Crashing Heat

by Richard Castle

  Rook seemed not to hear Garrett go; he was busy muttering to himself. “Lamont and Saunders?”

  Nikki felt for him. If they were right, which she believed they were, some of his oldest friends were involved in a clandestine organization they valued more than a human life.

  “Rook,” she said, drawing him out of his shock.

  He blinked twice. Then a third time. “Lamont and Saunders,” he said again, but this time his voice was filled with rage. “Those sons of bitches. They’re responsible for this. You know that, don’t you, Heat? Whether or not they killed her, they are responsible for her death. Remember at the Nellie Bly awards? Lamont said that even Saunders had met with Chloe. Why would he do that? He’s the provost. He’s bloody admin. Why would he meet with her? Because he needed to feel her out. To see what she knew and what she didn’t.”

  Heat heard out his rant, then redirected him. “I know this is hard, Rook, but we have to stay focused on the facts.”

  He scrubbed his face with one hand, exhaled, then went back to pacing. It was a distraction, she knew, but he would process through the information with her at the same time.

  “You start,” he said.

  She launched into the narrative. “Chloe had dug up dirt on the pipeline between Tektōn, the Freemasons, and the Illuminati. Michael Warton figured out what she was up to and tried to get her to give up the story. She refused—then came the fight in his office. That was the argument you saw.”

  Rook picked up the story. “Don’t forget our first meeting. Lamont said Saunders had met with her. Michael has the tattoo, we think?”

  So he had been paying attention. “Possibly. Or probably.”

  “He’s in the pipeline, then, and must have alerted his elders. Once Chloe refused to give her story to Michael, and Lamont and Saunders got involved, I imagine Chloe’s fate was sealed.”

  “Basically they ordered a hit,” Heat said.

  Rook turned and paced in the opposite direction. “The girl was stabbed, stripped, and laid out on my bed to bleed out.”

  A tableau befitting a clandestine organization seeking a new world order, Heat thought.

  One question that had lingered in her mind was how the killer had gotten into Rook’s campus house. They’d pieced together their ideas, but talking out the time line and telling Chloe’s story now, knowing where the university connection was, gave the narrative strength. “Let’s assume that the call Chloe got during her yoga class with Jada was, she thought, from you. She goes off to unburden herself with the one person she knew would understand—”

  “Because she’d read my archived and killed stories—”

  “But instead she encountered her killer. But how did that killer get into your house?” Heat asked. According to the police report, there had been no evidence of a break-in and no prints. Hence the suspicion that Rook had been involved.

  Rook scoffed. “If they’re part of this Illuminati faction, it would be a piece of cake for Lamont or Saunders to get a set of keys.” His eyes turned feral. “Son of a bitch,” he growled and then, suddenly, like a boxer, his arm shot out in a series of quick bursts, hitting the wall. His knuckles beaded with blood. “They were setting me up to take the fall. But why?”

  The answer to that question was crystal clear to Nikki. “Two birds with one stone,” she said. “Chloe picked up what you’d started. With you back here, the two of you were suddenly a double threat.”

  Rook looked as if steam might start billowing from his ears at any moment. “Frame me for Chloe’s murder, get rid of us both. Son of a bitch!”

  “Rook!” He had every right to be as mad as hell, but she’d never seen him like this. From the stunned look in his eyes, she guessed that he’d never seen himself like this, either.

  He flung his arm up, spinning around. “I’m okay, I’m okay.”

  She didn’t believe that, but she went on with the story, keeping an eye on him as she spoke. “Surely Foti didn’t kill his own daughter. The elders used him to get intel on Chloe and what she knew about them and the organization.”

  If they thought about the players in this tableau as a pyramid, Saunders, who hadn’t even been on their radar, was at the top, followed by Lamont, then Holz and Foti. There had to be others in the organization, or those being groomed for it, but Chloe’s investigations were centered on this group. Heat had told Rook that she couldn’t arrest an organization, but she still didn’t have a person to target. The kill was ordered, but who executed it?

  Rook had begun pacing again, stopping at the wall he’d smashed with his fist. The paneling had splintered, revealing a hollow behind it. “A false wall,” he said.

  Instead of trying to repair the damage he’d done, he dug his fingers into the spaces and yanked. With a sickening cracking sound, a chunk of the thin wood came free. “Look,” he said.

  Heat came up beside him and stared into the narrow space behind the wall he’d just officially destroyed. “So?”

  “It’s a double wall. Like the false bottom of a suitcase. A hiding place.”

  “It’s not very practical to create a hiding space you can’t get to,” Heat said, pointing out what she thought was quite obvious.

  “There has to be a trigger.” He began feeling the walls, paying special attention to the beveled edges of the different sections.

  Heat went back to her thought process, letting Rook have his conspiracy theory about hidden spaces and secret hiding places. Ian had had no reason to look for alibis for any of the suspects they’d just identified, with the exception of Christian Foti. Where had Saunders and Lamont and Holz been?

  “Eureka!” Rook’s exuberant voice echoed in her ears and she went running. “What did I tell you?”

  Rook had found a hollow piece of molding, removed it, and there had been the lever he’d been so sure he’d find. The panel had popped right off the wall, revealing a gaping space. Scrolls of what looked like blueprints and maps stood on end. Rook grabbed one, slid off the rubber band holding it in place, and unrolled it.

  “Blueprints for a bank,” Heat said, skimming over the page.

  Rook unrolled the next one. “This one’s for the New York Supreme Court.”

  One after another, the scrolled papers revealed the layouts of banks and government buildings, churches and malls, schools and businesses. Heat suddenly understood what this faction of the Illuminati was all about. “Tools for the new world order,” she said

  Rook had moved on to the next panel. He found the hollow molding and easily popped out the next panel. Empty.

  The next three were also empty. “Rook. We need to—”

  “Holy shit,” Rook said. The quiet tone of his voice was more alarming than his pounding on the wall.

  She stopped abruptly as he removed the next panel. At first glance, she thought the space was empty, but then her gaze settled on something at the bottom. Rook bent to retrieve it. He turned slowly. “Holy shit,” she said.

  He was holding a laptop computer.

  Without a password, they couldn’t get into the laptop, but the very presence of it brought Heat and Rook back to the question of who committed the actual murder. Heat went back to the hierarchy and their working theory. Saunders at the top. Lamont and Holz in the middle. Foti at the bottom.

  This all made sense, but there had to have been a whistleblower. Someone who’d discovered what Chloe was up to and who’d reported it to the higher ups. Most likely someone in Chloe’s peer group. Someone being groomed for the order.

  Heat laid her palm flat against the laptop. They didn’t need to know what was actually on the computer, she realized. “Presumably everything she wrote and researched is right here. This is what led to her death. Rook, there’s only one person who knew what Chloe was working on.”

  They looked at each other. Rook had come to the same conclusion she had. Completely in sync, they headed back to Cam U and the place where it had all started. The Merritt School of Journalism was a beehive of activity when they walke
d through the lobby and headed straight for the editor in chief’s office in the newsroom.

  They could see him sitting behind his desk from between the slats of the window. Heat knocked on the door, but she didn’t wait for Michael Warton to open it. She walked in, Rook on her heels. Warton shot to his feet. “What the hell are you doing?”

  Heat didn’t respond to the question. Instead, she set the laptop on his desk and watched his expression go from furious to horrified. “I see you recognize this,” she said.

  He reached for the laptop, but Heat snatched it back. “Nice tattoo,” she said. She’d caught only a glimpse, but her allusion to it was enough for him to yank down his shirtsleeves. “We have a theory we want to run by you.”

  Michael looked over their shoulders as if someone might appear to save him from having to answer to Heat and Rook. There was no cavalry. “I don’t have to talk to you,” he said, but the words had no bite.

  “You’re right. You don’t. But here’s the thing, Michael—can I call you Michael?” She didn’t wait for a reply. “We know you killed Chloe.”

  He started to bluster, but she stopped him by holding the palm of her hand out. “Shh, shh, shh,” she said to quiet him down. “No need to object.” She tapped her finger on the computer. “It’s all right here.”

  “You got in—”

  “Michael,” Heat interrupted, “why don’t you let me do the talking? Have a seat and let me tell you what I know.”

  He sat, but fidgeted, first leaning back, then putting his arms on the desk, then crossing and uncrossing his legs. He didn’t know what to do with himself. If he hadn’t been a murderer, Heat might have sympathized with him.

  “Tektōn.” She let the word hang there between them. His eyes darted from her to Rook. Twice he opened his mouth to speak, twice closing it up again.

  “The Freemasons,” she said, planting the next seed.

  The color had drained from his face. “I—”

  “Shh, shh, shh. I said not to talk. Now is your time to listen.”

  His eyes opened wider and he nodded.

  She spoke the next word slowly, enunciating each syllable. “Illuminati.”

  Michael sucked in a breath, choking on the air he pulled in. He coughed, doubling over until he stopped. Heat and Rook watched his every move. Desperate people did desperate things. Heat wouldn’t have put it past him to pull a gun from his desk drawer. He didn’t, though. He pulled himself together and Heat went on. “Chloe discovered Tektōn, didn’t she?”

  Michael stared at her, mute.

  “Now you can talk, Michael. Now you need to answer my questions. I’ll repeat it for you. Chloe discovered Tektōn, didn’t she?”

  Michael nodded.

  “And you tried to dissuade her from writing about it?”

  Again, he nodded.

  “And why is that, Michael? Why didn’t you want Chloe to write the article about Cam U’s secret society?”

  “It...it wasn’t a good story. She thought...she thought it was some exposé, but it wasn’t there.”

  He was trying to sound like an editor in chief, but he couldn’t quite pull it off.

  “But see, here’s the thing, Michael. There’s a witness that saw a ritual taking place right here on campus. He was with Chloe when the new recruits were led out to the Freemasons’ white van, heads covered for dramatic effect, I imagine. What I think, Michael, is that you were once a new recruit, but one of the elders saw something in you. They wanted to groom you, so you were taken under their wing. Raymond Lamont was your...is your...academic advisor. Is it his wing you were under?”

  Michael nodded. His fingers curled into a fist, then uncurled. Over and over and over. The guy was cracking.

  “So, when you told your mentor, Lamont, that Chloe was on to Tektōn, he told you to kill the story.”

  Again, Michael just nodded.

  “But Chloe wasn’t letting it go, was she?”

  This time he shook his head. “I tried to convince her. I really did, but she was stubborn.”

  “That’s a common trait among investigative reporters,” Rook said, speaking for the first time. His tone was not pleasant.

  “Here’s where I get a little lost, Michael. You’re low man on the totem pole. I get that. You have the tattoo. You are destined for great things with the new world order, clearly. But why kill a college journalist who was writing about a college secret society? Did they threaten you? Was it a test? A rite of passage?” Heat put her hands on the desk and leaned closer to him. “The elders wanted her dead, didn’t they? They wanted her stopped so she wouldn’t reveal the group’s plans to rob banks or blow up town halls, or whatever dastardly deeds they concocted. They needed Chloe to stop.”

  Michael moved his hands to the tops of his thighs, rubbing them up and down. “She wouldn’t.”

  “But the elders...who? Lamont? Saunders? Even Holz? They certainly wouldn’t get their hands dirty. My guess is Holz took a chance trying to recover Chloe’s notebook, but he wasn’t going to bloody his hands by silencing the bird.”

  Michael’s eyes widened, and Heat nodded. “That’s right. We found the poem. Or the kill order, I should say. Handy way to communicate with each other, leaving notes—poems—kill orders in that secret room in Zabro Hall. The poem was a big help, actually. Instrumental, I’d say.”

  Michael opened his mouth to speak, but Heat kept on, a thought suddenly coming to her. “It was you in the lecture hall, wasn’t it? Assuage your own guilt by trying to lay more blame at Rook’s feet.”

  His silence and the complete lack of color in his face were all the answer she needed. “And then there’s Christian Foti,” she continued. “They tricked him, didn’t they? Let him get close to her to find out how much of a threat she was, then took her from him. He didn’t realize they were using him, did he, poor man? Not until it was too late.”

  “I—”

  “Let me cut to the chase. You were the hit man, Michael,” Heat said. “No point in trying to deny it. You are especially qualified, aren’t you?”

  “W-what do you mean?” he stammered.

  “Chloe was killed by someone low on the totem pole but, more importantly, by someone who knows something about human anatomy—the femoral artery, specifically. You were premed, Michael. You fit the bill. But help me understand. Why did you do it? Why didn’t you say no?”

  Michael didn’t answer. He just hung his head and cried.

  Nikki and Rook walked hand in hand down West 47th Street, she in a little red cocktail dress that drove him wild, and he in a dapper black tux that made her feel feral. They’d spent the evening at the opening night of Margaret Rook’s new play. “Your mother is a force to be reckoned with,” Nikki said. She meant it. Mama Rook had been mesmerizing from the moment she’d stepped onstage to the last line she’d uttered.

  “She says that about you,” Rook said.

  They walked together, talking about the performance, but at a break in the conversation, Nikki changed directions. “I heard from Ian,” she said. Not exactly the sexy come-on she wanted to say, but something he’d be interested in nonetheless.

  “Let me guess,” he replied with a smirk. “Your ex-husband, chief of Cambria Police, the cool Mr. Cooley, has wrapped up the Chloe Masterson case?”

  “With a bow. Lamont and Saunders are the holdouts, but Foti and Michael Warton gave them up. The DA will prosecute to the fullest. Foti is an accessory after the fact. Holz, as well as our young recruit, Garrett, were in the dark.”

  In the glow of the streetlights, Rook’s face looked eerily solemn. She wound her hand around his arm, their stride in sync. “I’m sorry, Jamie. We got the bad guys, but I am sorry they were your people.”

  He stopped and cupped her face between his hands. “I am, too, but let’s be clear, Nik. You are my people.”

  “Two college students, Rook.” She shook her head sadly. “Losing anyone is hard, but somehow losing the young is more gut-wrenching.”

  He squee
zed her hand. He knew her personal loss, so he knew how deeply she felt everything when it came to victims and their families.

  “I don’t condone what Joon Chin was doing, but he was an entrepreneur. And Chloe...”

  He trailed off. “Chloe was a bright light snuffed out too early.”

  They both were. And nothing she or Rook said could change the reality that Joon and Chloe were gone.

  “I heard back from April Albright,” Rook said after a half block. “We were right. Chloe pitched her story and April wanted it. Chloe hadn’t sent any of it, though.”

  “Mmm.” Heat held Rook’s arm tighter as they walked on.

  “I also heard from Sparky. The three-part history of New York is on hold.”

  “Let me guess,” Nikki said. “She wants you to write the story Chloe died for?”

  “Nail on the head, Heat. Nail on the head.”

  Rook leaned toward Heat and they walked in silence. The cool night air seeped into Nikki’s skin, her brain, her lungs. She exhaled, letting her tightly wound nerves float away. After a few minutes, they both seemed to put all that had happened in Cambria to rest. Rook looked up at the skyscrapers that created the NYC landscape, and he grinned. He adopted a Shakespearean manner as he spoke. “But soft, what light through yonder window breaks? It is the east, and Manhattan is the sun. Take not the sweet sounds and smells of my city. They’re like no other and shall not be forsaken.”

  Nikki laughed. Margaret Rook would be proud. The dramatic flair had passed keenly from mother to son. “To which sounds and smells are you referring?”

  “You name it. Sirens. Music. Horns. Laughter. Steam. Chinese food. It. Is. All. New. York. City.” Rook pulled her close to him. “Remind me never to leave my beloved city again.”

  “Never?” She pulled away from him, walked ahead a few steps, then turned to face him. Walking backward in her dress and heels wasn’t easy, but she managed to do it gracefully.

  “Wine tasting in California?”

  He shook his head. “They import it to us here.”