Raging Heat (2 page)

What Heat wanted to do was exactly that. Only screw room service; just race across the street to the Excelsior and leave a trail of clothes from the Do Not Disturb sign to the bed. But she said, “A terrific idea. If I weren’t kinda busy investigating a suspicious death, and all.”

“If your job is your priority.”

“Says the man who left me eight weeks ago to write a magazine article.”

“Two magazine articles. Or, as my editor prefers to call them, in-depth investigations. And seven weeks. I came back early. See?” He spread his arms wide and turned a circle, which made her laugh. Damned Rook, he could always make her laugh. The other thing he always did was understand how dedication translated into deferred gratification. So without complaint, he hoisted his duffel onto the counter at Coat Check, which sat unattended but full of backpacks and raincoats left behind in the hasty evacuation.

Since the morning rain had let up, Heat decided to convene her squad
meeting outside and yield the interior to OCME and Forensics, who seemed less than thrilled by all those extra personnel contaminating their scene. She and Detectives Raley, Ochoa, Feller, and Rhymer formed a loose circle on the entrance plaza between the revolving doors and the circular driveway. Rook sat on a stone bench off to the side, making no attempt to stifle his jet-lag yawns. Up the grass slope, evacuated tourists milled on the sidewalk behind the wrought iron fence. Predictably the news vans had arrived. Their raised snorkels formed portable forests at both ends of Eighty-first.

“I don’t know why we got bounced out here,” said Feller. “Didn’t we find that finger for them?”

“We?” replied Roach, in near unison. And then Ochoa added, “Here, homes, I’ve got a finger for you, too.”

Feller came back with, “I’m touched, Miguel. You even took it out of your nose,” bringing a volley of chuckles that Heat clamped a lid on.

“Gentlemen, may I remind you we are in public at a death scene? Let’s not find ourselves laughing it up on the cover of this afternoon’s
Ledger
.” She surveyed the street, and, sure enough, her eye caught a man snapping shots of them with a long lens. But as Nikki turned back toward her group, it occurred to her that, even though the guy seemed familiar, she didn’t see a credential or recognize him as one of the usual press photogs. Where had she seen him before? Glancing again, she caught the back of his jacket getting swallowed by the crowd and shrugged it off. This was New York. The sidewalks were full of puzzler faces.

“Let’s all remember,” she began, “open minds. This could turn out to be an accidental, not a homicide. Either way, we are going to go about this case a little differently.”

“As in, we’re not looking for lurkers or suspicious persons fleeing the area,” said Detective Feller. Like his colleagues, he had jettisoned the grab ass and gone all business.

“Exactly. Let’s focus our efforts instead on establishing what happened. Starting with two priorities: victim ID and mode of death.”

Rook raised a hand. “I’m going with
kersplat
.” God, how Nikki hated and loved having him back. He read their reactions and, instead of backing off, joined the circle and doubled down. “Indelicate perhaps, but come on. The guy was basically a bug on a windshield. Except this bug actually went through the windshield, so he must have been going, what…five hundred miles an hour?”

“No way,” said Ochoa.

“For a lawman you seem quick to doubt the laws of gravity, Detective.” He appealed to Nikki, “What height did Dr. Parry say the injuries were consistent with?”

Heat felt wary of having her briefing hijacked but answered, “Over one hundred stories.”

“So we’re talking an altitude of at least one thousand feet. I’m surprised he didn’t achieve Mach-One.”

“Doubtful, Rook. An object falls at thirty-two feet per second per second until it reaches terminal velocity.” Ochoa turned a few heads with that one. “What? Back in the service, I was Airborne. Trust me, before you go jumping out a cargo door you buddy-up with ol’ Ike Newton.”

Rook couldn’t let it go. “I don’t doubt your courage, but aren’t we splitting hairs here?”

The detective smiled to himself, then recited, “Mach-One is the speed of sound, which is seven hundred sixteen miles per hour. Terminal velocity for the average human in free fall is one hundred twenty MPH and takes approximately twelve seconds to reach.”

After absorbing his calculus beatdown, Rook paused and said, “‘Approximately.’ I see.”

“The variable is the drag coefficient. Drag is created by things like clothing, body position…”

“…Facial hair, such as a G.I. Joe beard,” said Detective Rhymer.

Heat jumped in. “All right. I know how much you guys like to measure and what not, but can we just stipulate our victim fell from a height that suggests an aircraft and leave it there?” They all nodded. Then, when Rook opened his mouth, she said, “Moving on” and he closed it and gave her a smiling salute with his forefinger.

Nikki assigned Rhymer to scrub the Missing Persons database for an ID on the John Doe. “Obviously start with New York City and the tri-state,” she said, “but since this poor guy probably came from an aircraft, tap the FBI and Homeland, too. Also, do a run of prison escapees and active NYPD, county, state, and federal manhunts.”

She gave Randall Feller the neighborhood to canvass beginning with the tourists being held between the sawhorses on Eighty-first. “What am I looking for, though?” he asked. “I mean, since we’re not seeking a lead on a perp.”

“This is one of those times that we won’t know until we find it,” she replied. “It’s the lottery. All it takes to learn something is one person who saw the fall.”

“Or heard something,” added Raley.

Heat nodded. “Sean’s right. Plane in distress, a scream, a gunshot, whatever. And take a platoon of uniforms to knock on doors in those apartments.” She gestured to the block of pale stone encasing the Upper West Side’s most fortunate and texted him her iPhone shots of the looky-loos in their windows. Next she turned to Detective Raley and said, “Make a guess.”

“Show me: video cams.”

“Ding-ding-ding.” Rales wore the crown as the squad’s King of All Surveillance Media. Over the years he had excelled at scrubbing hours of sleep-inducing closed circuit television footage of everything from neighborhood traffic cams to bank and jewelry store lipsticks, and scored major breaks in their cases. Today Nikki tasked him with finding CCTV mounts at the planetarium and the surrounding businesses and residences.

“There’s a plus side,” she said. “What you’re looking for happens within a very tight time window.

“Detective Ochoa, I’m going to split you off from your partner to work the skies.” He flipped open his notebook and took notes as she directed him to contact the FAA and Air Traffic Control for any Maydays, distress calls, or unusual activity in the local air space. “Get a list of all aircraft—commercial and general aviation—that came anywhere near here around ten this morning; anything that might have veered off course or acted erratically or raised notice from other pilots.”

“Like did they see anything up there or hear something on the radio that was freaky, got it.”

“And don’t forget the helicopters. Not just NYPD but the TV, radio, tourist, and commuter choppers.” Heat looked up. The sky was brightening but still oystery. “Not sure how many of them got up in that, but if they did, somebody might have registered something.”

Rook raised a hand but didn’t wait to be called on. “Stowaways. Every once in a while you hear about dudes hitching a ride in the wheel well of an airliner. The pilot opens the landing gear and…well, you get the idea.”

“Won’t hurt to check, Miguel.”

“Oh, and skydivers. Write that down.” Rook annoyed Ochoa by tapping his finger on his notepad.

“No helmet or parachute turned up,” said Heat.

“Maybe the plane banked and he fell out. Or jumped.” Feeling their stares, he added. “Did anyone here see
Point Break
? Keanu Reeves dives out of a plane to chase Patrick Swayze, who left with the last parachute? Anybody?”

Ochoa clicked his pen and winked at Raley. “Skydiver one word or two?”

Heat knew it was time to send Rook home when she asked the group if they had any other theories about the victim and he didn’t chime in. No speculation about an untoward application of the Monty Python cow catapult. No conjecture about a boozy wing walker stumbling off a biplane. No nothing. In fact, he had returned unnoticed to his spot on the stone bench and sat with a fixed vacant stare into the middle distance.

“Maybe you should get a nap,” she told him when the others had dispersed. Logging thirty-six hours from Central Africa to Paris to JFK to that bench had finally taken its toll. He nodded blankly and she watched him amble away with his duffel after giving her an unsteady hug and a vow to catch up with her after some shut-eye. That bastard knew she was looking, too, because, at the top of the driveway, he lifted the vent of his sport coat and shook his ass. “Welcome home,” she said to herself.

Back inside, Dr. Parry looked up at Heat over a grim container of human morsels and declared she would be at this for hours and that movie night was definitely off. “Although I had already assumed so now that handsome’s back. Go ahead, you fickle bee-otch. Have fun.”

“I will. Think I’ll take him to see the new Bourne movie.” Nikki turned and walked off to hide her grin.

As the detectives began to filter into the bull pen to report at the end of shift, Heat was surprised to see Rook arrive with them. “Not much of a nap,” she said when he took a seat on her desktop.

“A nap’ll kill ya. You want to know how an experienced traveler blows the gum out of the carburetor? Hit the treadmill, instead. Three miles and a hot shower, I’m good for, oh, another twenty minutes.” He scanned the squad room. “What’s with the empty desk?”

“We, um, lost one of our detectives this week.” Before he could follow up, she cut him off. “A little sensitive, a little public right now, all right?”

“We won’t discuss it here, then.” He nodded, but continued, “Let me guess. Do I smell the handiwork of one Captain Wally Irons?” She gave him a sharp look and he put up both palms. “I think we best not discuss this here, if it’s all right with you.”

Detective Ochoa came over, turning pages to the front of his notebook. “No hits at the FAA or ATC. No commercial air traffic over this part of Manhattan at that time. One outbound from LaGuardia over the Bronx ten minutes before and two JFK approaches: one, five minutes after—that was over the Hudson; the second traversed the West Side at about ten-thirty.” Nikki recalled the sound of that plane on her walk-up, then asked about general aviation. “Nada. Same for Maydays, distress calls. And yes, Rook, I did inquire about stowaways. None reported, plus they said it wouldn’t be procedure to drop landing gear this far out.”

According to Rhymer, Missing Persons didn’t kick out any matches. “And still waiting on callbacks from various law enforcement on fugitives and escapees.” Mindful of the polite Southern nature that had earned Rhymer the nickname of Opie, Heat directed him to be a pain in the ass with those agencies. She also suggested he widen the window on Missing Persons to include the past week; you never knew.

“Sure thing. And I’ll check MP reports throughout the evening, just in case somebody comes home tonight and finds it empty by surprise.” When he said it, it sounded buttery, like “bah supprahs.” Opie in the big city.

Rook stood. “Hang glider.”

Ochoa shook his head. “From where, the Empire State Building?”

“You’re right. He’d have to get it up there undetected.” But Rook kept going with it. “How about the big skyscraper they’re erecting on West Fifty-seventh.”

“And what happened to the actual hang glider?” asked Heat. “Rook, you should have taken a nap instead.”

Rhymer beamed. “A wing suit could do it.”

“
Madre de dios
, it’s contagious.” Ochoa stared at the ceiling tiles, shaking his head.

Rook clamped an arm around Opie’s shoulder. “You know something? The halls of this precinct are going to ring with sweet laughter when one of our brainstorms leads to a break in this case.”

Detectives Feller and Raley strode in together, urgency on their faces. “You’re going to want to see this,” said the King of All Surveillance Media.

The six of them could barely fit into the storage closet Raley had converted into his digital domain, which basically consisted of two tables resting on filing cabinets, a scrounged assortment of yesteryear’s technology, and a cardboard Burger King crown, presented to him years before by a grateful homicide squad leader. “While I was canvassing the crowd for eyewits, some old dude from Canada is getting real freaked over near the tour bus, so I check him out,” said Detective Feller. “He and his wife—by the way, I’m betting she’s a recent trade-up, if you catch my meaning—Anyway, the two of them were posing for a video the bus driver was shooting of them in front of the planetarium.”

“Makes sense,” said Rook. “What’s a trip to New York without a picture of Uranus?”

Feller couldn’t resist joining in, adopting the voice of a tourist. “‘My God, Harry, I can’t believe the size of Uranus.’”

“Wanna talk massive?” said Rook. “Feast your eyes on this space junk.”

Heat turned to them. “Boys.” Then, admonishing Rook, “Definitely a nap next time.”

Raley resumed. “The tourist couple volunteered the video so I could make a digital copy. This part’s in slo-mo. Ready?” Rales didn’t bother waiting for a reply. Everyone gathered a little closer to the monitor when he rolled the footage.

The screen displayed a barrel-chested senior citizen with silver hair sprayed into a meticulous pompadour embracing a buxom woman of about fifty who wore her jewels proudly and rested her head on the love of her life. Both smiles seemed frozen, but that was due to the video speed, apparent when their eyes blinked in slow motion. “Here comes,” said Raley. A few seconds later, a dark form shaped like a bullet descended from the sky at a steep angle and crashed into the roof of the cube. Nobody on the video noticed or reacted, but the video room sure did, resounding with moans, gasps, and a long “Fuuuuck” from Ochoa.