Driving Heat (27 page)

“Let me do some seat-of-the-pants profiling,” said Delaney. “You’re talking about a lone wolf ex-cop with psych issues. Paranoia, for starters.”

Heat nodded to herself. “I’m right there with you. I’m not seeing Maloney with the organizational chops to pull off an operation like the one I witnessed.”

“But he’s viable as a number-two. Got it.” Nikki heard the turn signal again. “Listen, I’m about to hit the parking garage downtown. Get me that speakeasy video. My
crew specializes in missing persons and abductions, and we’re going to put a monitor on your phones in case contact gets made—hopefully by Mr. Rook—otherwise, anyone asking for
ransom. Oh. Do you need a sketch artist to work up your kidnappers?”

“Ours just got here.”

“Shoot me the pics. And Heat—fly close.”

Minutes after she hung up, her landline rang again and, as always when the incoming was from Zachary Hamner’s number at One Police Plaza, she hesitated before answering. But, whether she
liked the political survivor–slash–hatchet man or not, he was high up in the department, so Heat answered. And when she did, Nikki heard something she had never before heard from The
Hammer: compassion. “I’m reaching out to tell you how sorry I am about Rook. But beyond that, I want to give you my pledge that we are all over this. I’ve reached out to the FBI,
but I hear you’ve already engaged—good. Keep doing what you do, we’ll do the same. And if I hear anything at all about him, you’re my first call. And if you hit any departmental obstacles, any at all, make me your first.”

She thanked him and, as she replaced the phone on its cradle, she thought Zach had sounded almost human.

Sitting with the police sketch artist tortured Heat with a double dose of
agony. First, it forced her to sit idle for twenty
minutes—excruciating, even though she knew the importance of getting the faces of those kidnappers out there. But the interval also gave her too much time to grapple with the thoughts
she’d been able to avoid by keeping busy. Was he still alive? Was he suffering? Would she ever see him again? And through it all ran the deep anguish she felt over her last conversation with
Rook having been a bitter argument. Out there on Columbus and 82nd, Nikki had slipped her emotional chain and gone off on him. Losing Rook would be unbearable enough. Living with a harsh quarrel as
their last words would be a crushing weight borne eternally.

She had to make sure that didn’t happen.

As soon as the sketches were finished, Nikki bolted into the squad room,
only to encounter a surprise. Raley was back from his video
errand at P. J. Clarke’s, and he and Ochoa had transformed the bull pen into a Rook-abduction war room. They had called in extra detectives from Robbery-Burglary plus an extra shift of
uniforms and administrative aides to facilitate logistics, make calls, and act as runners. In tandem, Roach brought Heat up to speed on status and assignments.

“We’re going at this with a dual strategy,” began Detective Ochoa.

Detective Raley took the handoff. “We decided our best shot to break this is to break it down. So we’re operating on two fronts: First is the immediate search for Rook. Here’s
where we are with that.” He indicated a list they had posted on a new whiteboard they had rolled in. “An aide is calling his cell every ten minutes. Even though you said the SIM is
inactive, it’s an easy base to cover—so why not? Next, we’ve contacted his credit card companies to monitor any usage and get us an instant alert of where and when.”

“Same for his bank card?” asked Heat.

“Affirm,” said Rales. “If Rook—or anyone—taps an ATM for his cash, we’ll know in seconds and have cars and a chopper swarm it. We’re sending a detective
from the First Precinct to check out Rook’s loft in case there’s been a forced entry or signs of it being tossed.”

Flywheels were spinning so fast in Nikki’s head that, in her impatience, she started to read ahead on the board so she could assess the coverage without waiting through Raley’s
recitation. The list felt comprehensive: Run silver minivans through the DMV. Check for minivans reported stolen, starting in the last twenty-four hours (painstaking without access to the database,
but they would assign the manpower to do it by hand). Assign an administrative aide to call the Crime Stoppers anonymous tip line every half hour. Get in touch with 911 Dispatch for any calls
reporting fights or…gunshots.

With that the to-do list had taken a sharp left into corrosive areas. Nikki’s mouth went dry, and she crossed her arms so she could wedge her hands into her armpits and hide how much they
were shaking. At the end of his bullet points, Raley concluded with, “That’s one front we’re hitting.”

“But we’re hitting a second front just as hard,” continued Ochoa. “And that’s to step it up and push harder on the Lon King and Fred Lobbrecht murders.” He
must have caught Heat’s reaction to that and started to explain. “Our theory is—”

“The murder case is tied in to his kidnapping,” Heat said, interrupting. “Solving that case equals saving Rook.”

“Exactly. We don’t know how—”

“But we know they’re linked,” said Raley. “So the last thing we can afford to do is drop the ball there.”

Heat nodded. “Agreed. The clock is running.”

Detective Ochoa indicated the busy squad room. “That’s why we called in extra investigators from Robbery-Burglary. So our squad can keep flogging the homicides. Meantime, everyone
has canceled their lives for this. We are going to find him, Captain.”

“And if we don’t have solid leads—” added Raley.”

“We are going to follow up on every single weak one no matter how tangential it looks until we get Rook back safe and alive,” finished Ochoa.

The alternative sickened Heat, so she told herself for the hundredth time that there
was
no alternative. “Keep it rolling, bring him home,” she said. The thank-you was
implied; making it explicit would only cause them to lose a step in a fast race. But on the way to her office, Nikki paused for the briefest second to appreciate the fact that her squad co-leaders
had set aside whatever differences they had for the sake of the mission. The fact that they were back together working as the Roach machine gave her heart hope that they actually might find
Rook.

Heat closed her office door and placed another call—one that pride had made her procrastinate over, but pride would not help find Rook. It went to the 703 area code, and the operator in
the big glass building in the woods Nikki pictured outside Washington, DC, answered on the first ring. After a short interval—mercifully without lite jazz—there came a double click and
a single electronic purr. “You’ve reached voicemail for Senior Agent Bell. You may now leave a message.”

Figuring that the encrypted line would be secure enough, Heat left a lengthy message describing Rook’s kidnapping to Yardley and urging her to call so they could talk more about Tangier
Swift. Trying to keep the throat squeeze of desperation out of her voice, she said, “It’s ten past one
A.M.
, but call anytime with anything.” Before
hanging up, she added for emphasis,
“Anytime.”

So much for hiding her desperation.

Just before dawn after a night without sleep, Nikki sat on hold with the
graveyard-shift DMV supervisor she had chased down in Albany
to gate-crash the Records Section and run out a list of silver minivans for her. While he slowly—so damn slowly—took down the information, Heat tried to pry open the bottle of Tylenol
she had found in the break room’s first-aid drawer so she could tame the throbbing knot behind her ear where the goon had soccer-kicked her. Nikki’s quaking fingers managed to pop the
top, but the force of the action sent all the tablets clattering over her desktop to the floor. Screw it. Heat selected two off her blotter and dry-swallowed them.

As she wrapped up her call to the DMV, she heard someone walking on gravel and turned. But it wasn’t gravel. It was Detective Ochoa treading across Tylenol. His face registered something
she had not seen all night: hope. Then he said one welcome word: “Tipster.”

“Tell me,” she said, rising to her feet, adrenalized. With a cop’s reflex, she noted the time: 5:42 in the morning.

“Just came in. A guy in town for dinner last night from Port Chester saw Rook get taken. He said it didn’t look right, and tailed the silver minivan as far as he could.”

“He credible?”

“Gave the full plate that matches your partial.”

“Why’d he wait so long?”

“Said he was with someone he wasn’t supposed to be with, and didn’t want to get found out. Guess he got a conscience.”

“Let’s hear it for cheaters,” Heat said, pulling on her blazer. “Have him show me.”

To make sure he didn’t wiggle off the hook, Detective Feller picked up
Alvin Speyer outside his Times Square hotel and
chauffeured the philandering plumbing contractor to where he had last seen the kidnap van. They followed Montgomery Street under the FDR into the parking lot of Pier 36, where Detective Heat was
waiting between the cargo warehouse and the big Parks & Rec basketball complex. Raley and Ochoa wanted to be there, too, but she had come alone, not wanting to overwhelm an already apprehensive
eyewit with a heavy turnout of detectives.

Heat crossed the blacktop to her tipster after he got out of the passenger seat and gave him her most welcoming smile and a friendly handshake. She had already slid her badge further back on her
belt so that he wouldn’t spot it and freeze up. She made out Speyer to be about forty-six to forty-eight, with the kind of cheerful bad-boy face that some women find irresistible, and the
faded-glory level of fitness you see in suburban sports coaches. Nikki wondered if the previous night’s Gotham slumber party had been with a soccer mom or a lucky customer, then banished all
that as distracting. “Hi, Mr. Speyer, I’m Nikki,” she said, careful to keep it informal. No sense introducing rank-caused jitters. “I want to thank you for your cooperation,
and I want to assure you, right off, that your assistance will remain just between us.”

“Good. ’Cause I’ll end up in court if it gets out I was here. According to my wife, I’m supposed to be in East Meadow on a big condo contract all this week.”

“Your secret’s safe with me.” In order to move away from the subject of adultery before he retreated, she added, “Why don’t you describe exactly what you
saw.”

Speyer massaged the back of his thick neck and said, “Sure. We were heading to dinner up at Neary’s, you know, that Irish spot, when this asshole in a silver van cuts me off and hits
the brakes right in front of me. I give him a dose of horn, but then I see these three big dudes coming, and figure I’d better cool it. Then I see they’re wrestling this guy who no way
wants to go with them. My lady says we should get out of there, but my dad was a fireman, you know? It’s in the blood to help. I tell her let’s just follow and see what’s what,
you never know. Then when I see this lady get dropped in the gutter, I say, ‘No brainer, we’re on these dudes.’”

Speyer described the route, and Heat was happy to see Randall Feller taking notes behind him, out of his view. From the East Side they had taken the FDR south past the Williamsburg Bridge,
finding their way to South Street and then to the place where they now stood. “We didn’t want to get too close. Who knew what the fuck they were up to. Or carrying. So I hung back there
near the street and watched. They pull up to that ramp down there.” He made a chop with one hand toward an incline to the East River. “Then they drag the same guy out and take him down
to this motorboat that’s waiting. They load him in and it takes off.”

With her heart lashing her rib cage, Nikki asked, “What about the man? Did he seem all right? Hurt? Was he struggling?”

“Naw, he wasn’t fighting at all. He seemed sort of out of it. Upright, but these guys were big, and they were basically carrying him one on each shoulder.”

“Drugged?”

“I’d say so. Or they’d fucking cold-cocked his ass. He had a lot of blood on his shirt.”

Nikki felt herself lose feeling in her hands and feet.

Feller picked up on it and stepped in to distract her. “Tell us about the boat.”

“Not much to tell, and we didn’t hang around, I’ll tell you that.”

Every detective knows that when an eyewitness says there’s not much to tell, it’s only because they haven’t been asked the right questions yet. Randall had a few. “Did it
have any numbers? Maybe a name or markings?”

“I’m sure it had numbers and such, but it was too far to read.”

“Could you see what color it was?”