Driving Heat (6 page)

“J
ameson Rook, reporting as ordered, Captain.” He slid into one of the guest chairs angled in front of her desk and
crossed a leg as he leaned back. “I have to tell you that this driving up and down town all day is cutting into my nuptials planning. Speaking of which: I told Jill Krementz that the only way
she can come is if she’ll be our wedding photographer. I’m teasing, of course. Unless she says yes.” He let out a self-satisfied laugh and flicked his eyebrows. Then he saw
Heat’s expression, and his smirk withered. “What?”

“Ever since you saw the body at the river this morning you’ve been…off. Now I know why.” Nikki woke up her iPhone, which sat poised in the center of her empty blotter, and
swiveled it toward him. Rook leaned forward, elbows on the edge of her desk. He watched himself on the security video; Heat watched him grow a shade paler.

When the clip finished he sat back in his chair. A few seconds passed with the background chatter of the precinct as the only sound. At last he said, “You know, sometimes I hate
technology.” Then, a little too quickly recovered from his video smack to suit Nikki, he gave a minor shrug, saying nothing.

“You’re not going to tell me what this was about?” she asked.

“I think it’s probably best we not get into it.”

“Are you fucking serious?” Nikki, who rarely swore and always discouraged swearing among the squad, lost her filter. “Rook, we already are into it.”

“All right, I can see that. But can we keep some sense of scale here?”

“Scale?” Heat spoke so loudly that heads turned in the homicide bull pen. She got up and closed the door, calming herself by the time she regained her seat behind the desk.
“Let’s enumerate, shall we? One: You had knowledge of a homicide victim you didn’t disclose. Two: You—my fiancé—had a meeting with my shrink without telling me.
Where do I put that on the goddamned scale?”

“If I’m hearing you, I’d guess way up there.”

“Stop. Stop being glib. This is not a glib moment for me.”

“I apologize. I’m sorry.” He nodded in a belated attempt at conciliation. “But I’m not trying to be glib, I’m trying to play this down.”

“You can’t.”

“Because,” he pressed on, “you don’t have anything to worry about. Yes, I had some meetings with Lon King. And that—”

“More than this one? Not feeling too assuaged here, Rook.” “If you let me finish, you will.” He paused and cocked his brow toward her. She made a steeple of her
fingertips in front of her lips, a listening pose. He continued. “My conversations with King had nothing to do with you.” He sat back and crossed his leg again, as if what he had just
said qualified him to drop the microphone.

“That’s it?”

“Yup. All there is to it.”

“Not to me.”

“But it’s the truth. You were never mentioned. The psychological community has strict protocols when it comes to being discreet. You saw that yourself today when Josie never
acknowledged you as a client in front of me or Ochoa.” He couldn’t help himself and added, “Even though, much like me, you didn’t disclose your relationship with the victim
to your own squad.”

“OK,” she said. “This is going nowhere good.”

“Which is why I said, maybe we shouldn’t walk this path.”

“And you won’t tell me why you were seeing him?” When he didn’t reply, she gave him a frown and said, “He counseled cops. You weren’t in therapy with him,
were you?”

“That, I’ll answer. No. The reason I was seeing him has to remain confidential. It’s my right as a journalist not to disclose.”

“You saw him about a story you’re working on? What?”

“Nikki, I’d love to tell you, but there’s too much else going on with this. My ability to do my job depends on my sources’ knowing that I will honor confidentiality. I
have to invoke my constitutional right.”

“To what, act like an ass? I’m looking for a killer.”

“And I guess I am, now, too.” He twisted to peer through the glass at the Murder Board. “Any developments?”

“Do not press it, Rook.”

“You’re freezing me out?”

As angry as she was, Heat knew that Rook, although a pain in the butt—frequently delivered solutions to cases. She would be spiting herself to close him off as a resource, even though he
wasn’t playing fair. Her phone rang. It was Lauren Parry. Nikki asked her to hold. “This could be about Lon King’s autopsy,” she said to Rook. “I need the office to
myself. But don’t leave the building.”

“I’m under arrest?”

“You’re underfoot, as usual.” As he rose, she added, “There’s a complication here. Our little drama aside, you could be material to this investigation.”

“How cool am I?”

“And since Roach is officially in the mix, they’re going to need to interview you.”

“Nothing to say. It’s all puddin ’n’ tame with me. Ask me again, I’ll tell ’em the same.”

“You have fun with that,” she said, and he left her to her call with the medical examiner.

The sunniest voice at the Office of Chief Medical Examiner greeted Nikki when she picked up. “Rockin’ that uniform look this morning, Ms. Heatness. It’s like you were all
Beyoncé, but without the shoulder pads.”

“And the half billion net worth.”

“If that’s what you’re into.” After they shared a laugh, Nikki could hear crisp strokes on a keyboard and pictured the ME perched at the office window overlooking the
basement autopsy room. “Headlines first, report to follow, cool?”

“Ready, Doctor.”

“Not going to be a surprise here. Pending toxicology, of course, I’m finding cause of death to be traumatic brain injury due to gunshot wound.”

Nikki flipped to a clean page and jotted “COD = GSW” in her reporter’s spiral notebook. “You retrieved the slug, I assume.”

“Correctly. Retrieved it first thing so I could expedite it to Jamaica Avenue. Ballistics is all over it, and you should have a prelim from them soon.”

“Give me a preview.” Heat couldn’t keep the urgency out of her voice. “Fragged or in one piece?”

“Intact .22 caliber.”

“Mushrooming?”

“Negative. Either a lucky—if you’ll pardon that term in a homicide—or precise shot that met minimal bone resistance. Entry point was on the nasion, just superior to the
rhinion (the bridge of the nose, to you), and inferior to the glabella, which is the lower forehead.” The macabre image of the small hole between Lon King’s placid eyes resurfaced, and
Nikki drew a simplistic Charlie Brown face. When she marked it with a dot, her own brow sympathy-tingled. “We’ve both seen bullets do significant damage or sectioning of the brain due
to hydrostatic shock or internal bullet deflection. Not this time. This .22 created a narrow wound channel on a trajectory to what became a direct hit, severing the brain stem. The slug came to a
stop at the back of the skull.”

In the silence that followed Nikki gathered herself and tried to remain clinical about this victim. “Would that trajectory fit a suicide?”

“Anything’s possible, Nikki, but I’d bet no. To hold a weapon in front of you at that height, exactly on the proper angle? I can’t see it. Plus there would have been
significantly more flash burn and muzzle residue at that proximity. Also, no GSR on the hands. And with a quick rate of incapacitation and mortality like this, he could never have shot himself and
then taken off gloves.”

Captain Heat’s first incoming call ever on her new department-issued BlackBerry startled her when it rang. She pulled it out of her pocket and read the caller ID. “Listen, Lauren,
I’ve got a bureau chief calling.”

“Take it.”

“First, let me ask a quick one. Could King have been shot elsewhere and placed in the kayak, already dead?”

“No. Livor mortis indicates that he died seated in that boat.”

Nikki didn’t bother with a good-bye, just scrambled for the incoming before it dumped to voicemail. “Captain Heat.”

“You didn’t waste any time catching a hot one your first day,” said the chief of detectives without a hello or introduction. Heat guessed he had figured out that she was a
detective and could read a caller ID.

“No, sir.”

“In about ten minutes, I’m riding with the commissioner to a strategy session on these protests over this college kid from Syria. That shrink was one of our own, and the commish
wants a briefing in the car. What do you have?”

She jumped to her feet for an unobstructed view of the Murder Board and began to PowerPoint him, fighting off the squeeze of accountability tightening a corset around her rib cage. Just breathe,
Nikki told herself as she spoke. Heat had been in gunfights and felt more at ease.

In two minutes, she had summarized it all, ending with the autopsy findings. “And those just came in when you called, so you couldn’t be more current.”

“Is that supposed to impress me?”

“Sir?”

“I’ll fluff it out for the boss, but sounds to me like you’re still clearing your throat. Captain, I want you to move off the prelims and generate some activity. Give me some
meat to report, or—preferably—closure. And soon. Am I understood?”

“Of course. Yes, Chief.” Heat didn’t know if he had stayed on the call long enough to hear her answer. But he was a detective. He could figure out what it was.

Nikki found Raley and Ochoa at a table in the break room interviewing
Rook, and, to judge from their expressions, getting about as
far beyond his journalistic privilege as she had. “Boys, let’s convene.”

“Sounds good,” said Rook, hopping to his feet with a grin, rubbing his hands together vigorously.

“A meeting?” asked Ochoa from his chair. “Early on, don’t you think?”

His partner didn’t get up either. “Kind of still tasking.”

The air of disagreement hanging between the cops sent Rook to the door. “You guys work this out. I’ll be in the bull pen.”

“Seriously,” said Ochoa after Rook had left. “We spend more time in meetings, we’ll never get traction.”

So this is what it becomes, thought Nikki. A battleground of preordained roles. Detectives wanting more time. Downtown wanting more results. Precinct commander caught in the vise grip in
between. One slot Heat refused to fill—especially on day one—was that of a skipper harried by her superiors into pushing the pressure down the line. She also didn’t want to be
perceived as susceptible to that pressure herself. The flop sweat of Captain Irons was still stinking up the halls of the Twentieth. So she didn’t mention the hotfoot she’d just gotten
from the chief of detectives. “Meeting in five minutes” was all she said, then left them to work it out.

With no sign of dissent, her interim homicide squad leaders had gathered
the crew by the time Captain Heat entered the bull pen from
her office to begin the meeting. Rook, busy in the back of the room at his squatter’s desk, finished pulling a shot of espresso from his machine and joined the semicircle around the Murder
Board.

Nikki began with a recap of Dr. Parry’s autopsy results, which led to a handoff to Detective Ochoa and the report he had just received from the ballistics lab.

“As expected, we were looking for a small-caliber GSW. The vic’s autopsy yielded a .22 slug. Rounded, non-hollow-point.”

Feller finished a note and commented, “The .22 is an interesting choice, considering the conditions.”

“In an alley fight, I’d want a .9mm or a .44 Mag,” said Inez Aguinaldo. “But when I was military police, there were a fair number of fatals with .25s and .22s. Your
critical factors are always distance, angle, and location.”

“Dr. Parry tells us factors two and three were spot on,” said Heat.

“Ballistics gives us an estimate on the first, distance,” said Ochoa, going for his notes. “Assuming a long-rifle cartridge and forty grains of powder, the lab puts the muzzle
at a range of two to three feet. One yard, max.”

As Heat’s dry erase squeaked that detail onto the whiteboard, she asked, “Any conjecture about the weapon?”

Detective Ochoa nodded. “Good odds it was a handgun. Slugs from a rifle have a nasty habit of creating more mayhem inside the skull than those from a revolver or pistol. They not only tear
up the tissue but create a lead snowstorm in the brain. This bullet is misshapen, but intact. Unfortunately, no prints. And it’s a plain-wrap, over-the-counter, retail bullet. However, they
said they did get good striations for a future match. Of course, they’re running it through the database to see if they get a nexus on priors.”

“Excellent, Miguel. Glad I came.” Heat arched a teasing brow and got back a half smile from Ochoa, plus another from Raley, which she decided to add together, yielding her one more
smile than she had seen going in.

Ochoa continued. “I’ve gotten in touch with the RTCC detectives. They’re running all shooters favoring .22s, with a sub-run for headshots as MO.”

Raley read some secret partner signal and took the handoff. “They’re also doing a search for me on a shady guy who popped up on video from King’s medical building.”

“You mean other than the shady journalist who popped up?” asked Heat. Everyone’s laughter—including Rook’s—went a long way to diffuse tensions. Elephants
can’t take a joke. When you’ve got one in the room, sometimes an honest ribbing clears it out.

“This dude’s even shadier. If that’s possible,” continued Detective Raley. “Male, Cauc, early thirties. Made several camera passes over several days this week
without entering the office.”

Heat asked, “You get a face?”

The King of All Surveillance Media shook his head no. “Kept his head down and wore a brim.”

“Question.”

“Go, caller,” said Raley.

“Shady Jameson from Tribeca; first time, long time. If you got no face, how are you going to run him? Tattoo? Scar? I’ll hang up and listen to your answer.”

“The answer to your question is gait analysis.”

“There’s an app for that?” asked Rook.

“There’s an app for that,” answered Raley. “Real Time Crime techs are using new software, initially developed for Homeland, on the premise that gait—the way every
person walks—is unique and can be broken down into algorithms. It’s not as accurate as fingerprints yet, but neither was facial recognition when it started.”