Deadly Heat Page 22

  First call went to Carey Maggs at Brewery Boz. He came on the line sounding extra-Brit, which was to say deliciously cranky and jovial about it. “Catching you at a busy time?”

  He chuckled, “Is there any other kind? You know, just running a business and saving the world in a failing economy. I’m like your Clark Kent, only not slim enough for the tights, I suppose.”

  She thought of the peace march he was sponsoring that weekend, and her heart ached wanting to warn him about the looming terror possibility, but where did something like that stop? There were hundreds of public events, conventions, bike-a-thons, and street fairs on the weekend calendar. Maybe if Rook optioned her article to Hollywood, he’d have enough money to give everyone in New York City an award at SUNY and get them all out of town. Putting that aside, she broke the news to Maggs about Ari Weiss: that his old friend had not died of a blood disease at all, but had been murdered.

  “Christ in heaven,” he sighed.

  Weiss’s murder was not only new information, the stabbing matched her mother’s so closely that Nikki texted Maggs a picture of her killer, Petar Matic. She heard the chime on his cell phone as it arrived, then a deep exhale and some tongue clicking from Maggs’s end as he studied it. “Know what? I have seen this guy.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “No doubt. It’s the greasy long hair and the slacker eyes. Who is he?”

  “He was my boyfriend.”

  “Uh-oh, low bridge, sorry.”

  “… Who killed my mother.” She heard a whispered curse and continued, “It’s likely he stabbed Ari as well. Do you recall when you saw him, and where?”

  “I do very well because I called the police about him. He was hanging about in the front of my apartment building a number of times and I wanted him dealt with.”

  “When was this?”

  “Good lord, Detective, it was near Thanksgiving. Same week as Ari was staying with us. And same week as…”

  “It’s all right, Carey, I know what else happened that week.”

  Heat could hear the strain in Maggs as he absorbed the startling news she’d dropped on him about his old friend. But she pressed forward. He could recover later. Right now, she needed a new lead. “Carey, I want your help with something, if you’re up for it.” He sounded emotional but croaked out a yes, so she asked, “You mentioned Ari wasn’t real social or political. Do you recall if he had any colleagues in the science world with whom he was close? Was there anyone in particular he talked about, or teamed with on any special projects?”

  After some thought, Maggs said, “None that stuck in my brain. Sure, I’d cross paths with his crowd for a beer or to watch football at Slattery’s, but to me they were, basically, this blur of boffins.”

  She didn’t want to lead him with a name, so she asked, “Do you recall any foreigners?”

  He laughed. “You’re joking, right? That was most of them.”

  And then she said it. But Maggs didn’t recall any Vaja Nikoladze by name, so she texted him his photo, too, and waited for him to look at it. “Sorry. He meets the boffin test, but I don’t remember him hanging out with Ari.”

  Nikki chalked up another disappointment, but at least she’d gotten her ID of Petar, firming up his connection to Ari Weiss’s murder.

  Rook convinced her to step out with him for a quick bite at the new Shake Shack that had just opened on Columbus, but they didn’t get that far. In fact, Detective Raley called them to a stop in the precinct lobby. “What’s up, Sean? You spot something on the Coney Crest tapes?”

  “No, still screening them. But Miguel and I just got a hit on something else. Trust me, you will want to see this.”

  “I think the Shake Shack will have to manage without us,” said Rook.

  When Heat came back into the bull pen, Ochoa had the results up on his monitor at Roach Central, which is what the pair had dubbed the corner where they had pushed their desks. “OK,” he said as Heat sat in his chair, “we’ve been scouring the NYPD license plate surveillance cams from last month for any sign of that van that was hauling around the body of your mom’s spy partner. We track the van, we find the lab, right?”

  “We do,” said Rook.

  “We hope,” said Heat.

  “We scored,” said Ochoa. “Big-time. Here’s the first hit. And yes, it’s from the night she was killed. ” He clicked the mouse and a blurry image of the plate came up. The location read, “E-ZPass Lane 2, Henry Hudson Bridge.”

  “Is this right?” asked Heat. “All the way up there?”

  Roach nodded in unison. “It’s correct,” said Raley.

  “But we wondered the same thing,” added Ochoa. “We asked ourselves, What’s the van—and the body—doing coming down into the city from way up there? So we ran some further checks.”

  “I love you, Roach,” said Heat.

  Raley continued, “We combed a net of traffic cams at on-ramps in Westchester County and north.”

  “It wasn’t as hard as it seems, since we knew the general time and exact date.” Ochoa clicked again and the screen filled with four shots of the same plate at different locations. “So, backtracking, here’s where we see the first appearance of the van on its drive south toward New York City.” He double-clicked the top image. When it opened, the location stamp made Heat gasp.

  FIFTEEN

  That maroon van could have been coming from any number of places when it got photographed getting on the Saw Mill River Parkway at Hastings-on-Hudson, but Nikki Heat could only think of one. Rook said it out loud. “Vaja.” In a single mouse click all the reasons—all the instincts—she’d had about holding on to the biochemist as a person of interest seemed to be borne out. Heat only prayed it wasn’t too late.

  “Roach, saddle up.” She turned to the other detectives in the bull pen. “Feller. Rhymer. You, too. We’re taking a ride to Westchester.”

  “What about me?” Detective Hinesburg came in from the kitchenette holding a plate of deli salad scoops. Suddenly it was PE class, all the teams had been chosen, and everyone started getting very busy avoiding eye contact. Heat simply didn’t want Sharon there. And she sure didn’t want to ride with her. She wasn’t about to foist her on Roach or Feller and Rhymer, either.

  “I need you here to hold the fort.” Nikki felt bad for that, but in a way she knew she’d get over it in a hurry. In truth, Hinesburg could take care of a few things that would get Heat on the road faster. “Start by calling the State Police, Troop K. Tell them we are en route for a seal and seize at a place off Warburton Avenue in Hastings and need an assist. Give the Troop K lead my cell. I’ll coordinate logistics from the car.”

  “Got it,” said Hinesburg, seeming content to be relevant. “What about town police?”

  By then Heat and the others had reached the door. “I know the locals and have them in my contacts. I’ll handle them myself after I notify DHS.”

  “What’s this guy done, anyway?” she asked.

  “I hope nothing yet.” And then Heat rolled.

  They took up observation positions where the Old Croton Trailway ran along a wooded hill above Vaja Nikoladze’s property. “Got just about one more hour of daylight,” said Ochoa. He turned to his left to indicate the low sun’s reflection kicking off the glass skin of the Manhattan skyline twenty-two miles downriver. From that distance, it could have been Oz.

  Heat didn’t bother to look. Her focus remained through her binoculars, studying the secluded acreage below. She scanned Nikoladze’s metallic blue hybrid, which sat empty, nosed against the weathered rail where the gravel drive met the pasture beside his house. The freshly painted Victorian showed no sign of life from her vantage point. All the curtains were open but to no movement, no passing forms or shadows. And no lights inside. A breeze rustled the pink blossoms of the stand of rhododendrons near the kennel on the right side of the pasture. Nikki had never seen all the dogs he kept in there, but on her first visit the month before, she met the Georgian shepherd Vaja had anointed to re
claim the glory of his beloved show dog that had suddenly died. It crossed her mind at that moment to wonder what unexpected tragedy befell the biochemist’s dog, and if what she had read on Nikoladze’s face as grief had actually been self-reproach. Heat listened for the dogs but only heard the stir of wind mixing with the clatter of a northbound train behind the trees at the back of the meadow as it traveled along the Hudson River.

  “Callan’s landing now,” said Heat, adjusting the volume in her earpiece.

  Rook turned to her. “Why couldn’t we take a chopper?”

  “Dude,” said Feller. “We got here in like a half hour. In case you didn’t notice, we are waiting for the slicks with their f-ing chopper.”

  “Maybe it’s not so much wanting to ride in one. I was sort of hoping for once in my life I could turn to someone and say, ‘Prepare the chopper.’ ”

  Raley said, “Go ahead man, hit me one time.”

  “No, I couldn’t.”

  “Really, here’s your chance, go ahead.”

  Rook considered a beat and said, “Prepare the chopper.”

  “Eat shit,” said Raley. Ochoa held out a fist and the partners bumped.

  “Boys,” said Heat.

  “That’s fine,” said Rook. “I know you’re just ripping me because you see me almost as a brother cop.”

  “Hey, if that works for you, bro,” said Ochoa.

  They met Agents Callan and Bell down on the road, around a bend that concealed them from being seen from Vaja’s property. Callan greeted Heat’s team and said, “Sorry for the delay—we had to set down in some nature preserve.”

  “Mayberry doesn’t have a copter pad,” said Yardley Bell.

  Nikki spread a map on the hood of her car. “No sweat. Gave us time to set up logistics. We own the area, basically. State Police have closed this road to traffic between Odell Avenue and Yonkers Yacht Club. To the west, it’s just railroad tracks and river. East is woods and the trail up the hill, where we had our OP. Detective Feller is up there maintaining surveillance.”

  “Any sign?” asked Callan.

  “Nothing. Car’s there, but that’s not definitive.”

  Agent Bell asked, “What about his workplace?”

  “Checked on that. I have excellent cooperation from local law enforcement,” Nikki said, trying to push back on her Mayberry dig. “They drove my Detective Rhymer to the institute, and he confirms Nikoladze is not there. They are remaining on-scene in case he shows, and to make sure no calls go to him.”

  Special Agent Callan nodded approval. “Very thorough—for a local.” He snuck Heat a wink and asked, “How we going in?”

  Heat opened up a sketch she had drawn of the compound on a blank sheet of printer paper. Just as she pulled out her red Sharpie to mark arrows for the raid, Yardley Bell interrupted. “Here, maybe this will be more helpful.” She unfolded a large, color satellite photo of the property. “This was taken just after noon today.”

  Rook tried to take the brittleness out of the air. “Noon, huh? Well, maybe we should use Nikki’s since it was drawn ten minutes ago, so it’s more current.”

  They took their positions on the road, behind bushes at the end of the driveway, and at key locations in the woods flanking the land to the north and south. Another contingent of State and Hastings police covered the railroad tracks behind the grove of hardwoods, to close the back door. Detective Heat’s plan had been to approach on foot in a platoon, using silence to provide surprise, with vehicles as backup to create a tight perimeter. She got overruled. But before that, she got undermined.

  “First thing, Detective,” said Bell, “too much exposure on foot. You may sadly discover the surprise is yours.”

  Callan became swayed. “Kinda ducks in a barrel, if he’s got a rifle.”

  Before Heat could show where the cover would be and identify the house’s blind spots she had located, Yardley rolled over her. “Shock and Awe. Ever hear of that? There’s a reason… It works. Flip the plan, Detective. Roar in with the vehicles first, deploy the foot soldiers. Shock and Awe.”

  Much as Heat had seen all week, Callan let his subordinate steamroll him. “Shock and Awe it is,” he said.

  On Heat’s go signal they swarmed the place. SUVs and Crown Victorias with hell’s roaring fire under the hood thundered up the driveway, kicking up pea gravel and chewing lawn to the front door of the Victorian. Car doors flew open. Agents and cops rolled out. Using the vehicles for cover, Heat, Roach, Callan, and the others leapfrogged to the side of the house, squatting low as they moved along the latticework of the gallery porch.

  Agent Bell executed the same tactic across the lawn. An SUV and two cars scrambled across the meadow to the kennel, depositing Bell and her team to hug the walls there. That’s when things unraveled.

  As soon as all the vehicles were in, the double doors to the kennel burst open and ten Georgian shepherds ran out, barking and dashing in circles all over the compound. In the instant of surprise and distraction, an engine howled to life and an all-terrain vehicle screamed out of the building behind the cars and agents and headed for the woods. Bell and the others raised their weapons, but by then Heat had run across the grass from the house shouting, “Hold fire! Hold fire!” They had discussed it going in: They needed Vaja alive.

  Yardley Bell peeled herself off the kennel wall and ran for one of the cars as she holstered her weapon. “I got him,” she yelled to Heat.

  Still closing in at twenty yards, Nikki called, “We’re sealed off, he won’t get far.” Just as Heat made it beside the Crown Vic, the DHS agent slammed the door and fishtailed off, leaving Nikki to watch helplessly as she gunned it up the driveway to the road.

  Rook saw the whole thing. Relegated to the rear flank, relaxing on a gurney in the back of a waiting ambulance, he first heard the dogs, then Nikki’s distant shouts. That got him out and upright on the pavement in time to hear the high-pitched engine of the ATV snapping twigs on its way through the woods to his left and the growl of the Police Interceptor flying up the road behind him.

  Vaja’s four-wheeler broke out of the thicket and onto Warburton. Rook’s first impression was how small the Georgian seemed, looking like a kid joy-riding his dad’s quad. Nikoladze whipped his head Rook’s way, but was really looking past him at the oncoming car. He might have done better to keep crossing and try his chances in the woods across the lane. Instead, he gunned it and tried to make a run for it on the pavement.

  In a swirl of wind and grit, the Crown Victoria blew past Rook and pulled beside Nikoladze, slowing slightly to pace him. Before reaching the curve where a hidden roadblock waited, Agent Bell brought the right quarter of her car to touch the rear of his quad and jerked the wheel, executing what every law enforcement officer and anyone who’s seen a freeway chase knows as a PIT maneuver. If it had been a car instead of an ATV, it would have spun, lost control, and stopped, facing the opposite direction. But it was an ATV.

  It rocked wildly, nearly flipping over sideways. Nikoladze frantically worked the handlebars, steering madly to compensate and balance. The quad corrected, then set down hard with a bounce on its fat tires that sent the front end up in a wheelie. But the front end never came back down. It continued its rise up and over the head of the driver—until the rear wheels came up, too, and the entire vehicle went airborne—upside-down, backward. Unable to hold on with his knees, Vaja Nikoladze lost his grip and fell to the pavement on his back.

  The ATV not only landed on top of him, it continued to rev and spin at a crazy high speed, churning the wheels and grinding axles all over his face and body, shredding his clothes and skin until it thumped over him like he was some meaty speed bump, crashed in the woods, and left him bleeding, lacerated, and dying on the road from a split skull.

  Nikki Heat shifted in the front seat of her car, stirred from her nap by a rhythmic plunking of dew drops from a tree branch onto her windshield.

  It sounded like a ticking clock.

  Not quite awake, and determined to sta
y adrift just a few more minutes, she squinted to orient herself. Three flashlights moving in a line away from Nikoladze’s dog kennel swept the woods, forming shafts of light stabbing at the wooly fog that had woven through Hastings-on-Hudson after midnight. A forensic technician’s camera strobe flared out of the Victorian country house’s upstairs window. Amplified by the hanging mist, the flash took on the intensity of lightning without thunder.

  In a few moments, Heat would resume her search of Vaja’s property with the DHS team. She tapped the Home button of her phone to check the time. Nikki had budgeted forty minutes of sleep and still had twenty precious more left to recharge.

  Out there in the middle of a dark Hudson Valley pasture, she felt an odd sense of relief from the Rainbow case. Normally, the hunt for a serial killer constituted a race against time to prevent the murder of his next victim. Ironically, since Heat was his next victim, she’d bought herself a time-out. Also, what better way to feel safe than being surrounded by law enforcement at a crime scene? Nikki couldn’t do this every night, but for now, not going home and adhering to her usual patterns offered her a measure of safety.

  She closed her eyes and replayed the fight she’d had with Yardley Bell after the collision, and cursed herself for losing her cool. Heat could have chalked it up to fatigue; the hours, the stress, and the intense pull of two major cases certainly gave her license to be on the raw side. But no, Nikki blamed herself for not controlling her temper. Simply put, she slipped her chain when the paramedics gave up on Vaja and Yardley’s response was to turn to Callan—and shrug.