Frozen Heat (2012) (2 page)

“You’re making a very clear point here, Rook.”

He looked at her, mildly taken aback. “I am?”

“Yes. And the point is, I don’t care how many Pulitzer Prizes you’ve won. You still have the brain of a sixteen-year-old.”

“So is that a yes?”

“Make that a fifteen-year-old.” Nikki kissed him again and cupped him between the legs. “By the way? So worth the wait.” And then she went to work.

The crime scene was on her way to the precinct, so instead of going up to the Twentieth first to sign out a car and double back, Heat got off the B train a stop early at 72nd Street to hoof it. The bomb squad had ordered a precautionary traffic shutdown at Columbus Avenue, and Nikki came up the subway steps near the Dakota to witness nightmare gridlock backed up all the way to Central Park. The sooner she finished her investigation, the sooner relief would come to the stuck drivers, so she quickened her stride. But she didn’t short her contemplation.

As always, on approach to a body, Detective Heat steeped herself in thoughts of the victim. She didn’t need Rook to remind her how many homicides there were in the city every year. But her vow was never to let volume dehumanize a single lost life. Or inure her to the impact on friends and loved ones. For her, this wasn’t lip service or some PR tagline. Nikki had come by it honestly years ago when her mother was murdered. Heat’s loss not only spurred her to switch college majors to Criminal Justice, it forged the kind of cop she vowed to be. Over ten years later, her mother’s case remained unsolved, but the detective remained unbending in her advocacy for each victim, one at a time.

At 72nd and Columbus she picked her way through the knot of spectators who had gathered there, many with their cell phones aloft, documenting their proximity to danger for whatever street cred that gave them on their Facebook pages. She reached down to draw back her blazer and flash her shield to the uniform at the barrier, but he knew the move and gave her the fraternal nod before she even showed it. Emergency lights strobed two blocks ahead of her as she headed south. Nikki could have taken the empty street but kept to the sidewalk; even as a veteran cop, it unsettled her to see a major downtown avenue completely shut in morning rush hour. The sidewalks were vacant, too, except for uni patrols keeping them clear. Sawhorses blocked 71st, also, and a few doors west of them, an ambulance idled in front of a town house that had shed its brick facade in the earthquake. She passed one of the green ash trees growing from the sidewalk planters and looked up through its budding limbs at dozens of rubberneckers leaning out of windows and over fire escapes. Same on the other side of Columbus. As she drew closer to the scene, dispatch calls from the roundup of emergency vehicles echoed off the stone apartment buildings in enveloping unison.

The bomb squad had turned out with its armored mobile containment unit parked in the center lane of the avenue, just in case anything needed detonating. But from twenty yards off, Heat could tell from body language that Emergency Services had pretty much stood down. Elevated above the roofs of vans and blue-and-whites, she caught a glimpse of her friend Lauren Parry walking around inside the open rear cargo door of a delivery truck in her medical examiner coveralls. Then she ducked down and Nikki lost sight of her.

Raley and Ochoa from her squad stepped away from a middle-aged black man in a watch cap and green parka, who they were interviewing beside the Engine 40 fire truck, and met up with her as she arrived. “Detective Heat.”

“Detective Roach,” she said, using the partners’ house nickname that amicably squashed Raley and Ochoa into one handy syllable.

“No trouble getting here,” said Raley, not asking, not expecting that she, of all people, would ever have any.

“No, my line’s running. I hear the N and the R are down for inspection where they go under the river.”

“Same with the Q train coming out of Brooklyn,” added Ochoa. “I made it across before it hit. But I’ll tell you, Times Square station was unreal. Like a Godzilla movie down there, the way people were screaming and running.”

“Did you feel it?” asked Raley.

She replayed the circumstances and said, “Oh, yeah,” trying to sound offhanded.

“Where were you when it hit?”

“Exercising.” Not a total lie. Heat side nodded to the armored blast container. “What are we working here that warrants the parade of heavy metal?”

“Suspicious package lit things up.” Ochoa flipped to the first page of his notepad. “Frozen food delivery driver—that’s him over there—”

“—in the green jacket—” chimed in his partner in their usual duet.

“—opens the back of his truck to unload some chicken tenders and burger patties at the deli here.” He paused to allow Nikki a beat to eyeball the All In Bun storefront, where a trio of cooks in checked pants and aprons slouched at the window counter waiting out the closure. “He slides a carton aside and finds a suitcase sitting there between the boxes.”

“I guess ‘See Something, Say Something’ is working,” Raley said, picking up. “He books it out of there and calls 911.”

“Emergency Services Unit deploys and sends Robocop in to check it out.” Detective Ochoa beckoned her to walk with him while he led her past the bomb squad’s remote control robot. “The ‘bot does a sniff and an X-ray. Negative on explosive elements. Their bomb tech was suited up anyway, so—abundance of caution—he pops the lock and finds the body inside the suitcase.”

A few feet behind her, she heard Detective Feller. “That’s why I go strictly carry-on. Those checked bags’ll kill ya.” She snapped her head around and saw the surprise on his face, while his audience of two uniforms laughed. He’d been speaking in a low voice, but not low enough. Feller’s cheeks reddened as Heat left Raley and Ochoa to cross to him. The unis melted away, leaving him alone with her. “Hey, sorry.” Then he tried to charm it away with a preemptive grin and the self-effacing cackle that always reminded her of John Candy. “Don’t think you were supposed to hear that.”

“Nobody was.” She spoke so quietly, so evenly, and so without expression that the casual observer would think they were simply two detectives comparing notes. “Look around, Randy. This is serious as it gets. A murder scene. My murder scene. Not open mic night at Dangerfield’s.”

He nodded. “Yeah, I know I stepped in it.”

“Once again,” she noted. Randall Feller, perennial class clown, had a nasty habit of cutting up at crime scenes. It was the one bad habit of one great street detective. The same detective who, along with Rook, had gotten shot saving her life on that sanitation pier. Feller’s gallows humor might have fit right in during the years he spent in the Special Operations Division, riding around all night in undercover yellow cabs in the macho, kick-ass, Dodge City world of the NYPD Taxi Unit, but not in her squad. At least not inside the yellow tape. This wasn’t their first conversation about it since he’d transferred to her Homicide Unit after his medical leave.

“I know, I know, it just sort of comes out.” She could tell he meant it, and there was no point belaboring it. “Inside voice next time, I promise.” Heat gave him a short nod and moved off to the delivery truck.

From street level at the rear hatch, Nikki had to tilt her head back to look up at Lauren Parry, who squatted on the floor inside the cargo hold. The stacks of cardboard cartons deeper inside wept with condensation; some even glistened from ice crystals encrusting their sides. Even with the freezer motor off, refrigerated air rolled out cool across Heat’s face. At Lauren’s knee, a blue-gray hard-side suitcase rested open and flat with the lid clamshelled up, blocking Nikki’s view of its contents. She said, “Morning, Dr. Parry.”

Her friend pivoted to her and smiled. When she said, “Hey, Detective Heat,” Nikki could see puffs of Lauren’s breath. “Got a complicated one here.”

“When isn’t it?”

The ME rocked her head side to side, weighing that and agreeing. “Want the basics?”

“Good a place as any to start.” Nikki took out her own notebook, a slender, reporter’s cut spiral that fit perfectly in her blazer pocket.

“Female Jane Doe. No ID, no purse, no wallet, no jewelry. Estimating age as early sixties.”

“Cause of death?” asked Heat.

Lauren Parry’s eyes left her clipboard and settled on her friend’s. “Now, how did I guess that would be your question?” She glanced inside the suitcase and continued, “I can’t say, except preliminarily.”

Nikki echoed back, “Now, how did I guess that would be your answer?”

The ME smiled again, and small trails of vapor floated from her nostrils. “Why don’t you come on up here, and I can show you what I’m dealing with.”

Detective Heat gloved up as she ascended the corrugated metal ramp sloping from the pavement to the back ledge of the truck. As she stepped aboard, her gaze momentarily stuck on the suitcase, and when it did, her teeth clacked with an icy shiver. Attributing it to crossing climates—leaving behind the mild April morning for a January chill inside the cargo hold—she shook it off.

Lauren stood so Nikki could squeeze by to get a view of the corpse. “I see what you mean,” Heat said.

The woman’s body was frozen. Ice crystals like the ones shimmering on nearby boxes of ground beef, chicken, and fish sticks glistened on her face. Clothed in a pale gray suit, she had been folded into the fetal position and fit into the suitcase, where she now lay on her side. Lauren gestured with the cap of her pen to the frosty bloodstain covering the back of the suit. “Obviously, this here is our best guess for cause of death. It’s a significant puncture delivered laterally to the posterior of the rib cage. Judging from the amount of blood, the knife entered sideways between the ribs and found the heart.” Heat experienced that uneasy deja vu she felt every time she saw one of those wounds. She made no comment though, just nodded and folded her arms to warm the gooseflesh the refrigeration had no doubt raised on them, even through the blazer. “With her frozen like this, I can’t do my usual field prelim for you. I can’t even unfold her limbs to check for other wounds, trauma, defense marks, lividity, and so forth. I can do all that, of course, just not yet.”

Nikki kept her gaze fixed on the stab wound and said, “Even time of death is going to be a challenge, I suppose.”

“Oh, for sure, but not to worry. We can still come close when I get a chance to work on her down at Thirtieth Street,” said the medical examiner. And then she added, “Assuming I don’t get back there to a major situation following the quake.”

“From what I hear, it’s mostly a small number of treat-and-release injuries.”

“That’s good.” Lauren studied her. “You all right?”

“Fine. Just didn’t know I’d need a sweater today.”

“Guess I’m more used to the cold, right?” She uncapped her pen. “Why don’t I stand aside and make some notes while you do your beginn-y thing?” Parry and Heat had worked enough cases together that they knew each other’s moves and needs. For instance, Lauren knew that Nikki had an initial task she performed at each crime scene, which was to survey everything from every possible angle with what Heat called beginner’s eyes. The problem with veteran detectives, Heat believed, was that after years and years of cases, even the best investigators became numbed by habit; counterintuitively, experience worked against them by blunting observation skills. Ask a refinery worker how he deals with the stink, and he’ll say, “What stink?” But Detective Heat remembered how it felt on her first homicides. How she saw everything and then looked for more. Every bit of input held potential significance. Nothing could be overlooked. Just as the experience of her mother’s killing ritualized her empathic approach to the crime scene, her belief in keeping it fresh prevented her survey of it from lapsing into ritual. As she often reminded her squad, it’s all about being present in the moment and noticing what you notice.

Detective Heat’s eyes told her this truck was not likely the murder scene. Walking the tight area of the cargo section, flashing the beam of her Stinger on the floor between boxes and on the walls, she saw no signs of any blood spatter. Later, after the body removal, the Evidence Collection Unit would offload all the cartons for a thorough inspection, but Nikki was satisfied in her mind that the suitcase had been brought aboard with the victim in it and, possibly, dead already. Time of death and a timeline of the truck’s loading and unloading would help button that down. She turned her attention to the victim.

ME Parry’s pick of early sixties seemed right. Her hair was flatteringly cut to a shorter business length correct for a woman of that age and, from the roots that were starting to show some gray and dark brown in the part, her honey blond do, subtly streaked with caramel, indicated two things. First, she was a woman with some money who cared enough about her hair to have an expensive cut and a skilled colorist. Second, in spite of that, she was long overdue for a visit. “What kept her away?” wrote Nikki in her notebook. The clothes were similarly tasteful. Petite size. Off the rack, but clearly the rack lived on one of the upscale floors of the department store. The blouse was from the current season and the gray suit was a lightweight wool with some function to it. The feeling Heat got wasn’t so much expensive as good quality. Not the uniform of the lady who lunches, but the woman who power lunches. Nikki crouched to look at the one hand that was visible. It was partially closed and tucked up under her chin, so she couldn’t see all of it, but what she could see told a story. These were busy hands, toned without being muscular or abused by hard labor. The slender fingers had the kind of strength you see on tennis players and fitness enthusiasts. She noted a small scar on the side of the wrist, which looked years, maybe decades, old. Nikki stood again and looked straight down at her. The body fit the profile of a runner or cyclist. She made another note to have the vic’s picture shown at fitness clubs, the New York Road Runners, and cycle shops. Heat squatted again to examine a grimy, dark brown dirt scuff on the knee of the woman’s pants, which could say something about her last moments. She made a note of it and scooted around to look more closely at the knife wound. Furthering Heat’s notion that the victim had been killed before being put in the truck, the frozen bloodstain formed a wide pond, as if she had bled out facedown. The width of the stain indicated great volume, yet there was not much blood in the satin of the suitcase interior other than from abrasion smears on the lid. Nikki shined her flashlight where the victim’s back met the inside hinge of the suitcase and saw only similar bloodstain rub-off, with no evidence of pooling. Again, when they removed her later, better measurements could be taken, but Heat was getting a picture of a murder not only outside the truck, but outside the luggage.