Heat Rises (19 page)

So was death.

Blunt as they had been back at the crime scene, Nikki took the advice of Feller and Van Meter and sat down to unpack the facts of the Montrose death without prejudice. Detective Heat got out a single sheet of paper and penciled details. Making her own private Murder Board on the page, she especially focused on the captain’s strange new behaviors in the days ramping up to this dark one, logging them all: the absences, the agitation, the secretiveness, his obstruction of her case, his anger when she insisted on doing the sort of investigative work he had trained her to do.

Heat stared at the page.

The questions lingering in the back of her mind stepped forward and raised their hands. Clean or dirty, did Captain Montrose know what the stakes were? Was he trying to protect her? Is that why he didn’t want her looking into the Graf murder too deeply? Because if she did, a bunch of armed guys were going to try to stack her garbage in the park? Were they
CIA
contractors? Foot soldiers from drug cartels? A Colombian hit squad? Or someone she hadn’t even landed on so far?

And did these guys go for him next?

Nikki folded her sheet of paper to put in her pocket. Then she thought a moment, took it out again, and crossed over to the squad’s Murder Board to write it up there. No, she was not buying the suicide. Not yet.

“This is an official call,” said Zach Hamner, making Heat wonder what their other conversations had been. “I just received a formal complaint from an organization called . . .” She could hear papers rustling on his end and helped him out.

“
Justicia a Garda
.”

“Yes. Nice pronunciation. Anyway, they are alleging harassment and racist statements based on a meeting you had with them earlier today.”

“You can’t be taking this seriously,” she said.

“Detective, do you know how much money the city of New York paid out over the last decade in claims against this department?” He didn’t wait for her reply. “Nine hundred and sixty-four million. That’s pocket change short of a billion with a B. Do I take claims seriously? You bet. And so should you. You don’t need something like this coming up right now. Not with your promotion pending. Now, tell me what happened.”

She gave him a brief recap of the meeting and the reason for it. When she was finished, The Hammer said, “Did you have to show the mug shot of the gang banger? That’s the inflammatory part.”

“Sergio Torres tried to kill me this morning. I will damn well show his picture to everyone connected to this case.” When Hamner said he got it, she continued, “And one more thing. Conducting an investigation is hard enough without outsiders second-guessing my case work.”

“I am going to chalk that up to your obvious stress from the day you’ve had. By the way, our condolences on the loss of your commander.” Nikki couldn’t shake her memory of The Hammer standing outside the ambulance that morning whining, “Where the fuck is Montrose?”

She figured one push-back was enough for this call, so she let it go. “Thanks.”

“Where do you go from here?” he asked.

“Back to what I was doing. Finding out who killed Father Graf. And maybe my boss.”

Zach’s chair creaked. He must have sat up. “Hold on, wasn’t that a suicide?”

“We’ll see,” she said.

Rook met her with a cocktail when she opened her apartment door. “I hope you’re up for a mojito. This is a recipe I picked up in a dive bar near a beachside landing strip in Puerto Rico.”

She traded him her coat for the drink, and right there in the entryway, they raised their tall glasses up in a toast. But Heat and Rook didn’t clink right away. Instead they held each other’s eyes a long moment, letting the intimacy of their stillness speak. Then Nikki set her glass down on the foyer table, saying, “First things first,” as she folded her arms around him and they hugged.

“I figured after your day, you would be in the mood for some red meat,” he said when they moved into the kitchen.

“Smells amazing.”

“Roast beef tenderloin—simple-simple—just salt, pepper, and rosemary, plus the usual sides, mashed potatoes, brussels sprouts.”

“Comfort food. Rook, you don’t know what this means right now. . . . Oh, yes you do.” And then she took another sip. “You don’t have time to do this, what with bringing me clothes and trying to write your article.”

“Done! E-mailed it off two hours ago and came over here to take care of you. I was going to make kabobs, but after your morning in the park, I figured skewers would be too darkly comic, even for me.”

“And yet you mentioned them.”

“What can I say? I’m an enigma inside a conundrum inside a condom.” Nikki started to laugh but caught herself. Her face became drawn and she sat at the counter. She stayed there, perched on the bar stool, through her mojito and a glass of a surprisingly perfect red from Baja California, while Rook carved and served. He transferred the place settings from the dining table to the counter and they ate there, the informality of it relaxing her. She was hungry but only managed a small portion, choosing instead to fill him in on things she hadn’t told him about her difficulties with Captain Montrose. He told her she didn’t have to talk about it if it was painful, but it wasn’t, she said, it was therapeutic, a chance to let out the burden she carried.

Nikki had already told him just before strip Proust that there had been tension with Montrose, but this time she told him the details. She shared the unsettling suspicions that arose in her beyond the captain oddly showing up at Graf’s the night he was killed: how he obstructed her case in every way, plus the blood on the priest’s collar that coincided with the bandage on his finger. And then there was the baffling recurrence of
TENS
burns . . . on Graf, on the male dancer, and on a victim in an old murder case Montrose had worked when he was a Detective-1.

Rook listened intently without interruption, interested in her story but more eager to let her download and relieve the pain she bore. When Nikki finished, he asked, “The suspicions you had, did you share them with anybody? Internal Affairs? Your new friends downtown?”

“No, because they were only, you know, circumstantial. He was in a world of hurt already. You open that lid, it’s Pandora’s Box.” Her lower lip quivered and she bit on it. “I opened the door a crack about it with him this morning. He kind of boxed me into it, and let me tell you, it hurt him. It really hurt him.” She tilted her head back and squinted, refusing to let herself cry, then continued, “I’m ashamed to admit it now, but there was a part of me, this morning in the park . . . ?”

He knew where she was going. “You wondered if he could have been part of it?”

“Only for a second, a second I hate myself for, but he gave me this warning at the end of our meeting. It had to cross my mind.”

“Nikki, there’s nothing wrong with thinking things. Especially in your work, come on, it’s what you do.”

Her head bobbed in acceptance and she forced a thin smile.

“Did you ever get an ID on your attacker, the Human Popsicle?”

“You are a sick man, Jameson Rook.”

He bowed theatrically. “Thank you, thank you.”

Then Heat told him about Sergio Torres. How his rap sheet was the legacy of an ordinary gang banger but he was trained like a soldier.

“I don’t get it,” said Rook. “How does a mundane metropolitan miscreant master menacing military methods and maneuvers? Mystifying.”

“. . . Yeah . . .” Nikki cocked an eye at him. “I was sort of thinking the same thing . . .”

“Have you looked into whether he was connected to the Mara Salvatrucha gang? The MS 13s supposedly called a hit on all
NYPD
cops about a year ago,” he said. “And, breaking news from my recent arms trip, the cartels are giving paramilitary training to MS 13 gangsters to fight their drug war in Mexico.”

“I’ll check that out tomorrow.” She slid off the bar stool and excused herself. A few seconds after she disappeared down the hall, she called out, “Rook? Rook, come here.”

When he reached the bathroom, she was standing near the window. “Have you been in here since you got here?”

“I think the answer is evident in the lowered toilet seat. No.”

“Look at this.” She stepped to the side, indicating water drops from melted ice dotting the windowsill. She pointed to the latch. It was unlocked. “I always lock that.” She grabbed a flashlight from the cabinet under the sink and shined it on the latch. A minute abrasion in the brass tongue gleamed where it had been jimmied. It was nothing Nikki would have noticed had it not been for the droplets.

Together they made a survey of the apartment. Nobody was hiding and nothing was missing or out of place. Mindful of the careful snoop somebody had performed at the rectory, Heat took extra care to notice the little things. Nothing was disturbed. “You must have scared him off when you came in, Rook.”

“Ya know, my days of droppin’ in unannounced may be over.”

They locked up and went downstairs to tell The Discourager, who was parked across the street. “Want me to call it in?”

“Thanks, Harvey, but I’ll do it in the morning.” The last thing she wanted then was an evening of bright lights and forensic dusting. It wouldn’t kill Rook and her to use the other bathroom for one night. “Just wanted to give you the heads-up.”

Rook said, “Hey, Harvey, don’t you ever sleep?”

The veteran cop looked at Heat. “Not after today, I don’t.”

Nikki took what she insisted was a well-deserved bubble bath in the guest tub while Rook did the dishes. He waited for her in the living room, surfing
ESPN
, missing football season, glad
MLB
was days away from Pitchers and Catchers. At eleven, he switched off the TV. “You didn’t have to do that for me,” she said.

Nikki was in a robe, her hair wet, and looking comfortably dazed by the hot bath. She folded into him on the couch, smelling faintly of lavender.

“I think we already know the lead story,” he said.

“Yup. Precinct Captain dies in apparent suicide.” She turned to him, just inches away. The relaxation left her face. “They’d be wrong. He never would have done it.”

“How can you be sure?”

“Same reason I knew he didn’t kill Graf.”

“Which is?”

“He was Captain Montrose.”

The instant she said it, the doors to all the compartments Heat had so carefully closed off flew open. The seals broke, and a day of emotion—from the flight for her life in Central Park to the trauma of Captain Montrose’s death—rushed out to seize her. Rook watched the wave take her. She quaked and her eyes dripped tears. Then she cried out, throwing her head back in a release that startled even her. He opened his arms, and Nikki grabbed him desperately, clinging to him, shaking, sobbing and sobbing, as she had not in ten years.

When Heat came out from her shower the next morning and found Rook on his computer at her dining room table, she came up behind his chair and placed a hand on each of his shoulders. “There’s something not fair about a world where you get paid all that money for a job you do in your underwear.” At her touch Nikki felt the tension melt from his muscles. He dropped his hands off the keyboard, bringing them around behind her, gently gripping the back of her thighs. Then he rocked his head backward, resting it between her breasts, and peered up at her.

“I could lose the underwear if it would make you happy,” he said.

“That would make me very happy, but I just got a text that I’ve got a drug dealer coming in to be interviewed.” She bent to kiss his forehead. “Plus I have my oral boards today. Last hurdle before the lieutenant promotion.”

“I could help you with that. The orals.” She just stared at him, and he turned to her with a face of innocence. “What?”

“Tell me, Rook, is there a single word in the dictionary a guy can’t turn into something salacious?”

“Quatrain. Big points at Scrabble. Zip when it comes to double entendre, and I have tried. Oh, how I’ve tried.” Then he said, “With all that’s happened, couldn’t you get a postponement?”

“I could.” It was all on her face. Nikki was not going to let down. “But I won’t.” She gestured to his MacBook. “I thought you finished your arms smugglers piece. Is that your next bodice ripper, Miss St. Clair?”

“Nothing so lofty.”

“What is it?”

“Rather not say just yet.” He closed the lid and stood to face her. “Bad luck.” Then Rook drew her to him and they kissed. He was tender and gentle, comforting. “You doing OK this morning?”

“No, but I’ll get through.”

“There’s French Roast on.” Rook made a move toward the kitchen, but she clung to him and held him in place.

“Thank you for last night. You were . . . a friend.”

“Anytime, anywhere, Nikki Heat.” And they kissed again.

She dressed while he poured her coffee and squeezed them both some juice. Nikki reappeared looking puzzled and holding up her cell phone. “Want to hear something odd? I just checked my office voice mail. One of the messages was from the travel agent I referred Captain Montrose to. She said she can’t believe the news, especially since she just talked to him yesterday. He booked an island cruise.”

“Yesterday?” When she affirmed, he clapped his hands once and said, “John le Carré!” He read her bewilderment and added, “You know John le Carré, right?
Spy Who Came in from the Cold
,
Constant Gardener
. . . Oh, and
A Perfect Spy
—transcendent, best ever! But . . . John le Carré’s first novel was
Call for the Dead
. This secret agent is found. Suicide, they say. But that theory unravels because he left a wake-up call the night before. See the logic? Who leaves a wake-up call if he plans to kill himself?”

“Right,” she said. “And who books a cruise? Especially Montrose.” She frowned. “Now? And alone?” She had started to mull the oddness of that when he interrupted.

“I’ll be dressed in two seconds.”

“For what?”

“To come with you,” said Rook. “We have to get to work. This suicide theory is full of holes. Oo, sorry. Poor choice of words, forgive me, but I’m getting fired up.”