though. A heart attack could eliminate homicidal intent.”

  “Well, guess what? He did have a heart attack. Turns out it wasn’t fatal, he was choked before it could be, but it was a hell of a footrace to see which would kill him first.”

  Heat looked at the sheeted corpse. “You did say you smelled cigarettes and alcohol.”

  “And his organs proved all that. But.” She gave Nikki a look of significance and raised the sheet. “Take a look at these burns on his skin. These are electrical burns. Probably from a TENS,” said Lauren, referring to a transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulator, a portable electrical generator used in torture play.

  “I’ve seen TENS,” said Nikki. “I came across them in Vice.”

  “Then you also know they warn against ever using it near the chest.” She lowered the sheet to expose Graf’s torso, where the electrical burns were intense, especially near his heart. “Looks to me like someone wanted to put a big hurt on him.”

  “The question,” said Nikki, “is why?”

  They rode up together to the first floor. Heat said, “Got a question for you. You ever seen anything like that before?”

  “TENS burns as severe as those? Not like that.” As they reached the door to the NYPD office, Lauren said, “Know who I hear had some? That actor’s kid who was always in trouble and got killed in ’04 or ’05.”

  “Gene Huddleston, Jr.?” said Nikki.

  “Yeah, him.”

  “But he was shot to death. Some drug deal, right?”

  Lauren said, “Right. It happened before I started here, but conversation was that he also had TENS burns all over. He was one wild kid. They figured it was part of his freak.”

  The NYPD office was empty. Nikki got her coat off the hook, but before she left, sat down at one of the computers. She logged on to the department server and requested a digital copy of the case file for Gene Huddleston, Jr.

  As Nikki made her way through the vestibule to the precinct lobby, a woman standing near the blue velvet rope that cordoned off the wall of honor roll photos and plaques took a step into her path. “Excuse me, Detective Heat?”

  “That’s me.” The detective stopped but made a quick check of the woman’s rising hand. Someone had decided it was open season on cops this year, even in police stations, and Heat’s natural caution kicked in. But all the woman held was a business card. It read, “Tam Svejda, Metro Reporter, New York Ledger.”

  “I was wondering if I could have a few moments to ask you a couple of questions.”

  Heat returned the reporter’s smile politely but said, “Look, I’m sorry, Ms…” She looked at the card again. Nikki had seen her name in the byline but wasn’t sure how to pronounce it.

  “Shfay-dah,” came the assist. “My dad’s Czech. Don’t feel bad, it stops everybody in their tracks. Go with Tam.” She gave Nikki a warm grin, revealing a perfect row of gleaming teeth. In fact, her whole look was one-off supermodel: highlighted blonde with a great cut, wide green eyes that showed intelligence and a hint of mischief, young enough to get away without much makeup-probably not yet thirty, tall and slender. It was a look you’d associate more with a TV reporter than the pencil press.

  “Good. All right, Tam works,” said Nikki. “But I’m just here for a minute and then I’m on my way out of here. I’m really sorry.” She took a step toward the inner doors, but Tam moved with her. She was taking out her reporter’s notebook. A spiral Ampad, same as Heat used.

  “A minute will do nicely, then I won’t keep you. Are you classifying Father Graf’s death murder or accidental?”

  “Well, I can keep this short for you, Ms. Svejda,” she said with flawless pronunciation. “It’s too early in our investigation to comment on any of that yet.”

  The reporter looked up from her notes. “A sensational murder-a parish priest gets tortured and killed in a bondage dungeon-and you really want me to go with just that? A stock ‘no comment?’ ”

  “What you print is up to you. This is a young investigation. I promise when we have something to share, we will.” Like any good interrogator, Heat found herself gaining information even when she was the one being questioned. And what she was learning from Tam Svejda’s interest in the Graf case was that Nikki wasn’t the only one who felt something more than just another homicide was going on.

  The reporter said, “Got ya,” but without missing a beat added, “Now, what can you tell me about Captain Montrose?” Heat studied her, knowing even her next “no comment” had to be carefully delivered. Tam Svejda would be writing this, not she, and Nikki didn’t want to inspire some reporter-ese about circled wagons or tight-lipped cops. At last Svejda said, “If this is uncomfortable we can go off the record. I’m just hearing a lot of not so flattering things, and if you can steer me in my investigation, you could be doing him some good.. .. If the rumors are untrue.”

  Detective Heat chose her words. “You really don’t think I’d dignify rumors, do you? I think the most productive thing I can do is to go in there and get back to my job working Father Graf so I can get you some solid information. Fair enough, Tam?”

  The reporter nodded and put her notebook away. “I must say, Detective, Jamie did you justice.” When Nikki furrowed her brow, she explained, “In your cover story, I mean. Meeting you, seeing how you handle yourself. Rook sure got you right. That’s why Jamie gets the covers and the Pulitzers.”

  “Yeah, he’s good.” Jamie, thought Nikki. She called him Ja
mie.

  “Did you see his picture in our morning edition with that piece of work, Jeanne Callow? That bad boy sure gets around, doesn’t he?”

  Nikki closed her eyes a moment and wished Tam Svejda would be gone- poof! -when she opened them. But she wasn’t. “I’m running late, Tam.”

  “Oh, you go ahead. And say hi to Jamie. If you talk to him, I mean.”

  Heat had a distinct feeling she had more in common with Tam Svejda than a reporter’s notebook. Quite possibly it was a reporter.

  When Detective Heat got back to the bull pen, Captain Montrose was slouched in his office chair with the door closed, his back to the squad, staring out his window down to West 82nd Street. He might have seen her drive into the precinct lot below him, but if he did, he made no move to greet or look for her. Nikki made a quick scan of the While You Were Outs on her blotter, saw nothing that couldn’t wait, and felt her heart race as she walked to his door. When he heard her knock on the glass, he beckoned her in without turning. Heat closed the door behind her and stood looking at the back of his head. After five eternal seconds he sat upright and swiveled in his chair to face her, as if willing himself out of some trance and down to business.

  “You’ve had quite a day already, I hear,” he said.

  “Action-packed, Skip.” He gestured to the visitor chair and she sat.

  “Wanna trade? I spent my morning wearing the dunce cap at the Puzzle Palace,” he said, using the less-than-flattering cop slang for One Police Plaza. And then he shook his head. “Sorry. I promised I wouldn’t complain, but it’s got to come out somewhere.”

  Nikki’s gaze went to the windowsill and the framed photo of him and Pauletta. That was when she realized Montrose hadn’t been staring out the window but at the picture. It had been almost a year since a drunk driver killed her in a crosswalk. The pain of his loss was borne stoically, but the toll was written on his face. Suddenly Nikki wished she hadn’t initiated this meeting. But she already had.