Heat Rises

  Detective Feller’s car keys were still in her hand. Being careful not to jangle, Heat made a fist around them so that the two keys protruded from her knuckles. Not exactly Wolverine, but it would have to do.

  Patience again, always patience. The cop tiptoed sideways to the opening, searching for her in the gap. But his mistake was to look eye-level. Heat was crouched low, and when he was centered in front of her she sprang up at him, driving the keys into his left cheek while she grabbed for his gun with her right hand. He cried out in shock and pain. She jerked his wrist upward and the gun fired. The bullet hit harmlessly, eaten by the garbage bale behind her.

  Heat thrashed his face again with the keys and tried to wrest the weapon away. His grip was strong, and when, on her third try, she did manage to wrest the gun free, it flew and clattered on the floor.

  Nikki bent to grab it, but he tackled her from behind. She twisted and used his momentum against him, ramming him back-first into the workbench. She elbowed him three times at the sore spot under his badge. He wailed with each blow, until he palmed the side of her head and shoved her into the wall, where her shoulder crashed, breaking glass. Heat looked up inside the shattered case and hauled out the fire ax.

  Harvey was coming up from his stoop, the gun back in his hand. Heat quickly reared to swing. Mindful that he was wearing body armor, she went for his gun arm. And severed it at the elbow.

  He writhed on the floor moaning and bleeding out. Spent, Heat dropped the ax and scanned the surrounding area for something to use as a tourniquet. Then she heard sudden movement beside her. Nikki spun, bringing her hands up.

  Someone was diving at her, she braced herself for a blow, but in the same flash that she heard the gunshot, she recognized that the man pushing her aside was Rook. They both landed on the ground beside Harvey. Heat clapped a hand on his loose service weapon, came up with it, and put two rounds in Dutch Van Meter’s forehead as he stood in the doorway holding his smoking S&W.

  Nikki set the gun down and hugged Rook, who was still in her arms. “Oh, man, I don’t know how you found me, Rook, but your timing did not suck.”

  But Rook didn’t answer.

  “Rook?” Nikki’s heart stopped and her skin flushed with alarm. She shook him, but he didn’t respond. When she rolled him over in her lap and touched his cheek, she smeared it with blood.

  That’s when she realized it was Rook’s blood on her fingers.

  Frantic, she ripped open his shirt, looking for the wound, and found it right away, a .9mm entry gushing red below his rib cage.

  Sirens drew closer.

  Nikki fought tears; coming around to kneel over Rook, she compressed the wound with one hand and stroked his face with the other. “Hang on, Rook, you hear me? Help’s coming, you hang on. Please?”

  The sirens stopped right outside and flashing lights filled the hangar. “In here!” shouted Nikki. “Hurry, I’m losing him.” Verbalizing the thought crushed Heat, and she barked out an involuntary sob as his face lost more color.

  The EMTs rushed in and took over. Nikki retreated in a daze and wept, her bloody hand covering her mouth. She watched, trembling, as they cut Rook’s shirt off and went to work on him. That’s when Heat saw something she had never seen on Rook before.

  The big St. Christopher medal around his neck.

  NINETEEN

  “They’re ready for you now.” Nikki had been staring at nothing because that’s what she needed, a glazed, checked-out, middle-distance fix on the posters and memos on the bulletin board across from her seat in the hallway at One Police Plaza. The administrative assistant came around to step into her line of sight, saw her swollen eyes, and gave her a tender smile. Sympathy. Please, no more sympathy. Nikki had had her fill of it in the last twelve sleepless hours and didn’t know which was worse, the pitying faces or the consoling words.

  But she stood and returned the woman’s well-intended smile anyway. Then Nikki sealed the firewall once more. If she thought about Rook now, she couldn’t hold her emotions. “Ready,” she said. The aide opened the door for her. Heat drew a long breath and then stepped through it.

  Rooms didn’t come much more stony or intimidating than the tenth-floor conference room at 1PP that morning. The last time Nikki had been in there it had been just she and Zach Hamner—with the added attraction of the duo from Internal Affairs to confiscate her shield and piece. That had been frosty enough. Now she was being scrutinized by a full conference table of deputy commissioners, chiefs, and administrators, who halted their conversations to give her The Big Appraisal as she entered.

  Zach had been waiting for her inside the door and led her to the empty chair at the head of the conference table. On her way along the row of weathered faces belonging to the NYPD’s top brass, her eye caught a friendly wink from Phyllis Yarborough. Heat nodded her acknowledgment to the deputy commissioner and took the seat.

  Todd Atkins, the deputy commissioner for legal matters, faced Heat from the opposite end. As soon as The Hammer perched on the folding chair behind his boss, Atkins began quietly, saying, “Thank you for coming in. I know this must be an awful time for you, and you have all our best thoughts.”

  Nikki fought away another wave of crushing sorrow and managed to say in her most professional voice, “Thank you, sir.”

  “We wanted you in to address this matter immediately,” continued the Department’s lawyer. “The commissioner would be here himself, but he is in a committee meeting on Capitol Hill about now and we felt it was important to remedy the miscalculation made by this body vis-à-vis your status.” While he continued on, speaking in his coded language for their screwup, Nikki felt herself tumble into the kaleidoscopic tunnel that had swallowed her at Belvedere Castle in the aftermath of her attack. She held eye contact with Atkins, but all the while random images turntabled around him. Rook draped on her after the gunshot . . . Montrose cursing at his performance data printouts . . . Rook’s ashen face . . . Van Meter pulse-checking Steljess in the auto salvage yard . . . Rook’s blood in the sink when she finally washed her hands . . . the Murder Board after Captain Irons carelessly erased it, leaving red smears from her marker . . .

  A wrap-up tone in Atkins’s voice pulled her back to the moment. “It was a rush to judgment,” he said, “and for that, we sincerely apologize.”

  “Accepted, sir.” And then she added, “And appreciated.” The Mount Rushmore of faces around the table relaxed. Some even smiled at her.

  “It’s our decision to reinstate you immediately to active status, Detective Heat,” continued Atkins. “I should also say it’s no secret that you had one major champion through this ordeal.”

  “No secret because she won’t let us forget it,” blurted the Personnel chief, with a laugh that lightened the mood around the room.

  “And so,” Atkins said, “I’m going to give the floor to the Deputy Commissioner of Technological Development. Phyllis?”

  Midway up the mahogany, a beaming Phyllis Yarborough leaned forward, tilting her head for a better view of Nikki. “Detective Heat . . . Nice to be able to say that again, isn’t it? Well, don’t get used to it. I have been given the privilege and personal honor to inform you that you are not only reinstated as a detective, but today you will be given your gold bar and sworn in as a lieutenant in the NYPD.” Nikki’s heart galloped in her chest. Phyllis waited for the applause to settle. “Congratulations. And may I add that we have no doubt that this is just one rung on the ladder of your ascent within this department.”

  The applause grew louder and included a number of “hear, hear”s. When it died down, heads swiveled to Nikki, and it was clearly her moment.

  Heat rose.

  “I want to repeat what I told the Orals Board a few days ago. Police work—police work on the NYPD—is more than a job to me, it’s my life’s work. To whatever degree I am a professional, it is because I take it so personally. Which is why I wholeheartedly accept reinstatement and thank you for that.” There was brief clapping, which she
interrupted by holding her hands out. When they were quiet again, she said, “It is the same reason that I respectfully decline the promotion to lieutenant.”

  Astonishment hardly described the reactions before her. Sober, life-worn, career cops with poker faces were visibly stunned. Not the least of which was Phyllis Yarborough, who shook her head no to Nikki and then searched the others for some sort of understanding.

  “So that I don’t seem ungrateful—because I truly am thankful—I can help you understand why I made this decision by going back to what I said a moment ago. This is my life’s work. I joined the NYPD to help victims of crime. And over time, I have grown to love it even more because of the proud association and friendship I have working with the finest cops in the world. But the process of gaining this promotion, as well as some insights I’ve gained over recent weeks, has made me realize that stepping up the ladder is a step away from the street. A step away from why I am a New York cop. Administrators do important work, but my heart is not in CompStat data, or scheduling, and all that. It’s in doing what I’m born to do. Solve crimes. Out there. I thank you for your confidence and for hearing me out.”

  Nikki surveyed the table one by one and saw in most of their faces cops who knew all too well what she meant. They might not say it, but they admired the courage of her choice. And, to be honest, she also saw one or two who could not mask their bitter annoyance. “So,” she asked, “am I really a cop again?”

  Deputy Commissioner Atkins said, “I think I can speak for the group when I say, this isn’t how we expected this to transpire, but yes, Detective Heat, yes, you are.” He gestured to Zach Hamner, and the political cockroach who had so callously stripped her of her job and protection got up and strode to her end of the table to present Heat with her own shield and weapon, grinning as if they were gifts from him.

  Nikki reached into her coat, pulled out her empty holster, and held it up for them to see. “I was hoping.” That drew some chuckles. After she clipped her badge and her Sig Sauer to the old familiar places on her waist and adjusted them, Detective Heat said, “And now that I am officially a sworn officer, I would like to make an arrest.”

  TWENTY

  At first they acted like Heat was joking. Maybe this was a follow-up to the quip about her empty holster. But one by one they absorbed the seriousness of her expression, and Nikki found herself with the rapt attention of the conference room of police brass she stood before.

  “The murder of Father Graf was a case with numerous complications. I won’t go into them all, you can read them in my report, but the essential obstacle we faced was an uncommon amount of resistance from within the Department.” Zach Hamner leaned forward, trying to whisper something to his boss, but Atkins shooed him away. The Hammer sat back with a deep frown directed at Nikki, which she returned until he melted off and stared at the papers in his lap.

  “I developed leads that eventually brought me to a solid theory that the priest’s killing was tied to a narcotics bribery ring in the Forty-first.

  “There’s great credence for this idea. You all know the names of the five who not only tried to kill me in Central Park as I dug deeper, but are also implicated in the Graf killing, the Montrose murder . . . ,” she paused to let the M-word sink in, then continued, “. . . as well as the sniper attack of Horst Meuller.” Heat counted each on her fingers, “Sergio Torres, Tucker Steljess, Karl ‘Dutch’ Van Meter, Harvey Ballance, and Dave Ingram. At one time, all served in the Four-one. The key to my theory about Narco bribes to that group was the stash of DEA money in the pastor’s attic.

  “I was wrong.” She paused. “The DEA cash turned out to be for a human rights group the priest was involved in—unrelated to the case. So then what was the connection to these bad cops? If it wasn’t drugs, what was it? Well, it was another kind of conspiracy, and one that, sadly, reaches to the highest floors of this building.”

  The heat came on and the hissing of the vent filled her pause.

  “Let’s go back to Captain Montrose,” she said. “In 2004, he worked a famous homicide, the son of the movie star, Gene Huddleston. When the case cleared as a sour drug deal, Montrose never bought it and recently started to dig in again on his own.” Nikki turned to Hamner. “You know all about that, right, Zach? Did your pals in IA tell you he was sniffing around Huddleston when they checked him out?”

  “Montrose lit up IA’s radar by acting out of pattern. Their probe was legitimate due diligence.” Hamner said it as if it was so SOP that it bored him.

  “Clearly that’s not the only radar my skipper got on.” Heat turned back to the group. “I couldn’t access the official Huddleston case files, but I did have an entertainment insider,” she said, referring to Petar. “My source is highly credible and shared a number of secret rumors about this young man. The most strikingly relevant was that two years before his murder, Gene Huddleston, Jr., was in Bermuda on Spring Break and that he was one of the boys that raped your daughter, Phyllis.”

  Yarborough gasped and her hand flew up to cover her mouth. Tears welled in her eyes.

  “Detective Heat,” said Atkins, “this is feeling way out of line.”

  “I’m sorry, sir, but there’s no easy way to go about this.”

  “But it’s gossip,” said the Personnel chief. He handed Phyllis a tissue.

  “Which I have independently verified,” Heat replied.

  Deputy Commissioner Atkins said, “Go on.”

  “Jeremy Drew, who confessed to the assault and murder of Amy Yarborough, was extradited in 2002 and began a life sentence in Sing Sing, where I visited him yesterday. In our meeting Drew confirmed for me what I had heard from my source. That the Huddleston family had paid several million to his parents, who were on disability. All in exchange for his silence about the participation along with him by Gene Huddleston, Jr., in the gang rape on the beach that night.”

  “Why would he tell you?” asked the deputy commissioner of legal matters.

  “His parents have passed away and he has had a religious conversion. This was his first opportunity to clear his conscience. By the way, I checked with Customs, and Huddleston’s passport shows he was in Bermuda then and left the island on the first flight out the morning after the discovery of Amy’s body in Dockyard.

  “You know something, Phyllis? Even when I found out Jeremy Drew wasn’t alone that night with your daughter, there was a part of me that didn’t want to believe you were behind all this. But then I couldn’t get past the cruise Montrose booked. A guy in mourning taking a singles cruise? And in the middle of a career crisis while he’s also conducting a secret investigation? I called back the travel agent. The cruise was to Bermuda.”

  As a roomful of the best police minds in New York were doing the motive math, Phyllis Yarborough jarred them by speaking. “Nikki . . .” She shook her head mildly in disappointment. Her voice was hoarse and papery. “I can’t believe this of you, overreaching like this. And so hurtful. Are you trying to make me twice a victim with some tabloid conspiracy theory about me?”

  “I am sorry for the loss of your daughter, you know that. But this is not a theory anymore. The leather fragment from under Graf’s fingernail matches Harvey Ballance’s cuff case, and the button fragment from the crime scene is from one of his shirts. Harvey is in the hospital and he is talking. About you. And all the money you offered five cops in 2004 to take care of Huddleston.”

  “Detective, come on,” said Yarborough, trying to reclaim her composure and distance, positioning herself as judge rather than the accused, “let’s stop all this, please? You know criminals talk all sorts of bull to cut deals. This is hearsay and conjecture. Whatever happened to the Nikki Heat who deals in proof?”

  “Proof,” said Heat. She crossed to the door and rapped lightly. Lovell and DeLongpre entered. While the Internal Affairs detectives rounded the table toward the flat-screen on the side wall, Nikki swallowed thickly, revisiting her grim memory of the paramedics cutting Rook’s shirt off. Spotting the
holy medal she had never seen before. And after, listening to his final, pleading voice mail urging her to call him back and saying that he had the video on him. Nikki saved that call, his last words before he was shot. Then she examined the St. Christopher, which was not just a medal but a locket. And hidden inside—a black microSD video chip about the size of a pinkie nail.

  Lovell stood, having finished his DVD setup, and waited.

  “Let me set the stage,” resumed Heat. “Memorial Day weekend, 2004, Alan Barclay, a news video shooter, followed Gene Huddleston, Jr., from a nightclub in the Meat Packing District. Huddleston was just out of rehab—again—and Barclay trailed him to the Bronx, hoping to score some salable footage of the bad boy making a drug purchase. Both he and Huddleston got more than they bargained for. Watch.” Lovell started the DVD as DeLongpre dimmed the lights.

  The video began with the camera in motion. Jerky footage of a dashboard and then a blur as the videographer got out of his car—still rolling video—and crossed a dark street. This was the raw stuff they edited out of Cops.

  A block later, the lens moved to a hiding place behind a low wall. The shaky picture settled as the shooter rested his camera on the top cinder block, using it as a brace. The lens zoomed in and focused on a car parked about thirty yards away in front of a warehouse. Under the orange sodium lamps it was easy to make out a man Heat recognized as Sergio Torres approaching the M5. Huddleston got out and they chatted. Their voices were too low to understand but their conversation was easy; Huddleston seemed familiar with Torres. Then everything changed.

  Headlights approached from both ends of the block as two cars with police lights flashing roared in and screeched to a halt, sandwiching the BMW. One was a blue-and-white, the other a plain-wrap Crown Victoria. Huddleston shouted for Torres to run, but he didn’t. Instead, he grabbed the kid by his shirt and slammed him facedown over the hood of his M5, cuffing him while The Discourager approached from his cruiser and Van Meter and Steljess joined the party from the undercover vehicle.