Crashing Heat

by Richard Castle

  “Nicely put, Mr. Rook.”

  Ian shifted from one foot to the other, clearly irritated, but Rook ignored him, bowing slightly, inordinately pleased. “Why thank you,” he said as he walked up the center aisle. “Another tidbit, if I’m not mistaken, is the fact that the Worshipful Master’s throne, no matter what lodge you may be in, sits in the east.”

  “Absolutely right,” Holz said. “The Freemasons adopted their traditions from the early days of masonry, when guilds would guard the secrets of their craft.”

  Rook circled around the gold and velvet throne. “Fit for a king,” he said, before moving on. He walked up to the back wall. It was paneled with beveled frames divided into sections, as if each were a door to another room in a castle. Next he went up to the two stones, reaching his hand out touch them.

  Holz had been walking a step behind him, but as Rook’s fingertips lowered to brush the first stone, he was next to him in an instant. “Those are sacred,” he said, his polite way of telling Rook not to touch.

  Rook snapped his hand back and apologized. “It’s all so fascinating.”

  Holz had said earlier that the Masons came from all walks of life. Rook’s interest was rubbing off on her. “Who are Masons?” Heat asked, curious. “Doctors and lawyers and politicians?”

  Holz ushered them back out the way they’d come. “Yes, yes, and yes. But not only that. City workers. Roofers. Garbage men. We welcome the upper echelon as well at the laborer. We don’t turn people away.”

  “It’s a religion- and politics-free zone,” Rook told her.

  “Banned from the dining table,” Holz confirmed.

  “What about the secret handshake?” Ian asked. His voice was uninterested, but he was trying to get in on the conversation.

  Holz laughed. “Yes and no. There are levels of handshakes and signs when you greet a brother of the Order, but they’re not secret, per se.”

  Heat had been biting her tongue over the fact that the Order, as Holz called it, was male only. “Why aren’t women allowed?” she asked.

  Holz didn’t hesitate and didn’t have any qualms about defending the fact that women were not admitted to the Freemasons. “Our order is an allegory for the ancient male craftsman. Women did not have that role, therefore they are not part of the brotherhood. There are sister lodges or clubs in which they are more than welcome to participate.”

  Hmph. There was a reason behind the practice, but Heat still didn’t like it. The so-called inclusiveness of the Order was, in fact, exclusive of her gender.

  Once they were outside the ceremonial room, Rook turned to his new best friend. “Mr. Holz,” he said, placing his hand on his chest. “It has been a true honor.”

  “For me, as well, Mr. Rook. You are welcome here anytime.”

  The main door opened and a man rushed in, stopping short when he saw the group. “Oh, uh, who...hello?”

  Holz emerged from the center of the group and walked up to the man. They shook hands, gripping each other’s forearms at the same time.

  It looked like a special handshake to Heat.

  “This is Christian Foti,” Holz said to them, and then to Chris he said, “These folks are here about your daughter.”

  Ian spoke up, showing his badge. “This is Captain Heat, Mr. Foti, and I’m Chief Cooley.”

  Nikki noticed that he again omitted introducing Rook, but she left it alone.

  “You can use my office to talk,” Mr. Holz offered.

  Without a word, Christian Foti led them down the hallway opposite the ceremonial room. Heat took the time to catalogue his appearance. He looked to be in his early- to midforties. His hair was thinning, but he kept a neatly trimmed beard, which, like his hair, was a sandy brown. His cheeks were ruddy, and his eyes were puffy, almost as if a translucent caterpillar were beneath the skin under each one. It looked as if he hadn’t slept since his daughter died, Heat thought. She knew the feeling. The grave eyes; the pit in the gut; the shortness of breath, as if even the mere act of drawing air was a strain. He might not have known Chloe well, but her death had clearly taken a toll.

  “Don’t say a word, Rook. You are only here as a courtesy to your wife. I don’t trust you, so know that I’m always watching,” Ian whispered harshly.

  Rook looked nonplussed, but he quickly put on a mask of indifference and ignored Ian. He wasn’t going to let the guy faze him, she knew.

  They entered a well-appointed office. A large mahogany L-shaped desk with matching shelving occupied a good portion of one of the walls. Two armchairs sat opposite the front of the desk.

  Once the door was closed behind them, Ian shouldered past Rook. It was as if the confined space of the office and Christan Foti’s presence flipped a switch in him. He took over. Interrogation was at the center of his wheelhouse and he launched right into it. “Mr. Foti, we need to ask you a few questions about your daughter.”

  Foti sank onto one of the chairs. Heat perched on the edge of the massive desk, pen poised over her notebook. Ian pushed the second chair aside and stood looking over Foti. Meanwhile, Rook made his way around the desk and sat in Holz’s chair. He leaned back, looking more comfortable than he should. Just like a kid, he had a tendency to touch and break. Heat shot him a look that said, Keep your hands to yourself, and then turned back to Foti. Ian had already asked him about Chloe’s childhood and if he’d been part of it.

  “Her mother and me, we weren’t married and it didn’t work out. We were young. I left when Charlie—that’s my son—was a few months old. Chloe was five. Maybe almost six.” Foti cupped his hand over his forehead. “I was the perfect weekend dad for a while.”

  “But it didn’t last,” Ian said, filling in what Foti didn’t say.

  “I regret it. I really do. I came back home. Went to college. Got a job. Had a life. It’s not an excuse, but—”

  “That’s exactly what it is,” Heat said. She had no tolerance for people who made babies but weren’t mature enough to be responsible for them.

  Foti’s beard didn’t quite mask the trembling of his lower lip. “Things didn’t work out like I planned.”

  “We’ve looked at Chloe’s phone records,” Ian said. “You had a lot of conversations over the past several months.”

  He nodded, his lips turning up in a sorrowful smile. “She was a great girl. I still can’t get my head around what happened. I just found her again, and now she’s gone.”

  Christian Foti had spun a narrative that let him off the hook, so Heat jumped in. “But you didn’t find her. She found you.”

  “I suppose that’s true.”

  “There’s no suppose. It is true,” she said, going with her gut as she pushed him. “She realized you were here and got in touch, isn’t that true?”

  “Yes.”

  “Was she upset at all about the fact that you never looked for her all these years?” Heat asked.

  “She never said so,” he said.

  Heat studied him. Was his sorrow sincere? Did he even care that Chloe had come back into his life? It was hard to tell, and she wasn’t sure she believed it.

  Ian tapped the tip of his pen against his little notebook. “So Chloe got in touch with you, you talked pretty regularly, and now she’s dead. Does that about sum it up?”

  Foti squeezed his eyes shut for a beat, finally responding to the chief of police. “I guess so.”

  Ian flipped the cover to his notebook shut and slipped it into his pocket. “That is a tragic story.”

  Christian Foti’s spine stiffened and he gripped the arms of the chair he sat on. “You’re right, Officer Cooley. It is tragic. It’s easy for you to pass judgment, and you’re right, I didn’t know her for long, but she was my daughter. My daughter.”

  Ian opened his mouth, but Heat spoke up before he could put his foot in it. “What did you talk about, Mr. Foti?” she asked. “Once she found you, how did you and Chloe connect again?”

  He ran his hand over his head. “She just wanted to spend time with me.”
r />   “And you, did you want to spend time with her?” Ian asked, apparently not able to control himself. “Because from what I can tell from the phone logs, she initiated most of the contact. I’ve also seen her financials. She had a pretty decent nest egg. Almost ten thousand in a savings account. Did you know that?”

  Chloe’s savings was something Ian hadn’t shared. Heat jotted it down on her pad. Suddenly the apartment decor as well as Rook’s theory about her writing for another publication that paid both made sense. The implication of his question to Foti was that maybe the guy had found out about Chloe’s fund and wanted to get his hands on it. Ten thousand wasn’t a lot in the big picture, but she’d seen people do stupid things for a lot less.

  Foti balked. “I didn’t know she had any money.”

  Ian scoffed. “Sure you didn’t,” he said, not bothering to feign impassiveness. He was pushing Chloe’s father hard, but without cause.

  It felt as if they were playing good cop, bad cop, only Heat didn’t want to be part of it. What she wanted was to have a conversation with Christian Foti that wasn’t antagonistic so that maybe he’d give something up that could be useful. Ian was acting like the guy had killed his own daughter. “Mr. Foti,” she said, wanting to soften the animosity that was heavy in the room. “Was Chloe in trouble of any kind? Anyone she was afraid of?”

  Foti avoided Ian’s piercing eyes, instead turning all of his focus to Heat. “Not that I know of,” he said. “She was always focused on her writing and the story she was working on.” He made air quotes around the word “story,” but he didn’t sound irritated. Not exactly.

  Heat heard a smooth sliding sound from behind her. From Rook. She chose to ignore it, zeroing in on what Christian Foti had just said. “Do you know what the story was?”

  “No idea. She was close-lipped about her research.” From his tone, Heat understood: he might not have been the one to reach out to his daughter, but it sounded like he would have liked to know more about who she was and what she was doing.

  “She only ever wanted to talk about me,” he continued. “I tried, but I couldn’t pry much of anything from her. A little bit about her childhood. About my son. He’s not as inclined to see me, she said. Nothing about her schooling, or even about her plans for the future. Her roommate’s name was Tracy. No, Tammy. She talked a little bit about the people she worked with at the newspaper. Don’t think she ever mentioned anyone’s name, though. She kept it all in some mental vault.”

  Ian jumped in with a question. “Where did you get together?”

  “Different places. Sometimes at my place. Sometimes here. There’s a diner a couple blocks away. Sometimes we’d get lunch. And sometimes she’d call and just want to talk.”

  “Anything in particular she wanted to talk about?” Heat asked.

  He shook his head. “Not really. Sometimes she would tell me about her day and I’d tell her about mine. Sometimes she’d ask about my years away from her. Nothing in particular. She just wanted to talk.”

  “Is there anything else you can tell us, Mr. Foti?” Heat asked.

  He stroked his beard and started to say no, but then stopped. “Wait.”

  She and Ian both leaned toward him. “What?” Heat asked.

  “I did see her calendar once.”

  “We haven’t found a calendar,” Ian commented.

  “It was on her phone.”

  Ian spoke again. “We haven’t found her phone.”

  Heat followed up. “Did anything jump out at you?”

  “She was busy. Lots of appointments entered in.”

  “Nothing in particular, though?” Heat prodded.

  “There was one thing. I don’t know why, but it popped out. I think because it reminded me of a game.”

  Heat wanted to roll her hand to get him to speed up, but he stayed the course of his roundabout story. “Me and Chloe, we used to play chess. Before I...before I went away. She was young, but she was a smart girl. Quick learner. We played again just recently. She won both times.”

  Ian sighed. “What does this have to do with Chloe’s calendar? Was she planning a trip to Manhattan? A little chess in Washington Square Park?”

  “No, no, nothing like that,” Foti said, not seeming to pick up on Ian’s impatience. “She had an appointment with someone. The name was a piece from the game. King? Oh no, Bishop? No, no—”

  “Rook?” Ian offered.

  Foti snapped and pointed at Ian. “That’s it!”

  Damn. Everywhere they went, someone said something about Chloe needing to talk to Rook, but no one knew why. If only Chloe had insisted on talking to him sooner.

  “Anything else you can tell us?” Ian asked, ready to wrap this up but taking a moment to shoot a shit-eating grin at Rook. To him, Nikki thought, Rook’s tangential connection to Chloe gave the makings of a motive. Everything came back to him and the story Chloe was writing. How could it not be related to the murder? It was flimsy at best, but there were possibilities.

  Rook needed to stop Chloe from writing her story.

  Rook wanted to steal Chloe’s story for himself.

  Rook had an affair with a coed, and things went wrong.

  None of them was even remotely a possibility in Nikki’s mind, but she realized that Ian had been right on some level. She could not be completely objective in this investigation.

  “Not that I can think of,” Foti answered.

  Heat and Ian both withdrew business cards from their pockets. “If you do,” Heat said, beating Ian to the punch and offering hers to Christian first.

  “Let us know,” Ian finished.

  A quick knock sounded at the door before it suddenly opened and Mr. Holz appeared at the threshold. Before he spoke, he noticed Rook sitting behind his desk.

  “Best chair in the room,” Rook said as he straightened the blotter pad and the pens so they were perfectly aligned. He patted the arm of the chair. “Very comfortable. It could take the place of the Worshipful Master’s throne in the ceremonial room.” He looked at Heat. “I need to get one of these. Great lumbar support.”

  “Of course. My lower back,” Holz said. “It always gives me trouble. Everything good in here?”

  Christian Foti stood, his shoulders slumped. He looked as if the fifteen-minute conversation had taken the life out of him.

  “Everything is fine,” Heat said. “Thank you for your time.”

  The two Masons stood at the main door and watched the trio until they were on the sidewalk. Heat was left with a strange feeling in her gut, but at the moment, she couldn’t say why.

  Heat and Rook drove off in one direction, while Ian headed the opposite way. The collaboration, such as it was, had ended for the time being. Heat asked Ian to call her with any new information; he gave her an ambiguous nod, and they went their separate ways.

  Heat had set up a conference call with her squad back at the precinct. Roach was handling the Lincoln Center investigation, but she needed an update. Her being in Cambria and wrapped up in her own murder investigation didn’t absolve her of responsibility. She was still the precinct commander, and that meant staying abreast of everything that was going on at the Two-Oh, even in her absence.

  “We’re pounding the pavement, Cap, but so far we’re coming up zero.” Raley’s voice was apologetic.

  Nikki and Rook were back in the hotel room. She leaned back in the chair, staring at the whiteboard but not seeing. “Come on, guys. Someone killed that kid.”

  “The best we have right now are a few strands of hair Parry found stuck under a jagged edge of one of the vic’s fingernails,” Ochoa said. “She’s running it for DNA, but that’ll take a while, and who knows if we’ll even get a hit off of it.”

  “What’s she thinking?” Nikki asked. Parry was good at creating scenarios for the bodies that wound up on her table. Did the hair belong to one of the killers? Nikki could take Lauren’s opinion on that to the bank.

  “Parry thinks that the attackers held our vic under the water at t
he plaza. Water from the dude’s lungs are a match to the pool. He gave a good fight, though. One of his nails ripped, leaving a jagged edge. Joon Chin must have been holding on to his assailant’s head, fighting for his life. Unbeknownst to our killer, he left behind a calling card.”

  “Still nothing about where our vic was before he died?”

  “Negative,” Raley answered. “We’ve checked every coffee shop in a two-mile radius around Lincoln Center. If Chin was there, no one remembers him. I’ve scanned all the connecting street cams, but there’s no sign of them around any of those coffee shops.”

  “What about—”

  “Around NYU? Checked. Nothing.”

  If the King of All Surveillance Media had come up empty, that meant there was nothing to find.

  “Sorry to say it, boys, but you’re going to have to do this the old-fashioned way.”

  “Already have our walking shoes on,” Ochoa said.

  “And the knuckles are wrapped,” Raley said. “We’re going to knock till we drop.”

  There was no doubt in her mind that Roach would do whatever it took to find some kind of justice for Joon Chin. She gave them her blessing, then signed off with a resigned “Keep me posted.”

  By the next morning, there had been no significant developments in either of her open cases. Heat was frustrated beyond belief. They had to figure out what Chloe’s story was about. Once they did that, she knew the oyster shells would open up.

  “Are you sure you want to teach your class?” she asked Rook. “I’m sure the university would understand if you took a pass. They’d probably welcome it, in fact. They’ve got to be in a PR nightmare.”

  Rook scoffed. “Never show your weakness, Heat. I was hired to teach journalism, which is just what I aim to do. And what better way to fill in the blanks of the story than by being up close and personal with the students? If and when the university feels differently, they can tell me that to my face.”

  “It’s bound to happen unless we keep at it.”

  “What better place to keep at it than with my students? The kids taking my course, Journalism in the Real World, are Chloe’s people. Trust me, they’ll be champing at the bit to talk to me about every single detail. And you? You’ll be the icing on the cake. Investigative journalism at its best, with the lead detective there for a show-and-tell session.”