“That’s politics, it’s an ugly game.”
“And one I don’t care to play, thanks,” said Heat. “Not why I swore my oath.”
“Actually, that’s why I called,” said the deputy commissioner. “Since backstabbing isn’t your favorite sport, I wanted to let you know that I’ll keep my eyes open for you. I can’t promise there won’t be any more surprises, but maybe I can head them off, or at least I can warn you.”
“Wow, that’s very generous.”
“You deserve it. So what’s up for you? Daytime dramas? Scrapbooking?” When Nikki’s pause was the answer, Yarborough continued, “Of course not. You’re Nikki Heat. Listen, do what you have to do. But if you need anything, anything at all, please call me.”
“I will,” said Heat. “And Phyllis? Thanks.”
About an hour later, impatient with exile in her apartment, unable to escape needling thoughts through daytime TV, Nikki bundled up. Even the process of getting ready was a confrontation with her unhappy situation: By reflex, she reached for her holster—empty—muttered a quiet curse, and, for the first time Heat could recall in ages, had to step out her door unarmed.
The best way to cover ground in Manhattan during a snow event is to go under it. As was her habit, Nikki picked up a 6 train at Park Avenue South and rode it down to Bleecker for a transfer to the uptown B. Waiting on the platform, she performed the straphanger’s rite of leaning over the edge of the track every sixty seconds, scouting up the dark tunnel for the gleam of an oncoming headlight reflected on the tracks. It didn’t make the trains come any faster, but it was something to do other than look for scurrying rats in the grime below.
Nikki did her headlight check, she did her rat check, and she also did a platform check. There had been no cruiser parked downstairs that morning—no Discourager to give a two-finger salute or bring coffee to. They had pulled her protection when they pulled her shield. Heat didn’t clock any threat and got on her car for the ride uptown to the Twentieth, and was able to relax a bit.
But her inner demons got on with her and muscled into the next seat. Always a clear thinker who could slow things down and navigate the wildest distractions under fire, Nikki couldn’t shake her thoughts free of how her whole life had been upended in a blink. What the hell was going on? She prided herself on being skeptical, not paranoid, but Heat seriously believed she was being railroaded. But why? And by whom?
It pained her that a few hundred words in an also-ran newspaper could get her kicked out. That damned article.
And Rook.
Her sharpest agony. She had invested in this guy. Waited for this guy. Felt something for this guy that went beyond the bedroom . . . or wherever else they took each other. Nikki did not give herself easily to a man, and this betrayal by Rook was why. Heat reflected on her answer at the oral boards about her greatest flaw and admitted her reply was a mask. Yes, her identification with her job was total. But her greatest flaw wasn’t overinvestment in her career. It was her reticence to be vulnerable. Unarmed as she was—literally—she had been emotionally so with Rook.
That was the gut shot that had blown clean through her soul.
What the hell was she doing back there in the bull pen? The others weren’t asking her that. Nikki Heat was asking herself.
When she had put on her coat and picked her way along the unshoveled sidewalk heading from her apartment to the subway, Nikki had decided that she needed some things from her desk. Not knowing how long this suspension would last—or whether it would be permanent—there were materials she required and wanted at home. By the time she came up the steps from the B train under the American Museum of Natural History and trudged toward Columbus Avenue, she had convinced herself that entering her squad room was all about dignity. And that dirty coffee mug Roach had alerted her to.
The truth behind her visit was that the detective in Heat craved information. And what Nikki learned only served to deepen her suspicions about her reversal.
Right off the bat Roach drew her aside to a quiet corner. “WTF?” said Ochoa.
“Yeah, why’d you have to go and get yourself suspended?” added Raley. “Your timing sucks.”
“Not so much that we care about you,” said his partner, “but the Graf investigation’s upside-down in the ditch with four wheels clawing sky.”
“Do I even need to ask why?” Nikki knew from her meeting the day before.
“Because of the Iron Man,” said Ochoa. Heat had a mental bet that would be the handle they’d give Captain Irons. She also bet they weren’t the first. “He’s pulling all resources into the dead homeless guy, even though it’s gonna end up accidental OD.”
“For all intents, this case is dead.” Raley side nodded to the Father Graf Murder Board, which had been carelessly erased and hung there, suspended on the easel with only the ghostly streaks of Nikki’s colored markers to hint at its prior purpose.
“It almost seems convenient,” she said.
Ochoa chuckled. “Know how we’re always pimping Rook over his wild-ass conspiracy theories?” Heat nodded even as she masked her pain at hearing his name. “Nothing compared to what Rales and I have been thinking.”
“Any answers?” asked Heat.
Raley said, “Only one. On your time off, let us know what you need.”
“On your ‘time off,’ ” repeated Ochoa, complete with air quotes.
The only satisfaction she could draw from this disheartening news about the shelving of the Graf case was that Sharon Hinesburg was ordered by Captain Irons to go undercover as a homeless woman and had to spend the night in the Riverside Park pedestrian tunnel. “Let it snow,” Nikki said.
On a whim—yes, a whim, she told herself—Heat logged onto her computer so she could print out a PDF of the Huddleston homicide file, the 2004 case then-Detective Montrose had run. Disbelief.
Her password didn’t work.
Access denied.
Nikki phoned the IT department help desk. After a brief hold, the technician came back on and apologized. He said that due to her renewed classification, she was currently unauthorized to use the NYPD server.
After she set the phone back on its cradle, Heat realized how wrong she had been. She had mistakenly thought it wasn’t possible to feel more shaken and alone. Stepping out into West 82nd Street, Nikki turned to face the icy wind rushing crosstown off the Hudson. But she knew that no matter how long she stood there, it could never dish out enough cold to numb her. She turned her back against the bluster and plodded toward the subway to go home.
“Lady-lady!” was the last thing Heat heard before the collision. She whirled in the direction of the shout a split second before the delivery guy and his bicycle smacked into her, knocking her down onto Columbus Avenue. They landed in a tangle—arms, legs, and a bike—surrounded by ruptured cardboard take-out cartons, broccoli in oyster sauce, smashed wontons, and a duck leg. “My order’s ruined,” he said.
Still down, with handlebars against her cheek, Nikki turned up from the gutter and said, “You were going the wrong way in that lane.”
His response was, “Hey, up yours, lady.” He jerked his bike off Nikki and raced away, leaving her and his lost order down in the crosswalk at the side of the avenue. For a split second as Heat watched the patch of filthy snow and sand under her face redden with her blood, she actually wondered if whoever killed Montrose had also sent the crazy delivery guy on the bike. Such was the rabbit hole of conspiracy thinking. When you actually stop and look around and wonder, who in the world can you trust?
When Rook opened the door, his expression was a mix of shock and vigilance. First he reacted to her face with its tributaries of dried blood fanning like tentacles from the spot in her scalp where Nikki held a wadded handkerchief. Then, out of experience, he checked the hall to make sure she wasn’t on the run and being followed. “Nikki, jeez, what happened?”
She strode past him through his foyer and into the kitchen. He locked the door and joined her. Nikki held up a hand
. “Shut up and don’t say anything.”
His mouth opened and then closed.
“I’m a great cop. I was on track to blow past lieutenant and make captain. I was going to be running the precinct. And, as a cop, one thing I understand is motive. And when I look for your motive in leaking that article? . . . I get nothing. It makes no logical sense. Why would you give your notes on a story that’s your exclusive to somebody else? For sex? Please. I can tell, Tam’s way too needy to be good in bed.” He started to speak and she said, “Shut up. With no motive, I just don’t know why the hell you would have done that. So I’m making the choice to believe you.
“I not only want to, I have to. Because whatever’s happening on this case, it’s kicked up to a new level and there’s nobody I can trust except for you.
“Everything’s caving in. I’m locked out and the murder investigation I have been moving heaven and earth to conduct is now in the Dumpster because the bumbling pencil jockey they replaced Captain Montrose with is basically Inspector Clouseau. Say nothing.
“Now . . . as I lay there minutes ago in the southbound lane of Columbus, mowed down by a wrong-way and rather unapologetic delivery bicyclist, shivering, bleeding, and taking stock of the new low my life had achieved, I thought, Nikki Heat, are you just going to lie there? And, tempting as it may be to while away my forced hiatus at Starbucks playing Angry Birds, waiting for 1PP to call and say sorry, that is not an option. I am too stubborn and too personally invested to let this case die. But—minor technicality—I am no longer an active member of the NYPD. No gun, no badge, no access to records, no squad. Oh, and people are trying to kill me. So what do I need? I need help. To press this investigation forward I need a partner. I need someone with experience, with balls, someone with top investigative skills who knows how to stay out of my way and isn’t afraid to put in some sick hours. Which is why I am here in your kitchen bleeding on your custom slate flooring. OK, you can talk now. What do you say?”
Rook didn’t reply. Instead, he turned her gently to look over the kitchen counter into his great room. And she beheld the Murder Board Rook had reconstructed in his loft. Not everything was there—for instance, no photographs—but the main elements were in place: the timeline, the names of victims and suspects, leads to track down. It needed a big update, but the foundation was all right there.
Heat turned back to Rook and said, “Well? Are you interested or not?”
TWELVE
While she sat atop the closed toilet lid in Rook’s master bathroom, he bent over her, carefully drawing aside strands of hair to examine the cut. Nikki stared at her blood-caked face in the mirror and said, “This looks a lot worse than it is.”
“Oh, if I only had a nickel for every time I said that in my life.”
“To whom, Rook? Unsuspecting girlfriends catching you with someone in a bar?”
“You sully me with your tawdry assumptions.” Then he added, “Usually, it was the bedroom.” He turned to the mirror so Nikki could see his proud grin. “Once in an armoire. God, I miss high school.” He moved to the counter and picked up the dish of warm, soapy water he had prepared.
“What do you think, Doctor? Stitch, or no stitch?”
Rook dipped a cotton ball in the solution and gently dabbed her scalp. “Fortunately, this is in the abrasion rather than laceration category, so no stitch. Although, when was your last tetanus shot?”
“Recently,” she said. “Right after that serial killer worked on me with his dental picks out there in your dining room.”
“We do have the memories, don’t we, Nikki?”
Twenty minutes later, showered and dressed in a fresh blouse and pair of jeans that had been hanging in his closet, Heat appeared at the kitchen counter. “Transformation, complete,” she said.
He slid a double espresso over to her. “You weren’t kidding. When you get knocked down, you do get up again.”
“Just watch.”
“Can I tell you you’re off to a good start?” Nikki called out while she gave his Murder Board a once-over. Rook emerged from the back hall of his loft carrying a plastic milk crate of office supplies and an aluminum tube easel to hold the giant presentation pad that was sitting in the guest chair, waiting to be invited to join the party. “Most of what we need to focus on is right here.”
“Good notes, the writer’s friend,” he said. “I’m sure it’s not as dense with possibility as a Nikki Heat Murder Board. It’s like the branch office version. I call it Murder Board South.”
“It’s more than exists uptown right now.” She told him about Captain Irons and how his ineptness had accomplished more than all the obstacles Montrose had thrown at her, effectively bringing the investigation into the priest’s homicide to a whimpering halt. “So, basically, we are the Graf case right now.”
“Let’s make it count,” said Rook.
They spent the next hour updating his old information with her new leads and persons of interest. He kept track of the board, partitioning sections for each major thread to investigate as well as restructuring the timeline to add recently discovered elements; she created index cards on the big four-by-sixes from Rook’s crate of supplies, expanding status details and listing unresolved questions, all corresponding to the categories he had drawn on the whiteboard. Whatever noise had rained chaos down on their relationship fell away in their focus on the task at hand. From the start, and without much ceremony, the two fell into an easy and efficient routine. At last, when the board was current and the cards were coded and filed, they stood back to admire their progress.
Heat said, “We’re not a bad team.”
“The best,” agreed Rook. “We finish each other’s references.”
“Don’t get cocky, writer boy, now comes the hard part. There’s no way with our limited resources and manpower to investigate every lead and every person we’re looking at up there.”
“No problem,” said Rook, “let’s just pick one and go arrest him. That narrows the field. Or, even better, use the Gadhafi method and arrest everyone.”
“You’re bringing up a point we—meaning you—need to remember. I can’t arrest anyone. Remember? No badge, no gun?”
He processed that and said, “We don’t need no stinking badges. And as for a gun, what’s a roving band of killers to you, as long as there’s an icicle handy?”
Nikki held a pencil out to him, point first. “You’d be wise to remember that.”
“Noted.”
“Given we’re only a two-horse carousel, we need to draw priorities.” She set the presentation pad on the easel and tore off the cover, exposing a fresh page. “Here are the prime targets as I see them.” Heat uncapped a marker and printed her A-list, giving Rook a rationale for each choice: “Sergio Torres . . . If he wasn’t Graf’s murderer, he’s linked to the killer in some way—and his skills are too good for his rap sheet; Lawrence Hays . . . not only has the means and motive, he threatened Father Graf. And what were you so excited to tell me about Lancer Standard right before I tore your head off last night?”
“I remembered hearing something nasty about Hays’s group, so yesterday I reached out to a source of mine at The Hague from a piece I did on Slobodan Miločević’s, air-quotes, heart attack right before his verdict. Score. Check it out.” He pointed to his laptop screen and quoted, “ ‘An international human rights watchdog group filed suit to have Lancer Standard brought to the World Court on charges of abuses by its contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan involving sex shaming, waterboarding, and . . . ,’ wait for it: ‘torture through use of transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation, or TENS.’ ” He looked up at her and said, “And where have we heard of that before, boys and girls?”
“Nice one,” she said. “Definitely has my interest.” Heat continued with her A-list. “Horst Meuller . . . Our German male dancer threatened Graf, and he took a bullet for some reason. Even if it was intended for me, I want to know why he ran; Alejandro Martinez . . . That was his dirty druggy money stashed
at the rectory, I want to know why; Justicia a Garda . . . militant with a violent revolutionary pedigree and, don’t forget, Father Graf was last seen with them. Emma . . . I don’t know who Emma is—never got a chance to find out—but Graf had a purged e-mail file with her name on it. Emma makes my list. Tattoo Man . . . A John Doe seen on security cam with one of the domme’s roommates. A loose end I can’t let go of. Captain Montrose . . . OK, two ways to look at him. First, his suspicious behavior before he died links to Graf. What was he up to and why? Second, his so-called suicide. I don’t buy it.” She capped the marker and stepped back from the easel.
“That’s narrowing it down?” said Rook.
“Hey, you don’t know the stuff I’ve left off. For instance, besides the physical evidence Forensics is running, I am very curious about two odd socks from the rectory: the prescription in Graf’s medicine cabinet, and what’s the significance of that missing St. Christopher medal?” She wrote “Rx” and “St. Christopher” on the board, then Nikki tapped her temple with the cap of the marker.
“Well, this is plenty to get started on,” said Rook. “Nice job, you.”
“You, too.” And then she couldn’t resist tossing a little barb. “By the way, Rook, I’m not going to be seeing any of this in the newspaper, am I?”
“Hey . . .”
“Come on, lighten up, I’m kidding.” He looked at her askance. “. . . Well,” she admitted, “half kidding.” Rook considered a moment and grabbed her coat off the bar stool. “You’re throwing me out?”
But then he grabbed his, too. “No, we’re both going out.”
“Where?” she asked.
“To fix the half that isn’t kidding.”
Riding up in the elevator at the Midtown offices of the Ledger, Heat insisted the trip was not necessary. “Take a joke and let it go. I told you I trusted you.”