“You see any of them?” Nikki shook her head. “Any idea who they were?”
“Not yet.”
He studied Nikki and could not miss seeing her resolve. “They say the SUV down in the Transverse is gone. No sign of the other guy, the driver you say you shot.” Then he said, “These guys were pros.”
It always annoyed her to have office functionaries roll up after the action and play cop. All she said was “Tell me.”
He looked at his watch and then around the crime scene. “By the way. Where the hell’s your boss? Where the fuck is Montrose?”
The Hammer irritated her, but he wasn’t wrong. Precinct commanders always showed at every major incident involving their people. Captain Montrose didn’t make Belvedere Castle. He wasn’t in his office when she got back to the Two-oh, either.
Everyone knew of her ordeal, and all eyes fell on her as she entered the bull pen. In any other profession Nikki would have been forced to spend the rest of the day being pestered by sympathetic coworkers milking every detail of her story out of her and pushing her to share her feelings. Not in Copland. Ochoa set the tone when she reached her desk and he sidled over, checking the wall clock. “About time you rolled in,” he said. “Some of us have been working this case.”
Raley pivoted on his office chair to face them. “I hope you have a good reason for keeping us waiting.”
Heat thought a moment and said, “I made the mistake of taking the park. The Transverse was a killer.”
Detective Ochoa had a ball of kite string in his hand. He set it on her blotter. “What’s this?” she asked.
“Old trick. Tie one end of it to your gun.” He winked and clucked his tongue.
Then the three paused five seconds, letting the silence express the friendship. Marking the end of the interval, Raley stood. “Ready to hear what we’ve got?”
“Am I ever,” said Heat. She wasn’t just seeking solace in work, Nikki now had highly personal stakes in jamming this case even harder.
Lancer Standard, the CIA contractor, had finally called Raley back to set an appointment with Lawrence Hays, who was due back tomorrow from his desert training facility in Nevada. “Weird,” he said. “His secretary said that he would only meet with you. By name, he specifically mentioned Detective Heat. I never brought you up.”
“Pushy, but it just means he’s done his homework,” said Nikki. “He’s a military type and probably wants to deal with the leader of the squad.”
Ochoa said to his partner, “Man’s busy. Can’t waste time on a loser like you.”
“Loser?” said Raley. “Partner, you are talking about the King of All Surveillance Media, now including hard drives.”
“Whatcha got, sire?” asked Nikki.
“I took another look through Father Graf’s computer and found a link to a second e-mail account that didn’t forward to his Outlook. I accessed it and found only one folder. It’s labeled ‘EMMA.’ There were no saved e-mails in it, nothing in the inbox. Either it was inactive,” Raley speculated, “or it’s been purged.”
“Call Mrs. Borelli at the rectory,” said Heat. “See if that name means anything to her.” She cast another glance at the dark office across the pen. “Any Montrose sightings?”
“Nada,” said Hinesburg, joining in as she crossed over. “And his cell is dumping to voice mail. What do you think it means?”
“Cap’s been off the charts lately, but I have to say this has me shaking my head.” Nikki recalled his warning an hour before her ambush to watch her back, and wondered if it was more than sage advice. The salacious hunger in Hinesburg’s eyes alerted Nikki that this was not the forum for thinking out loud about her boss, and she moved on. “Anything on the money in the cookie tins yet?”
“Oh, yes, and get this,” she said. “The serial numbers trace to cash used in a DEA sting years ago.”
Ochoa asked, “How does a stash from a fed drug deal end up in a priest’s attic?”
“Do we know who the DEA deal was with?” said Heat.
“Yeah, an Alejandro Martinez.” Hinesburg consulted her notes. “He cut a plea bargain for a deuce in Ossining and he’s out. Clean jacket since his release in ’07.”
Nikki crossed over to the board and started to write his name next to the notation for the found money. “Let’s see how clean this Alejandro Martinez is. Bring him in for a chat.”
They had just scattered to work their assignments when a familiar voice called from the door to the bull pen. “Delivery for Nikki Heat?”
Jameson Rook stepped in toting dry cleaning on hangers looped over his hand. “You know, I can’t just drop everything and keep coming here every time you get all bloody.”
Heat looked at the clothes from her closet, then at Rook, and then to Roach, arching a brow at them. Ochoa said, “We figured, you know, that he’d want to know how your day was going.”
Rook asked, “Did you really stab him with an icicle?” When she nodded, he said, “Please, tell me you said ‘Freeze,’ because that would be only perfect.” Rook was grinning, but there was worry behind it. He put his free arm around her waist. “Detective, you doing OK?”
“Fine, I’m just fine. I can’t believe you did this.” She took the clothes from him.
“Think they match. . . . You seem to have this sort of practical monochromatic thing going in your closet, not that I judge. All right, I judge. We need to take you shopping.”
She laughed and pulled a couple of items from the selection he’d brought. “These will do just fine.” She kissed his cheek, forgetting herself in a rare office display. “Thanks.”
“I thought you had protection. What happened to your Discourager?”
“Poor Harvey, you should have seen him. Mortified. In all his years he never got blocked like that.”
“How . . . discouraging. Whatever’s going on, you need better. When I went by your apartment, there was a car sitting up the block watching, I know the look.”
Nikki got a fresh chill and draped the clothes across the back of her chair. “How do you know it was watching?”
“Because when I walked up to it, he sped off. I yelled stop, but he kept going.”
“The yelling stop, that never works,” said Raley.
“Did you see him, get a description?” Ochoa had his pad open. Then he said, “You didn’t get a description, did you?”
“No,” said Rook. And then he took out his Moleskine notebook. “But would a license plate help?”
“Got it,” said Raley, hanging up the phone. “Vehicle you saw was regis tered to Firewall Security, Inc., a domestic protection division of . . . are you ready? . . . Lancer Standard.”
“We should get on them. Get over there right now,” said Rook. “These have got to be the guys who ambushed you. It adds up, the surveillance, the military tactics, let’s go.”
Nikki finished putting on her clean blazer and said, “First of all, there is no ‘we’ or ‘let’s,’ Rook. Your ride-along days are through. And second, there’s nothing to go on. Third, if they are up to something, I don’t want to let on that I know. . . .”
Rook sat down. “When you get to the fifteenth reason, let me know. I believe this is like Little League; isn’t there a mercy rule?”
She put a hand on his shoulder. “You’re not totally wrong. Of course this guy Hays and Lancer Standard have my attention, but let’s go about this the right way.”
“Did you say ‘let’s’? Because I heard ‘let’s.’ ”
She laughed, shoving him so he spun a rotation in the chair. Then Nikki felt Ochoa’s presence, standing in the middle of the bull pen, ashen. The smile left her face. “Miguel?”
The detective spoke in a voice so low it would not have been audible if the room hadn’t gone completely silent. “Captain Montrose. . . . He’s dead.”
EIGHT
Special Investigations owned that city block and would control it for as long as they pleased. Rook, who liked Montrose and knew how much the captain meant to
Nikki, had wanted to come along for support, but she said no. She knew what it would be like. Immediates only. And she was right. Even Heat and Roach had to park outside the yellow tape and walk; that’s how tight that crime scene was. The press called Nikki’s name as she passed, but she kept her eyes front, ignoring them—especially Tam Svejda, who hopped sideways along the no-go line, shouldering her way between reporters and making desperate pleas for a comment.
There was a lull in the precipitation, but the afternoon sky hung low and sullen. The three detectives strode wordlessly, crunching over pellets of sidewalk salt toward the middle of 85th, where strobes were flashing in front of the rectory of Our Lady of the Innocents.
Nikki recognized the shooting suits from the castle. The pair clocked her as she approached, gave a nod, then went back to their business. Heat had never seen these two before in her life, and now here they were again, crossing paths the second time that same day.
Montrose’s Crown Victoria sat parked in front of a fire hydrant and was ringed by portable isolation barriers of white plastic sheeting stretched on aluminum frames. Nikki stopped on the sidewalk a car length away, not knowing if she had it in her to proceed. Cameras inside the barrier flashed like lightning punching against the gloom. “We can do this, if you’d rather,” said Ochoa. She turned and saw the sadness behind his cop mask. Beside him, the skin around his partner Raley’s lips was white from pressing them together so hard.
Nikki did what she had done so often on this job. She put on her armor. There was a switch inside her, the one that sealed off her vulnerability, like triggering a fire door in the Met. For the space of one long breath, which was all it took, she made the silent acknowledgment she always made to honor the victim she was about to meet, threw the switch, and she was ready. Detective Heat said, “Let’s go,” and entered the crime scene.
The first thing she took in was the quarter inch of ice and frozen slush coating the entire top of the car, notable because there was a clear circular patch about the size of a DVD on the roof above the driver’s seat. Raising herself up on her toes, she saw the dimple of the bullet’s exit point. She bent forward to look through the back window, but it was like trying to see through a shower door. Then the shooter from Forensics took another picture inside the car, and the slumped body formed a horror movie silhouette.
“Single head shot,” said the voice. Nikki rose up and turned from the rear window, and one of the suits, Neihaus, was on the curb with his pad.
“You have positive ID this is Captain Charles Montrose?” was the first thing she said. When he nodded, she asked Neihaus to say it. “You’re absolutely certain Charles Montrose is the victim?”
“Yes, I have matched him to his ID. But speaking of, you knew him, right?” He tilted his head toward the open passenger door, and she felt her stomach swim. “Going to need confirmation, you know that.”
“That’s him.” Detective Ochoa rose up from his crouch at the open car door and walked back toward them. He showed his palms to Nikki and shook his head slightly, signaling Don’t. And for the hundreds of victims she had seen in the hundreds of awful ways people can die and what it does to their bodies, and for the traumatic day she had had already, Nikki decided there was no point testing her armor.
“Thank you, Detective,” she said in a formal tone.
“No problem.” His face said anything but.
Nikki shifted gears, asking Neihaus, “Who found him?”
“Guy from a cleanup crew looking for a parking place to get in the Graestone.” In near unison, Heat and Roach looked up the block. A commercial van from On Call, a smoke and water damage recovery company, was double-parked at the rear service gate of the prestigious Graestone Condominiums. Detectives Feller and Van Meter were interviewing a man in coveralls. “Says he was mad he couldn’t find a spot while some jerk had parked at the hydrant, and he was going to give him some shit. Surprise.”
“How about witnesses?” She had to ask, even knowing that if anybody had seen or heard anything, a 911 call would have preceded the accidental discovery by the van’s driver.
“None so far. We’ll canvass, of course, but you know . . .”
“Did you ask the housekeeper if he had some reason to be here at the rectory?” Nikki asked. “Her name is Mrs. Borelli. Have you talked with her?”
“Not yet.”
“You want some extra manpower?” said Heat.
“I know this is your skip and your precinct, Detective, but this one’s ours.” Neihaus gave them his most assuring look. “And don’t worry, this is family. Commissioner’s going to give us any resources we need.”
“You go over the car yet?” said Raley.
“No note, if that’s what you mean. Forensics is on latents, that’ll take a while. His weapon’s down on the front floor mat. Nothing unusual in the vehicle on first go-over. Trunk’s got the standard-issue kit, vest and whatnot. Oh, and two canvas grocery bags of canned dog food. Must have had a pooch.”
“Penny,” said Heat, her voice cracking as she continued, “a dachshund.”
On their walk back to the Roach Coach, Feller and Van Meter hailed them and they stopped. “Sorry about the captain,” said Feller.
“It’s fucked up” was Van Meter’s take.
“You get anything from the On Call driver?” asked Nikki.
Feller shook his head. “Just the details of the discovery. No unusual activity.”
Nikki said, “You know what? No way this is isolated. Whatever’s going on here, I don’t know what it is except that it is bigger than we suspected.”
“I hear that,” said Ochoa.
“Bunch of paramilitary types come after me in the park, trying to kill me . . . ,” she said. “Guys with no history or connection to me, at least not from the one I put down. Now, a couple of hours later, Montrose is dead. . . .”
“In front of Graf’s rectory? I’m sure not buying coincidences,” agreed Raley. “Something’s up.”
Detective Feller said, “Look, I know how you felt about him, it’s a big loss, I’m sorry for you. All of you. He was a good man. But . . .”
“But what?” she said.
“Come on, let’s be objective. With all respect, you’re too close,” said Van Meter. “Your skipper was under huge pressure. 1PP had his nuts in a vise, his wife dies . . .”
Feller picked up his partner’s point. “It’s no secret how unhappy the man was. Nikki, you know this is going to come down as a suicide.”
“Because it is,” from Van Meter. “You’re going all Area 51. He ate his piece.”
The urge to scream at them overwhelmed Nikki, but instead she sought her cop’s detachment, and when she had reclaimed it, she let herself examine what they were saying. Was it possible with all those pressures—plus all the strange behaviors she had witnessed—that the Cap had taken his own life? Her boss, who had snooped the rectory and had so obviously worked to cut off her investigation, was slumped in his car with a bullet in his head. And people were sure it was suicide?
Was it suicide?
Or was he involved in something? Could the captain have crossed over and gotten into something dirty? No, Nikki dismissed those thoughts. She couldn’t imagine the Charles Montrose she knew doing anything like that.
Detective Heat shivered. She didn’t know what was going on, but she knew one thing. Standing there on the snow, deep in the coldest winter in a century, she saw herself on the tip of an iceberg. And all around her in the water were sharks.
The purple bunting was already hung above the main entrance to the precinct when they got back. Of course, business in the house was still being conducted, but the air was somber. On the trip through the lobby to Homicide, Heat noticed that the uniforms wore mourning bands across their shields. Conversations everywhere she passed were hushed and had the odd effect of making the ring of telephones sound louder. Captain Montrose’s office remained empty and dark. There was also a seal on his door.
Detective Rhymer gave h
er an interval to settle at her desk before he came over. After they shared brief condolences, he handed her a file. “Just came in. An ID of your dude from the park.”
Detective Heat flipped open the cover and a mug shot of the rifleman she had stabbed at Belvedere Castle stared back at her. Sergio Torres, DOB February 26, 1979, was a shoplifter turned car radio thief who did enough jail time to hook up with Latin gangs on the inside. That relationship earned him a few new stretches stacking time for carjacking and assaults. She closed the file on her lap and stared into the near distance.
“I’m sorry,” said Rhymer. “I should have waited.”
“No, no, it’s not that,” said Heat. “It’s just . . . This is not sitting right. I mean, Torres had no military background. I saw this guy in action. He had skills. How does a gang banger get trained like that?” Her phone rang.
It was Rook trying her again. It must have been his tenth call. And for the tenth time, Nikki didn’t pick it up, because if she did, she’d have to talk about it. And once she did that, it became real. And once it became real, it was all over. And Heat couldn’t afford for it to be all over right now.
Not in front of everyone else. Not while she was going for lieutenant.
“Hey?” said Ochoa. “Timing sucks, but before all this went down I set a meet with Justicia a Garda and they’re here. Want me to try to push it to tomorrow?”
Heat gave it serious thought. No, she had to power forward. Keep paddling or risk sinking. “No, don’t cancel. I’ll be right there. . . . And Miguel? Thanks for stepping in like that, ID-ing the captain.”
“Before you thank me you should know something,” he said. “The God’s truth? I couldn’t look.”
“Thank you for coming,” said Nikki as she entered the waiting room. She was met by silence. A man and woman, both about thirty, sat across the table from Detective Ochoa, arms folded, without so much as a glance her way. Heat couldn’t help but notice that they also still wore their coats, another nonverbal cue.