Driving Heat (21 page)

He squinted, bracing for something terrible, eased the box onto the countertop, then gradually drew his hands out and away.

This time Heat didn’t hesitate to grab her walkie-talkie. She used it to call the bomb squad.

T
he Emergency Services Unit had evacuated the tenants from Heat’s building and the apartments flanking it to a safety zone
around the corner on the west side of Gramercy Park. The mist had let up, but everyone was still milling around in front of mid-1800s Mayor James Harper’s landmark brownstone with bodies
hunched and arms gathered close to their chests as if it were still drizzling. No doubt those folks, many of whom had pajama bottoms protruding from their coats, were not only feeling the chill of
the evening but also of anxiety. Nikki certainly felt a deep shiver of her own.

A rumor was emerging among the chattering crowd that the incident was an act of terror committed by the same group that had blacked out the city’s technology. As wild and misinformed as
some of the conjecture got, Heat had to admit that nothing fueled speculation like standing on a wet street for a half hour at night in your jammies with an armored ESU bomb disposal vehicle parked
in front of your home.

Those who already knew their neighbor was a cop, or else had glimpsed her shield, engaged her from behind the tape, asking Heat what was going on. She thought back to a bull-necked detective she
knew from the Counterterror Unit who made it his stock practice to answer all such questions by saying someone had called 911 about spotting an alligator, and they were checking it out.
“You’d be surprised how many people that shuts up,” he had said. “They’ll swallow anything if you act like it’s true.” Believing she owed her community
more than cynical pragmatism, Nikki answered honestly, but revealed as little as she had to. “A suspicious package,” she repeated for the umpteenth time. “Just a
precaution.”

The package was more than suspicious, it was brazen, and Heat had quite a good idea where it had come from. So did Rook. Without articulating that suspicion, Rook was scanning the night for the
suspect’s face, just as she was. Both knowing they’d never find it. They had a better shot at spotting an alligator.

Two words—a matter-of-fact “All clear” from the ESU commander on her walkie—sent Heat hurrying back to her stoop with Rook following in her wake. They passed the
Emergency Services truck with its bomb disposal chamber hitched to the back, which always reminded Heat of a small cement mixer in tow. Officers on the lee side of the vehicle began heading over to
release the evacuees. In her vestibule Heat and Rook stepped aside for a K-9 sniffer coming out with his handler. Upstairs CSU had already begun to suit up in her hallway. “Bootie
call,” muttered Rook as they approached some techies slipping on paper shoe covers. Even he didn’t smile at his own joke.

The bomb sarge had his protective hood off when they came in. His short hair was pasted down by sweat. “Thank you,” was the first thing Heat said. She could only imagine the bravery
it took for him to wake up every day and face the unthinkable, especially in these times. This unit called itself the “tip of the spear,” and they were.

The sergeant gave her a half smile and a salute with his thickly gloved hand. “Shame about your bottle of wine.” But Heat’s attention was focused inside the armored box in
which the disposal expert had placed the suspicious package. “We ascertained pretty quickly it wasn’t an explosive device,” he explained, tugging his hands out of his Kevlar oven
mitts. “We did an X-ray, and saw no wires, timers, caps, et cetera. Exterior swab, neg. K-9 was also negative—same for the rest of your apartment, by the way.”

“I can’t tell you how freaked I was,” said Rook. “I kept thinking, ‘Forrest got it wrong. Death is also like a box of chocolates.’”

“OK to have a peek?” she asked.

“You bet.” The containment vessel sat on the floor under the overhang of the kitchen counter. Boards under the rug creaked under the weight of the sergeant’s suit as he led her
to it. Nikki’s limbs lost strength when she looked inside.

To Heat, it might as well have been a bomb.

Rook, immediately sympathetic to the impact of what she saw, draped a hand on her shoulder that Nikki never even felt. She was too transfixed by the contents of the Godiva box. The candies had
all been removed to make room for two items: a spice jar full of cinnamon sticks and a chef’s knife.

The bomb sergeant said, “When I saw this I thought, ‘OK, somebody’s playing a practical joke on you.’ It wouldn’t be the first time we rolled out to a prank.”
Then he studied her and, seeing her reaction, gave her some quiet space. He didn’t know the symbolism of these everyday items. He didn’t know that on her freshman Thanksgiving break
from Northeastern, Nikki was helping her mom do some baking and left the apartment to buy cinnamon sticks at the Morton Williams up the block. He didn’t know that while she was out on her
errand, someone attacked her mother with her own chef’s knife and left her for Nikki to find her dying on that very kitchen floor. He didn’t know any of that. But the person who had put
this package together, then broken into her apartment, then left it in her living room, did.

Closure is more than elusive, it is an illusion. But in the years since her mother’s murder, thanks to the healing of time and by ultimately solving the case, Heat had made a tenuous peace
with the formative tragedy of her life. Now, in an upending instant, the act of a sick mind had ruptured that detente.

“Captain Heat,” said a CSU technician peeking around the corner from her entrance hall. “Something for you to see.” Nikki and Rook joined her in the foyer, where the
evidence specialist indicated a folded piece of paper on the Oriental runner. “This just floated down on your rug when I opened the closet door to lift prints off the knobs. It must have been
wedged up high in the door crack.”

“By someone who knew it would be dusted,” said Rook. Nobody disagreed.

Heat snapped on the pair of blue nitriles offered by the technician, who then handed her the slip of paper. Nikki unfolded it carefully, even though she knew there would be no fingerprints on it
for her to spoil.

The single sheet of plain, multiuse paper contained a brief message printed on an inkjet or laser. It contained no greeting, no salutation, no addressee. The writer got right to it:

Nikki felt a lurch inside, as if she were rocketing skyward in the Coney Island Cyclone. But her alarm and anguish quickly resolved into anger at Timothy Maloney. Anger served Heat well. It gave
her something to do instead of something to feel.

As CSU continued its work, Heat sought some physical outlet for her as-yet-undirected energy. She threw herself into cleaning up the broken glass and wasted Gavi on the kitchen floor while Rook
sat at the counter absorbing the download of her ricocheting thoughts. “Want to know the big message from all this?” she asked.

“You mean Maloney’s big subtext of, ‘I can have you anytime?’”

A dustpan full of glass shards clanged into the trash can. Heat banged the broom head against the rim to shake off any slivers embedded in the bristles. “He’s going to have a
challenge there, trust me.” She crouched and swabbed the wine and stubborn bits of glass up from the tiles with a wad of paper towels. “No, my big takeaway is to see Maloney in a
different light in this case.”

“You mean killing Lon King? I thought he had slid down that totem pole.”

“He had. Especially after you brought the whole automotive safety conspiracy into this.” She tossed the wad of towels into the trash, and a shower of bits of glass plinked against
the big chunks of broken bottle like sleet. She grabbed for another fistful of paper towels. “Now I’m renewing my interest in him.”

“You know me, I love a big, juicy, rare hunk of speculation,” said Rook. “But, purely from my take on the guy? A drone shot doesn’t seem like Maloney’s MO. A little
too much finesse. Agreed?”

Nikki didn’t reply. She had paused, absently fixing a blank stare on an area three tiles over from where she was mopping—the spot where she had wiped up her mother’s dried
blood almost fifteen years before—and yet, it seemed, only yesterday…Then she resumed cleaning. Out, damned spot. “I don’t know what he’s capable of, although I got a good
idea tonight.”

“You mean mind-fucking you with the Godiva box?”

“I mean by knowing what to put inside it.” She stood up, chucked the towels in the rubbish, and slammed its lid. She dropped her voice low so it wouldn’t carry to the Crime
Scene Unit. “Rook, I think he did steal King’s files. Those details, the cinnamon sticks, the knife—hell, even my mother’s murder, in the first place, I talked about those
things in my counseling sessions, and those would have been in Lon’s notes.”

Rook said, “May I point out that the facts were also in that cover story I wrote about you in
First Press
? And that includes the cinnamon sticks, the knife, and dozens of other
case details in that article and the follow-up, both of which not only were available at any newsstand but are still there online. Except, of course, in most offices of the NYPD tonight. So now
it’s my turn to tell you not to jump to conclusions or speculate wildly. What’s wrong with this picture? The shoe’s on the other foot, and I like it!”

Nikki rocked her head side to side as she considered all that. “Maybe. Maybe not,” was all she’d give him for now.

“By the way, thank you for trusting me enough to share your conversation with your shrink. It means a lot.” Then he couldn’t resist. “What else did you talk about?

She smiled. “I think we’d best leave it there. Some things are just mine to know.”

“Fine, absolutely.” But he couldn’t help himself. “Did I come up?”

Before CSU left, Rook gave them a set of prints to eliminate his from the
batch they had collected. They asked for Heat’s, as
well. Even though Nikki’s were on file, nobody knew how the hack attack would affect prints searches, so having hers at hand would save time. It really didn’t matter. They all knew the
intruder had left no fingerprints or fibers.

“Don’t forget to bring your iPhone charger,” said Rook as he grabbed his jacket. “Forgetting it would add insult to injury.”

“I’ll take it in the morning. I want to stay here tonight.”

“Really? After what happened? It doesn’t creep you out or make you feel unsafe?”

“Why, does it you?” She unwrapped an alcohol wipe and used it to clean a smudge of ink off his thumb. “Because I’m fine with it. In fact, I think staying here tonight
will make a little statement.”

Rook hesitated, then took a turn around the room. “How do you suppose he got in without a key?”

“Listen, if you are scared—”

“Not scared, definitely not scared—”

“Feeling cautious, then. The district commander is posting a car out front tonight.”

“To stop a nutjob ex-cop who’s got the balls—and the skills—to let himself into your place, undetected, and threaten you?”

“Yeah, pretty much.”

He returned his jacket to the back of a chair at the dining table. “This little statement you want to make by staying here. It
is
directed at Maloney, right?”

“Who else?”

“Just wondering out loud. I would be lying if I didn’t tell you I am getting a definite sense of foot-dragging when it comes to our living arrangements.”

“Let’s not get into this. Not tonight.”

“It never seems to be a good time for you to get into this. Ergo, foot dragging.” She ignored him and pulled the liner out of her trash can. But he pressed on. “By the way,
about this apartment? I don’t know if they keep official stats, but you must have the home invasion record in this building.”

“Oh, nice, very nice.” She bow-tied the liner’s gray drawstrings and cinched the bag extra tight. “How can you stoop to glibness at a time like this?”

“I see we have gone from foot-dragging to diversion tactics.”

Nikki leaned a hip against the range and crossed her arms. “All right. You want to deal with this? Look around. This isn’t just real estate to me.”

“Nik, as far as I’m concerned, I can be happy wherever we settle down. Hell, we could even get side-by-side bathtubs on a lake just like in that commercial.” He grinned, but
when he saw how deeply she was dug in, he came around the counter to join her. “If this is about your freedom, your independence is something you never have to worry about. Not with me. You
do know that, right?”

“Sure. Of course. Look, can we put a pin in this subject? It’s all been a bit of a drain, especially with Maloney all paranoid that I’m out to get him.”

“Which, of course, you are.”

“I am now.”

At a quarter to six the next morning Heat left her building with two fingers
looped around the hook of a clothes hanger that held her
captain’s uniform in dry-cleaning plastic. The outfit wasn’t going to Rook’s loft but uptown with her to the Twentieth, where she could keep it handy in her office with the other
backup clothes she kept stashed there. But they were civvies, same as she was wearing again that day, held at the ready in the event of the inevitable coffee spill or bloodstain. It made sense to
keep her uniform handy just in case her duties unexpectedly required it. She and the other detectives used to bad-mouth the late Wally Irons, the Camera-Ready Captain, for always keeping a fresh
uni on his coatrack in hopes of a press conference or photo opportunity. Now, here was Nikki, doing it herself. “‘And we become what we hate,’” quoted Rook on their elevator
ride down.