Heat Rises nh-3

by Richard Castle

  Nikki told her anything was possible and asked if she would write down a list of all the videos she could recall, just for a complete record or in case, by some unlikely chance, any of them showed up in someone’s possession or at a flea market.

  The crew from the Evidence Collection Unit was nearly done upstairs, and so the three of them were able to go through the whole house, except for the attic, where the ECU was still at work. One of Detective Hinesburg’s observations had been correct, and that was that Mrs. Borelli was a housekeeper who took her job as a mission. She knew where everything went because she was the one who put it there and made sure it stayed clean, dusted, and in place. The anomalies were subtle and would have been lost on the casual visitor. But for the woman who went so far as to square the edges of stacked undershirts in bureau drawers and to align gleaming shoes on the closet floor, with tassels front, any disturbance was a Disturbance in the Force. With the guidance of her schooled eye, it was clear to Detective Heat that someone had definitely given the rectory a once-over. And that with the low degree of disruption to the house, it sure felt like a professional job.

  That opened a whole new front. It certainly cast major doubt that the death of the priest had been a dominance session gone awry. Nikki knew better than to get ahead of the investigation, but the whole torture thing, combined with a search of the rectory, was pointing less toward a sexual proclivity and more toward someone trying to find something out. But what?

  And what was Captain Montrose’s search about the night before?

  Heat met up with the lead ECU detective, Benigno DeJesus, coming out of Father Graf’s bathroom, where he had just logged and bagged meds from the cabinet. He recapped his findings, which corresponded to Mrs. Borelli’s: the missing videos, moved clothing, doors slightly ajar, and the absent holy medal. “Something else we found,” said DeJesus. Atop the priest’s dresser he indicated the dark brown velvet box, hinged open to expose the tan satin liner.

  “This where the St. Christopher was?” asked Nikki.

  “Yes,” said Mrs. Borelli from behind her. “It meant so much to Father.”

  The ECU detective lifted the empty box off the dresser. “Got something a little unusual.” Heat knew and liked Detective DeJesus and had worked scenes with him often enough to read his understatement. When Benigno said something was a little unusual, it was time to pay attention to Benigno. “Underneath the doily.” And when Heat hesitated, he added, “It’s OK, I’ve dusted, logged, and photographed.”

  Nikki lifted the lace runner that covered the bureau top. There was a small scrap of paper under it, right under the spot where the St. Christopher’s case had been resting. DeJesus tweezed the strip and held it up for her to read. It was a handwritten phone number. Heat asked, “Mrs. Borelli, are you familiar with this number?”

  The ECU man slipped the paper into a clear plastic evidence pouch and laid it on his open palm for her to see. She shook her head. “What about the handwriting,” asked Heat, “do you recognize it?”

  “You mean is it Father Graf’s? No. And it’s not mine. I don’t know this writing.”

  Heat was jotting the phone number onto her spiral when one of the other ECU techs appeared in the doorway and nodded to DeJesus. He excused himself to the hall and reappeared shortly. “Detective Heat? A moment?”

  The attic had one of those pull-down wooden staircases that tele scoped into the ceiling. Nikki ascended it into the loft where DeJesus and the technician who had summoned him were crouched in a pool of portable light beside an old mini-fridge. They parted to give her a view as she joined them. The tech said, “I noticed the dust pattern on the floor indicated this had been opened recently, but it’s not plugged in.” She looked inside and saw three square holiday cookie tins stacked on the white wire shelves.

  DeJesus snapped open the lid of the top one for her. It was filled with envelopes. The ECU detective took one out for her to examine. Like all the others, it was a parish collection envelope. And it was filled with cash.

  Benigno said, “This might be worth some study.”

  At the end of the day Detective Heat gathered her squad in the bull pen for an update of the Murder Board. It was a ritual that served not only as a chance for her to recap information, but also as an opportunity for Nikki and her crew to bounce theories.

  She had already logged Father Graf’s moves on the timeline, including the notation of the unaccounted for hours the day preceding and the day of his disappearance. “There’s nothing on his calendar that helps. If we had his wallet, we could run his MetroCard to see what subway stops he made, but that’s still missing.”

  “What about e-mails?” said Ochoa.

  “Right there with you,” said Heat. “Soon as Forensics finishes with his computer, why don’t you pick it up and start reading? You know everything to look for, don’t need to tell you.” She tried not to let her gaze sweep to Hinesburg, but she did, and registered the pissy look before turning her back to print “Graf’s e-mails” on the board.

  Raley made his report. At Heat’s direction, he had gone to Pleasure Bound to show copies of the stills to Roxanne Paltz, who made ID of the three dommes who worked there, two past and one present. As for the men, the manager either didn’t know or wouldn’t say. Afterward, on his own initiative, Detective Raley had walked the area near the underground dungeon, flashing the stills at local retail shops and to doormen. “I didn’t get any hits,” he said, “but I may have gotten a nice case of frostbite. Windchill’s down below zero today.”

  The canvass of Dungeon Alley had also come up empty. Detectives Ochoa, Rhymer, and Gallagher covered the main BDSM clubs stretching about twenty blocks from Midtown to Chelsea, and none of the workers or guests they encountered said they recognized the photo of the priest. Detective Rhymer said, “It could mean someone’s lying or it could mean Graf was discreet.”

  “Or he wasn’t in the lifestyle,” said Gallagher.

  “Or,” added Nikki, “we haven’t talked to the right person yet.” She told them about the slip of paper that was hidden under the lace runner. “We ran a check on the phone number. It was for a male strip club.”

  “Male strip club? Who did you run the check with-Rhymer?” When the laughs died out Ochoa continued, “You deny it, Opie, but it’s always the wholesome ones.”

  Raley chimed in. “Don’t listen to him, Opie. Miguel’s just mad ’cause you only put a buck in his thong last time.”

  Heat declared that since Raley and Ochoa seemed the most knowledgeable, they could have the detail of going to the strip club to show Graf’s picture. After Roach took a chorus of ribbing from the squad, she finished her recap of the missing items at the rectory. Detective Rhymer, who was on loan from Burglary, wondered if the videos got stolen because they had sex tapes in them. “If the priest was into something… unpriestly… maybe there was something embarrassing to someone else who was on the video.”

  Heat acknowledged that could be so and jotted it under “Theories” on the board as “damning sex video??” That notwithstanding, Nikki said that some things made her want to broaden the scope of their investigation. No sooner had she said the words than behind the squad she saw movement from the glass office. Captain Montrose got up from his desk and stood leaning against his door frame to take in her briefing.

  “Starting tomorrow,” Heat said, “I want to dig deeper into the parish. Not just to look into the parishioners who could have motives, but also any of the other activities Father Graf could have been involved in. Clubs, immigration protests, even charity drives and fund-raisers.”

  Then she told them about the stash of money in the attic, which came to about a hundred fifty thousand. All in bills under a hundred, all in parishioner collection envelopes. “I’ll reach out to the archdiocese to see if they had any knowledge or concerns about embezzlement. Whether it’s skimming, or an inheritance, or, I don’t know, a secret lotto win-however that money came to be in his attic-we can’t rule out the possibility tha
t someone wanted to get it and tried to force him to say where it was. But,” she cautioned, “it’s too soon to run for that piece of candy, because there are other things to look at as well. Let’s just say it’s one of many reasons to open this case wider.” Then she relayed the findings of the autopsy. “What was particularly striking was the degree of electricity the victim took before he died. TENS, in mild doses, get used in some torture play. But his burns, the heart attack, this did not look like play.”

  The room fell silent, the quietest that bull pen had been since Nikki had arrived to turn the lights on that morning. She knew what each squad member was going through. Each was reflecting on the last minutes of Father Gerald Graf’s life on that St. Andrew’s Cross. Heat looked at them, knowing that even in this group of smart mouths, there was no amount of cop humor that would overcome the compassion they felt for another human’s suffering.

  Mindful of the collective mood, Nikki resumed quietly. “Like any assault, perps use pattern behavior. I’m already looking into other assaults like this, especially involving electrical means.”

  “Detective Heat.” All heads turned to the voice at the back of the room. For many, it was the first they had actually heard that voice in a week.

  “Captain?” she said.

  “I’d like to see you in my office.” And before he stepped inside it, he added, “Right now.”

  Nikki wheeled her leg around, caught him on the back of his upper calf, and he went down. Don landed hard on the blue wrestling mat in the gym and said, “Jeez, Nikki, what’s eating you tonight?” She extended a hand to hoist him up, and midway through the lift, Don thought he’d get cute and flip her. But he telegraphed his move with his eyes and she cartwheeled to his weak side, still holding his hand, twisted his thumb, rolled him on his stomach, and parked a knee on his back.

  That afternoon, when she had gotten the text from her onetime personal combat trainer and now regular sparring partner, Nikki declined Don’s offer. Her day had been a meat grinder, and all she wanted to do was get home and sink into a bath, hoping an early bed would let her escape the burden of the case, and of Rook, in sleep. But then came that last meeting with Montrose. Heat came out of there feeling caged, frustrated, and above all, conflicted. First thing she did was grab her cell phone and text the ex-Navy SEAL that she wanted a workout after all.

  Poor Don was on his feet about two seconds before Heat dropped him again.

  The meeting had been with a Montrose Nikki didn’t know. He closed his door, and by the time he had walked around behind her to his desk, he had accused her of losing focus on the case. She listened but couldn’t take her eyes off the Band-Aid on his finger, wondering whose blood was on that priest’s collar if it wasn’t the priest’s.

  Don went to the corner of the gym and toweled the sweat off his face. Nikki hopped on the balls of her feet in the center of the mat, energized, eager to resume.

  Her captain had said, “We agreed this afternoon that you’d keep working the bondage line on this case. What happened? Did you eat some funny mushrooms for lunch and get it in your head to change it up?”

  Who was this man, she wondered, talking to her like that? Her mentor, advisor, and protector all these years. Not so much the father she never had but certainly the uncle.

  Don tried to fake her out. He shook his arms loose, going all rubbery, working on the tightness to catch her sleeping. But then he lunged, going low with his left shoulder to her waist, trying to straight-out tackle her. She sidestepped and laughed when he caught nothing but air and landed on his face.

  “I started getting information that opened my thinking, Captain,” she had told him, all the while wondering what to tell him and what to hold back-something that had never occurred to her to do with this man.

  “Like what? Talking to all his parishioners to see who thought his sermons lacked humor? Interviewing the members of his Knights of Columbus? Going to the archdiocese?”

  “There’s that money we found,” she said.

  “There’s the agreement we had,” he said. Then Montrose had calmed a little, and a glimpse of the old the skip came to visit. “Nikki, I’m accountable for supervision here and I see you spinning your wheels on side shows. You are a great detective. I’ve told you before. You’re smart, intuitive, you work hard… I have never seen anyone better than you at finding the odd sock. If there’s one aspect of a case or a crime scene that doesn’t ring true, seems slightly out of whack, you see it.” And then that phase was over. “But I don’t know what the hell to make of what you’re doing today. You’re half a day late to interview a key witness, and that’s after your poor judgment sending Hinesburg. That’s right, I said it, your poor judgment.”

  Don’s feet bicycled the sky on his flight over Heat’s shoulder. She rounded her back and dropped on one knee as she released him, keeping her head down and tucked toward her tummy in the follow-through. Twisted that way, she couldn’t see him land. But the floor shook.

  “I agree I should have been to the rectory sooner.” Heat had halted there, saying no more about it. She reflected on her OCME round trip, heavy traffic included, getting delayed by that phone call from the administrative assistant at 1PP, and of course, that file she stopped to read about the old homicide. But to go further, to explain herself, would only be to sound defensive. This was hard enough. Hard enough trying to pretend she hadn’t seen what she saw in that file. That the lead detective on the 2004 Huddleston murder had been Detective First Grade Charles Montrose.

  “Yes, you should have been there but you weren’t. That’s not like you, Detective. Are you distracted by all this business of your promotion?” Then after he had let that work on her, he leaned forward on his blotter, hands clasped so she couldn’t avoid seeing the Band-Aid right there. And then he lobbed out, “Or is it that you were too busy with other things? Like blabbing to newspaper reporters.”

  Station House Privacy Rule #1: There is no privacy in a station house.

  “Let me assure you of one thing, Captain. The extent of my conversation with that reporter was basically different ways to say, ‘No comment.’ ” She held his gaze so he could see the truth written on her. In that moment, she also made a decision. She concluded that this was not the meeting to ask him about the old Huddleston case. For now, as far as her boss was concerned, she had never even asked for that file. Whatever storm this was, she just hoped it would pass so she could focus on the work and operate in the open again in her own house.

  “Make sure you keep it that way,” he had finally said. “I know what the press can be like. Especially the Gotcha Press. You don’t think I have them all over me? And the community pressure? And the jerkoffs downtown? I’ll tell you what I don’t need, Detective Heat, and that’s one more reason for someone to climb up on my ass, and it better not come from you.” His tone had been measured, which made his words sting all the more. “Know this. I will pull you off the case if you don’t focus. Stay on the BDSM path and nothing else. Am I clear?”

  She had no words and only nodded.

  When she reached for the doorknob, he added, “Blow this case and it’ll be bad for me. Bad for you, too.”

  Heat left wondering if that was advice or a threat.

  Don, who had asked her to spar that night, had made an additional in vitation. And that was to sleep together. They had a history of that, but it had become a dimming one. Somewhere along the line, years back and without much fanfare, Nikki’s Brazilian jujitsu trainer had become her trainer with benefits.

  When it started, they were perfectly matched for that. Neither was in a committed relationship; they liked each other, were intensely physical, and equally happy to let their grappling go no further than the gym or the bedroom. Their sex was occasional, energetic, and mutually passionless. It all changed for Nikki when Rook came into the mix. It wasn’t even about serial monogamy for her so much as something else. Something she couldn’t-or wouldn’t-exactly put into words. Since the heat wave, Don and Nikk
i had confined their wrestling to the mat. He had floated invitations from time to time, which she had declined without explanation, also part of their unspoken rules.

  That night, after the drubbing she gave him, before they parted for their respective locker rooms, he asked her again. And this time, for the first time in a long time, Nikki was tempted. No, more than merely tempted. She came very close to a yes.

  On the walk back to her apartment, she sorted through her feelings. Close as she had come to saying, “My place,” she had taken it right up to the line in her imagination and declined. The month without Rook had been a long one emotionally and physically. She could have easily had a night with Don, and neither he nor Rook would have had a say in her choice. But her no came from the same place as all the ones that preceded it. But why? Was she in a committed relationship now with Rook? She might have answered that differently before he went away. And certainly it loomed as a bigger question after the Le Cirque shot and all it meant. The issue for her was what kind of relationship, if any, she would have with Rook when-if-they did see each other again. Sleeping with Don that night would have been revenge sex. Which Don sure wouldn’t care about, even if he knew. But she would. That wasn’t her reason, though. Her no to Don had been about postponing a definition.

  Or perhaps it was more transparent than that. Maybe she knew the last thing she wanted was to have one more complication added to the stress of her life. Hell, of her day. What she needed was a night of letting go, of lightening up.