Heat Rises (37 page)

“I was down at court when I heard the call go out about you at Grand Central. I tried to raise Dutch but got no reply. I wasn’t sure, but thought—what the hell—and tracked the transponder from our cab here.”

Nikki smiled. “What the hell.”

Back up the pier there was a loud crack as the door to the work shack flew open against the wall. Van Meter must have slipped up there, and he was calling out, “Harv! She’s loose!”

Feller cursed. The Discourager emerged from the electrical room and called back, “How?”

“Who cares, start looking. Now!” Across the parking lot a beam from Harvey’s flashlight swept the buildings. Dutch called out again, “Check out that Dumpster.”

Feller pressed his car keys in Nikki’s palm. “Run.” Without waiting, he bolted out from behind the bin and charged at Harvey with his gun up. As Heat ran for it, she heard two shots. She made a quick check over her shoulder. Feller was down. Harvey’s flashlight scanned him. The beam came up, finding her. A shot followed and the slush exploded off the pavement a yard ahead of her.

And then the engine of the taxi roared to life. Van Meter fishtailed out of his spot, chasing Nikki down the pier.

There was no way she could outrun that cab. Heat shot desperate glances to both sides, searching in vain for a space between buildings she could slip through and dive into the river.

The police-modified engine rumbled, drawing ever closer, the tires swishing, kicking up the icy slop that had turned her feet numb.

Instead of running a zigzag, Nikki took a bold gamble and ran in a straight line, letting Van Meter gain speed, letting him forget the steering conditions. She sprinted, her lungs searing, toward the convoy of garbage trucks parked in a row outside the off-loading hangar. She held her course, waiting, waiting, as the high beams drew closer, bathing her back in hot light. When she could see her own shadow cast on the side of the first sanitation truck, Heat dove hard right, her body skimming prone across the water and ice accumulated on the concrete like it was a Slip ’n Slide.

Behind her, Dutch Van Meter, who had taken her bait, mashed his brake pedal and jerked his wheel, but the mix of precip that was icing that pier sent him hydroplaning. Traction gone, his cab floated into a sideways skid, slamming him broadside at top speed against the garbage truck. Nikki got up off the deck and saw him slumped motionless over the airbag on his steering wheel.

A gunshot cracked and hit the fender of the taxi beside her. Heat wanted Dutch’s Smith & Wesson, but The Discourager was bearing down and his next shot might not miss. Nikki hurried into the open hangar door of the garbage receiving station and took cover behind the six-foot-tall bales stacked there for barging.

When she heard Harvey’s feet slapping to a stop at the door, she crouched down and peered out between rows of compacted trash. He had turned off his six-cell so he wouldn’t give himself away, but there was enough ambient light from the West Side that she could see him wince as he rubbed a tender spot on his chest. When he took his hand away, Nikki made out the puncture in his jacket just below his shield, where his Kevlar had stopped Feller’s bullet.

Just as Heat renewed her plan to escape with a dive into the river, The Discourager worked his way around to her left flank, wittingly or unwittingly blocking her route to the open side of the hangar where they loaded bales onto barges bound for landfills. So Nikki crept to her right in the crevice between the stacks and made her way to the end of the row, where there was a small workbench.

Tools, she thought.

She studied the open distance to the workbench. It was risky exposure but better than waiting to become target practice. Heat was about to take a tentative step out of her hiding place when she heard his breathing. Immediately, she crouched low in the opening between the bales and made herself still.

Harvey was being quiet, too. Where the hell was he?

On a shelf above the workbench, among the girlie calendars and chipped coffee mugs, there sat some kind of trophy cup from the city or maybe the union. Nikki fixed her gaze on it and waited. Sure enough, after a few seconds, in the brass-plated reflection, she saw slow movement. The dark blue uniform was approaching the gap in which she was hunkered.

Detective Feller’s car keys were still in her hand. Being careful not to jangle, Heat made a fist around them so that the two keys protruded from her knuckles. Not exactly Wolverine, but it would have to do.

Patience again, always patience. The cop tiptoed sideways to the opening, searching for her in the gap. But his mistake was to look eye-level. Heat was crouched low, and when he was centered in front of her she sprang up at him, driving the keys into his left cheek while she grabbed for his gun with her right hand. He cried out in shock and pain. She jerked his wrist upward and the gun fired. The bullet hit harmlessly, eaten by the garbage bale behind her.

Heat thrashed his face again with the keys and tried to wrest the weapon away. His grip was strong, and when, on her third try, she did manage to wrest the gun free, it flew and clattered on the floor.

Nikki bent to grab it, but he tackled her from behind. She twisted and used his momentum against him, ramming him back-first into the workbench. She elbowed him three times at the sore spot under his badge. He wailed with each blow, until he palmed the side of her head and shoved her into the wall, where her shoulder crashed, breaking glass. Heat looked up inside the shattered case and hauled out the fire ax.

Harvey was coming up from his stoop, the gun back in his hand. Heat quickly reared to swing. Mindful that he was wearing body armor, she went for his gun arm. And severed it at the elbow.

He writhed on the floor moaning and bleeding out. Spent, Heat dropped the ax and scanned the surrounding area for something to use as a tourniquet. Then she heard sudden movement beside her. Nikki spun, bringing her hands up.

Someone was diving at her, she braced herself for a blow, but in the same flash that she heard the gunshot, she recognized that the man pushing her aside was Rook. They both landed on the ground beside Harvey. Heat clapped a hand on his loose service weapon, came up with it, and put two rounds in Dutch Van Meter’s forehead as he stood in the doorway holding his smoking S&W.

Nikki set the gun down and hugged Rook, who was still in her arms. “Oh, man, I don’t know how you found me, Rook, but your timing did not suck.”

But Rook didn’t answer.

“Rook?” Nikki’s heart stopped and her skin flushed with alarm. She shook him, but he didn’t respond. When she rolled him over in her lap and touched his cheek, she smeared it with blood.

That’s when she realized it was Rook’s blood on her fingers.

Frantic, she ripped open his shirt, looking for the wound, and found it right away, a .9mm entry gushing red below his rib cage.

Sirens drew closer.

Nikki fought tears; coming around to kneel over Rook, she compressed the wound with one hand and stroked his face with the other. “Hang on, Rook, you hear me? Help’s coming, you hang on. Please?”

The sirens stopped right outside and flashing lights filled the hangar. “In here!” shouted Nikki. “Hurry, I’m losing him.” Verbalizing the thought crushed Heat, and she barked out an involuntary sob as his face lost more color.

The EMTs rushed in and took over. Nikki retreated in a daze and wept, her bloody hand covering her mouth. She watched, trembling, as they cut Rook’s shirt off and went to work on him. That’s when Heat saw something she had never seen on Rook before.

The big St. Christopher medal around his neck.

“They’re ready for you now.” Nikki had been staring at nothing because that’s what she needed, a glazed, checked-out, middle-distance fix on the posters and memos on the bulletin board across from her seat in the hallway at One Police Plaza. The administrative assistant came around to step into her line of sight, saw her swollen eyes, and gave her a tender smile. Sympathy. Please, no more sympathy. Nikki had had her fill of it in the last twelve sleepless hours and didn’t know which was worse, the pitying faces or the consoling words.

But she stood and returned the woman’s well-intended smile anyway. Then Nikki sealed the firewall once more. If she thought about Rook now, she couldn’t hold her emotions. “Ready,” she said. The aide opened the door for her. Heat drew a long breath and then stepped through it.

Rooms didn’t come much more stony or intimidating than the tenth-floor conference room at 1PP that morning. The last time Nikki had been in there it had been just she and Zach Hamner—with the added attraction of the duo from Internal Affairs to confiscate her shield and piece. That had been frosty enough. Now she was being scrutinized by a full conference table of deputy commissioners, chiefs, and administrators, who halted their conversations to give her The Big Appraisal as she entered.

Zach had been waiting for her inside the door and led her to the empty chair at the head of the conference table. On her way along the row of weathered faces belonging to the NYPD’s top brass, her eye caught a friendly wink from Phyllis Yarborough. Heat nodded her acknowledgment to the deputy commissioner and took the seat.

Todd Atkins, the deputy commissioner for legal matters, faced Heat from the opposite end. As soon as The Hammer perched on the folding chair behind his boss, Atkins began quietly, saying, “Thank you for coming in. I know this must be an awful time for you, and you have all our best thoughts.”

Nikki fought away another wave of crushing sorrow and managed to say in her most professional voice, “Thank you, sir.”

“We wanted you in to address this matter immediately,” continued the Department’s lawyer. “The commissioner would be here himself, but he is in a committee meeting on Capitol Hill about now and we felt it was important to remedy the miscalculation made by this body vis-à-vis your status.” While he continued on, speaking in his coded language for their screwup, Nikki felt herself tumble into the kaleidoscopic tunnel that had swallowed her at Belvedere Castle in the aftermath of her attack. She held eye contact with Atkins, but all the while random images turntabled around him. Rook draped on her after the gunshot . . . Montrose cursing at his performance data printouts . . . Rook’s ashen face . . . Van Meter pulse-checking Steljess in the auto salvage yard . . . Rook’s blood in the sink when she finally washed her hands . . . the Murder Board after Captain Irons carelessly erased it, leaving red smears from her marker . . .

A wrap-up tone in Atkins’s voice pulled her back to the moment. “It was a rush to judgment,” he said, “and for that, we sincerely apologize.”

“Accepted, sir.” And then she added, “And appreciated.” The Mount Rushmore of faces around the table relaxed. Some even smiled at her.

“It’s our decision to reinstate you immediately to active status, Detective Heat,” continued Atkins. “I should also say it’s no secret that you had one major champion through this ordeal.”

“No secret because she won’t let us forget it,” blurted the Personnel chief, with a laugh that lightened the mood around the room.

“And so,” Atkins said, “I’m going to give the floor to the Deputy Commissioner of Technological Development. Phyllis?”

Midway up the mahogany, a beaming Phyllis Yarborough leaned forward, tilting her head for a better view of Nikki. “Detective Heat . . . Nice to be able to say that again, isn’t it? Well, don’t get used to it. I have been given the privilege and personal honor to inform you that you are not only reinstated as a detective, but today you will be given your gold bar and sworn in as a lieutenant in the
NYPD
.” Nikki’s heart galloped in her chest. Phyllis waited for the applause to settle. “Congratulations. And may I add that we have no doubt that this is just one rung on the ladder of your ascent within this department.”

The applause grew louder and included a number of “hear, hear”s. When it died down, heads swiveled to Nikki, and it was clearly her moment.

Heat rose.

“I want to repeat what I told the Orals Board a few days ago. Police work—police work on the NYPD—is more than a job to me, it’s my life’s work. To whatever degree I am a professional, it is because I take it so personally. Which is why I wholeheartedly accept reinstatement and thank you for that.” There was brief clapping, which she interrupted by holding her hands out. When they were quiet again, she said, “It is the same reason that I respectfully decline the promotion to lieutenant.”

Astonishment hardly described the reactions before her. Sober, life-worn, career cops with poker faces were visibly stunned. Not the least of which was Phyllis Yarborough, who shook her head no to Nikki and then searched the others for some sort of understanding.

“So that I don’t seem ungrateful—because I truly am thankful—I can help you understand why I made this decision by going back to what I said a moment ago. This is my life’s work. I joined the
NYPD
to help victims of crime. And over time, I have grown to love it even more because of the proud association and friendship I have working with the finest cops in the world. But the process of gaining this promotion, as well as some insights I’ve gained over recent weeks, has made me realize that stepping up the ladder is a step away from the street. A step away from why I am a New York cop. Administrators do important work, but my heart is not in CompStat data, or scheduling, and all that. It’s in doing what I’m born to do. Solve crimes. Out there. I thank you for your confidence and for hearing me out.”

Nikki surveyed the table one by one and saw in most of their faces cops who knew all too well what she meant. They might not say it, but they admired the courage of her choice. And, to be honest, she also saw one or two who could not mask their bitter annoyance. “So,” she asked, “am I really a cop again?”

Deputy Commissioner Atkins said, “I think I can speak for the group when I say, this isn’t how we expected this to transpire, but yes, Detective Heat, yes, you are.” He gestured to Zach Hamner, and the political cockroach who had so callously stripped her of her job and protection got up and strode to her end of the table to present Heat with her own shield and weapon, grinning as if they were gifts from him.