High Heat Read online

  “There are any number of drugs that mimic death when given at the right dosages. My personal go-to would be Baclofen. Ever heard of it?”

  “No.”

  “It’s most often prescribed as a muscle relaxer, particularly to people with spinal cord injuries,” Rook said. “In low doses all it does is relax muscles. But at higher doses it actually sends the patient into either a coma—or, I should say, what appears to be a coma—or even death.

  “There are cases of Baclofen overdose where the patients appeared to have lost all brain stem function and were actually declared medically dead. There was one hospital I read about that was about to begin harvesting the patient’s organs until they realized the person was still alive. There are other stories of Baclofen overdose where the patient has woken up in a funeral home.”

  “But she felt cold, Rook. And I checked for her pulse. I remember that so clearly. She didn’t have one.”

  “Hypothermia. Bradycardia. Those are common side effects of Baclofen overdose. Body functions slow down to almost nothing and the body goes into a kind of hibernation. It’s difficult to detect a pulse when you’re expecting a heart that beats sixty times a minute and it’s actually only beating about ten.”

  “Still, I wasn’t gone from the apartment for more than fifteen or twenty minutes. Surely a drug that powerful requires longer to reach full efficacy?”

  Rook shook his head. “Baclofen absorbs rapidly in the bloodstream. It doesn’t take more than a few minutes. If anything, it was probably one of the last things they did after they staged the rest of the scene. That’s why she was even still breathing a little bit when you came home.”

  “Rook, I don’t know…”

  “You asked how it’s possible. I’m telling you, that’s how it’s possible. To be honest, I’m surprised at myself I never thought about this before. Baclofen easily accounts for every symptom you’ve just described. The brilliant thing about it is your mother wouldn’t have even needed to call on her acting skills. She would have actually felt like she was dying. She probably would have died if the dosage wasn’t very, very precise. Baclofen is not to be toyed with.”

  Heat sat at her desk and buried her face in her hands. Rook was pacing now.

  “You know, there’s one thing I’ve always wondered about,” he said. “It’s something I never asked you because…well, because you fixated on your mother’s death enough. You didn’t need me bringing it up.”

  “What?”

  “I never wanted to get into it, because it seemed like a small discrepancy,” Rook said.

  “Well, we’re into it now. So spit it out.”

  “911.”

  “What about it?”

  “Any time I’ve heard you recount the day of your mother’s death—the trip to Morton Williams, all of it—I’ve never heard you say you called 911.”

  “That’s because I didn’t.”

  “And yet a paramedic and a police officer just showed up at your mother’s apartment and whisked her body away.”

  “I always thought…I mean, I assumed my mother must have called them.”

  “Well, let’s examine that for a moment, shall we? Let’s just assume this wasn’t all staged. Let’s assume Tyler Wynn really did sneak into your mother’s apartment, as he was certainly capable of doing, and then killed her with one blow—as he was also capable of doing.”

  “That’s what he did to Nicole Bernardin,” Heat said, referring to the woman who had been Cynthia Heat’s best friend during her spy days.

  “Exactly. So Tyler Wynn buries a butcher knife in your mother’s back, while she’s on the phone with you.”

  “Right.”

  “And yet she somehow manages to hang up with you, then dial 911 before losing consciousness?”

  “Well, it’s possible.”

  “Perhaps. Except,” he said, now closing his eyes, “when I think back to photographs I’ve seen of the crime scene, I don’t see any blood on the telephone. How is that possible? She had blood all over her when you found her. It was pouring out of her. But she managed to call 911 without getting so much as a drop on the phone?”

  Heat was silent for a moment. Her head was starting to throb. She absentmindedly massaged her temples. Rook was clearly back in November of 1999, trying to reenvision the scene under every different scenario they were now creating.

  “It’s an easy thing to overlook,” Rook said. “Whoever staged that scene was careful to get blood all over. But when you think about being stabbed in the back, wouldn’t it be natural human instinct to reach around and feel the wound? Assuming she was aware enough to call 911, she’d certainly be aware enough to do that. That would put blood on her hands, which would put blood on the phone receiver. Except there wasn’t any.”

  Heat was nodding. She had the same photographs imprinted in her mind.

  “I hate to ask this, but have you thought about making a visit to Fresh Pond and—”

  “Already did it.”

  “Of course you did. And?”

  “There were ashes in the urn. I plucked out a sample and gave it to Lauren for testing.”

  Rook had stopped pacing and returned to his one-leg-sit on Heat’s desk.

  “Hang on,” Heat said. “Tyler Wynn admitted to killing my mother.”

  “Only because that’s what he wanted us to believe. Maybe that’s what he wanted everyone to believe. But try this on for a moment: Do you think it’s possible at the end that Wynn still cared for your mother?”

  “I…I don’t know.”

  “Think about when we saw him in the hospital in France,” Rook said.

  Heat closed her eyes and took herself back to that hospital room. They had watched Wynn “die”—or at least elaborately stage his own death, with fake doctors and a rigged EKG. But before he did, he had told Heat about the Nanny Network and the jobs Cynthia had done for him.

  “Okay, I’m there,” Heat said.

  “Think about how he looked when he talked about her. They had a lot of good years together—a lot of great years, when they were both in the primes of their lives, before he had been twisted by money and betrayed his country. Tyler Wynn was your mother’s ‘Oncle Tyler.’ It was clear to both of us he was incredibly fond of your mother. He admired her spy craft. He even loved her, in a platonic way.”

  “But that was all a fraud. He was just trying to trick us.”

  “Maybe he was and he wasn’t,” Rook said. “The best lies are the ones based on truth. Maybe it was easy for him to pretend he had affection for Cynthia because he really did have affection for Cynthia.”

  “Okay, so let’s say, just for sake of argument, that Tyler Wynn loved my mother, in his own way.”

  “Right. And let’s say he knew she had to die. Because of what she knew and what she was going to expose. But he couldn’t bring himself to do it. For as twisted as he was, there was still good in him.”

  “What? Now he’s Darth Vader?”

  “Well, no. Because if he was, I definitely would have had him hook me up with a real lightsaber,” Rook said. “But Vader is the perfect example of villainous complexity. In Revenge of the Sith, he only betrayed the Republic to save the life of Padme, the woman he loved. And in Return of the Jedi, he betrayed the Emperor to save the life of his son. Even for as evil as Vader was, he was always motivated by his devotion to others.”

  Heat stood up. Now she was the one pacing.

  “So Wynn goes to my mother and says, ‘I’m sorry. I have to pretend to kill you. It’s the only way to save you from the people who will stop at nothing to see you dead.’ And she goes along with it—”

  “Because she knows he’s right,” Rook added.

  “And then she stays dead for fifteen years. But then even after we expose Wynn and the entire plot he was involved in—the plot to infect New York City with smallpox—she stays quote-unquote ‘dead.’ Why would she do that? Why wouldn’t she come back to life?”

  “Because maybe we don’t know everythi
ng yet,” Rook said. “Maybe there’s more to it we haven’t uncovered.”

  “I don’t know, Rook. That seems pretty far-fetched.”

  “I completely agree. But I’m not the one who saw her sitting in a bus shelter this morning.”

  Heat’s head was legitimately spinning. For a journalist, Rook had a remarkable gift for fiction. He probably would have become a novelist if he weren’t so busy doing something more important.

  Did this actually happen? Did her mother fake her own death, with Tyler Wynn’s help? Or was this just Rook’s ability to spin any set of facts into a believable yarn?

  Then she remembered the words of Tyler Wynn himself. He uttered them just after Heat and Rook discovered he hadn’t really died in that French hospital after all.

  At the time, she thought it was just the empty boasting of a criminal who couldn’t resist a diabolical monologue. But now she wondered if, in fact, he had been trying to tell her something much more profound.

  One thing you learn in the CIA, Wynn had said. Nobody is ever really dead for certain.

  Another twenty minutes of supposition, speculation, and conjecture did not lead Heat and Rook any closer to a definitive conclusion beyond the fact that they couldn’t really come to one. Based on the evidence at hand, it was every bit as possible that Cynthia Heat was alive as it was that she was dead.

  Eventually, they reached a standstill, where Rook was staring at Heat and Heat was returning his gaze.

  “So, can I ask a question?” Rook said.

  “Shoot.”

  “Since we don’t seem to be getting anywhere, and since the blinds are still closed, can we make out again? Because that was pretty hot.”

  “I know. But we probably both have other things to be doing.”

  “Drat.”

  “Though we certainly will tonight if you don’t run out on me again,” she added.

  “Is a trip to Reykjavík a possibility?”

  “A trip to Reykjavík is a near certainty.”

  “Then I’m not going anywhere,” Rook said. “Now, at risk of being totally self-centered, did you say something about savage terrorists announcing to the world that they intended to decapitate me?”

  “I did.”

  “Well, in that case—and with all due assurances that I will continue to train my journalistic powers on the open question of your mother’s death—do you think maybe I can watch the video?”

  “Yes. But call your mother first. She’s worried sick and all she has for comfort is Jean Philippe.”

  “Eww,” Rook said.

  “I know. So call her.”

  Rook followed orders, withstanding a withering blast of maternal distress before being allowed to move on. By the time they returned to the bull pen, Roach was already hard at work.

  “Hey, we hear anything from Rhymer and Feller yet?” Heat asked.

  “They’re still canvassing,” Ochoa said. “So far, nothing.”

  “What about our search for the missing head?”

  “ECT is going through the Dumpster where they found the rest of the body. They got uniforms going through other Dumpsters in the neighborhood. Hope the budget can handle some dry-cleaning bills.”

  “What about Aguinaldo? Anything from her on the scarf?”

  “Negative.”

  “And your efforts?” Heat asked, gesturing toward the stack of files from the Counter-Terrorism Task Force arrayed in front of Ochoa.

  “Also negative. I went through all of these quickly to see if anything popped out at me—maybe a group that was rapidly progressing toward more extreme rhetoric or more violent behavior. But nothing really hit on the first pass. I’m going through it slowly now, though I’m starting to think our beheaders might be a new element.”

  “Rales, you got anything yet?”

  From the other side of the computer screen into which he was burying his attention, Raley just grunted.

  “Okay, do we have the video cued up anywhere?” Heat asked. “Rook wants to see it.”

  Ochoa pointed at the computer sitting on Feller’s desk. “Try that one.”

  Rook found his chair, the one with the wonky wheel, and pulled it up in front of the screen as Heat clicked play.

  Heat watched Rook more than she did the video. Throughout the talking part, Rook viewed it with typical journalistic dispassion. Rook had been in the Arab world enough that the anti-Western rhetoric typical of the jihadist crowd did not faze him. He even knew aspects of it were justified. Rook had often remarked how the world was full of autocratic, backward-focused dictatorships that oppressed their citizenry, treated women like objects, and had policy aims counter to US interests…but the only ones America seemed keen to meddle with were the ones sitting atop the world’s largest oil reserves.

  Besides, it was just talk. And Rook could take in bombastic talk—then shrug it off—with the best of them. It’s part of what a journalist learns to do.

  But the moment the man with the machete flashed his steel, then sank it into the victim’s flesh, Rook’s expression changed. His face was awash in horror. One of the things that drives a reporter into his often hard and thankless line of work is a fundamental love for human beings and their stories. That made this kind of barbarism a total anathema to everything Rook stood for. Humanity—the thing Rook most connected with—was the thing ISIS lacked most.

  And then, of course, on top of the repulsive conclusion came the shocking dénouement: Rook hearing his own name spoken by the abhorrent thugs. Even after the screen went black, Rook continued staring at it for a little while.

  “Have we identified the victim yet?” Rook eventually asked in a hushed voice.

  “No. Why?”

  “I don’t know. I just…I could be wrong, but I feel like I…know her. Like maybe I’ve worked with her somewhere or…”

  “Do you want to watch it again?”

  “No. I’m not sure I could if I wanted to. There was something familiar about her body language. I just…Maybe it’ll come to me later.”

  Ochoa strolled over and put a consoling hand on Rook’s shoulder. Then, showing the delicacy and tact for which the Twentieth Precinct’s detective squad had become known, he grabbed a pen and pretended it was a microphone.

  “Excuse me, Mr. Rook. M.T. Chatter with Channel 3 here. How does it feel knowing that a dude who sounds like Darth Vader wants to chop your head off?”

  Rook sloughed off his funk and played along. “Well, M.T., I have to say I think you’re mishearing it. To anyone who has seen The Force Awakens six times—no, sorry, seven—that sounds a lot more like Darth’s grandson, Kylo Ren.”

  “Oh, you mean the dude who takes his lightsaber and—”

  “Spoiler alert,” Rook yelled. “Please. Think about the viewers at home, M.T. But, yes, that Kylo Ren. He’s a much badder bad guy anyway. I mean, did you see the size of his Death Star? It was, like, a hundred times bigger than the other Death Star.”

  “I don’t know,” Ochoa said philosophically. “I thought he might have been compensating for something.”

  “Maybe. But being able to harness the power of a sun for your weapon? Admit it. That’s cool. Much more badass than the first two Death Stars.”

  “Yeah, but how is it they can’t manage to make a Death Star without a super-secret self-destruct button? I mean, first Death Star, okay, everyone makes mistakes. And the second Death Star, you’re still working out the bugs. But the third Death Star? You’d think someone in the engineering department would have gathered everyone around and said, ‘Okay, guys. Here’s what we’re not gonna do this time.’”

  “True. But maybe it’s like Preparation H,” Rook suggested.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Haven’t you ever wondered what happened to Preparations A through G?”

  Ochoa just grimaced. Rook continued: “Besides, what fun would a Star Wars movie be without a Death Star that blows up? It’d be like Lucky Charms without the marshmallows.”

  “You
mean Lucky Charms with only the icky oat bits?” Ochoa said, looking horrified.

  “I do.”

  “Homes, that’s just depraved. How are you even gonna go there?”

  “Hey, you’re the one talking about a Star Wars movie where the Death Star doesn’t blow up. I’m just taking it to the next step in a logical progression.”

  “Uh, excuse me? Siskel and Ebert?” Heat said. “Can we put our eyes back on the prize?”

  “Sorry,” Rook said, chastened. “Anyhow, as I was saying, we have no line on who the victim is?”

  “Sorry, not yet.”

  “And you’ve found the body but not the head?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Has Lauren had a crack at it yet?” Rook asked.

  Heat gave Rook a rundown on Parry’s findings, slim as they were, finishing with the discovery of the unknown whitish substance in the victim’s shoes and the smell of kerosene on her body.

  “Kerosene,” Rook said, absentmindedly. “That’s interesting.”

  “How so?” Heat asked.

  Heat recognized the far-off look on Rook’s face, the one that told her Rook was working on a theory. When they first began solving crimes together, Heat mostly dismissed Rook’s hypotheses, many of which didn’t merely come out of left field, but from the mailbox across the street from the bleachers that were behind left field.

  But over the years, Heat had come to recognize that Rook’s way of looking at things, while screwy, had its benefits. It turns out you can’t build much of anything without screws.

  And so she had learned to humor—and even respect—his remarkable, albeit sometimes off-the-wall, insight.

  “Well, I’m not sure of the significance of this,” Rook said. “But kerosene is very meaningful in Arab culture.”

  “How so?”

  “Well, of course, because the first person to write about the distillation of kerosene was Muhammad al-Razi,” Rook lectured. “He was an important figure in the Islamic Golden Age in the ninth and tenth centuries, a prolific author whose interests ranged from medicine to chemistry to philosophy. There are those who consider him to be the father of pediatrics. The Razi Institute in Karaj is named after him, as is Razi University.”