Heat Rises nh-3 Read online

  He turned, startled at the closeness of her voice, and when he did, his momentum pulled his center of gravity out from over his feet and he stumbled. Meuller would have fallen flat, but he grabbed the railing of some concrete steps leading up to the promenade to some high-rise apartments and only went down on one knee. He was just hoisting himself up when Heat leaped, grabbed the railing, and vaulted herself over, landing on top of him and taking him down.

  The snap she heard as Meuller went down was followed by a “ Scheiss! ” and a moan. He writhed, groaning on the concrete stairs as Heat cuffed him. By then Raley had arrived and they brought him to his feet.

  “Careful,” said Nikki, “I think I heard something break.”

  “ Ja, my collarbone, why did you do that to me?”

  Ochoa had the Crown Victoria double-parked with the back door open, and they led their prisoner to it. “Why did you run?”

  Horst Meuller never answered. The bullet ripped through the collar of his shirt, and Heat and Raley were sprayed with blood. He dropped again but didn’t moan. Or make any sound.

  Heat called, “Down, down, everybody down!” and hit the deck, covering Meuller’s body as she brought up her Sig, scanning the apartment promenade, the high-rise, the roof across the street. On the other side of the fallen dancer, Raley had his weapon out and was doing the same; even as he called in the 10-13, shots fired.

  On Henry Street, an engine thundered and tires spun, whining for purchase in the ice. Heat ran in a low crouch for cover beside Ochoa at the Roach Coach, but it was too late. The SUV spun its tires and sped off, driving over the curb as it turned onto Orange and out of view.

  Heat recognized the SUV. She called it in as graphite gray with heavy-duty tires, but that was the best description she could give. This time, it had no license plates.

  FIVE

  The two paramedics in the back of the ambulance were still working on keeping Horst Meuller from slipping away when the uniform buttoned up the rear doors and it rolled from the scene. Nikki Heat stood holding her breath against its issue of diesel exhaust and watched it lumber off in the sleet, following the same route the SUV had not a half hour before. A block down Orange Street, at the perimeter of the crime scene, the siren kicked on, a sign that, at least for the moment, there was still a life on that gurney.

  Detective Feller handed Heat and Raley each a cup of coffee. “Can’t vouch for it, it’s from the Chinese place over there. But it’ll warm you up.”

  Raley’s assist call had drawn a swarm. First on the scene had been the crew of New York’s Bravest from the 205 up the block. If the dancing German pulled through, he would owe it to his firefighter neighbors for slowing the bleeding within minutes. Cruisers from the Eighty-fourth Precinct and the neighboring Seventy-sixth were first cops on-scene, followed immediately by Feller and Van Meter in their undercover taxi. With their roving status, it was typical for Taxi Squad cops to be first responders to officer assist calls, and Ochoa threw a barb at the pair for letting the home blue-and-whites beat them.

  Dutch Van Meter winked to his partner and lobbed one back. “Oh, by the way, Detective, how’d you do apprehending the vehicle after your pursuit?”

  Ochoa had come up empty. The chase was perfunctory at best given the shooter’s head start, and they all knew it. But he had given it his best effort, able at least to follow the wide tracks in the freshly fallen sleet until he lost them on Old Fulton Street, which was more heavily traveled. He drove the Roach Coach on a honeycomb of the neighboring streets on his way back just to make sure, but no SUV.

  On the other side of the yellow tape, the first TV news minicams were setting up. Nikki saw a lens pointed at her from under a blue Gore-Tex storm cover and heard her name. She rotated to present her back to the press line and once again grumbled a mental curse about her magazine cover.

  Feller took a sip of his own coffee and made a face. “So none of you saw the shooter?” Steam rose as he poured it out into the gutter. Heat, Raley, and Ochoa all looked at one another and shook their heads.

  “It was one of those split-second things,” said Raley. “We’re all focused on our prisoner, you know, and out of nowhere, bang.”

  “More like boom,” said Ochoa. All nodded in agreement. “I make it a rifle.”

  “Boom,” said Van Meter. “Not much to go on.”

  Heat said, “I know the vehicle.” They all turned to look at her. “I saw it yesterday. Twice. Once in the afternoon on Columbus on the way to Andy’s and then last night in my neighborhood.”

  “What’s this, Detective?” Heat turned. Captain Montrose had come up behind her. He must have read their surprise, and explained, “I was on my way to 1PP for a meeting and heard the ten-thirteen. Now, am I to infer that you were being tailed but you didn’t report it?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “I could have called in protection.”

  “I wasn’t sure. And I didn’t want to draw resources without more certainty.” Heat left out the part about how the strain between them made her hold back.

  The old Montrose would have taken her aside for a chat. But New Montrose snapped at her right there in front of her colleagues. “That’s not a call for you to make. I’m still your commander. My job isn’t yours… yet.” At that, the captain turned and crossed the sidewalk to confer with the CSU team gathered around the bullet hole in the service door of the high-rise.

  An ass-kicking in front of the family is an uncomfortable thing for everyone, and in the dead air that followed, the other detectives busied themselves trying not to make eye contact with Heat. She turned her face upward into the sleet and closed her eyes, feeling the hundred little stings of the sky falling.

  When she got back uptown, Nikki made a quick stop to do an appear ance check outside the door to the bull pen, where the fluorescent overheads created a poor man’s mirror in the window of Montrose’s dark office. It wasn’t about vanity; it was about dried blood. At the shooting scene in Brooklyn Heights, EMTs had given her wipes to clean her face and neck, but her clothes were another story. The emergency shirt and slacks she usually kept folded in her desk file drawer were still at the cleaners following a latte mishap, so the rust-colored spray on the collar of her blouse and in the V pattern down the front where her coat had been open would have to do. While Nikki made her appraisal, she heard Detective Rhymer’s soft drawl coming around the corner from the squad room.

  Heat couldn’t hear all he was saying, just snippets because he was speaking in hushed tones. She picked up phrases like “… wheel spinning and make-work…” and “He said, ‘Screw it, life’s too short…’ ” and then “… Heat’s more worried about her freaking promotion…”

  Listening in was tantalizing but made Nikki feel skeevy, like she was in a soap. What had Phyllis Yarborough said a few hours before? Something like “transparency means no shame”? So Heat turned the corner to face whatever she would face.

  What she found was Detective Rhymer leaning in gossip mode with Sharon Hinesburg at her desk. Both sat upright in their rolling chairs when they saw her walk in. “Damn, look at you,” said Hinesburg, hopping to her feet. “Who took the bullet, you or the dancer?” She was extra loud, the way people get when they’re diverting attention. Or hoping to.

  Nikki ignored her and gave a puzzled look to Rhymer. “Are you and Gallagher done working your list of dommes already?”

  He rose, too, albeit more tentatively. “Not quite. We came back so I could drop Gallagher off.”

  Nikki scanned the room and didn’t see his partner. “What, is he sick?”

  “Gallagher, he, ah… He requested a reassign back to Burglary.” The detective turned to Hinesburg as if he’d find some help, but Sharon was letting him deal his own hand. The whispers Nikki had just overheard sufficed for her to do the math. Another day talking to dominatrixes felt like a waste to Gallagher and so he booked out. Apparently with some opinions expressed about Detective Heat on his exit. “You know,” continued Rhymer, “we had some cases hanging tha
t needed some attention, and he must have just felt, you know, obliged to mind them.”

  Heat knew it was bull but didn’t expect Opie to throw in his partner. This latest piece of unrest created by her coming promotion tasted bitter, but she set it aside. Her immediate concern was that she was suddenly down one investigator. “In that case, I’m glad you hung in, Ope.”

  “I’m here, Detective.” But then he couched it. “Long as I can be, that is.”

  At the Murder Board a few minutes later Heat selected a new marker color and printed the dancer’s name in the upper left corner where there was plenty of white space. “Probably doesn’t feel like it to him, but it’s Horst Meuller’s lucky day,” she told the squad. “The slug they pulled from that door was a. 338 Magnum.”

  Raley said, “Any brass?”

  She shook no. “My guess is he either never threw the bolt since it was one shot, or if he did, the casing ejected into the vehicle and left with him.”

  Ochoa let out a low whistle. “. 338 Mag. Man… Hunters use those loads to drop grizzlies.”

  “And, apparently, pole dancers,” said Heat. “I want to find out why. Detective Rhymer, dig deeper on Horst Meuller.”

  “I thought you wanted me to check out the freelance dommes,” he said.

  Nikki stopped herself and for the hundredth time thought about her contentious meeting with the captain and all the lines of this investigation he had closed down. She clenched her teeth and reversed herself, trying not to choke on her own words. “Stay on the BDSM canvass. When you finish, let me know. Then we’ll see where we are with Meuller.”

  “Are you sure Meuller was the target?” asked Raley. “If that SUV was tailing you, seems like maybe you’re the one who got lucky this morning.”

  “As a trained sleuth that possibility did not escape my notice,” said Nikki, tugging at her bloodstained collar and triggering a laugh from the squad. Heat turned to the board and sketched a looping arc from Meuller’s name to Father Graf’s. “What I really want to do is see what the connection is, if any, between these two victims. Hopefully, our dancer will survive and be able to shed some light. Meanwhile, let’s treat these two incidents as related.”

  “By interviewing random dominatrixes?” said Detective Rhymer.

  His instincts were right; it was her orders that were wrong, and she knew it. But she followed the edict. “Dommes for now, Opie. Clear?”

  “What about the money in the cookie tins?” asked Raley. “Want me to contact the archdiocese, see if they have any suspicions about the padre doing some skimming?”

  Once again, Heat came nose first against one of the brick walls Montrose had put up. It was an obvious trail to follow; why had the captain obstructed it? “Leave that to me for now,” she said.

  Hinesburg reported that she had no hits yet on the man in the surveillance photo Father Graf’s housekeeper reacted to. “Which only means he may not have a criminal background.”

  Nikki said, “I’ll call Mrs. Borelli and press her. But keep working it and all the other stills.” Heat opened the folder of surveillance pictures and took one out. It was of a man and a young woman coming down the stairs into the lobby of Pleasure Bound. The woman was laughing with her face turned up at her companion, but his was obscured by a Jets cap. Nikki posted it on the board with a magnet. “Had a thought about this one. See on his arm there, the tattoo?” First Raley and then the others rose to gather closer. The tatt was of a snake coiled around his left upper arm. “Real Time Crime Center keeps a data bank of scars and tattoos. Why don’t you have RTCC run it, Sharon. See if you get any matches.”

  “Detective?” said Ochoa. “I know that woman.”

  Raley said, “Something you want to tell us, pard? You in the lifestyle and holding back?”

  “No, seriously. I talked to her yesterday. Know that domme who’s over in Amsterdam? Whatsername… Boam? Andrea Boam?” He tapped the picture with his pen. “That’s the roommate I talked to.”

  “Pay her another visit,” Nikki said. “Let’s see what this roommate knows about charming snakes.”

  Heat had to wade through a dozen messages on her voice mail from people who had seen her on the TV news at that morning’s shooting scene and hoped she was OK. One was from Rook, who also insisted on treating her to a non-takeout dinner, “in a sit-down restaurant like a respectable woman.” Zach Hamner left word, as did Phyllis Yarborough. Nikki appreciated the sentiments but could see how easy it would be to keep up with all the bonding outreach from 1PP and never get her work done. She saved the messages to answer later. Lauren Parry down at OCME, however, got an immediate callback.

  Lauren began, “I just want you to know that I am going to be seriously pissed if I come in here some morning and find you laid out on one of my tables.”

  “I’d hate that, too,” said Nikki. “I’d want a week to diet first.”

  “Yuh, right,” her friend laughed, “like you’d need to, woman of steel.” Nikki could hear keystrokes and pictured the ME in the cramped dictation office, at the desk that looked out onto the autopsy room. “OK, interesting discovery about that fingernail they vacuumed up in the torture room. It wasn’t a fingernail after all, but tested out as hardened polyester.”

  “Plastic? That looked like a fingernail?”

  “Exactly like a fingernail clipping. Even the same color. But know what it actually was?” Lauren, always happy to put on a show, said, “Wait for it… A piece of a button. Little crescent-shaped sliver broken off a button.”

  “So no DNA help.”

  “No, but if you find the button, we can always match it.”

  The detective didn’t see a lot of hope there. “What else you got?”

  “Something inconsistent came out of the ECU sweep at the rectory. I’m looking at the meds they collected from the victim’s bathroom chest. There is a vial of adefovir dipivoxil. That’s a reverse transcriptase inhibitor used to treat HIV, tumors, cancer, and hepatitis-B. The thing is, Nikki, the priest had none of those conditions. And none of it showed up in his tox screening.”

  A true odd sock, Heat thought as she finished jotting down the list of diseases. “But it was his prescription?”

  “Made out to Gerald Francis Graf, ten milligrams. The pill count says it was full.”

  “Who’s the doctor?” Nikki wrote Raymond Colabro on her spiral Ampad.

  “And a heads-up,” Lauren added. “The DNA test is still in process on that blood on Graf’s collar.”

  “What about that little speck you showed me in that vial?”

  “As I thought, a flake of leather from a laminate. But it’s not consistent with any equipment at Pleasure Bound, including the other studios, or any of the devices in their storage locker. I’ve ordered more forensic testing to ID its source. When we get a hit, I’ll call you.” Before she hung up, she added, “And remember, Detective Heat, you show up on my autopsy table? I’ll kill you.”

  The first thing the old lady said when she saw Heat was “Good Lord, is that blood?” Heat had managed to do a commendable wet paper towel job on her coat in the precinct restroom but skipped the blouse. Her neck was wrapped by a scarf, and she had her coat fastened all the way up, but some of her collar must have been visible. Mrs. Borelli seemed less put off by the idea of blood and more focused on the laundry mission. “Give me a half hour, I can get that out for you.”

  Career caregiver, thought Nikki, smiling at her. “Thank you, but I won’t be that long.” Heat adjusted the scarf to conceal the stain.

  When they reached the kitchen, the housekeeper said, “You’re going to roast in that coat. If you’re leaving it on for me, don’t.” Nikki kept it on anyway and sat at the table where there was a cup of hot coffee waiting for her and homemade pizzelles resting on the saucer.

  Ms. B. still seemed fragile, so the detective decided not to jam her right off about the picture. Instead she began by saying, “I dropped by to see if you can clear something up. Yesterday we collected prescriptions from Fat
her Graf’s medicine cabinet, and among them was something called adefovir. What’s confusing is he had none in his system and had none of the diseases it would be prescribed for.”

  “I don’t know what he had in that cabinet. I cleaned in there, but personal is personal, and it doesn’t get any more so than a medicine chest.”

  Nikki nibbled a pizzelle. It was extraordinary. If heaven were made of vanilla, that is what it would taste like. For Nikki, this was lunch. She finished it off and said, “I wanted to ask if perhaps the adefovir was yours.”

  “No. And trust me, last thing I need is another pill to swallow.”

  “Fine then. As long as I’m here,” said Heat, suddenly feeling like her last name should be Columbo-why not? she was certainly wearing the coat-“I want to ask if you had any new thoughts about the pictures I showed you.” When the woman shook no, Nikki handed her the photos again and asked her to give them a second look. She cleaned her glasses on her sweater and surveyed them. This time she went through the stack with no reaction to the one she had hesitated over before.

  “Sorry,” she said and handed the array back across the table. Nikki was trying to figure an approach that wouldn’t traumatize her even more, when Mrs. Borelli said, “Oh. I did have one other thing to mention to you. I thought of it this morning and was going to call you, but here you are.” She seemed overwhelmed by circumstances. “You asked if Father Gerry had any trouble with anyone.”

  “Please, go ahead.” Nikki flipped to a clean page.

  “We had a priest here a while back. There were accusations that he had been… improper with two of the altar boys on a weekend field trip. Now, I don’t know what happened, and neither did Father Graf, but as the pastor, soon as he heard about it, he did the right thing and reported it immediately to the archdiocese. They transferred Father Shea and started an investigation. But one of the boys’ parents, Mr. Hays, filed a lawsuit-which was fine, who wouldn’t? But he also harassed Father Graf.”