Heat Rises

  Heat said it first. “One’s missing.”

  “Even better. Not only is one missing, the top load in his gun’s mag was the orphan from that spare clip.” Nikki could feel her spirits rise back up while Detective Ochoa continued, “No prints on the cartridge, which is also strange—not even Montrose’s.”

  “Not just strange,” Heat said, “significant. I mean, come on, how does a dead man reload?”

  Evening rush hour traffic back to Manhattan gave Rook an extra thirty minutes in the rear of the cab to work out a scenario to spin over Ochoa’s revelation. “This is big. No disrespect to the vaunted Mr. le Carré, but this is bigger than Call for the Dead. This is a dead man’s bullet. Hey, I think I have the title for my article. I should write it down. No, I’ll remember, it’s that good.” Nikki didn’t even bother trying to reel him in. He was not only more entertaining than the Taxi TV embedded in the driver’s seat back—she had the Sam Champion promo memorized by now, anyway—Rook was like the broken clock that managed to be correct two times a day. For once he was thinking out loud about something she wanted to hear. Because she was sorting it out, too.

  “OK, here’s how it spools for me,” he said. “Montrose is parked in the car and bad guy X, in the passenger seat, has got his gun somehow. Don’t know how that happened but I say it did, otherwise this doesn’t play.”

  Heat said, “We can sift the details later. Keep going.”

  “Fine, so Montrose’s weapon is in the hands of his passenger, who has either been holding it on him or he takes the captain by surprise. Anyway, the passenger jams the gun under his chin, and pow. Which also explains why a chin shot and no eating the barrel.”

  Nikki agreed so far. “And why Lauren expressed reservations about the trajectory.”

  “Yes. Now, here is where we go a little Mission: Impossible, but stay with me because it’s absolutely feasible. Montrose is dead. The issue for the shooter becomes how do you sell this as a suicide if the residue is on your hands, not the victim’s? Answer: You hold the gun in the dead man’s hand and fire another shot. Problem 2: Then the magazine is down not one, but two bullets, leaving a lot of messy questions to complicate things. So what the killer does is fit the gun into Montrose’s hand, hold it out the car window, squeeze off the second shot to get residue on the captain, right? Then replace that second bullet by using gloved hands to take one of Montrose’s own bullets—guaranteed to match his weapon—from the spare mag on his belt. The killer slides that round into the top of the clip. It looks like a perfect one-shot suicide, and he splits.”

  “You don’t often hear me say this, Mr. Conspiracy Theory, but I think you’re on to something.”

  Rook said, “Yes, but it’s pure hypothesis, right? And that doesn’t hold water.”

  “So leaky that if you took this theory to the Department, you’d need a mop.”

  “We could give it a try. I mean you do know a good water damage service, don’t you, from the crime scene?”

  They rode in silence a moment, Nikki staring at the silhouette of the Manhattan skyline in the greening sky of twilight. Then she pulled out her cell phone. “What?” asked Rook.

  Heat didn’t answer. She dialed 411 and asked for the number of On Call water damage restoration.

  Rook said, “I was joking, you know.”

  DeWayne Powell from On Call met them in front of the Graestone Con dominiums, where Heat had seen him parked the day of Montrose’s shooting. “You got here fast,” she said.

  “When you’re name’s On Call, that’s what you do. Besides, I have two brothers who are firefighters, so I like to do what I can to help out, you know?”

  “Must be handy,” said Rook, “having a few of the Bravest in the family when you’re in the water clean-up business.”

  DeWayne beamed a sunny smile. “Know how lawyers chase ambulances? I do fire trucks.”

  “Tell me what you were doing here the other day,” said Nikki.

  “I’m happy to go through it with you again, but I already told those other detectives everything I saw. Not much to add when you saw nothing.”

  Heat shook her head. “I don’t mean about the shooting. I mean, why were you called in?”

  They needed flashlights by then, but DeWayne had three in his van and they took them up on the roof. He shined his at an array of orange safety cones connected together by yellow tape. “That’s where I did my patching. Building’s going to redo the whole roof, so that’ll be it until spring.”

  “And any idea where the leak came from?” said Nikki.

  “Oh, absolutely.” DeWayne trained his light on the wooden water tank on stilts above them. It resembled the hundreds of cedar tanks atop all the buildings Heat had been looking at from the cab when she was checking out the skyline. “Folks on the top floor called and said they were getting flooded through the ceiling. With the freeze, we figured a busted pipe or whatever. But it was from the tank.” He waggled his light beam over a fresh cedar plank. “Leak drained a few hundred gallons before we got here. By then, water level was low enough it stopped by itself.”

  “Don’t know what caused it?” Rook was looking straight at Nikki when he asked it. Both were thinking the same thing.

  “Nah,” said DeWayne. “Water was done leaking by then, so it didn’t matter to me. Figured that wood just split in the cold. The tank guy couldn’t come till the next day, so I never heard what made the leak happen.”

  Rook leaned and whispered in Heat’s ear. “My money’s on a bullet hole from shot number two.”

  On the ride back to Rook’s loft, Nikki speed-dialed Ochoa. “You’ll be sure to let me know when I’ve depleted the favor bank, won’t you?”

  “Hey, no problem. The way it’s going here at the Two-oh, it’s nice to actually engage in some real police work.”

  “Iron Man?”

  “Has no plan.” She could hear Raley laughing in the background. Ochoa said, “Raley wants me to tell you that Captain Irons has set up eight A.M. tomorrow for desk inspection. For real. If we can’t clean up the streets, at least we can tidy up our work areas.”

  Heat said, “It’s probably best that this isn’t sourced from me, so in about ten minutes, you’re going to get a call from a DeWayne Powell. He’s the guy who discovered Montrose’s body. He’s going to report that the more he thought about it, the water leak he got called in to clean up was from a bullet hole in the water tank on top of the building near the captain’s car.”

  “Jeez,” said Ochoa as he was struck by the implications. “Cap’s bullet went straight up, so this one . . .”

  “Right,” said Nikki. “Could be the orphan slug from his backup magazine. Listen, my guess is if a slug punctured that cedar and got slowed by a twelve-foot-diameter tank of water, it probably didn’t exit.”

  “We are all over it, trust me.”

  “Good, but wait for DeWayne’s call. I just wanted to give you the heads-up so you took him seriously and had Forensics check out that tank.”

  “Will do,” he said.

  “And Miguel? This is all because of the job you and Rales did today double-checking his weapon and ammo. If we prove homicide instead of suicide, you’ve done this man a great service.”

  “Hey, I’ll put on a mask and flippers myself, if I have to.” And as she looked up at the CNN JumboTron above Columbus Circle and saw it was minus-three degrees, Nikki knew that was exactly what he would do if it came down to it.

  Rook was hungry, but she was too amped to eat, so he zapped the scar pariello that was left over from the night before while she pulled a dining room chair up to face Murder Board South and took a seat for her contemplation. “How was it?” she said when he ate his last bite.

  “Even better as a leftover,” he said. “And how did you know I was done, do you have eyes in the back of your head?”

  “No, I have ears. You stopped moaning in ecstasy.”

  “Ah. So that’s how you know when I’m done.”

  She turned to him wearing
a sly smile. “I know when you’re done, mister. You’re done when I’m done.”

  “It’s a beautiful thing,” he said. She turned her attention back to the board, then rose with a red marker and drew circles around Rook’s notation: “Montrose—What was he doing??” He said, “Guess we got the answer to that today, thanks to Eddie.”

  “No, we got half of it. We know what he was trying to do, but we don’t know what investigative course he was following. And he kept it from me. Either because he had some pride thing about cracking it himself or he didn’t want to admit it if he failed.”

  “Or . . . ,” said Rook. “More likely, he knew it was dangerous and was trying to keep you out of it. Even at the expense of pissing you off.”

  She mulled that, then said, “Or any of the above. But what were his leads? Where was he going?”

  “You could have Roach check his files, but, according to you, Internal Affairs beamed them up to the mother ship.”

  “I knew Montrose, and if he wanted secrecy he wouldn’t have kept anything at the office. Especially with IA all over him.” Heat tapped the barrel of the marker against her lip and then tossed it on the tray, a decision made. “I want to break into his apartment.”

  It was nine-thirty, still early enough not to freak out Captain Mon trose’s next-door neighbor, although Penny the dachshund went on high alert on the other side of the door after they knocked. As the multiple locks snapped open, they heard Corrine Flaherty shushing and saying, “Relax, Pen, it’s Nikki, you know Nikki.” She opened the door and the two women hugged. Corrine, dowdy and late fifties, primped her hair and said, “I’m glad you called, it gave me a chance to chase the men out.”

  The long-haired mini dachshund turned absolutely inside out over Rook. She rolled onto her back in the living room, and he knelt on the carpet to administer a tummy rub while she melted, her caramel tail waving like a flag. “I’m next,” said Corrine, followed by a smoker’s laugh.

  When she excused herself from the room, Rook stood and said to Heat, “So how are we going to do this, use her balcony to jump to Montrose’s like Spider-Man? I mean the movie, not the musical; it’s six floors down and I don’t have my health insurance card on me.”

  “How would we get in the sliding door on his balcony if it’s locked, which you know it must be?”

  “Hmm,” he said, “does Corrine have a hammer? I could break the glass with a mighty blow.”

  “Here ya go, Nikki,” said Corrine as she came back from the kitchen with a key ring. “This one’s the knob, this is the deadbolt.”

  Rook frowned as if deep in thought and said, “Spare keys. Very crafty.”

  At Montrose’s front door Rook stepped in front of Heat, blocking her. “I’ll do this part.” He tore the police tape seals off the door and stepped back. “Wouldn’t want you getting in any trouble with the cops, ha ha.”

  Once they were inside, Nikki felt a chill that had nothing to do with the low thermostat. They kicked up the temp and turned on all the lights, but it still felt like a place that would never be warm for her again. She kept her coat on and stood in the middle of the living room, turning a slow rotation, trying to put aside memories of the dinners she had enjoyed with the skip and Pauletta or the Super Bowl party the captain had invited her squad to three years before, after they got their citation for top case clearances. She shut those things out as best she could and simply observed.

  On the way over the bridge to Queens, she had told Rook not to expect much, that Internal Affairs would have been over the apartment just like his office. She said to expect furniture but no files or anything like that. Those items would have been boxed and inventoried and shipped off for examination. When he asked her what she was looking for then, she told him whatever IA might have missed that she wouldn’t. “They were only investigating him. I’m clearing him.”

  They worked together methodically, Rook following her lead and her instructions. The bathrooms were the first stops. Cops knew that’s where most people hid their valuables because there was so much to look through. But when they opened the cabinets, they saw that clearly IA had had the same thought, because the shelves were bare in the medicine chests and under the sinks of both bathrooms. The kitchen was much the same. Although a few items were left on the pantry shelves, most items had been cleared out and were no doubt gone over by downtown.

  The second bedroom, which had been converted to a study, had been picked clean, as Heat had predicted. They could see the gaps on the shelves where books and videos had been removed. The desk drawers were empty, and there were compression lines on the rug from the footprints of absent filing cabinets. The master bedroom was an easy search. The bed had been stripped and the frame was empty; the mattress and box spring were leaning neatly against a wall. “Not looking so promising,” said Rook.

  “It never does until it is.” But she was feeling the futility as well. “Tell you what, I’ll take the closet, you do the dresser, then let’s call it a night.”

  Nikki was sliding suits on hangers along the wooden pole when Rook said, “Oh, Detective Heat?” When she stepped out of the walk-in, he was at the dresser. The top drawer was open.

  “I’m not sure if this will be anything, but if it is, I figured you deserved the honors.” She slowly crossed the room to join him, then followed his gaze down into the open drawer.

  Captain Montrose’s sock drawer. In it were about a dozen pairs of black and navy dress socks, folded and balled to marry the pairs. And toward the back of the drawer, a lone beige sock without a mate. Nikki looked up at Rook. Both were thinking it, but neither was saying it.

  An odd sock.

  Heat picked it up. Her heart raced when she did. “There’s something in it.”

  “Come on, I’m gonna pee myself.”

  Nikki opened the sock and reached inside. “It’s cardboard.” She pulled it out. It was a business card. For a talent representative. “This is for Horst Meuller’s agent.”

  When she turned it over her throat contracted and she stifled an involuntary wail. She covered her face with one hand and turned away as she handed the card to Rook. He flipped it over. The ballpoint handwriting read, “Nikki, just be careful.”

  SIXTEEN

  At nine the next morning, when Heat and Rook climbed the subway steps up to 18th Street, a frozen mist was descending on Chelsea, wrapping the neighborhood in a harsh, woolen chill. They crossed Seventh, heading west, toward the agent’s office, joining an eclectic sidewalk mix of tortured young artists and upstart dancers who might have been cast in a music-video salute to brooding. By the time they reached Eighth, Rook said he had stopped counting navy berets.

  When they entered the third-floor walk-up office of the Step This Way Talent Agency, Phil Podemski was eating take-out oatmeal at his desk. As he swept old trade magazines and newspapers from his couch onto the floor so they could sit, the agent eyeballed Nikki and said he could really do something with her, considering her figure and looks. “You have to strip, of course. Not for me, I don’t go for any funny business, I mean in the act.”

  “Much as I appreciate the offer,” she said, “that’s not why we’re here.”

  “Oh . . .” Podemski sized up Rook and tugged at his orange Yosemite Sam mustache. “Sure, guess I could give you a bullwhip and a fedora. We’d market you as Indiana Bones. Or maybe go sci-fi. You sorta look like that guy who roamed outer space everybody’s so crazy about.”

  “Malcolm Reynolds?” asked Rook.

  “Who? . . . No, I’m thinking we give you a space helmet and some assless chaps and call you . . . Butt Rogers.”

  When Nikki jumped in and told him they were there to talk about Horst Meuller, Podemski stuck the plastic spoon back in the wide-mouthed deli cup and frowned while he finished chewing. “You cops?”

  Nikki dodged telling an outright lie by saying, “You already spoke to one of my squad members, a Detective Rhymer?” When that seemed enough of an answer, she pressed forward. Heat wasn’t su
re what she was looking for yet, but Captain Montrose had gone to great effort to leave her a posthumous clue leading to Podemski’s agency. He had also told her to be careful, although her assessment of the agent himself was that he was more colorful than dangerous, a lovable schemer straight out of Broadway Danny Rose.

  Nikki told Podemski she was with his client the day he got shot but that Horst had been uncooperative. “Do you have any idea why he won’t speak to us?”

  “That kid, I dunno. Since the boyfriend passed on, he hasn’t been the same. His act as Hans Alloffur is my big draw. But he ducked out on me after his pal Alan died, didn’t even tell me where he moved.”

  Nikki remembered that from Rhymer’s report, which was why her plan with Phil Podemski was to drill down more on the dead lover, since that was driving Meuller’s actions. She flipped up the cover of her notebook. “Tell me about the boyfriend. Alan who?”

  “Barclay. Nice guy. Older than Horst, maybe fifty. In good shape but had one of those gray complexions with the hollow eyes and dark circles like you see on people in nursing homes.”

  Rook said, “And health food stores.” Nikki shot him a look. “OK, tell me I’m wrong.”

  She turned back to Podemski. “He had some cardiac problems, right?”

  “Yeah, that’s how he kicked. Tragedy.” The agent stirred his cold oatmeal and shook his head. “I never got that demo reel he said he’d make for my agency.”

  “Was he in advertising?”

  “Nuh-uh. Cameraman.” Phil held up both hands. “Videographer, pardon me.”