Heat Rises

  Heat ran down the short list in her mind. She looked at the fresh Band-Aid on his finger and pictured the blood on the priest’s collar. Then she thought of the TENS scars on Graf and how similar electrical burns had also appeared in the 2004 case Montrose had investigated. And now the latest revelation, that the bruise on the small of the priest’s back came from handcuffs . . . Yes, these raised lots of questions, and Nikki didn’t like the way the scale was tipping as she weighed them. However, none of these proved anything. And she certainly couldn’t voice them. Not without mortally wounding an already frail relationship. So she said, “Nothing worth discussing.”

  He slapped the palm of his hand on the desk and she jumped. “Liar!” In her periphery, Nikki saw heads in the bull pen turn their way. “It’s all over you. Come on, Detective, lay ’em on the table. Or are you saving it for your new friends at 1PP?”

  “Captain . . . no, I . . .” She trailed off, on the defensive now.

  “Oh, or maybe you’re holding it for the next article.” He read her reaction and said, “You haven’t seen it yet?” He reached to his briefcase and pulled out the morning edition of the Ledger. “Metro section, page three.” He tossed the newspaper on the desk right in front of her. It was folded open to the story, a short item headlined, UPHEAVAL AT UPPER WEST SIDE PRECINCT. Reported by Tam Svejda. “You still claim you didn’t talk to that reporter?”

  “I didn’t.”

  “Somebody did. And gave her details, including Gallagher bailing in frustration. I wonder who.”

  Rook’s phone call from the bouncing Czech played itself back, but Nikki dismissed it as a possibility. There was no way she could imagine him doing that. “I have no idea.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “Captain, whatever else is going on here, I hope you know . . .”

  But he stopped her, holding out the palm of his hand in the gulf between them. “We’re done,” he said. There was a gravity, a global finality in the weight of his words. Montrose stood. She sat looking up at him. How had this meeting slipped out of her grasp? Nikki had only wanted one thing when she walked in there, and it had dissolved in the toxic haze. “And if you have anything to discuss about this case, you bring it to me, not reporters, and especially not the sharks downtown. Tempting as it is to go polishing that gold bar, remember, you work for me.”

  “You don’t need to tell me who I work for.” Heat rose to face him, feeling herself reclaiming lost meaning from a mislaid motto. “There’s a killer out there, and for the sake of his victim, I want to catch him.”

  “Damn it, Heat, not every victim is your mother.”

  Her old friend might as well have slapped her face. He knew her vulnerability, and that stung her all the more. But she didn’t back off. Nikki absorbed it and spoke her guiding truth. “No, but every victim is somebody else’s mother. Or their father, or daughter. A son, or a wife.”

  “I’m telling you. This time, let go of this.”

  She said, “If you know anything about me, you know I am not going to lie down.”

  “I could fire you.”

  “You’ll have to.” And then, as turnabout, she dealt him his own vulnerability card. “How will you explain that downtown? Because you must know I’m not the only one asking these questions.”

  His jaw muscles flexed. He tilted his head to her, leveling a challenge. “Are you saying I can’t stop you?”

  “You can’t.” Heat returned his stare, unblinking. “Make your call, Captain.”

  He pondered a moment. Then, unhappy but resigned, he said, “Go ahead then.” And as she turned to go, he said, “Detective Heat. Watch your back. You may be poking into something you wish you had never gotten into.”

  On her walk across the bull pen, Hinesburg said, “Detective Heat, you got a sec?”

  “Actually, Sharon, not the best time.”

  “I think you should make time.” There was something in the way Hinesburg presented herself that felt different. The bluff of arrogance was muted. Replaced by an uncharacteristic urgency.

  “All right. What is it?”

  In answer Detective Hinesburg handed Nikki photocopies of Father Graf’s phone records. There weren’t many calls over the month, so Heat was able to scan the pages quickly. She stopped abruptly, however, when she hit the last page, covering the prior week . . . the one before Father Graf was killed. There were numerous calls to and from two phone numbers Heat recognized—because she had called them so often herself. They were the office and cell phone numbers of Captain Montrose.

  Heat looked up from the page to his office. He was standing at the glass wall looking at her. Just as they made eye contact, Montrose snapped his blinds shut.

  In fewer than five minutes Nikki had assembled her squad at the Mur der Board. Detective Heat moved quickly before the captain had a change of heart about breaking the restraints he had placed on her investigation. She also wanted to energize her people by illustrating that this was a new day.

  The revelation about Montrose showing up on the victim’s phone records was huge, but Heat decided not to bring it up at an open meeting. She had collected the file from Hinesburg and told her that she would take it from there. It would mean another confrontation, but the captain had already turned off his lights and left, so it would have to come upon his return. As painful as the meeting with her embattled commander had just been, her next session could make that one look like high tea.

  They all took notes while she reported that the bruise on Father Graf’s lower back had likely been caused by handcuffs. “Isn’t that consistent with the whole bondage-torture deal?” asked Rhymer.

  “Could be,” said Heat. “It could also be the best evidence that he was brought there against his will.” Ochoa raised a forefinger. “Question, Miguel?”

  “He was a big drinker. Plastered the morning he disappeared, according to his activist group. Have we checked records to see if he got cuffed for a Drunk and Disorderly over the last few days?”

  “Good thought,” Nikki said. “Sharon, when you get with RTCC on that snake tattoo, ask them to run this week’s ten-fifty complaints and see if Graf shows up.”

  She assigned Ochoa to look up Dr. Colabro about the mysterious prescription. “Then I want you and Rales to make another visit to Justicia a Garda. I hear they have paramilitary connections. Find out who their leaders are and invite them in for a chat. Use the waiting room instead of Interrogation. I don’t want them treated like suspects, but I want them on our turf, in a formal setting.”

  She put Detective Hinesburg on the found money from the rectory attic. “Reach out to Forensics and hustle along a complete workup on that cash. Everything. And Sharon? Like yesterday.” Hinesburg arched a brow, taking that like the shot it was. Nikki couldn’t give a rat’s ass. She continued, “I want to pay a visit to the archdiocese later today to ask them if they had any accounting concerns from Our Lady of the Innocents. So whatever you can get before I go—get.

  “Rhymer. You’re off dommes. Dig into Horst Meuller. He’s able to speak this morning, so I’m going to make a hospital call. Meanwhile, you learn all you can. Obviously any more on his connection to Graf, but also work history, financial, any connection to Pleasure Bound . . . Also run him through Interpol and Hamburg police.”

  Rhymer dotted a sentence on his pad and said, “Nice to see we’re moving out of the horse latitudes.”

  “You and me both,” she said. “Tell your pal Gallagher. If he wants to come back, I can let bygones be bygones.”

  From where she stood looking out a tenth-floor window of New York Downtown Hospital, Nikki could pick out the spot across the East River where the shooting had taken place the day before. A low range of buildings south of the Brooklyn Bridge blocked her street-level view of the exact location on Henry, but on their far side she was able to pinpoint the high-rise where it all went down. Ragged, bruisey clouds streaming trails of snow and frozen rain gobbled the top of the apartment building as she watched, darkening the n
eighborhood until it disappeared in a curtain of foul weather.

  “Excuse me?” Nikki turned. A male nurse with a youthful face and surfer dude curls was smiling at her. “Are you waiting for Dr. Armani?”

  “Yes, I’m Detective Heat.”

  He took a step closer and his smile widened. Nikki thought he had the most brilliant teeth she had seen since the Dawn of Bieber. “I’m Craig.” He gave her a quick head-to-toe that was approving yet somehow not creepy. She bet Nurse Craig got laid a lot. “Dr. Armani is stuck on rounds. We’re a teaching hospital, you know, and she is, well, she is definitely not one to be hurried.” Craig said it with the intimacy of a patient lover.

  “How long will she be?”

  “If I had a nickel . . . But good news, she told me to personally escort you to Mr. Meuller’s room.” He flashed his teeth again. “My lucky day.”

  The uniform outside the door rose from his metal folding chair when Heat approached. She gestured for him to sit and he did. The detective turned to her guide and said, “I can take it from here.”

  “Craig,” he answered.

  Nikki said, “Yeah, I got that,” and that seemed to please him no end. He walked on but not without a turn back to wave before he rounded the corner.

  The dancer had his eyes locked on her the moment she entered the room. Because of his wound he couldn’t turn his head, so Heat stopped at the foot of his bed to help him out. “How are you feeling?” He croaked out something she couldn’t make out. Either it was in German, or the thick bandages framing his jaw made it hard for him to talk. “You got lucky, Horst. An inch or two lower, you wouldn’t be here.”

  Heat had been briefed on the phone by his surgeon. The bullet had completely blown out his trapezius muscle but missed the carotid artery. If the shot had come from above, say from a rooftop or balcony, instead of from a car window, the trajectory would have been downward with fatal consequences.

  “Lucky?” he said. “You break my collarbone and now this.” Meuller paused and pushed the morphine button connected to his drip. “My dancing career is over. What do I do now?”

  “You talk,” she said. “Why did you run from us?”

  “Who says I was?”

  “Horst, you rappelled three stories down a scaffolding to get away. Why?” He couldn’t turn away so he looked up at the ceiling. “Any idea who would want to shoot you?” He kept his gaze fixed above her. “Tell me about Father Graf.”

  “Who?”

  “This man.” She held the picture above him so he had to see it. “Father Gerald Graf.” He pursed his lips and did a mild head shake, which obviously pained him. “Eyewitnesses saw you fighting with the priest at One Hot Mess. The bouncer intervened when you tried to choke him. You also threatened to kill him.”

  “I don’t recall.” With the accent, it came off sounding like Sergeant Schultz’s “I know nuh-think” from Hogan’s Heroes. And about as credible.

  “I’m asking because he is dead now. Choked.” She omitted the other details, holding them for corroboration, in case he decided to confess. “Is that why you ran, because you killed him?” He pressed his morphine button repeatedly and turned his eyes upward again. “Let’s walk it back. What was your relationship with Father Graf?”

  This time he closed his eyes. And kept them closed, the corners of his lids twitching from the effort to shut her out. “You rest up, Mr. Meuller. You’ll need it. I’ll be back to talk later.”

  Nurse Craig was fussing with meds on a cart outside the door, pretending he wasn’t waiting for Nikki. “I’ll be seeing you again, I hope,” he said.

  “Never know, Craig, it’s a small hospital.”

  He looked around, flunking the irony test. Then he gestured toward the elevators and walked with her. “Sometimes I think maybe I should do some professional dancing.” Nikki gave him a side glance and, even in the scrubs, figured he could.

  “I hear there’s big money for male nurses at bachelorette parties,” she said and pushed the down button, hoping the car would arrive soon.

  “Maybe. Wouldn’t want to do the clubs, though. After seeing that guy, the stripper pole is bad for you.”

  “How?”

  “I had to sponge bathe him this morning. You wouldn’t believe all the scars. Looks like rope burns all over his legs and chest.”

  The elevator doors opened, but Heat didn’t get on. “Show me.”

  Detective Heat didn’t wait to get back to the Two-oh to deal with the discovery of TENS burns on the dancer. She got off the FDR at the 61st Street exit and took First Avenue uptown. At the first stoplight, she speed-dialed Captain Montrose’s direct line. Four rings in, she could picture the lonely light blinking in the dark office, and sure enough, it dumped to voice mail. Nikki left her name and the time only, trying to keep the tightness out of her voice. She knew she would have to address his numbers on the priest’s phone records, but she had planned that for the end of shift, when the office had cleared. But finding those marks from electrical burns on Meuller forced her hand. It was time to ask him about the Huddleston murder he had handled back in 2004. Heat didn’t know its relevance, but experience had made her wary of coincidences.

  Lost in thought, turning left onto 79th, she ran the tail end of the yellow and immediately saw police lights in her rearview mirror. For a split second her heart jumped—even cops get a klong if they think they’re going to get ticketed—but it was The Discourager alerting traffic that he was shaving the light with her. He pulled his cruiser beside her at the next stop and she powered her window down. A mix of sleet and snow hit her sleeve. “Don’t worry about me,” he said, “I’ve got life insurance.”

  “Just keeping you on your toes, Harvey,” she said with a laugh and pulled away. One more Montrose attempt. Nikki tried his cell. It didn’t even ring, but went straight to voice mail. Heat left another brief message and tossed her phone on the passenger seat. She’d try again in five minutes, back at her desk.

  She crossed Fifth Avenue for her cut across Central Park, taking the Transverse. As always, Nikki’s gaze drifted to the right for an appreciative glimpse of one of her favorite buildings in the city, the Metropolitan. On that raw winter’s day it looked to her like a brooding hulk, damp and icebound, hibernating among bare trees of a mean winter. The blare of car horns brought her to the rearview, where she saw a white step van, tagged with graffiti, lurch to a stop across the road behind her, blocking it. More horns. Then she could hear the double chirp of a siren and The Discourager’s command voice on his PA. “Move the vehicle . . . now.”

  The 79th Street Transverse is a two-lane road cut like a narrow canyon ten feet below ground level across Central Park. An urban compromise, its submersion allows traffic to flow without spoiling the view. As the street lost elevation descending beneath the park’s East Drive, Heat entered the shelter of the underpass and the Crown Victoria’s wiper blades chattered across the dry windshield. As she emerged, a loud pop echoed in the tunnel and her steering wheel lurched in her hands. Not a flat tire, she thought. But instantly came another series of pops, and the rear of the car fishtailed in the slush. She took her foot off the gas and corrected as best she could on the icy road, but without air in any of her tires, it was more like skating than driving. Her car slid sideways until the front end smacked hard into the wall of rocks lining the road. At impact, Nikki lurched against her seat belt, and papers, pens, her cell phone—everything loose in the car—flew. Shook up but unhurt, Heat couldn’t figure how she got four flat tires. She craned to look behind her. Since her car was diagonally across the road, she had to look through the rear side passenger window. Just as she made out the traffic spike strip lying across the underpass, the back window exploded. A bullet struck the side of her headrest, ripping it off the seat and shattering the driver’s window beside her.

  Nikki dove, flattening herself as far down as she could, clawing the two-way out of its bracket. “One-Lincoln-Forty, ten-thirteen, officer needs help, Seventy-ninth Transverse at E
ast Drive, shots fired.” She unkeyed the mic and listened. Nothing. She tried again. “One-Lincoln-Forty, ten-thirteen, Seventy-ninth Transverse at East Drive, shots fired, do you copy?” Silence. She was groping on the floor trying to find her cell phone when another bullet tore through the seat back and into the dashboard just above her head. If the shooter was a professional, the next one would be lower. She had to get out of that car, fast.

  The angle of the skid worked in her favor; the driver’s side door was away from the direction of the shots. She threw herself out onto the icy, wet pavement and rolled under the car door to shelter herself behind the front tire and the engine block. That’s when the third bullet fractured the steering wheel.

  With four flats the Crown Vic sat low enough that she could lie prone and get a view without having to gopher up and make herself a target. Heat drew her Sig Sauer and pressed her cheek down against the slush. Behind her in the underpass an SUV idled. Not the graphite gray, this one was navy blue. In the dimness of the tunnel, it was impossible to see how many there were. The driver’s door stood open with the window down, so her guess was that the driver was also the shooter, using the window frame as a brace. She made a quick clock of the street behind her and got a bad feeling. There was no oncoming traffic. The Transverse cut across Central Park, connecting two busy avenues. The only way there could be no cars was if somehow both ends of the road had been blocked.

  There was movement at the SUV when she looked back. A glint—probably reflection off a scope—shimmered briefly in the open window of the driver’s door. Heat made an isosceles brace, pressed the butt of her gun on the ground, and squeezed. The sound was deafening as her shot reverberated under the chassis. Nikki didn’t wait to see if she hit him. She was still smelling cordite as she duckwalked away, keeping the Crown Vic between herself and the SUV.

  After twenty yards, the road curved and she was able to jog upright. The same high wall that trapped her down in canyon of the Transverse was serving as cover. Behind her she could hear the growl of the SUV engine and then a brief squeak of brakes. Her abandoned car was diagonally across the lane and would have to be moved unless the shooter wanted to chance coming on foot.