Deadly Heat

  “Because she triggered it…”

  “Screwing up the tipster call from the rent-a-car guy who spotted Salena Kaye…”

  “So she could warn her…”

  “And on and on.”

  “It’s ingenious. Incompetence masking subterfuge. And there she was, hiding in plain sight in the middle of your bull pen.” He reflected and said, “One good thing. You flushed out the mole. No more looking over your shoulder before you say something.”

  “I sure hope not.” She shaded that thought and got his attention.

  “What?”

  “Know how Callan got to the heliport so fast? Yardley Bell told him about my meet.”

  He thought about that. “How would Yardley know?”

  Nikki gave him an appraising look. “You tell me.”

  “Wait, you don’t think I—Nikki, seriously?” She said nothing, one part interrogation technique, the other not wanting to think it was so. “Hey, I will admit to a lot of things. Yes, I went to Nice with her. Yes, I told her when I was trying to track down Tyler Wynn through his… through his wine and custom shoe purchases.”

  “And about the jerk chicken pop-up stores.”

  “Yes. But when you tell me something is between us, it stays between us.”

  “Then how did Yardley know?”

  “No clue. But I can look you square in the eye and tell you it wasn’t me?”

  They held each other’s stare. After a few seconds her phone buzzed with a text.

  “Is that my lie detector result?” he asked.

  “Don’t need one. Lucky for you, pal, I trust you.” She held up the phone. “Glen Windsor’s out of surgery. Want to come?”

  “You bet.” Rook stood up and got out his cell. He gave Heat a sly grin and said, “Let me call Yardley first.”

  The uniform stationed outside Glen Windsor’s private room on the second floor gave Rook an appraising once-over as they arrived just before midnight. “It’s all right, she’s with me, Officer,” Rook said. The cop actually laughed and, following Heat’s nod, gestured them both to pass.

  They found the prisoner with his bandaged leg up on a pillow, watching NY1 news on the overhead. He didn’t seem surprised by Heat’s visit but said, “Wow, Jameson Rook, too. Am I going to be featured in your next article?”

  “Absolutely. I’m doing one on excrement.”

  “You’ll pardon me if I don’t get up.” He tugged at the manacle that cuffed him to the bed rail. “But I can still wave hello.” He gave Rook the finger and laughed. Nikki switched off the TV. “Hey, come on, I’m the lead story. I want to see it again.”

  “You’ll be hearing about it for some time, Windsor,” she said.

  Rook added, “Like the rest of your life.”

  “Hey, why the disrespect, Rook? It’s not like you’re the one I was trying to kill.” He grinned. “Allegedly.”

  As Heat drew over a chair she eye-signaled Rook to ease up, and he took a spot leaning his shoulder against the doorjamb. “How’s the leg?” she asked Windsor.

  “You need some time on the range to requalify, Detective.”

  “I put it right where I wanted it, believe me. If I’d killed you, we never could have had this chance to chat.” She took a seat and gave him some silence in an attempt to claim the meeting. Detective Rhymer had e-mailed Windsor’s file to her and Nikki opened the printout she’d made downstairs at Hospital PD. “Our detectives turned up some interesting things at your apartment.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Let’s start with the electronic box that alters voice pitch over the phone.”

  Windsor scoffed. “I only use that to order pizzas. You’d be surprised how fast they deliver when Darth Vader places the call.”

  Nikki decided to ignore the glib distractions and continued. “In your desk they found numerous files of clippings about me. Not just that cover story from last fall’s magazine—heavily underlined and highlighted. Also articles about cases I’ve worked over the past few years and photos of me—and not clipped. We checked your camera. They were taken by you without my knowledge. Pictures of me in the supermarket, pictures of me jogging, pictures of me taken through windows into my apartment.”

  “What can I say? I’m a fan.”

  “Your computer history shows a ton of searches for me, for Rook, and others in my life, including my parents, coworkers, even criminals I have arrested.”

  “Detective, everybody clips articles and searches shit that interests them on their computers. It’s not like I have this secret closet with your pictures plastered all over it.”

  “No, that would be nutty,” said Rook. Nikki flattened him with a glower, and he stared at the floor.

  When Heat turned back to Windsor, he said, “He doesn’t get it. Calling it nutty.”

  “What do you call it?” she asked.

  “Preparation.” He held her gaze a moment, letting that settle before he continued. “I learned about you in his first article. You know, Crime Wave Meets Heat Wave? I read it over and over and thought, This one… this detective… is different. A challenge.” The words twisted Heat’s solar plexus as she recalled the other detectives Windsor had engaged over the years. And killed. Now she was designated as “this one.” He watched her from his pillow and must have known exactly what she was processing because he said, “I decided last fall I would test myself with you, but it wasn’t until I saw the online teases for Rook’s new article about you that I said I’d better get moving.”

  He stopped there, leaving Nikki time to reflect on a psychopath’s classic need to share—or even claim—the limelight of his fixation. “Tell me what you mean by that, to get moving.”

  “I wanted to test you when the article came out. When you had everyone’s attention. When there’d be heat around Nikki.” He grinned. “Tell me I don’t have a poet’s touch.”

  Heat’s temper sat one inch from breaking the surface, and she struggled not to lose it with this guy. But her objective—even more immediate than building a case against a serial killer—was only one thing: Nikki needed to learn whatever information he had tortured out of Salena Kaye so she could stop the bioterror plot. “Tell me about the conversation you had with the dead lady in the helicopter.”

  “Now? I really wanted to see Ferguson’s monologue tonight.”

  Letting her rage explode wouldn’t get her anywhere. She decided the time had come to get under his skin for a change. And Heat believed she knew the soft spot where the knife would go in.

  As soon as Glen Windsor came on the radar as a suspect, she had unleashed Malcolm and Reynolds to do a biographical search on him. Heat held the results in her lap. She picked up the single page she hoped would tip the balance her way. “You like being a locksmith, Glen?”

  “What’s that supposed to mean? It’s a job. It pays my way.”

  “Yeah, but you? A… locksmith?” Nikki had respect for every trade, but for this purpose, she put a shit stank on the job title. He shifted slightly on the hospital bed and examined his fat bandage. “Not what you had in mind, was it?” His eyes flicked over when she played with the page in her hand. Nikki waited to milk the moment and said, “We did some research—yeah, we do computer searches, too—and know what popped up? You were dismissed from the NYPD Police Academy.”

  “That’s ancient history,” he blurted, not sounding like it was archive material, at all.

  “Maybe so, but it’s kind of interesting. According to records, you got bounced because you failed the psychological evaluation.”

  “That’s a fucking rigged test.” His breathing became more rapid. Wilding flashed in his eyes. “You ever seen that test?”

  “I have,” she answered quietly. “I took it myself. Passed.” She delivered that with a smile and let it sit there. “The thing about the psych eval? The deficient ones never think it’s valid.”

  His manacles clanged against the stainless bar as he tried to sit up. “Hey, fuck you. Deficient, my ass. I was too smart for tho
se losers at the Academy. They were threatened by my special gifts and set me up to get bounced. Jealous shits.”

  “Bet you would have made a great detective, otherwise.”

  “Fuckin’-A right.”

  “Except I see the NYPD wasn’t the only place you failed. I don’t have all of them here, Glen, but there’s a short list of you washing out as an investigator at several top security firms and then a sort of descending curve of gigs until you landed at… locksmith.” Then she added, “Oh, and security systems. So you did have that going to keep the dream alive.”

  “This is bullshit. I know what I can do. I know who I am. I know my destiny. I am smarter than all those assholes, and I’ve proved it.”

  Rook chimed in. “By ambushing Bedbug Doug?”

  “Hey, fuck you, too.”

  Heat didn’t mind the gang pile this time. “Rook’s got a point.”

  “The fuck he does.”

  “Is that what your destiny’s all about?” she continued. “Sneaking up on innocent people pretending you’re better than they are?”

  “And smarter. Don’t tell me you don’t know that. I had to practically draw you a picture to keep you in the game.”

  “Oh, so you think I’m a loser, too.”

  His demeanor snap-shifted from defensive to pure manic. “No, no, no, Detective. You made it all… come to, I dunno… life. You brought my game to the next level.”

  “Well, game over, Glen,” said Heat.

  “Like hell it is.”

  Nikki reached out and clattered his chains with her thumb and forefinger. Then she closed the file, slid her chair away, and started for the door. When she got there, Windsor shouted, “You want to talk about Salena Kaye?” Nikki stopped, and he said, “I know stuff. I learned shit about this bioterror plot.”

  Heat turned to Rook. “And Detective Windsor cracks his case.”

  When she turned away, Windsor called, “I got it all out of that bitch when I worked on her. And trust me, Heat, you’ll want all of it.”

  She stayed by the door but said, “I’m listening.”

  “No. I want a deal first.”

  “Don’t make me laugh, you’re a serial killer.”

  “It’s not supposed to end like this.” He yelled and jerked at the wrist chains hard enough for the uniform to come in and make a check. After the uni left, Rainbow said, “You should have killed me, Heat. I deserve to go down in a blaze.” Destiny again, she thought. He became contemplative. Then he said, “You know where the deals are. Come up with something. Like doing life in a shitty prison versus a nice one out of state, maybe in warm weather, for starters. California. Arizona.”

  “Clock’s running, Windsor. You want to talk deal, you’d better give up something you learned about this terror plot.”

  He thought a short while, then calmly beckoned her over. When she stood beside him, he smiled and said, “When I’m ready. Come back tomorrow, I’ve had a hard day.” Then he closed his eyes and rolled his face away as if going to sleep.

  On the way downstairs, Heat turned to Rook. “Don’t say it.”

  “You mean, ‘Game not over’? ‘Do not proceed to the exit’?”

  “I hate you.”

  When Rook postponed their meeting with Puzzle Man, he had instructed him to hang loose. Now, as he and Nikki crossed the Bellevue lobby, he got out his cell to call him. Heat looked at her watch and said, “Now? These are drug dealer hours, he’s not going to—”

  Rook held up a palm to her. “Keith. Rook. Hey, puzzle me this. You still good to go?” He grinned and gave her a thumbs-up.

  Heat’s eyes burned from fatigue, and she felt so hungry that she was no longer hungry. But sleep would have to wait. “Can he meet us someplace they serve food?” she asked.

  Tavern 29, walking distance for them, served all night, and Nikki craved one of their bacon burgers, which she ordered before she even sat down. A beer would have been perfect to go with it, but she didn’t want to lose her edge, and so went for a seltzer. They were both finishing their meals by the time Keith Tahoma strolled in, gray ponytail swaying, yakking from the door to their table about the awesome energy of New York freakin’ City at night. Heat was more interested in what he held in his hands than his speed-talk. He carried a tan cardboard tube from an empty roll of paper towels.

  He ordered a coffee, and when it came, he repeated his ritual of six sugars and an OCD paddle stir. Heat asked him if that was going to keep him awake, and he laughed, saying, “So far, so good.”

  Rook said, “Keith, I hate to put the squeeze on, but it’s been a long one, and we’re kind of eager to hear whatcha got.”

  “Oh, yeah. For sure.” Nikki’s energy level perked up as Puzzle Man brought the cardboard tube up from his lap and set it on the table. “Apologies for the delay, this was one tough nut.”

  “But you cracked it,” said Heat, not really asking so much as hoping. Or willing.

  His answer was to pat the tube gently and wink. “Now, just so you don’t feel bad about not solving it yourselves, those little lines and squiggles were totally meaningless. I ran every cipher I could without success. And I know ’em all. Even invented a couple over the years. Then this morning, I’m sitting in the park, working my chess games, waiting for the other dopes to realize they’re six moves from losing. I look up and see this bird flapping along. And I saw a jet, probably coming around to land at JFK, five thousand feet higher than the bird. But to me, it looked just like the two were going to collide. You see?”

  They both shook their heads.

  “You will. It was a visual trick. The optical overlay created a message in my brain.” He stacked his hands flat before his eyes like pancakes.

  Heat started to get there. “So you thought maybe all the pages could be overlaid, and this would be revealed.”

  “No,” he said, then slapped the table and smiled. “Not all, but a few of the pages could be. After a fair amount of trial and error, I managed to find four pages of your mother’s sheet music that, if I stacked them and held them up to a lightbulb like a shadow box, I got a message. It wasn’t even in a cipher, it was right there in front of my eyes in the King’s English. Hot damn, I felt smart.”

  “Do you, um…” Nikki gestured to the cardboard tube.

  “ ’Deed I do.” He presented it to her with a flourish.

  Nikki took it from him, made a privacy survey of the tavern, and pulled the furled sheets of paper out of the tube. She unrolled them, squared the edges on her place mat, and then, with her heart pounding, held the four stacked sheets to the candle. In her mother’s clean handwriting it read: Unlock the Dragon.

  Her eyes went to the code breaker and then back to the message. Heat moved the pages, scanning them in front of the candle, hoping for more. “This is all it says?”

  “That’s all she wrote, pardon my French.”

  “May I?” asked Rook. She gave the sheets over to him, and he did the same thing, trying to scan for more text. While he held the pages to the light, Nikki thought about the Dragon. The word—obviously a code name—had first come into this case only days ago when the skyjacked helicopter passenger heard Salena Kaye call someone by that name on her cell phone. What had she said? “Dragon, it’s me.” So Dragon was Salena Kaye’s controller. Also Tyler Wynn’s, by his dying declaration. But now, in this code from the past, her mother mentioned him, too. All of which told Heat that the Dragon was as alive today as he had been eleven years ago.

  Her mother had no way of knowing it would take so long for her daughter to get this message. But the code still left Nikki confused. And she sure didn’t have another eleven years to figure it out.

  She didn’t even have eleven days.

  Puzzle Man said, “You two seem a little less excited than I’d hoped you’d be.”

  “No, no,” said Heat. “You did great, it’s just…”

  Rook finished the thought. “We don’t know what it means.”

  “Well, that’s an entirely differ
ent task,” said Puzzle Man. “Times like these, I go back to the wisdom shared by my shi’nali, the Windtalker. My grandfather used to tell me there’s one code you can never break.”

  “What’s that?” asked Nikki, holding the words to the light again.

  “The one that’s only known by two people. The sender and the receiver.”

  Cynthia Heat spoke to her daughter in the nonsensical way apparitions do in sleep. Nikki saw her as she had countless times over the last eleven years, mostly in the middle of the night, although sometimes at unbidden daytime moments as mundane as when she reached for her MetroCard on her way down to the subway or smiled at a New Yorker cartoon. Her mother usually spoke to her from her own pool of blood on the kitchen floor. Over the years she’d said many things to her, mostly as much non sequiturs as the appearances themselves. This time, from the leaden depths only Nikki’s mattress seemed to possess, her mom sat playing her piano—the one in the room right up the hall—and spoke the same two words again and again like a video loop on an online avatar. Cindy Heat kept telling her daughter, “You know. You know. You know…”

  A hand on Heat’s shoulder nudged her awake. She blinked. Still dark. Rook sat beside her, holding out her ringing cell phone. Heat cleared her throat and said her name into it. Listened, then moaned.

  “What?” asked Rook.

  “He’s out. Rainbow escaped.”

  Heat got to Bellevue in record time because she didn’t have to get dressed. In her exhaustion at 2 A.M., Nikki had collapsed onto her bed still dressed. Four short hours later, she and Rook strode into Glen Windsor’s room on the second floor of the hospital, both wearing the same clothes as the night before. She looked at the empty bed and said, “Somebody explain this to me.” An NYPD uniformed officer standing with a pair of unis from Hospital Police lowered his eyes to the floor. She went to him. “What’s your name?”

  “Slaughter.”

  “Your first name.”

  “Nate.”

  She canted her head to put herself in his field of view. “Listen to me, Nate. I know this feels awful. But you’ve got to put it in your back pocket. This guy’s very resourceful, so hold off on the blame. Just tell me how it came down.”