“I kind of wanted to ask you a little about that, I mean the past year,” said Nikki.
The ex-detective nodded. “Didn’t think you flew all the way down here for the horchata.”
“No,” she said, “I’m trying to make sense of what went on with the Cap.”
“You won’t be able to. Doesn’t make any sense.” Eddie’s lip quaked briefly, but then he sat up, willing some steel into his body, as if that would help.
Rook asked, “Did you have much contact with him since his wife was killed?”
“Well, you could say I made a lot of attempts. I flew up for her funeral, of course, and we sat up talking most of the night after the service. In truth, maybe more sitting than talking; like I say, I made attempts, but he went to stone in there.” Eddie poked his heart with two fingers. “Who couldn’t understand that?”
Nikki said, “It’s not uncommon to sort of slide a rock over you for a time after you suffer a trauma like that. But after a period of intense grieving most people come out of the funk. And when they do, it’s sort of startling, the new energy.”
Eddie nodded to himself. “Yeah, how’d you know that?” Nikki felt Rook’s hand touch hers under the table briefly. Hawthorne continued, “It was out of the blue, like three months ago. He calls and talks awhile. Old times small talk, that kind of stuff. More conversation than I’d heard from him in ages. Then he says to me that he’s been sleeping poorly, tossing thoughts all night. I told him to join a bowling league, and he just says, ‘Yeah right,’ and keeps on about his insomnia.
“He asks me, ‘Edward, you ever get bothered by any of the old cases?’ And I said, ‘Shit, man, why do you think I retired?’ and we had a good laugh about that, but he came right back to it, like he was scratching at poison ivy. And he gets to the point, saying that he’s been thinking more and more about The Job and how he’s having doubts about his purpose. Even said-get this-wondering about how good a cop he was. Can you believe that?
“So he says he’s been sitting up nights chewing on this one case we worked together, saying he was never satisfied we got it right, and the deeper the hole gets dug around him with all the administrative bullshit he has to deal with, the more he feels the itch to do something. Something to prove that he’s still the cop he believed he was. I told him to open the Scotch and watch some Weather Channel, anything to get his mind clear, and he gets pissy with me, saying he thought that I of all people would understand the importance-the duty, he says-of getting it right. I didn’t know what else to say to that except, let’s hear about it then. Charles says he never believed it was a bad drug deal. It didn’t figure for the victim and his priors to be in with that low end of a dealer, or in that part of town. And I said what I said back then, drugs is dangerous business; if they don’t get you, the dealers will. And then I reminded him I always thought if it wasn’t a busted deal it was a Latin gang initiation.” There it was again, thought Nikki. The catch-all explanation for unsolved crimes. “But Charles, he said he was picking up pieces that smelled like a planned killing and a cover-up. He said he was looking for a revenge motive. Either way,” he shrugged, “what are you going to do? You give it your best shot and don’t look back. That’s what I did, anyway. But he wasn’t one to let anything go unfinished.” The steel left him and his lip quivered again. “I dunno, maybe that’s what finished him.”
“The case,” said Nikki. “What was the case that bothered him so much?” But she knew the answer before she asked it.
“The Huddleston kid,” answered Eddie.
FIFTEEN
I f Nikki couldn’t have access to the Huddleston file, she would have the next best thing. She asked Eddie Hawthorne to walk her through the case. The ex-detective leaned far back in his plastic chair, and when his head left the shade of the umbrella, the sunlight that hit his hair made the black dye shine purple. His eyes worked back and forth as he searched his memory, and he exhaled loudly, girding himself for this unexpected heavy lifting. “Two thousand four,” he said. “Charles and I were working Homicide out of the Four-one and got the call about a gunshot victim in a car over on Longwood. That zone was pretty much junkie central, you know? Joke among the uniforms was, you hit a perp with your baton and the crack vials come falling out like a pinata. Anyway, so Charleston and I roll, figuring this was just another garden variety crack whack.
“We reset that notion pretty quick, though, as soon as we drove up and clocked the M5. The only Beemers in that zip code belonged to dealers and we knew them by heart. So we got ready to check out the vic, figuring on a kid from maybe Rye or Greenwich who saw Scarface one too many times and made the mistake of coming to the big city to bypass his pharmacological middle man. Profile was right, too, when we saw the body. Very early twenties, expensive clothes, Green Day CD still blasting an endless loop on the custom sound system. But then it kicks up a notch when Montrose says he knows this kid. Not personally, but from TV. Wallet and registration both ID him as Eugene Huddleston, Jr., son of the movie star, and then it all starts to tumble in place for us. He’d been all over the news, especially Access and ET, for his drug spiral. Nothing like Charlie Sheen, but enough for me and my partner to paint the picture. And why wouldn’t it make sense?” Eddie wasn’t just being rhetorical. Nikki could see he was seeking her understanding. She gave a mild shrug, enough to acknowledge how it could happen, but mindful, too, that a detective follows evidence and doesn’t lead it, which was probably the same homily that kept her captain awake in hindsight.
“How was he done?” asked Heat.
“Single head shot.”
“How, face? Execution style in back?”
“Temple,” said Hawthorne.
“Like a drive-up buy where the dealer sees the gourmet car and thinks fat wallet and puts one… here?” She pointed a finger pistol at Rook’s left sideburn.
“See, that’s where it started to fight our theory.” Eddie put a finger to his own right temple. “Entrance wound on this side. Passenger side.”
All these years later, Heat was back there in her mind with Montrose and Hawthorne, processing that first odd sock. “You sure he was done in the car?”
“No doubt. Brains and broken glass on the driver’s side.”
“The window was up?” Odd sock number two for Nikki; not inherently significant, just… odd. “What about the passenger window, open or closed?”
Eddie’s eye rolled upward while he thought. “Closed, yeah for sure, closed.”
“So whoever shot him was probably inside the car with him,” said Heat.
“Riding shotgun,” offered Rook. He saw their expressions, crossed his arms, and said, “All yours.”
Nikki continued, “And I assume no prints?”
“None that did us any good. Just his clubbing and party buddies, a few girlfriends, and plenty of no-matches.” Which meant no criminal records for the unknowns. “All the matched prints alibied out,” he said, a step ahead of Nikki.
“Anything else about his body? No signs of beating?” She wanted to know if Eddie knew about the TENS burns.
“Not beating, per se. His wrists had marks like he’d been tied up.”
“Or cuffed?”
He grew thoughtful. “Honestly, never thought of cuffs, but here’s what we did attribute it to. We check out the neighboring buildings, of course, and we come upon this empty loading bay inside a low-rise industrial space. Old sign said it had been one of those textile rental places that supply uniforms and coveralls to hotels and construction. Door’s unlocked and, inside, there’s nothing in the whole place but this wood frame lying in the middle of the concrete floor.”
Heat and Rook exchanged glances and Nikki said, “Describe it for me, Eddie.”
“Simple. Like a wood pallet hammered together, kind of crudely, but in the shape of a big X-about seven feet long, three wide. And the thing of it is, it had straps at each corner.”
“Like restraints,” said Heat.
“Yeah, but improvised. I thin
k they were tie-downs, like you’d get for strapping a kayak to your roof rack. Of course, this was the point when me and Rose totally fell out of the drive-up-drug-deal-gone-bad notion. Somebody took that kid in there and lashed him to that rig.” When Hawthorne’s face grimmed up, it was like he was seeing something unpleasant right then and there instead of years ago. “In addition to the chafing at the young man’s wrists and ankles, he had these red marks like a bad sunburn. Only in blotchy areas all over his skin. I’m talking about his chest, his legs, his… his groin…” Eddie winced and said, “You get the idea. Charles and I worked it as best we could, but given the kid’s history of drugs and drug busts and all the crazy and dangerous stuff he got into, it went down as a sour drug deal.”
“What about the torture?” asked Rook. “Didn’t that play in?”
“Oh, yeah.” Hawthorne nodded. “OCME said it was electrical, something called a TENS. That just added credence to the bad drug deal theory, saying Huddleston wasn’t a drive-up target of opportunity but was probably dealing regularly with a player who the kid shorted on money, and the torture and killing was payback to make him an example to others or to increase the dealer’s status in the ranks.”
“I’m not accusing, Eddie, I’m just asking this to get into the load Captain Montrose was carrying,” said Nikki gently. “You guys didn’t take it any further?”
“We wanted to, but the Huddleston family, they were begging for closure. They’d had enough, so pressure came from downtown to move on, especially since there’d been official disposition. And then Charles got his promotion and took over the Twentieth, so it fell away.”
Heat handed him the mug shot of Sergio Torres. “This guy would have been doing some low-level dealing north of 116th and in the Bronx back then. Ever come across him?”
He studied it carefully and said, “No, but that doesn’t mean he wasn’t around. I was Homicide, not Narcotics.”
“Speaking of which, does this guy look familiar? He worked Narco around then.”
Eddie took the picture of Steljess and said, “Mad Dog.”
“What do you know about him?”
“Total dipshit, that’s all you needed to know. He was undercover but everyone knew he crossed over. Went native, you could smell it on him.” He handed the picture back. “I hear they drummed him out. Good riddance.”
“Well said,” from Rook.
After Heat took back the pictures, she said, “One more question, if you don’t mind, Eddie. Who was the big player then?”
“In drugs? Uptown and in the Bronx?” He chuckled. “One man, Alejandro Martinez.”
On the flight back to LaGuardia Nikki said, “Nice one, thinking about Eddie.”
“Not a problem. I am an investigative journalist, you know.”
“Oh? And I understand you also have not one, but two Pulitzers.” She drilled his ribs with her knuckle.
“Do I say that too often?”
“Not really. Maybe if you just carried the awards around it would be more subtle.” She laughed and said, “But you did put your talents to good use. Even if we don’t know all the answers to this yet, we do know one thing.”
“If you’re dyeing your hair black, keep out of direct sunlight?”
“Absolutely.” Then she grew serious. “At least we know Captain Montrose was working on something and not… you know.”
“Dirty?”
“And I knew it. And now that we’ve talked to Eddie, I truly know it. So thanks, times two, Pulitzer boy. For the idea and the plane ticket.”
Rook turned to her and said, “I don’t know who you’re trying to redeem, Montrose or yourself, but I do know one thing. I’m with you on either.”
Heat had multiple voice mails from Ochoa when they got off the plane. “What’s up, Miguel?” she said in the taxi line.
“Where are you? I hear jets.”
“At the airport. Rook and I just went to Florida.” And then she couldn’t resist adding, “For lunch.”
“Man, my frostbite has frostbite. I want to get suspended.”
“Oh, yeah,” said Heat, “best week of my life.”
“First off, Steljess did have his old cuff case and holster but no scrapes matching that leather bit. Same on Montrose’s leathers. OK, more on the captain. Raley and I went to Forensics and personally checked out the questions you had about his weapon. He had a full magazine minus one bullet.” Whatever relief Nikki had felt after meeting with Eddie Hawthorne flushed out of her. A deep sadness gripped her. Rook read it on her and mouthed a silent “what?” but she waved him off. Then Ochoa said, “But hang on. I checked his backup magazine from his belt and discovered something interesting.”
Heat said it first. “One’s missing.”
“Even better. Not only is one missing, the top load in his gun’s mag was the orphan from that spare clip.” Nikki could feel her spirits rise back up while Detective Ochoa continued, “No prints on the cartridge, which is also strange-not even Montrose’s.”
“Not just strange,” Heat said, “significant. I mean, come on, how does a dead man reload?”
Evening rush hour traffic back to Manhattan gave Rook an extra thirty minutes in the rear of the cab to work out a scenario to spin over Ochoa’s revelation. “This is big. No disrespect to the vaunted Mr. le Carre, but this is bigger than Call for the Dead. This is a dead man’s bullet. Hey, I think I have the title for my article. I should write it down. No, I’ll remember, it’s that good.” Nikki didn’t even bother trying to reel him in. He was not only more entertaining than the Taxi TV embedded in the driver’s seat back-she had the Sam Champion promo memorized by now, anyway-Rook was like the broken clock that managed to be correct two times a day. For once he was thinking out loud about something she wanted to hear. Because she was sorting it out, too.
“OK, here’s how it spools for me,” he said. “Montrose is parked in the car and bad guy X, in the passenger seat, has got his gun somehow. Don’t know how that happened but I say it did, otherwise this doesn’t play.”
Heat said, “We can sift the details later. Keep going.”
“Fine, so Montrose’s weapon is in the hands of his passenger, who has either been holding it on him or he takes the captain by surprise. Anyway, the passenger jams the gun under his chin, and pow. Which also explains why a chin shot and no eating the barrel.”
Nikki agreed so far. “And why Lauren expressed reservations about the trajectory.”
“Yes. Now, here is where we go a little Mission: Impossible, but stay with me because it’s absolutely feasible. Montrose is dead. The issue for the shooter becomes how do you sell this as a suicide if the residue is on your hands, not the victim’s? Answer: You hold the gun in the dead man’s hand and fire another shot. Problem 2: Then the magazine is down not one, but two bullets, leaving a lot of messy questions to complicate things. So what the killer does is fit the gun into Montrose’s hand, hold it out the car window, squeeze off the second shot to get residue on the captain, right? Then replace that second bullet by using gloved hands to take one of Montrose’s own bullets-guaranteed to match his weapon-from the spare mag on his belt. The killer slides that round into the top of the clip. It looks like a perfect one-shot suicide, and he splits.”
“You don’t often hear me say this, Mr. Conspiracy Theory, but I think you’re on to something.”
Rook said, “Yes, but it’s pure hypothesis, right? And that doesn’t hold water.”
“So leaky that if you took this theory to the Department, you’d need a mop.”
“We could give it a try. I mean you do know a good water damage service, don’t you, from the crime scene?”
They rode in silence a moment, Nikki staring at the silhouette of the Manhattan skyline in the greening sky of twilight. Then she pulled out her cell phone. “What?” asked Rook.
Heat didn’t answer. She dialed 411 and asked for the number of On Call water damage restoration.
Rook said, “I was joking, you know.”
&
nbsp; DeWayne Powell from On Call met them in front of the Graestone Con dominiums, where Heat had seen him parked the day of Montrose’s shooting. “You got here fast,” she said.
“When you’re name’s On Call, that’s what you do. Besides, I have two brothers who are firefighters, so I like to do what I can to help out, you know?”
“Must be handy,” said Rook, “having a few of the Bravest in the family when you’re in the water clean-up business.”
DeWayne beamed a sunny smile. “Know how lawyers chase ambulances? I do fire trucks.”
“Tell me what you were doing here the other day,” said Nikki.
“I’m happy to go through it with you again, but I already told those other detectives everything I saw. Not much to add when you saw nothing.”
Heat shook her head. “I don’t mean about the shooting. I mean, why were you called in?”
They needed flashlights by then, but DeWayne had three in his van and they took them up on the roof. He shined his at an array of orange safety cones connected together by yellow tape. “That’s where I did my patching. Building’s going to redo the whole roof, so that’ll be it until spring.”
“And any idea where the leak came from?” said Nikki.
“Oh, absolutely.” DeWayne trained his light on the wooden water tank on stilts above them. It resembled the hundreds of cedar tanks atop all the buildings Heat had been looking at from the cab when she was checking out the skyline. “Folks on the top floor called and said they were getting flooded through the ceiling. With the freeze, we figured a busted pipe or whatever. But it was from the tank.” He waggled his light beam over a fresh cedar plank. “Leak drained a few hundred gallons before we got here. By then, water level was low enough it stopped by itself.”
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