Deadly Heat (38 page)

Dry lightning sparked to the north when Heat finished her debrief with the shooting team. Lauren Parry had wrapped up her exams of Salena Kaye and Sharon Hinesburg, preliminarily finding both causes of death obvious, but worthy of follow-up. The ME told Nikki she’d pull an all-nighter and perform the postmortems so she could have the findings first thing in the morning.

She found Bart Callan sitting with his elbows on his knees on the short wooden ramp that led from the tarmac to the boarding area of the modular. He stared blankly at the sheet over Hinesburg’s body and the numbered yellow marker the shooting team had placed beside his ejected casing. He didn’t acknowledge Heat. She stood beside him and followed his gaze, then said, “Tough to take someone out. Especially a cop.”

He held up the evidence bag with the pistol inside it. “Hinesburg’s backup piece. Mini Glock Twenty-six. Nine millimeters to spoil your day.” He set the bag down on the ramp between his shoes. “I can live with the kill. Lose a cop, save a cop.”

She put a hand on his shoulder. “Thank you.”

He gave the shortest nod and said, “Guess you had your hands too full to pat her down.”

“You could say my attention became somewhat divided by his escape attempt.” She realized her palm still rested on him and drew it away. “You got here fast, thank God. I’d barely put out the ten-thirteen.”

“I was already en route.” When he saw her reaction, he said, “Soon as I heard about your meet, I thought I’d better get over here and cover your idiotic butt. Any complaints?”

“None.” Then she asked, “Heard about it how?”

“Yardley Bell told me.”

“Agent Bell? How did she know?”

He picked up the evidence bag and stood. “Didn’t ask. I just assumed she heard it from your boyfriend.”

Rook spun through the revolving door at the entrance to Bellevue Hospital and shouted her name as the door spit him out into the lobby. “Nikki!” echoed in the cavernous atrium renovators had built five years before, encasing the old stone hospital in glass like a living museum display. When he reached her, Rook grabbed Heat in his arms, clinging tight, whispering in her ear, “Holy shit, Nik, sometimes you scare the hell out of me.” When they kissed, he sensed her reserve and studied her. “You OK?”

She considered a moment and let it go at “Been a hell of a night. Glen Windsor is upstairs getting his calf sewn up. Soon as he’s out, he’s mine to interrogate.”

They found a couch to wait on in the Hospital PD Squad Room near the ER, and she bulleted the sequence of events, first going back to how she knew from the sound of Salena Kaye’s phone call something was up; how she sounded either drugged or under duress, and how she’d even slipped Heat a hidden message.

“But what gave you the idea to connect her to Rainbow?”

“That by itself would have been a Jameson-esque leap, but it’s been bugging me how quickly Kaye just vanished off the street when I chased her out of that deli.”

“After my Jameson-esque takedown?”

“What have I started?” She pressed her forefinger on his lips and continued, explaining the DMV trace on the silver minivan that made Glen Windsor a probable. “I couldn’t be certain, but I figured, if he was setting me up, I could get there early enough and get in position to take him.”

“And if it hadn’t been a setup by Rainbow?”

“Then, worst-case scenario, I could still apprehend Salena Kaye.”

He processed it and said, “Well done. Very Nikki-esque.”

“Don’t even.”

“Hinesburg, though… Man.”

“I have to admit, I feel sort of blindsided, too. I guess I started to have inklings that I must have denied—I mean she was a flake—but that security video from Coney Crest was the big domino, knocking down all the others. Every one of her cute little screwups and oversights started looking more like sabotage: telling me Wynn’s bomb was a timer when it was a remote…”

“Because she triggered it…”

“Screwing up the tipster call from the rent-a-car guy who spotted Salena Kaye…”

“So she could warn her…”

“And on and on.”

“It’s ingenious. Incompetence masking subterfuge. And there she was, hiding in plain sight in the middle of your bull pen.” He reflected and said, “One good thing. You flushed out the mole. No more looking over your shoulder before you say something.”

“I sure hope not.” She shaded that thought and got his attention.

“What?”

“Know how Callan got to the heliport so fast? Yardley Bell told him about my meet.”

He thought about that. “How would Yardley know?”

Nikki gave him an appraising look. “You tell me.”

“Wait, you don’t think I—Nikki, seriously?” She said nothing, one part interrogation technique, the other not wanting to think it was so. “Hey, I will admit to a lot of things. Yes, I went to Nice with her. Yes, I told her when I was trying to track down Tyler Wynn through his… through his wine and custom shoe purchases.”

“And about the jerk chicken pop-up stores.”

“Yes. But when you tell me something is between us, it stays between us.”

“Then how did Yardley know?”

“No clue. But I can look you square in the eye and tell you it wasn’t me?”

They held each other’s stare. After a few seconds her phone buzzed with a text.

“Is that my lie detector result?” he asked.

“Don’t need one. Lucky for you, pal, I trust you.” She held up the phone. “Glen Windsor’s out of surgery. Want to come?”

“You bet.” Rook stood up and got out his cell. He gave Heat a sly grin and said, “Let me call Yardley first.”

The uniform stationed outside Glen Windsor’s private room on the second floor gave Rook an appraising once-over as they arrived just before midnight. “It’s all right, she’s with me, Officer,” Rook said. The cop actually laughed and, following Heat’s nod, gestured them both to pass.

They found the prisoner with his bandaged leg up on a pillow, watching NY1 news on the overhead. He didn’t seem surprised by Heat’s visit but said, “Wow, Jameson Rook, too. Am I going to be featured in your next article?”

“Absolutely. I’m doing one on excrement.”

“You’ll pardon me if I don’t get up.” He tugged at the manacle that cuffed him to the bed rail. “But I can still wave hello.” He gave Rook the finger and laughed. Nikki switched off the TV. “Hey, come on, I’m the lead story. I want to see it again.”

“You’ll be hearing about it for some time, Windsor,” she said.

Rook added, “Like the rest of your life.”

“Hey, why the disrespect, Rook? It’s not like you’re the one I was trying to kill.” He grinned. “Allegedly.”

As Heat drew over a chair she eye-signaled Rook to ease up, and he took a spot leaning his shoulder against the doorjamb. “How’s the leg?” she asked Windsor.

“You need some time on the range to requalify, Detective.”

“I put it right where I wanted it, believe me. If I’d killed you, we never could have had this chance to chat.” She took a seat and gave him some silence in an attempt to claim the meeting. Detective Rhymer had e-mailed Windsor’s file to her and Nikki opened the printout she’d made downstairs at Hospital PD. “Our detectives turned up some interesting things at your apartment.”

“Yeah?”

“Let’s start with the electronic box that alters voice pitch over the phone.”

Windsor scoffed. “I only use that to order pizzas. You’d be surprised how fast they deliver when Darth Vader places the call.”

Nikki decided to ignore the glib distractions and continued. “In your desk they found numerous files of clippings about me. Not just that cover story from last fall’s magazine—heavily underlined and highlighted. Also articles about cases I’ve worked over the past few years and photos of me—and not clipped. We checked your camera. They were taken by you without my knowledge. Pictures of me in the supermarket, pictures of me jogging, pictures of me taken through windows into my apartment.”

“What can I say? I’m a fan.”

“Your computer history shows a ton of searches for me, for Rook, and others in my life, including my parents, coworkers, even criminals I have arrested.”

“Detective, everybody clips articles and searches shit that interests them on their computers. It’s not like I have this secret closet with your pictures plastered all over it.”

“No, that would be nutty,” said Rook. Nikki flattened him with a glower, and he stared at the floor.

When Heat turned back to Windsor, he said, “He doesn’t get it. Calling it nutty.”

“What do you call it?” she asked.

“Preparation.” He held her gaze a moment, letting that settle before he continued. “I learned about you in his first article. You know,
Crime Wave Meets Heat Wave
? I read it over and over and thought, This one… this detective… is different. A challenge.” The words twisted Heat’s solar plexus as she recalled the other detectives Windsor had engaged over the years. And killed. Now she was designated as “this one.” He watched her from his pillow and must have known exactly what she was processing because he said, “I decided last fall I would test myself with you, but it wasn’t until I saw the online teases for Rook’s new article about you that I said I’d better get moving.”

He stopped there, leaving Nikki time to reflect on a psychopath’s
classic need to share—or even claim—the limelight of his fixation. “Tell me what you mean by that, to get moving.”

“I wanted to test you when the article came out. When you had everyone’s attention. When there’d be heat around Nikki.” He grinned. “Tell me I don’t have a poet’s touch.”

Heat’s temper sat one inch from breaking the surface, and she struggled not to lose it with this guy. But her objective—even more immediate than building a case against a serial killer—was only one thing: Nikki needed to learn whatever information he had tortured out of Salena Kaye so she could stop the bioterror plot. “Tell me about the conversation you had with the dead lady in the helicopter.”

“Now? I really wanted to see Ferguson’s monologue tonight.”

Letting her rage explode wouldn’t get her anywhere. She decided the time had come to get under his skin for a change. And Heat believed she knew the soft spot where the knife would go in.

As soon as Glen Windsor came on the radar as a suspect, she had unleashed Malcolm and Reynolds to do a biographical search on him. Heat held the results in her lap. She picked up the single page she hoped would tip the balance her way. “You like being a locksmith, Glen?”

“What’s that supposed to mean? It’s a job. It pays my way.”

“Yeah, but you? A… locksmith?” Nikki had respect for every trade, but for this purpose, she put a shit stank on the job title. He shifted slightly on the hospital bed and examined his fat bandage. “Not what you had in mind, was it?” His eyes flicked over when she played with the page in her hand. Nikki waited to milk the moment and said, “We did some research—yeah, we do computer searches, too—and know what popped up? You were dismissed from the NYPD Police Academy.”

“That’s ancient history,” he blurted, not sounding like it was archive material, at all.

“Maybe so, but it’s kind of interesting. According to records, you got bounced because you failed the psychological evaluation.”

“That’s a fucking rigged test.” His breathing became more rapid. Wilding flashed in his eyes. “You ever seen that test?”

“I have,” she answered quietly. “I took it myself. Passed.” She
delivered that with a smile and let it sit there. “The thing about the psych eval? The deficient ones never think it’s valid.”

His manacles clanged against the stainless bar as he tried to sit up. “Hey, fuck you. Deficient, my ass. I was too smart for those losers at the Academy. They were threatened by my special gifts and set me up to get bounced. Jealous shits.”

“Bet you would have made a great detective, otherwise.”

“Fuckin’-A right.”

“Except I see the NYPD wasn’t the only place you failed. I don’t have all of them here, Glen, but there’s a short list of you washing out as an investigator at several top security firms and then a sort of descending curve of gigs until you landed at… locksmith.” Then she added, “Oh, and security systems. So you did have that going to keep the dream alive.”

“This is bullshit. I know what I can do. I know who I am. I know my destiny. I am smarter than all those assholes, and I’ve proved it.”