Heat Wave

by Richard Castle

  Buckley looked up at her like she was nuts and left in a hurry.

  Things were quite a bit different with Brian “Doc” Daniels when he returned to the Interrogation Room. Nikki made sure she was already seated when Roach brought him in, and the Iron Ponytail was scoping her out, trying to read some sign off her face before he sat down. “What’s going on, what did that guy say to you?”

  Heat didn’t answer. She gave a nod to Raley and Ochoa and they left the room. It was a very silent place when they went.

  “Come on, what did he say?”

  Nikki made a show of opening a file and scanning the top page. She looked up over the top of the file at Doc and said, “So just to be clear, you consider Gerald Buckley to be a friend of yours?” She shook her head and closed the file.

  “Friend? Hah. He’s a liar, is what he is.”

  “Is he?”

  “Buckley’ll say anything to save his ass.”

  “That’s kind of what happens when things start going bad, Doc. People start shoving friends and family off the lifeboat.” When she was good and ready, Nikki crossed her arms and leaned back in her chair. “Question I guess is, Which one of you is going to be treading water with the sharks?”

  The biker was running odds in his head. “Tell me what he said, and I’ll tell you if it’s bull.”

  “Like I’m going to do that.”

  “Well, what am I supposed to do? Confess?”

  She shrugged. “Let’s call it cooperate.”

  “Yuh, right.”

  “Hey, your call, Doc. But the smart man would get out ahead of this. Prosecutors are going to want a head on a pole. Whose is it going to be, yours or Buckley’s?” She picked up the file. “Maybe Buckley’s the smart man today.” Then Nikki stood. “See you at the arraignment.”

  The biker thought that one over but not for very long. He shook his mane of hair and said, “All right, here’s the God’s truth. We didn’t steal any paintings. When we broke into that apartment, they were already gone.”

  “I believe the dude,” said Raley. He was slouched back in his chair with his feet up on a two-drawer filing cabinet in the middle of the bull pen.

  Heat was standing at the whiteboard tossing a marker from hand to hand. “Me, too.” She uncapped it and circled the arrival of the truck and its departure on the burglary timeline. “No way they could move out all that art in a half hour. Let’s suppose Henry is off in his timing and it’s an hour. Still no way.” She tossed the marker into the aluminum sill on the bottom of the board. “And not be seen or heard doing it in a building full of people? Un-uh.”

  From his seat, Rook raised his hand. “May I ask a question?”

  Heat shrugged. “Go ahead.”

  “I need the practice,” added Raley, chuckling. Nikki suppressed her own smile and nodded for Rook to continue.

  “Do Penn and Teller have a burglary crew? Because somebody sure as hell took all those paintings.”

  Across the bull pen Detective Ochoa hung up his phone and said, “Madre de Dios.” Then he shoved off his desk with his foot, launching himself the length of the room on his chair rollers, coming to a stop at the group. “This is big. Got back the VIN result off that Volvo from the impound.” He looked down and read from his notes, which is what Ochoa did when he had news and wanted to get it right. “The vehicle was registered to a Barbara Deerfield. I made some calls including Missing Persons. Barbara Deerfield was reported missing by her employer four days ago.”

  “Who was her employer?” said Heat.

  “Sotheby’s”

  Nikki cursed. “The art auction house…”

  “That’s right,” said Ochoa. “Our dead woman was an art appraiser.”

  FOURTEEN

  Raley came back into the bullpen dangling his sport coat on one finger. His powder blue shirt was two-tone from sweat. “Brought you a present from Sotheby’s.”

  Nikki rose from her desk. “I do love presents. What is it, a Winslow Homer? The Magna Carta?”

  “Better.” He handed her a folded sheet of paper. “They let me print out a page from Barbara Deerfield’s Outlook calendar. Sorry it’s all buckled and everything. Humidity’s a bear out there.”

  Nikki held the page like she would catch something from it. “It’s damp.”

  “It’s only perspiration.”

  While she unfolded the sheet and read it, Ochoa swiveled in his desk chair and covered his phone. “Never saw a dude sweat like you, man. Shaking your hand is like squeezing Sponge Bob’s ass.”

  “Ochoa, I believe that’s a think, not a say.” Rook stepped over to surf the page over Nikki’s shoulder.

  “All right, we have our…” Nikki seemed to feel that Rook was standing a little too close, so she handed him the page and created some distance. “We have our confirmation that Barbara Deerfield had an art appraisal booked at Matthew Starr’s apartment the morning he was killed.”

  “And the morning she was killed,” added Rook.

  “Likely. We still need confirmation on time of death from the M.E., but let’s call it a safe assumption.” Nikki used the fine tip of the marker to squeeze Barbara Deerfield’s appraisal appointment with Starr into the timeline on the whiteboard, then capped the pen.

  Rook said, “Aren’t you going to put her death on the board, too?”

  “No. Safe or not, it’s still an assumption.”

  “Right.” And then he added, “For you, maybe.”

  Raley filled her in on what he had learned about the victim from her coworkers. The whole Sotheby’s office was distraught and shocked by the news. After someone goes missing, you hope for the best, but this was confirmation of their worst fears. Barbara Deerfield had a good relationship with her colleagues, was by all appearances stable, loved her work, seemed to enjoy a happy home life, with kids in college, and was excited about planning a vacation to New Zealand with her husband. “Sounds good to me,” said Raley. “It’s winter there. No unsightly perspiration.”

  “Well, check out the family and friends and lovers angles to cover the bases, but my instincts aren’t taking me there, how about you?”

  Raley agreed and said so.

  Ochoa hung up his phone. “That was Forensics. Do you want the news or the news?” He read Detective Heat’s look and wisely decided this wasn’t the time for screwing around. “Got two sets of results for you. First, the fiber on the balcony is a match for a pair of Pochenko’s jeans.”

  “I knew it,” said Rook. “Scumbag.”

  Nikki ignored his outburst. Her heart was gaining speed, but she acted as if she was merely sitting through the day’s Tokyo Stock Exchange average while waiting for the traffic report on news radio. She had learned over the years that every case had a life. This one was not near a solve yet, but it was entering the phase where she finally had hard data to sift through. Each piece needed to be listened to, and excitement, especially her own, just made noise.

  “And second, you were right. There was a set of prints outside those windows off the fire escape. And we know whose.”

  “Duh,” said Rook.

  The detective sat and reflected a moment. “OK. So we have one piece of evidence that points to Pochenko tossing Matthew Starr over that balcony, and we have another piece that tells us at some point he tried unsuccessfully to get in a window.” She went back to the whiteboard and wrote Pochenko’s name beside “fibers.” In a blank space, she printed “access?” and circled it.

  While she stood there, tossing the marker hand to hand, a new habit she noticed, her gaze went to the photo of the hexagonal ring and then to the bruises on Matthew Starr’s torso. “Detective Raley, how sick are you of screening surveillance video from the Guilford?”

  “Like totally?”

  She rested a hand on his shoulder. “Then you are going to hate your next assignment.” Then she removed her hand and discreetly wiped it on her thigh.

  Ochoa chuckled to himself and hummed the SpongeBob theme.

  While Raley
dug out and loaded the surveillance video, Heat made her usual phone and computer rounds to check petty thefts, assaults, and ATM robberies to see if the latest reports lit up any Pochenko radar for her. There had been no sign of him since his drugstore grab. A friend of Nikki’s, an undercover vice cop who was tapped into the Russian neighborhoods in Brighton Beach, had come up with nothing, either. Heat told herself these compulsive checks were good detective work, so much of success was just donkey-level diligence. But in her true heart she just didn’t like the idea that there was a dangerous man out there who’d made it personal with her and slipped off the grid. This challenged Detective Heat’s cherished ability to separate herself from the emotional aspects of her work on a case. After all, she was supposed to be the cop, not the victim. Nikki allowed herself her momentary trespass onto the turf of the fully human and then got back on the path.

  Where did he go? A man like that, big and obvious, injured, on the run, cut off from his apartment, would have to convert into scavenger mode at some point. Unless he had a support system and/or money stashed, his presence should be felt somewhere. Maybe he had those things. Maybe. It didn’t feel right. She hung up her last call and stared out of focus at nothing.

  “Maybe he got on one of those reality shows where they sequester the competitors on some desert island to eat bugs and berate each other,” said Rook. “You know, like I’m a Mouth-Breathing Killer, Get Me Outta Here.”

  “Black with one Equal, right?” Nikki set a coffee down on Raley’s desk.

  “Oh…thanks, yeah, appreciate it.” Raley scanned forward in the surveillance video of the Guilford lobby. “Unless that means I’m pulling another all-nighter on this.”

  “No, this won’t take long. Roll up to Miric and Pochenko and slow it down for me.” Raley had plenty of experience with this section and found the exact spot where they came in from the street. “OK, when you hit just Pochenko, stop there.”

  Raley froze the picture and manipulated it to zoom in on the Russian’s face. “What are we looking for?”

  “Not that,” she said.

  “But you wanted to stop on this frame.”

  “That’s right. And what have we been doing? Focusing only on his face for the ID array, right?”

  Raley looked at her and smiled. “Ah, I getcha.” He pulled out from the zoom of Pochenko’s face and reconfigured the shot.

  Nikki liked what he was going for. “Exactly, there you go. Rales, you catch on quick. Keep this up, I’m going to let you screen all the surveillance vid from now on.”

  “You’ve seen through my plan to become the precinct video czar.” He moused over to the other part of the freeze frame and worked a drag and zoom. When he had what he wanted, he sat back and said, “How’s that?”

  “No more calls, please. We have a winner.”

  Filling the computer screen was Pochenko’s hand. And on it, a not-bad shot of his hexagonal ring, the same one Lauren had shown her at the impound. “Do a save and print that for me, Czar Raley.”

  Minutes later, Heat added the shot of Pochenko’s ring to the gallery that was growing on the whiteboard. Rook stood leaning against the wall, taking it in, and raised his hand. “Am I allowed to ask a question?”

  “Rook, I’ll take a question over one of your open-mic-night comedy attempts any day.”

  “I’ll mark that down as a yes.” He stepped up to the board and pointed to the autopsy shots of Matthew Starr’s torso. “What exactly was it your M.E. ghoul friend said about the punch bruises and the ring?”

  “She has a name, it’s Lauren, and she said all of the bruises on the torso had the telltale ring mark except one. Have a look.” She indicated each. “Bruises with the ring: Here, here, here, and here.”

  Rook pointed to one of the bruises. “But this one here, one punch, same hand, no ring mark.”

  “Maybe he took it off,” said Nikki.

  “Pardon me, ah, Detective, who’s the speculator here?” Nikki shook her head. She hated it that he was so cute. Sort of hated it. He continued. “Pochenko had the ring on when he and Miric came by to ‘encourage’ Starr to pay up his debt, right?” Rook shadowboxed. “Boom, boom, and boom. Get Raley to rack up that video again and I’ll bet you anything Pochenko’s still wearing the ring on his way out.”

  Heat called across the room. “Raley?”

  Raley answered, “I hate you,” and reloaded the video to check.

  “After they go, the art appraiser comes for her meeting and leaves. My speculation is this,” said Rook. “This bruise here, the one without the mark, came later, when Pochenko returned in the afternoon to kill Matthew Starr. Pochenko didn’t have the ring on then because he lost it in the car fight when he was strangling Barbara Deerfield.”

  Heat sucked in her lips, thinking. “That’s all fine, very likely in fact.”

  “So don’t you think I’ve made my case for the time of death for Barbara Deerfield?”

  “Oh, I’m already with you there. But you’re missing an even bigger point, Mr. Reporter.”

  “Which is?”

  “Which is a big why,” said the detective. “If there is a connection between these two murders, why did Pochenko kill Barbara Deerfield first? That’s a motive question. Work backwards from the motive and you usually find a killer.”

  Rook looked at the board and then back to her. “You know, Mick Jagger never made me work this hard.”

  But she didn’t seem to hear him. Heat was focused on Ochoa, who was coming into the room.

  “Did it come in?” she asked. Ochoa held up some folded papers. “Excellent.”

  “What’s going on?” said Rook.

  “Some people wait for ships to come in, I wait for warrants.” Heat stepped to her desk and picked up her shoulder bag. “If you promise to be a good boy this time, I’ll let you come watch me arrest someone.”

  Heat and Rook walked up the stairs of the dingy apartment building and turned onto the second floor at the landing. It was an old brownstone gone duplex in Hell’s Kitchen that somebody must have thought could use some paint because everything was painted instead of repaired. At this hour of the day, the air was ripe with a combo of disinfectant and cooking odors. The stifling heat only made it a more tactile experience.

  “Are you sure he’s here?” said Rook in a whisper. Even then, his voice echoed like a cathedral rotunda.

  “Positive,” she said. “We’ve had him under surveillance all day.”

  Nikki stopped at apartment 27. The brass numerals had long ago, and many times, been painted over. A fossilized drip of pale green enamel formed a tear off the 7. Rook was standing right in front of the door. Nikki put her hands on his waist and placed him to the side. “In case he shoots. Don’t you ever watch Cops?” She stood to the opposite side. “Now, you stay out in the hall until I give the all clear.”

  “I could have waited in the car for this.”

  “You still can.”

  He weighed that and took a half step back and leaned against the wall with his arms crossed. Heat knocked.

  “Who is it?” came the muffled voice inside.

  “NYPD, Gerald Buckley, open the door, we have a warrant.” Nikki made a short count of two, pivoted, and kicked the door down. She drew and entered the apartment, catching the door on the rebound and giving it her shoulder as she went through. “Freeze, now!”

  She caught a glimpse of Buckley disappearing into the hall. She made sure the living room was clear before she followed, and in the brief lag before she entered the bedroom, he had time to get a leg out the window. Through the curtains she could see Ochoa waiting on the fire escape for him. Buckley stopped and started to come back inside. Nikki gave him a surprise assist, holstering her gun and yanking him backward by the collar.

  “Whoa,” said Rook with awe.

  Nikki turned to see him standing in the bedroom behind her. “I thought I told you to wait outside.”

  “It smells out there.”

  Turning her attention back o
n Buckley, who was facedown on the floor, Heat pulled his hands behind him.

  Gerald Buckley, dishonored Guilford doorman, sat a few minutes later with his hands cuffed at his own dinette. Nikki and Rook sat on either side of him while Roach searched his place.

  “I don’t know why you’re bugging me,” he said. “This what you do every time there’s a rip-off somewhere, hassle the guys who happen to work there?”

  “I’m not hassling you, Gerald,” said Heat, “I’m arresting you.”

  “I want a lawyer.”

  “And so you shall have one. You’re going to need one, too. Your biker pal, Doc? He…I don’t want to say “dropped the dime,” that’s so Starsky and Hutch.” Nikki’s digressions were pissing him off, which made her want to do them all the more. Get him rattled, loosen his tongue. “Let’s be more civilized, let’s say he implicated you in a sworn statement.”

  “I don’t know any bikers.”

  “Interesting. Because Doc, a biker, by the way, says you were the one who hired him to pull the art theft at the Guilford. He says you made a rush call to him when the blackout hit. You asked him to get a crew together to break into the Starr apartment and steal all the artwork.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “It’s tough to put a crew together for a big job like that on short notice, Gerald. Doc says he came up short and asked you to be his fourth on the job. Which, I guess is why you had to call in and tell Henry you couldn’t make your shift. I love the irony. You had to call in and say you couldn’t work so you could come in and pull a job. Do you appreciate irony, Gerald?”

  “Why are you tearing my place up? What are you looking for?”

  “Anything that can make your life difficult,” Heat said. Raley appeared in the doorway, held up a handgun, and continued his search. “That might do. Hope that’s got a permit, or this could be a troublesome visit.”