High Heat

  “Shots. On Versace’s balcony. Overlooking Ocean Drive. How amazing would that be? Doing shots with the future president of the United States in the former home of an internationally known fashion designer who was brutally murdered by his lover? Heck, if I can figure out what that has to do with running the country, I might make that the lede to my article just because it’s so cool.”

  “Rook—”

  But now Rook was the one who wasn’t listening. “Apparently, Legs never gets hangovers. He swears he can drink bourbon all night long and then wake up feeling like he spent the night at church. Talk about a superpower I wish I could borrow. No wonder he’s poised on the brink of becoming the leader of the free world. Heck, I think I could become the leader of the free universe if I didn’t get hangovers.”

  “Rook—”

  “Legs told me about his first big deal. It was this oil well out in New Mexico. Half the mineral rights he needed were on federal land, which he had already secured. But half were on private land owned by this rancher who wasn’t sure if he wanted to trust some kid who no one knew to run the operation. Well, Legs went out and they cracked open the Maker’s Mark and started pounding it down. When I say Legs drank the guy under the table, I mean the man literally woke up staring at the underside of his kitchen table. But by the time he did, Legs was already outside, helping one of the ranch hands load an eighteen-hundred-pound Angus bull into a trailer. That’s what made him decide Legs was a man who could handle any job sent his way. I’m telling you, the guy is—”

  “Rook!” Heat said, loud enough to get his attention.

  “Oh. Sorry.”

  “Look, just be careful, okay? Just because we have two of these ISIS guys in custody doesn’t mean we’ve chopped the head off this snake. For all we know, we’ve only gotten the tail. So be careful, okay?”

  “Yeah, I will. Don’t worry. Between Legs’s private security goons and the Secret Service guys with the squiggly things in their ears, I’m as safe as I can possibly be. Look, I gotta go. My Versace contact is here and if I don’t look extra cool he might not let us in.”

  “Okay,” Heat said. “Be safe.”

  But Rook was already gone. All she heard as she disconnected the call was more giggling.

  Heat tossed the phone on the cushion next to her and let her head sag on the arm of the couch.

  When she lifted it again, her eyes fell on the Steinway baby grand in the corner.

  She swung one foot onto the floor, then the other. Before she even knew what she was doing, she was walking toward the piano. She always found comfort in the feel of her fingers gliding across its keys.

  As the daughter of a piano teacher, Nikki was playing scales when she was eighteen months old. By age three, she was playing two-handed pieces. By age five, Mozart.

  Nikki had never quite become the musician her mother was. Though, to be fair, Cynthia had world-class talent—even if she ultimately decided that spying on people at the Palais Garnier was more interesting than playing for them there. But Nikki could hold her own. She could play Chopin. Rachmaninoff. Bach. Or even just Billy Joel, when she felt like hacking around and belting out “New York State of Mind” at full voice.

  She played right up until her mother’s death. Then, to her surprise, she found she couldn’t touch a single note. It was too painful, too much of a reminder of the person who was no longer there. Every part of the instrument, from the keys to the soundboard, whose integrity was the reason for the dehumidifier Cynthia Heat kept on at all times, was a reminder of her mother. So, for thirteen unlucky years, the baby grand in the corner of her apartment stayed silent.

  That finally changed four years ago, when Nikki solved (or at least thought she solved) her mother’s murder (or at least what she thought was her mother’s murder). Ever since then, whenever she wanted to feel a connection to her mother, all she had to do was sit down and let her mother’s spirit flow through her.

  Which was exactly what she needed at that moment.

  Thankfully, the realtor had insisted the Steinway stay in the apartment while it was on the market. Few things dress up a space better than a baby grand. And, of course, Nikki had kept it tuned at all times. One discordant note from those perfect strings would have been an affront to Cynthia’s memory.

  Nikki had reached the bench. She bent down and pulled out Mozart for Young Hands, with its dented cover and dog-eared pages. Then she turned to the page that was practically creased open anyway: Sonata no. 15.

  She set the open book on the music holder, then walked around the side of the piano, letting her hand slide along the smooth black wood, admiring its glossy sheen. She lifted the top board and slid the prop in place, so the music could pour out of the piano and into her aching heart.

  This was all so familiar now. She returned to the bench. She sat. She lifted the lid to expose the keyboard, all eighty-eight bone whites and ebony blacks. She took in air through her nose, being mindful of the feeling of her diaphragm expanding. She released the breath from her mouth. She reminded herself what her mother always told her about not rushing.

  Like Mozart said, “The space between the notes is music, too.” That had been one of her mother’s favorite reminders.

  She straightened her spine—Cynthia Heat did not tolerate slouching—and placed her fingers in position. She set a metronome going in her head, then began silently counting herself in.

  One. She and her mother would play together again someday. Maybe they would finally master Mendelssohn’s Allegro Brillante, the four-handed piece that Nikki had never gotten quite right.

  Two. Except, of course, if Cynthia Heat never really intended to return. Maybe her self-exile was permanent. Maybe that one glimpse was all Nikki would get.

  Three. What was more traumatic? Knowing someone was dead? Or knowing they were alive but refused to rejoin your life?

  Four. Abandonment. The word sprang into her head. That’s really what it was. And was there anything more powerfully painful in this life than being abandoned by your own mother?

  Nikki stared at the staffs and lines in front of her. She was supposed to have begun playing by now. It was what the music demanded. It was what the piano wanted.

  She tried counting herself in again. One, two, three, four.

  Again, nothing happened.

  Nikki Heat couldn’t bring herself to strike a single note.

  Dawn. Or, wait, not dawn. That was always one of the problems with Manhattan. The city that never slept glowed no matter the hour. You could never be quite sure whether what you were seeing was sunrise or just light pollution.

  Heat sat up in bed and looked at the clock: 3:23 A.M.

  She lay back down, but only for a minute, until the pounding in her chest told her she was unlikely to find sleep again. Anxiety often hit her like this when she was wrestling with a big case or when something disruptive was happening in her personal life. And, right then, since she was dealing with both, it was like the stress was being dropped on her by a crane.

  It left her with two choices: spend the next couple of hours tossing, turning, and tangling the sheets until it was time to get up, or face reality and get on with the day ahead.

  Heat was soon on her feet and tugging up the bedspread. She might have ordinarily taken advantage of the early start by getting in a good workout, but the plan that had begun rising in her mind as she talked to Rook was now something like fully baked.

  Bart Callan was at least somewhat out of reach. As a former federal agent, he had been placed in Florence ADX, a supermax facility out in Colorado—both for his own safety, so he wasn’t incarcerated with convicts he had personally put behind bars, and because he was deemed to have all the skills necessary to be a significant escape risk. Reaching him would require a flight and, because of the nature of the facility, some pre-arrangement on Heat’s part.

  Carey Maggs was another story. He had been packed off to the United States Penitentiary at Allenwood, in Central Pennsylvania. It was still a h
igh-security facility—a man who had been involved in the kind of mendacity that Maggs had would never qualify for medium security—but Heat could show up there and, as a sworn law enforcement officer, have a reasonable expectation of being able to see him immediately.

  Heat worked out the rest of the details while she was in the shower. She could slip out there and be back before anyone at the Twentieth Precinct would miss her too much. Her detectives certainly had enough to keep them busy for the time being.

  She left the apartment without taking time to tidy up. The realtor would throw a fit if she had to do a showing. Heat didn’t care. She was suddenly less eager to be rid of the place.

  Maybe she’d even take it off the market. Rook would understand.

  Back out on the street, her last act before getting into her unmarked car was to stick the temporary gumball on top. The drive out to Allenwood was a shade under three hours at normal speed. But she could make it in closer to two if she kept the lights flashing and the pedal to the floor.

  There was little traffic getting out of town at that hour, and she was soon crossing the George Washington Bridge, then heading west on Interstate 80. Once she cleared Bergen County, New Jersey, the highway straightened out and opened up, and she was able to make good time.

  As she passed through the Delaware Water Gap, twisting through the small canyons carved long ago by that mighty river, dawn was still just a rumor. The first hint of daybreak didn’t begin to appear in her rearview mirror until she was through the Poconos. Pennsylvania had flattened out somewhat by that point. It was rolling farmland, which Heat raced by in the dark, her flashing lights bouncing off hayfields and sleeping cows.

  By the time she reached Allenwood, the first rays of Wednesday’s light were just starting to make their way over the horizon to the east. She parked in a space that had been marked for law enforcement, then approached the main building, which looked more like a ski chalet than a prison. But, truly, most of the men inside were there because their lives had found a different kind of downhill slope.

  The duty officer who greeted her from behind a thick slab of bulletproof glass seemed surprised to see Heat. Her visit was unannounced and, besides, he could do the math. It was a quarter after six in the morning. Anyone who had gotten there from New York City had woken early.

  He seemed even more taken aback when, after he checked out her badge and driver’s license, she said she was there to see Carey Maggs. Allenwood had its share of notorious inmates. But Maggs might have been their biggest celebrity at the moment. Attempting to wipe out New York City with smallpox is good for one’s Q rating, if nothing else.

  While she waited, Heat sat in the barebones lobby, whose furniture had been bolted to the floor—not because anyone would steal it, but because it couldn’t be used as a weapon that way. The families who visited were sometimes every bit as violent as the men who were on the inside, and every bit as unhappy to be there.

  With nothing else to do, Heat stared at a portrait of the president of the United States—now a lame duck, perhaps soon to be replaced by the man who had spent the night pounding shots with her husband.

  Twenty minutes passed. Heat had expected this, of course. Nothing happened quickly at prisons. Everyone there—from the inmates to the guards who were just counting the days until retirement—had altogether too much time on their hands to even consider rushing.

  Forty minutes passed. Heat had now inspected not only the portrait of the president, but also those of the vice president, attorney general, and director of the Bureau of Prisons. She wondered if, when the photos were snapped, those people knew that someday the image would find its way to such a desperate, forlorn place.

  Heat was just about to raise a fuss with the duty officer—really, how long could it take to locate one inmate?—when the door to the side of the bulletproof glass box slid open.

  A tall, handsome man in a crisply ironed uniform stepped out. Heat stood.

  “Captain Heat,” he said. “I’m sorry to keep you waiting. I’m Captain Wills. I’m the assistant director of security here.”

  “Good morning,” Heat said, ready to have him begin reciting the protocol he expected for her trip back to see Maggs.

  Instead, he said, “Can I ask why you’re looking to talk with inmate Maggs?”

  “He may have information about a cold case we’re looking into,” Heat said.

  “A cold case,” Wills repeated. “So this wasn’t because of something that happened recently?”

  “No. It’s old news. Something from the nineties,” Heat said, only half lying.

  “Ah,” he said, then looked down at his well-polished shoes for a moment before bringing his gaze back up. “I wish you had called first. I could have saved you the trip, Captain. Carey Maggs is dead. He was murdered yesterday.”

  Heat felt the words like a bucket of ice water that had been dumped on her head. It shocked her upon first contact and was now running down her spine in a chilling flow.

  Wills had paused, like he expected Heat to say something. When she didn’t, he continued: “It happened sometime between lunch and dinner, but that’s about all we know. The guard who delivered lunch said Maggs bitched about how he was supposed to get a kosher meal. Maggs was pretending to be Jewish. Some of the inmates do that because they think we spend more money on the kosher meals. We don’t, but…Anyway, the guard who delivered dinner found him dead. He had a deep gash across his throat, like someone got him with a garotte wire. We’re currently investigating but at this point we don’t have a lot to go on.”

  “Well, it had to be his cellmate, right?”

  “That’s the thing. Maggs was in the Special Housing Unit. He didn’t have a cellmate. He was supposed to be in that room, by himself, twenty-three hours a day. He had already had his hour out for the day. He should not have had any interaction whatsoever with other inmates or guards between lunch and dinner.”

  “But if it’s the SHU, you must have a camera or two on his cell, yes?”

  Wills looked down at his shoes again. “Not in the cell, no. And the camera that covers that block of cells had a, uh, a malfunction yesterday.”

  “A malfunction?” Heat said. She could feel the blood draining from her face.

  “When we went back to review the footage, it wasn’t there. We don’t know if the software had some kind of glitch or if it was erased. The computer stores footage in three-hour blocks. The block from yesterday afternoon was missing.”

  Missing. Of course it was. Heat felt her anger rising. She almost didn’t need to hear more. But she felt compelled to continue asking questions anyway, just to be sure.

  “Did you find the murder weapon?” she asked.

  “No, ma’am. We’re still looking.”

  “What about fingerprints? Stray hairs left by the killer? Any kind of physical evidence?”

  “Sorry,” he said. “The blood was smeared in a way that suggests the killer was wearing gloves. Beyond that, we’ve been having inmates in the SHU change cells a lot lately. It makes it harder for them to stash cell phones, weapons, and other contraband. Maggs had only been in that particular cell for about two days. And it’s not like we have maids clean the rooms between inmates. There have been a lot of people in and out of that cell. Anything we could have found in the way of hair or fibers would have been inconclusive anyway.”

  Having already shifted into detective mode, Heat was now trying to rule out some trigger for Maggs’s murder unrelated to her mother.

  “What about motive?” Heat asked. “Had Maggs been having a dispute with anyone? Some kind of beef during yard time?”

  “Not that we’re aware of.”

  “Was he involved in any of the gangs here?”

  “Maggs? Oh, Lord, no. He was in the SHU by his own request in part so he could get away from the gangs. It sounds funny to say, because I know what got him sent here, but he wasn’t a criminal like most of the people in here.”

  “Is it possible he owed anothe
r inmate money, something like that?”

  Wills shook his head. “He kept totally to himself. Even during his hour out, all he did was walk the perimeter of the fence. I asked each of our regular guards in the SHU on all three shifts, and they all said Maggs was a loner. None of them could recollect him having any meaningful interaction with another inmate. They couldn’t begin to figure out why anyone here would want him dead.”

  “So what you’re saying is you have no leads.”

  “No, ma’am,” he said, adding another, “I’m sorry.”

  Heat wanted to rail at the man’s incompetence, but she knew it wouldn’t help. Someone had slipped into Carey Maggs’s cell, ended his life, then slipped out without detection. Perhaps it was a crooked guard. Perhaps it was a cunning inmate.

  Whatever the case, Heat knew the task, while a logistical challenge, wasn’t impossible. For whatever security systems may be in place, prisons are ultimately large bureaucracies. And bureaucracies are made up of human beings, who make mistakes—or who can be bribed or threatened to look the other way.

  “You were part of the team that took Maggs down and prevented that attack in New York City a few years back, were you not?” Wills asked.

  “That’s right.”

  “Well, then I suppose you should know one more thing. Maybe you can help us make sense out of it, because we’re a little stumped by it to be honest. It’s not something we were planning on releasing to the public. So I’d appreciate you treating this information with some discretion.”

  “Okay,” Heat said.

  Having given a full preamble, Wills just came out with it: “Carey Maggs had his tongue cut out.”

  “Cut out?” Heat asked.

  “Yes, ma’am. The body did not have a tongue.”

  “But was the tongue…I mean, did you find it somewhere?”

  “No, ma’am. It wasn’t in the cell. And we did a surprise inspection last night. We literally tossed every other cell in the facility. We turned mattresses inside out. We flipped over tables. We performed cavity searches. We thought maybe the killer kept the tongue as some kind of trophy. We were also looking for the murder weapon. But we didn’t find that or the tongue.”