Deadly Heat (28 page)

“Hey, Nikki,” she said, the only one in the house who used her first name, a trait residing about midpoint on her list of annoying qualities, “did that tipster guy ever reach you?”

“You heard about him?”

“Yeah, some guy called and said he spotted Salena Kaye and wanted to talk to you. I started quizzing him to make sure he wasn’t a crackpot, and he got all cranked and said he couldn’t waste time and hung up on me.”

Heat recalled the rental car manager saying he made two tries to reach her. “Detective, how come you didn’t tell me?”

“I am.” And then Hinesburg actually giggled.

“Detective.”

“You mean before? I didn’t bother you earlier ’cause I thought he was a nut job.”

As she had so many times dealing with Sharon Hinesburg, Heat made a silent three-count before she continued. “You have a pen? Write this down.” Nikki recited the Recents number from Salena Kaye’s phone and asked her to run it. “And Sharon? Do call me immediately when you get the trace.”

After she hung up, Heat furrowed her brow, considered the screwup potential, then pressed the speed dial for Detective Ochoa’s cell. When he answered, she gave him the phone number and asked him to trace it. “And Miguel, don’t let Hinesburg know you’re doing this. I asked her to run it, and I’m having second thoughts about her follow-through.”

“You mean just now?” He laughed and hung up.

“You think someone called and tipped Kaye off, don’t you?” said Rook.

Heat continued to go through the shoulder bag. “Could be. Why do you ask?”

“Because back at the rent-a-car, when you asked me to go out and reenact walking in—playing the part of you—there’s no way Salena Kaye could have spotted you without you spotting her, too.”

“Not unless she has X-ray vision and saw me coming through the wall when I was on the sidewalk.” She glanced up from her bag search and gave him a smile. “That’s good deduction, Writer Boy.”

“I walked a mile in your shoes, Nikki Heat.”

“You can stop now.”

“Stopping,” he said.

“OK, here we go…” From a fold at the bottom of the shoulder bag she pulled out a small plastic card, about the size of a supermarket rewards chip. “Somebody joined a gym.” She held up the membership card with the bar code on it so he could see. “Coney Island Workout.”

Macka, the owner of the gym, paused his chore of rolling towels and stacking them in cubbies to scan the bar code on the infrared gun at Reception. “She bought a month-to-month. This who you’re looking for?” He spun the computer flat-screen toward them. Salena Kaye’s unsmiling ID photo, taken right there against the powder blue wall, stared out. But the name matched the fake credit card and license, not her real one.

“That’s her,” said Heat. “Do you have an address?”

“Sure do,” he said and brought that file up for them to see. “It’s in Fairfax, Virginia.” No surprise to Heat. She turned away to scan the gym, hoping to find someone Salena worked out with—also a long shot; Kaye would be a loner and just use the facility to keep up her battle strength. Then Macka said, “But I know where she lives. You know, she’s kind of a looker. I was waiting for my bus one night and saw her go in the Coney Crest on Surf Ave.”

On their way there, Rook said, “Excuse me, you’re not going to check in with our cousins at Homeland Security?”

Heat knew she should, but answered, “It’ll slow us down,” speaking the perfect brand of truth: the one that also functioned as camouflage for a deeper truth. Someone may have tipped off Salena Kaye about Heat’s visit to the rent-a-car. Nikki simply would not take the chance that it could happen again, and made a field decision that this raid would be lightning-quick, minimal in size, and known solely by the actual participants. She only made two calls. One to Benigno DeJesus, whose evidence collection team had finished scouring Heat’s apartment, and
the other to the Sixtieth Precinct to request some uniformed officers to establish a perimeter around the motel and provide backup. Detective Heat never said for what, and nobody asked her to. Everyone just assumed it was all about the Rainbow case.

The Coney Crest fell into that subcategory of lodging known as the SRO, or single residence occupancy—a weekly transitional rental for the increasing number of unfortunate souls who’d lost their homes in a bad economy. In police shorthand, SROs also functioned as flophouses for the marginally legal and folks hiding out: shitheads, robbers, and offenders. The thing most of these places had in common was few questions asked, bad smells in the halls, and names that sounded classier than the joint.

As Heat walked the second-floor breezeway toward Room 210, a trio of uniforms crept up the far stairs to converge with her in the open hallway. She paused to look over the rail at the cloudy swimming pool where Rook waited beside the broken diving board. The Coney Crest’s manager, no constitutional scholar, never asked for a warrant. The weary man with pouched eyes simply gave Nikki his passkey, even though he pointed out that the one Heat had brought from Salena’s bag would fit 210 and about a half dozen other doors in the place.

Detective Heat and the officers behind her took positions on opposite sides of the door. Using the silent signals and the plan they had worked out in the parking lot, Nikki knelt, slid the key in the lock, called, “Salena Kaye, NYPD, open up,” and unlocked the door. The nearest uniform booted it open and they all rolled in, covering one another and shouting don’t-move commands.

In fifteen seconds, it was over. They had cleared the bedroom, the closet, the bathroom, even searched the modest array of cabinets in the kitchenette.

“You didn’t really expect her to be in here, did you?” asked Rook when she allowed him in.

“Not really. Kaye’s a trained agent. She’d been burned, we had her key; she’ll never come here again.” She smiled at him. “But let a girl have her fantasies.”

“Every wish begins with Kaye,” he said.

Benigno DeJesus had no trouble finding the place. He had been to the Coney Crest so many times over the years that he’d joked to his forensics team about renting one of the rooms to keep as storage for his gear. While Heat’s go-to ECU detective snapped open his rolling case out on the breezeway and prepared to examine Room 210, he filled Nikki in on the results of his run of her apartment.

The report didn’t take long. The intruder had gotten in through a closet window. The busted latch had been invisible to her eye when she’d made her check of the place, but DeJesus’s inspection of the window from the outside revealed jimmy scratches and brass shavings on the sill from chiseling and prying. He found no sign of the missing hard drive from her lipstick cam or any evidence of DNA—translated as excrement (not uncommon) or results of sexual gratification—same with inconsistent hairs, fibers, or shoe scuffs. The orange string matched the same lot found on Joe Flynn’s boat. The lab had it, but as with the other strings they’d tested, the prospect of finding anything useful on it seemed bleak. “We did lift some prints, but it will surprise me if they aren’t yours, Mr. Rook’s, and your building super’s.” He put on his scrub cap and added, “I know it won’t make you rest any easier, but it’s like a ghost came to visit you.”

Instead of feeling spooked, Heat processed his comment dispassionately, as an investigator. She made a mental note to run cat burglars through the RTCC database downtown, then led him into Salena Kaye’s motel room.

The forensics detective stood quietly in the center of the room and simply looked around. After a few Zen-like moments of stillness, he asked, “Your raid team, how much did they disturb?”

“Minimal. Once they opened doors and cabinets to clear the room, I sent them out.”

“Good.” Finished with his overview, he continued, “Fingerprints will be tricky due to volume of room traffic in a place like this. But if she had visitors, you’ll want to know who, so I’ll do my best. We have some partials of Salena Kaye’s from your Starbucks cup, and I assume we’ll get more out of the shoulder bag you found.”

“Actually, I got it away from her,” said Rook. And, for a little extra
hot sauce, he added, “During our fight.” Benigno regarded him a moment, said nothing, and got to work.

He began in the kitchenette because he’d spotted several plastic bags from a hardware store on the countertop—rather inconsistent with food preparation. “See here?” he said, holding one of the bags open with his gloved hands. “Ball bearings, bulk purchased nails, screws and nuts… I’m betting these are her shrapnel leftovers from the Tyler Wynn bomb. It’ll match, mark my words.” He opened and closed cabinets. When he got to the one beneath the sink, he knelt and shined a work light inside. Then he turned to Heat, speaking casually. “I’m going to stand down until you have the motel evacuated and call the bomb squad. Just a precaution, but take a peek.” She bent to look over his shoulder as he pointed to a plastic dish tub filled with cellophane bags, and an array of electronic parts. “None of it seems hooked up, but I see gunpowder, C4… even a backup remote control device. See that tan garage door clicker next to those firing switches and wires? That’s the same sort of radio controller that was used to detonate the package in Wynn’s apartment.”

Heat said, “I was told that got set off by a timer.”

“Not by me,” said the forensics man. “I know a timer from a radio controller.”

Heat turned to Rook, who had not only read her mind, but already had his scoff on. “Another thorough job by the Queen of Detail, Sharon Hinesburg.”

On the drive back to Manhattan, Heat put in a call to Detective Hinesburg—or, as Rook had christened her, Defective Hinesburg. “Oh, I was just about to call you.” Somehow Sharon always managed to sound as if she’d gotten caught playing Angry Birds and was covering. It occurred to Nikki that that may have been more than merely an impression. “You know that number you gave me to check out? Burner cell.”

“You’re sure.” Heat let her testiness come through.

“Yep. A prepaid phone, probably bought at a CVS or Best Buy. Not traceable.”

“The reason I’m asking if you’re sure is that you also said the trigger for Tyler Wynn’s bomb was a timer, and I just learned it was a remote.
Maybe not the end of the world, but my main concern—Detective—is that I can count on you to actually complete an assignment when I give you one.” Nikki side-glanced to Rook, who was nodding feverishly and throwing shadow punches in the passenger seat.

“But I did.” The whine did nothing to endear her.

“Then why did you say it was a timer?”

“Because when you called on me, I got all flustered. I forgot which it was and said the first thing I thought of. I feel a lot of pressure in those Murder Board meetings.” Hinesburg paused, and Nikki could hear her swallow hard. “I feel like you hate me, and that makes it harder. I’m trying to do better.”

Heat felt like she was dealing with a preadolescent rather than a homicide detective, and cut her losses. “Here’s where you can start, Sharon. Do what you’re asked, and if you don’t know an answer, don’t make one up, OK?”

“See, you do hate me.”

After the call, Nikki growled in frustration and said to Rook, “Last thing I need in the middle of two monster cases is Sharon Hinesburg’s…”

“… Bullshit?”

“… Crap.”

“You go, Nikki.”

“I can deal with weakness. I can even handle a certain degree of incompetence. Sort of. But what I can’t have is a lack of confidence. And there aren’t enough make-work assignments just to keep her out of the way.”

Rook said, “You should just bag her.”

“I can’t, and you know why.”

Rook smiled as they entered the Midtown Tunnel. “Which is why I’d never sleep with someone I work with.”

On the sidewalk outside the Department of Homeland Security, Heat made a quick call to Detective Raley before she and Rook went in. “You’re still my King of All Surveillance Media, right?”

“I’m also clairvoyant,” Raley said. “I predict my future holds canceled dinner plans.”

“Uncanny. From now on, I’m calling you the Great Ralini. I just left Salena Kaye’s SRO in Coney Island. The motel has some actual working surveillance cams, and the manager is holding the tapes from the last few weeks. I’d like you to scrub them to log her comings and goings and pull video of any visitors she might have had.”