Driving Heat (29 page)

T
he traffic officer recognized Heat’s car as a plain wrap when she pulled up, so without having to badge herself through,
Nikki got waved to a spot in front of the coroner’s van on East 3rd Street, down in the Alphabets. A patrolwoman stood at relaxed sentry beside the front door of the apartment building, an
unremarkable tan-brick structure sandwiched between a laundromat and a cross-fit gym advertising its grand opening. The uni gave Heat a smart nod as the captain signed in to the crime scene.
Following a five-story climb up through the old walk-up, Heat stepped out through the propped-open service door onto the rooftop.

Across the flat expanse, which had been painted white, per the latest eco-trend, Lauren Parry and a crew from the Office of Chief Medical Examiner had set up shop near the victim. Detective
Aguinaldo stood with them, taking notes. Nikki paused, performing her usual ritual of respect and remembrance, then let her eyes soak up the area as she approached the body.

Every murder scene is memorable in its own way. The lasting impression made by Abigail Plunkitt was that she didn’t appear dead at all from the rear, but simply like a woman seated in her
patio chair, enjoying the view of the Lower East Side. The laid-back quality was furthered by the glass of red wine on the teak end table beside her and the Kindle that lay sleeping on her lap.
Only when Heat came around for a front view did it all change. Dried blood formed a line descending from a small hole where her eyebrows met above the bridge of her nose. The rust-colored stream
traced the channel formed between her right cheek and nostril, around her mouth to her jaw, then down her throat onto her pale-yellow tee, where it had been absorbed and spread by drizzle two
nights before into an oxidized tie-dye. In that sense, this murder scene was not unique at all. “Same COD as Lon King down at the river,” said Heat.

Dr. Lauren Parry peered up at her from her kneeling position beside the corpse. “Normally, I’d say don’t rush to judgment, but I can’t say I disagree.”

“But you’ll need to run your tests.”

“I will.” The medical examiner stood and approached her. “Right now, I’m more interested in you.”

“Thanks.”

“Any word?” Then she read her friend’s face and let it go. “OK, but anything you need. Anything.” Sympathetic enough not to push it, Parry focused on the prelim of
Abigail Plunkitt. “Obviously small-caliber, single GSW, same POE as King’s. Based on his condition, I did a quick field test and see definite signs of residue from gunpowder. The lab
will be more definitive, probably reveal some trace metals.”

“So, another close-range shot.”

“Bet on it.”

Nikki turned a 360, then tilted her head to examine the victim’s lap. “You’re going to find residue from lubricant on that Kindle’s screen.”

“Already have.”

Heat studied the condition of the body, whose bloating and discoloration spoke of a long passage of time. “What’s your ballpark on TOD?”

“Going out on a limb, Nikki, I’d say three, probably four days.”

“Same day as Lon King.”

“Pretty near.”

Heat turned to Detective Aguinaldo. “Guess we know why she was unreachable.”

“We checked her apartment, we checked her car, we checked her friends.”

Nikki reflected for a beat and said, “I guess we learned something then.” She left it at that. Inez would be chewing herself up; Heat didn’t need to add to the new
detective’s own postmortem. “Let’s move on. What we need to find out now is whether Nathan Levy is the next victim, or our prime suspect.”

Detective Rhymer’s field report over the phone from Throggs Neck tipped
the balance of that scale. “Damn near got myself
creamed coming up here,” he said. “I’m driving on Schurz, about a block from Nathan Levy’s house, when this souped-up 450 comes barreling up the wrong side of the street at
me. I swerved, and so did he at the last second, missing me by an inch. I made Levy as the driver and started working a three-pointer when the cruiser detailed to him blows past me running a hot
code, nearly taking my rear bumper as a souvenir.”

Heat’s pulse quickened. Things are breaking, maybe I’ll finally get some answers, she thought. “How long ago was this?”

“By now, ten, no, eleven minutes. He led the blue-and-white out on the Neck and lured them into a cul-de-sac off Soundview Terrace. Levy chewed some lawn making his turn, but the unis got
boxed. By the time they came out, he was a ghost. Local knowledge and a test driver—I guess you’re gonna end up with some
Fast and Furious
.” Nikki remembered Levy’s
built-for-the-job physique and could picture him muscling that performance pickup anywhere he wanted, at any speed he chose. “Called in a BOLO, of course,” added the detective.
“Could be anywhere by now, though.”

Thoughts bounced in Nikki’s head, and one of them settled in the clear. “Let’s update that BOLO. Radio in a Do Not Apprehend. If they spot him, have them maintain a tail. Just
in case Levy is involved with Rook’s disappearance, he might lead us to him.”

“Copy that.”

“And the instant they spot him, I want to be notified. I want to be there, understood?”

Now that Levy looked good as a potential suspect, Raley and Ochoa were already busy shoveling deeper into his past. They were making calls, trying to run him for any jail time or arrests.

“While you’re at it, a guy who drives like that is going to have some moving
violations,” said Heat once she got
back to the station. “Run them—even parking tickets, now that I think of it. See what addresses he got pinched at. Maybe there’s a pattern to a neighborhood or borough where he
hangs out.”

“On it,” said Raley.

Ochoa sucked his teeth. “So frustrating. If the databases were up, we could run this stuff in the time it took to print. Instead, we’re calling multiple jurisdictions and waiting for
them to do hand searches.”

Heat fixed him with a firm glare. “Then that’s what we do, Miguel. We do whatever it takes.”

“Look what just came in from Ballistics.” Detective Raley rose from his desk holding up a printed report.

Nikki rushed across the bull pen to him, her internal voice pleading with every step, Please let this help, please let this help…

“It’s the finding on the slug found in the garage door frame at Nathan Levy’s house,” he said. “It was a .38.”

“Not a .22?” she asked. “Lon King was killed with a .22. Prelim on Abigail Plunkitt is also a .22.”

“Same with the drone slugs recovered at Washington Square,” added Ochoa.

“But Levy claims the drone shot at him,” said Ochoa. “But that’s out of pattern if it’s a .38. Which means either his drone weapon got swapped—”

“Or he’s lying, and staged the potshot,” added Raley.

Heat held up the interoffice envelope which, from all the signatures on it, looked like it had been in circulation since the Kerik era. She read the date of submission, and her chest became a
furnace of rage. “Two days it took this to reach us! Goddamnit, if we’d known about this discrepancy even thirty-six hours ago, we could have been all over this guy.
Now”—she crumpled the envelope and tossed it in the trash—“right now. Somebody find out if Nathan Levy is registered to own a gun—especially a .38.”

Back in her fishbowl, she called Detective Feller, who was patrolling the waterfront in a Zodiac borrowed from the Harbor Unit. He had been working a slow recon of Long Island City all morning
and had gotten the notion to mix it up and check the Gowanus Canal, which was where she caught him, motoring in the Brooklyn channel’s 4th Street Basin, with no luck, so far. With the
ballistics foul-up fresh in mind, she double-checked him on running the skiff through the boat registry.

“Affirm. Boat registration is handled through DMV, and they’ve still got tech capability—but no matches. I also put it through New Jersey, Connecticut, and Rhode Island. No
hits there, either. At least not yet. Of course, it could always be unregistered or stolen. If the RTCC was up, we could do a quicker check. But I have some Harbor Unit pals on it.”

“How much more do you have to cover?”

“I never knew there was this much waterfront in this city. It’s slow going,” he said, “but I’m working it, boss. I’ll freakin’ swim it, if I have
to.”

Nikki paced her office, frustrated, panicked, desperate to do more than wait and hope. But what could she do? Thoughts of Rook pummeled her, attacking from every direction. Where he might be.
What he was doing. What was happening to him. Whether he was alive. Instead of helping herself, all she was doing was dragging herself deeper into her own vortex of despair and speculation.
“Stop,” she said aloud. “Stop right there.”

What Heat needed was to be useful. And busy. What bases weren’t being covered? All of them were; what she lacked was results. She flopped in her chair and put her face in her palms to
think in isolation. What any detective does is follow the hot lead. What was it that Randall Feller had just said? The boat. That was the last sighting of Rook. But with five hundred miles of New
York City waterfront, even if you carved out everything but Queens, Brooklyn, and Lower Manhattan, that was still quite a haystack in which to find a needle. Assuming the boat was even in the water
anymore, and not trailered somewhere inland. Or out of state. If they got lucky with registration, they might get a line on it. But how long would that take?

She balled up her fists against her temples. Think, Nikki, think. When the hot lead is at the end of a cold trail, and the technology you always used as a crutch goes belly up, what can you do?
She thought of her combat training. When disarmed, trapped, or overpowered, what is your strategy?

Embrace the obstacle.

She stood up, crossed to the bull pen, and stuck her head in. “Call me if anything pops.”

Raley looked up from his desk. “Where are you going?”

“Back to school,” said Heat.

Throughout her senior high years, Nikki Heat had clocked as many as
eight to ten hours a week in the last quiet place on earth, the
Rose Main Reading Room of the New York Public Library. A cathedral of books, she thought then. Standing in the entry, peering into the vast North Hall, with its long oak tables and stately brass
lamps surrounded by walls lined with yards and yards of literature, she thought that now. Heat knew that many greats of letters from Singer to Doctorow had quietly labored under that
fifty-foot-high muraled ceiling. She also knew that the true power of the research branch, now named the Schwarzman Building (same lions, new name) came from the librarians who catalogued
publications, sought answers, fetched materials, and advised readers, writers, dilettantes, scholars—and teenage girls who just wanted to know.

Carolyn Jay, who had been an inspiration and spirit guide to adolescent Nikki, had become a bit thinner and more angular and had more salt than pepper in her hair than last time they had seen
each other, but the playful eyes above the wry smile had not changed, even behind those eyeglasses, which were also a new addition. When Carolyn saw Nikki and came around the dark wooden counter of
the research call desk, they embraced as old friends, and it was the librarian who turned heads by being too loud in her joyful greeting. “Let’s go down to my office where we
won’t bug anybody,” she said in mock indignation.

The room behind the heavy oak door with the “Staff Only” sign was just as Heat remembered it: a bull pen, smaller, but not unlike the one uptown at the Twentieth. A common space for
lots of work and sporadic privacy, with eight mass-produced desks arranged to face the walls. Mrs. Jay still had the same spot, frozen in time. Same single shelf of books overhead, same lamp, same
single plastic cup of water next to the pencil mug. The upgraded computer took up less of the desk surface, but that was about it. Heat began by asking about the computer. “Are you guys cyber
challenged like we are?”

“Yes, it’s really maddening. I still remember my first Internet search. Tom Wolfe wanted to fact-check commercial real estate tycoons in Atlanta. You get so accustomed to answers at
the stroke of a keyboard or the click of a mouse. Suddenly I’m forced to go back and do it the old way. Truth be told, I love my technology.”

“But I bet you still have your old skills.”

“Who you calling skilled?” She laughed then took a moment to study Nikki. “I can see this isn’t a social call.”

“I need your help, Mrs. Jay.”

“Absolutely, you know that. What can I do for you?”

“Find me a boat.”

If Carolyn Jay felt daunted by the task, she didn’t show it. Nikki showed her the notes from her spiral notebook that included the eyewitness description of the sky-blue skiff from the
plumbing contractor who had followed Rook and his abductors to Pier 36. The only time the librarian faltered was when she saw Rook’s name and his circumstances. She stared at Nikki,
understanding the gravity of all this without needing to discuss it, then put herself to work. Mrs. Jay made photocopies of Nikki’s reporter’s notebook and made some side notes to
herself on slips of paper, which she had made, as she had always done, from the blank backs of printed sheets of paper that had been cut down to scratch size.