Frozen Heat

NINETEEN

“Petar.”

It was all Heat could manage to say. She had no breath for more, as if the oxygen had been sucked from the tunnel. But those two hoarse syllables spoke volumes. She whispered her old lover’s name as both a question and an answer. And the weight she gave the word articulated a sour array of feelings suspended from it on sharp, cutting hooks:

Betrayal. Sadness. Shock. Disbelief. Blindness. Anger. Hatred.

Petar’s face displayed no shame or regret as he moved toward Nikki. His eyes met hers and she saw in them something like amusement. No, arrogance.

Heat thought of going for her gun. Even if Tyler Wynn hit her, she might get off a shot at Petar. He was armed, too, but holding his Glock sloppily. She could do it.

“I wouldn’t,” said the voice behind the flashlight. Tyler Wynn, the living ghost in the Ghost Station, had read her. So much for making the play.

Petar took her Sig.

“Good.” Tyler stepped a little closer. “I’ve seen so many people try something stupid when emotions take over.”

Nikki twisted to look up at Petar. “You killed her? Fuck you.”

All Petar did was take a step back while he tucked her gun into this waistband. He looked past her in pure dismissal. To him, she was just a chore.

“I said, ‘Fuck you.’”

“You two will have time to air things out after I leave. Petar, get the bag, please.”

Petar stepped behind her, and Nikki could hear him sliding the cooler back under Nicole’s drop box. She tried to wall out her torment and get strategic. Petar would need to pocket his gun to reach up for that pouch. If only she weren’t on her knees, she might have a shot at catching Wynn with a surprise kick. He had read her before, so she covered with conversation. “Was it you that Carter Damon called on the burner cell to get the green light to kill Nicole?”

“That was for logistics. Petar did the actual work.”

“And he called you again. Was that to set up the visiting nurse to spy on us?”

“I am a creature of habit. Once you run a Nanny Network, it’s hard to stop.”

She didn’t ask permission, just kept her hands behind her neck and eased up off the ground onto her feet as she spoke. “I really thought Carter Damon killed my mother.”

“No, he was there after, for cleanup.” Petar fell off the cooler behind her and swore. She noticed Wynn become alert and didn’t make her move. When Petar stepped up on it again, he relaxed and continued, “Detective Damon was quite an asset until the very end when he got a dying man’s conscience and tried to text you.”

“The interrupted text,” she said, inching closer.

“Yes, we caught him trying to reach out to you to make amends. Bad for his health, it turned out.”

“The Brooklyn Bridge?”

Wynn nodded. “His attempted confession gave me the idea of staging his suicide with another text taking responsibility for the murders. Seemed win-win.”

Nikki said, “More like win Wynn,” pointing at him. And when she extended her arm to do that, she used it as a feint to lunge for him.

The old man anticipated her and quickly got her in a choke hold, pressing the muzzle of his gun against her temple. “What? Do you want me to shoot you? Well, do you?” Nikki stayed still. “I will if I have to, but I’d rather not. In fact, I’ve been thinking train mishap. More ambiguous to the police than a bullet, but I’m happy to improvise, if you force my hand.” He pressed the muzzle harder against her flesh. “This gun is a throwdown I can easily plant at Rook’s loft. Do the math on that before you make me shoot you with it. Understood?” He didn’t wait for an answer. He just shoved her away.

Petar came down from the drop box and handed him the leather pouch. Tyler whispered instructions to him. She picked up “after the next train,” but the rest was lost in the racket as a downtown subway rushed through on the far side of the tunnel.

Heat battled to keep her head under the crush of emotions coming down on her. Self-anger dominated. She found herself sucked back to Paris, in the Place des Vosges, where she had felt unsettled about something she couldn’t articulate. Now, waiting to be killed in the Ghost Station, the nagging thought defined itself, albeit a bit late. As usual, it was the odd sock.

“I should have known,” she said to Wynn. She shook her head, unhappy with herself. “I should have smelled it back at the hospital when your ‘dying words’ were urging me to nail the bastards who killed my mom, that’s what you said.”

“I did.”

“But I never asked myself, if you were CIA and were so passionate about avenging my mother’s death, why didn’t you do it yourself? You had ten years and all the resources.”

He smiled. “Don’t feel bad. I’ve fooled more experienced players than you, and for much longer.” A train began to approach them from downtown. Blocks away, but the soft rumble drifted up the tunnel. Nikki’s chest seized with sudden urgency.

“Why did you have my mother killed?”

“Because I didn’t fool her. When she found out I had gone independent in the interval between Paris and when I reactivated her in New York, she had to go. She just had to. Up to then, she thought working for me meant she’d still been working for CIA. Then she found out who I was really working for and, unfortunately for her, what the project was.”

“You killed her for that?”

“Your mother’s sense of mission is what killed her. She was just like you.”

They stood as statues when an uptown train raced through, rattling the station and making the hair on their heads lift and swirl. The moment it passed, Petar took out his gun. Tyler Wynn holstered his under his sport coat and climbed down the ladder to the tracks. “Should have four to six minutes before the next train.”

“You’ll have plenty of time,” said Petar, switching on his Mini Maglite. “Catch you after.”

Nikki watched just Wynn’s disembodied head move along the platform as he walked the tracks. “Tyler.” He stopped. “What’s in the pouch?”

“You’ll never know.”

“Wanna bet?”

Wynn said, “Shoot her, if you have to.” Then started his walk back to the 96th Street station.

Heat made up her mind she would kill Petar.

That’s how she would survive. The only question was, would she enjoy it? And what would that make her if she did?

Alive. That was all she cared about. The morality of how she felt, she would gladly sort out in her old age.

She had already figured out their plan. It wasn’t hard to. The next train would rocket past in four to six minutes, and the idea was for her to be in front of it when it did. So she had five minutes, give or take, to get it done.

“So there’s no way to call this off?”

Petar didn’t engage. He stood silently, close enough to be accurate with his Glock but distant enough to be out of reach if she made a run at him. At the moment, their plan was better than hers.

“A head start for old times’ sake?” Still no reply. He watched her but without looking at her.

It was hard for Nikki to even see Petar as the same man she had fallen for. She had not gone to Venice in the summer of ‘99 seeking romance but passion of another kind: her love of theater. Other students interning at the Gran Teatro La Fenice had asked her out, and she had a series of first dates, but nothing serious. Until the night at the Ai Speci wine bar when she met an earnest-looking Croatian film student visiting the city to shoot a documentary on Tommaseo, the renowned Italian essayist. Within a week, Petar Matic had moved out of his hostel into her apartment. After Venice, they spent a month touring Paris before she returned to Boston to start her fall semester at Northeastern. He surprised her by sliding into her booth one morning in the student union, saying that he missed her so much, he’d enrolled there himself.

“Just tell me one thing, you owe me that,” she said, still trying to engage him. “Did Tyler actually go to all the trouble to find out who I was dating and then recruit you to kill my mother?”

That got a reaction from him. He snorted and shifted his weight back onto one of the support pillars. “You like to flatter yourself? Go ahead.”

“I’m not flattering myself, I’m just trying to figure out Tyler’s approach. ‘Hello, young man, would you be interested in earning a few extra dollars murdering your girlfriend’s mom?’”

“See, that’s where your head’s up your own ass. Nikki, do you honestly believe our relationship was ever about romance?” Heat felt herself absorbing yet another emotional shock but kept the conversation going, kept pushing.

“Sure felt like it to me.”

He laughed. “It was supposed to. Come on, do you think we met in Venice by accident? Like it was Kismet? It was a job, man. The whole thing was a setup.”

“You mean like ‘accidentally’ running into me and Rook in Boston? Was that to find out what I knew?”

“No, I was just tailing you. Or was, until fucking Rook spotted me. My assignment in Venice was to get in your pants and work that to get close to your mom.”

“To kill her?”

“Not at first. To find out some things.”

“And then kill her.” Nikki gritted her teeth, fending off her own fury to stay focused on getting him distracted.

“Yeah, kill her. Like I said, it was a job. I’m good at it.”

“Except for the suitcase.”

“Right. I fucked that up. I used that old piece of shit to carry papers from your mom’s desk and forgot all about it. Hey, it was ten years, I’m allowed one.”

“That’s not all you screwed up.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“The High Line. You were the sniper, weren’t you?”

“And?”

“And you blew the shot.”

“I didn’t blow the shot. There was an earthquake.”

“Then you blew the second shot.”

“No way.”

“And the one you could have taken at the end of the line. I saw the laser dot. But instead, you jumped.”

“You’re crazy.”

“You bet I am.” Nikki took a step toward him.

“Stay where you are.”

She took another step. “I want you to shoot me.”

“What?” He shined the light in her eyes and raised his gun, but she took another step. “I’m warning you, stop.”

She moved closer. “You seem to be real good at slipping knives in women’s backs. Can you put one of those bullets in me? No you can’t. Come on, Pet. Face-to-face. Right here. Bring it on. I’ll even make a better target for you.” She moved closer yet.

But he took a step back and bumped into the support pillar he’d been leaning on. A sound like the low roar of the sea floated up the tunnel. The train was coming. Right on time. He wagged the gun, gesturing her to step to the edge.

Heat stood firm.

“Go on. Let’s not make this harder than it has to be.”

“For whom, Petar?” She took one more stride closer. They were only three feet apart, and for the first time, she could look into his eyes. And he, into hers.

“Now,” he shouted.

“Do you really think I’m going to make this easy for you? Stand with my back to you so you can give me a shove?”

His eyes darted away, then returned.

The roar grew into a rumble. The concrete platform vibrated.

“You killed my mother. You lied about loving me. Take me out of my misery, you son of a bitch!”

“I’ll do it,” he said.

Nikki smiled and spread her arms before him, daring him to go ahead.

And then she heard the whine of a small power tool and metal grinding. Sparks showered down through the ventilation grate at the top of the stairway, falling into the dark tunnel like fireflies.

Petar turned to look at them.

Nikki made her move.

She threw herself toward him, leaping inside the danger circle of the gun on his right side. Her arms were already up from her “go ahead and shoot me” gesture, and as she brought her body next to his, her right hand was in position to lock onto his wrist to aim the gun away. At the same time, Heat brought her left elbow up over his shoulder and spiked it into his nose.

He cried out but managed to keep his grip on the pistol. Heat delivered a sharp knee to his quad. With her right hand still clamping his wrist, she wrapped her left on top of the Glock and began to twist the barrel inward to point back at him.

Petar must have had some combat training, too. He surprised her by suddenly dropping his butt to the floor, pulling her off balance. Nikki fell forward and hit the deck on top of him, still clutching his gun wrist, but her other hand had come free of the Glock.

He tried to head butt her nose. She slipped it and went for the gun again with her free hand, but he pulled it away.

She called out to Rook, but he couldn’t hear her over his grinding.

Nikki leaped back to her feet. Keeping her joint lock on his wrist, she yanked his arm to full extension and smacked it, trying to break the elbow. But Petar jerked his arm back defensively, just enough for her blow to hit his forearm instead. She didn’t disable the joint, but the punch did loosen his hold on the Glock. It dropped to the floor.

Heat dove for it, but the gun landed just beyond her reach, skimming across the deck. Scrambling to snatch it, she reached the edge of the platform just as the pistol tumbled over the side onto the tracks below.

She almost went over after it. But bright light grew in the tunnel. The train raced toward her, seconds away.

Heat shouted for Rook again.

The sparks continued to fall.

Petar got to his feet. He reached for her Sig Sauer in his waistband.

Nikki scoped the platform in the light from the train. No cover for her.

The Sig came out.

The train broke the mouth of the station.

Petar brought it up to aim.

Heat made a choice.

She dove over the side.

Nikki stretched herself out lengthwise and hunkered as flat as she could in the grimy ditch between the rails. In the two seconds before the lead car got to her, she flashed on news stories she’d seen on subway commuters who had fallen on the tracks and survived that way. And those who hadn’t; it all depended on the terrain.

Heat had never been in a tornado, but that’s what it felt like to her. A ten-car cyclone of howling wind and screaming steel. The ground quaked, her body shuddered. She screamed a scream that nobody heard.

On the hike to get there, Nikki had cursed the deep depression in the railroad bed. It had created an obstacle course, making her climb up and over the crossties. Now she hoped that trenching would save her life. She pressed her face hard against the soil and emptied her lungs to make her torso smaller. The tiny breath she dared take made her mouth taste of stagnant water and rust.

Unable to count the cars, they seemed to go on forever. Hundreds more than ten. Which car, she worried, would be the one with the protruding bolt that would carve her open? Or have the dangling loop of chain to snag her and decapitate her?

Then, sudden silence. Except for the grinding of Rook’s power tool, above.

Nikki didn’t wait. She rolled under the edge of the platform and looked for the Glock in the dim spill from Petar’s Maglite. She swept the area but couldn’t see the gun. Only more plastic soda bottles and old spray cans left by taggers.

The flashlight beam hit the tracks. He was searching for her body.

Heat didn’t call to Rook again. She scrunched herself further underneath the lip of the platform and waited quietly. The concrete felt cold on her back where her flesh touched it. The bottom of one of the cars must have sliced her coat and blouse.

The light grew more intense directly in front of her. That put Petar right over her head. “Nikki?” he said tentatively. She had never hated the sound of her name so much as in his mouth just then. Heat readied herself. Made sure of her footing. Waited for his next “Nikki,” and then sprung.

She popped up and twisted to square herself with Petar where he knelt, peering over the edge of the platform, and sprayed his eyes with aerosol paint. He screamed and put his hand to his face, dropping his flashlight but not the Sig. Nikki tossed the spray can and reached up for him with both hands. Clawing him by the shirtfront, she hauled him over the side, letting go of him midair. He landed shoulder-first on the railroad bed and screamed again.

Nikki went for him, reaching for her handcuffs, but he rolled over onto his back and swung a beer bottle at her. It connected with her jaw hard enough for her to see stars. She staggered back, dazed, and sat down clumsily, just breaking her fall by putting one hand behind her.

Petar got up. His hands were empty. He wanted the Sig. Nikki had heard it hit the ground when he landed but couldn’t see it in the bad light, either.

He tried to boost himself up on the platform to get his flashlight, but it was too high. Petar had gotten to the metal ladder but had only cleared two rungs when she grabbed him again to pull him back down with her. He didn’t resist. Instead, he tried to pile drive her, letting himself be pulled and falling on top of her.

When they landed in a heap, he didn’t go for the ladder again. He tried to make a run for the station at 96th.

Without good light, he misjudged the height of the crossties and tripped, once again, landing between the rails. He hauled himself up to his feet but too slowly. Nikki hopped on him, throwing a blindside tackle. He spun himself on the way down, making her take the brunt of the landing. The wind got knocked out of her, and she ached for air so she could go after him. But he wasn’t running. Petar had her by the lapels of her coat. He was dragging her. When Heat turned her head and could see where, she was inches from the third rail.

In seconds he would drop Nikki on it and she’d take six hundred fifty volts.

Heat kicked a leg up into his crotch. They were too close together for her to generate the swing power to drop him, but it hurt enough to make him moan and loosen his grip. The back of her head hit the ground an inch from the hot rail.

He staggered away.

A downtown express was coming on the center rails. Petar started for those tracks. He was going to try to beat it across and put the train between them to give himself a chance to get away. Nikki stopped him before he got there.

She slammed a fist behind his ear and his knees buckled. He grabbed a metal beam with one hand to support himself and used it to swing his body around to strike back. But his own momentum carried him into her next blow, a fist to the temple. His eyelids fluttered and he started to lose balance.

The express train was fast approaching behind him. Heat pulled him up and slammed him against the steel beam. He took a looping swing at her. She tilted her head to dodge it and hit him with another punch in the nose. And then another. Blood gushed out his nostrils, mixing with the blue spray paint on his face.

As the telltale rush of wind from the oncoming train pushed into the tunnel, he lolled his head north, turned glazed eyes over his shoulder at the approaching headlight, and then back to her with resignation. He regarded her with the look of a man prepared to receive his fate. They both knew there were no witnesses.

This perfect moment was Heat’s chance to avenge her mother. The stuff of both dreams and nightmares.

Nikki gathered him up by his armpits and yanked him clear of the post, balancing him on weak legs as the first car broke the entrance to the Ghost Station.

He closed his eyes and waited for the push.

But when the speeding train got there, she threw him to the ground away from it. With his face in a puddle in the ditch, Nikki pulled his hands behind his back. She said, “Petar Matic?” And then Detective Heat paused before she gave voice to the words she had waited a decade to speak. “I am arresting you for the murder of Cynthia Heat.” She swallowed hard and continued, “You are also under arrest for the murder of Nicole Bernardin.”

After she put the cuffs on her prisoner and read him his rights, Heat looked up, choking back tears, and saw that Rook was still sawing at that bolt. Nikki took a moment to wipe her eyes and watch the sparks fly.

In spite of the late hour, when Heat stepped into the Observation Room on her way into Interrogation One, she found that, in addition to Rook, a small audience of detectives had come in to the precinct that night. Roach had made the trip, as had Rhymer and Feller. Malcolm and Reynolds would have been there, but they were still on Staten Island working Carter Damon’s van with Forensics. She felt all their eyes on her. They knew what this arrest meant. They also knew the ordeal she had suffered through that night, and this was a turnout for their team leader. But cops being cops, the show-up itself was the message of support. They weren’t going to express any sentiment.

To make sure of that, Ochoa said, “Real nice of you to get dolled up for us, Detective. Special.”

Heat resembled the cover of one of those commando video games. She hadn’t changed clothes, plus her face and hands were scuffed and filthy. In the hallway coming from the bull pen she had pulled a wad of grape chewing gum from the back of her hair. “Been a tad busy.”

Nikki stepped up to the magic window to look in on Petar Matic, who sat alone, in shackles, at the conference table on the other side. “Surprised you didn’t waste the asshole when you had the chance,” said Detective Feller. “Him and you? Nobody would ever know.”

“I would. Besides, he’s worth more alive. I want to know the whole story. Everything he did. Everyone he worked with. Who else he might have killed.”

“And where’s Tyler Wynn,” said Rook.

“Especially that.”

When Heat went into the box and sat across from Petar, she could see the fight all over him, too. The only difference was he’d been changed into jailwear. He bore more than his share of cuts, bruises, caked dirt, and dried blood. He even still wore the stripe of blue paint Nikki had tagged his face with. In his orange coveralls, he looked like he’d gotten ejected from a Florida Gators game.

The two stared at each other in frosty silence. Nikki didn’t like what she saw. Not just that she saw the man who had stabbed her mother to death and killed at least one other woman. Or that she saw the ex-lover who had called their relationship a job, merely a means to an end. What Nikki didn’t like was in the eyes. His submissive, resigned, defeated eyes from his takedown in the subway were history. Petar Matic had always been a strategic thinker, and his eyes told her he had done some brainstorming since they brought him up from the tunnel in handcuffs.

“You should have killed me when you had the chance,” he said.

“A lot of people around here think the same thing.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“I’m not the jury. I’m just the cop. At the end of the day, I have to stand for something. You do, too. We both know what that is.”

“The ever-righteous Nikki Heat. Saint and soldier.” He leaned forward over the table and smiled. “Too bad lover doesn’t make the list.”

When she felt her face flush, Nikki reminded herself to separate. Petar was going to try for any leverage he could get, especially messing with her head to gain an advantage. She tried to ignore the emotional stab-and the fact that, even if her squad had left the Ob Room to work the assignments she had just given them, Rook stood on the other side of that mirror. She drew a slow breath to get her focus back. “Tell me exactly when you got the contract to kill Cynthia Heat.”

“Very good. So professional to depersonalize. Your specialty.”

“Who approached you about it?”

“See? You remain focused on the work, as always.”

“I want some answers.”

He grinned. “I want a deal.”

“You don’t have anything to deal with. I already know you killed my mother and Nicole Bernardin.”

“Says who?”

“You.”

“When?”

“Tonight in the subway.”

“Prove it.”

Petar smiled his grin again, only bigger and more self-assured. It was the attitude she had seen in his eyes when he’d disarmed her earlier in the night’s drama. It was the arrogance that had made her consider killing him then. For a moment, as she knew she might from that day on, she wondered if she should have.

They both knew that this interrogation was not perfunctory. As a homicide detective, Heat recognized that any case required solid proof for the DA. Which was why she had just assigned detectives to search Petar’s apartment as well as his office at the TV show he worked for. In addition, they’d run his entire life through a sifter for any evidence they could find. And that was just the start.

But Petar was trying to seed her with doubt. Nobody else had heard him admit to the murders any more than anyone else would know if she had shoved him in front of that train. If she couldn’t find physical proof that would stand up in court, Petar Matic would walk. Keenly aware of those stakes, he played his ace card. “I have something you want, you know.”

If she blinked and showed interest she would lose ground, and that could be the beginning of the unraveling of this case. So Heat remained stoic. She betrayed no tells and said nothing.

“And maybe it’s not just information about your mother’s killing. Or the other one.” He tossed it off as if these murders were just inventory items to be noted then dismissed from reflection. “Something is coming. It’s big and it’s bad. This has been in the works for ten years-if that period creates a context in any way for you.” His allusion to the decade that bookended the two stabbings was his way of teasing her interest without admitting guilt. Petar was smart. Nikki had to be smarter.

Without taking the negotiation bait, she said, “If you know Something about a pending crime, you are obligated to share that information.”

“Sound advice, Detective. Maybe I will.” He flashed her his arrogant grin again and said, “I guess that depends on the right arrangement.”

Irons was in the Ob Room with Rook when she came through the air lock from Interrogation. The captain rushed over to Nikki. “You’re not really going to bargain with this creep, are you?”

Heat glanced up at the wall clock. “What are you doing here after midnight, Captain?”

“I heard you nabbed our man and I wanted to be here.” She noticed he was freshly shaved and dressed in his duty uniform, with extra starch in the white shirt. Wally had taken time to get himself camera-ready. “You’ve got him to rights, don’t you?”

“Not that simple. He told me he murdered both victims, but it’s my word against his, unless we button him down hard. Even beyond that, there are things we need to know that his cooperation will bring to light.”

Irons scoffed. “Sure. And long as you’re letting him call the tune, why don’t you just spring him?” And when he remembered who else was in the room, he said to Rook, “Don’t print that.”

“Never heard it, Captain.”

“Petar is not going to spring anywhere, sir. I just think the prudent course is to take a breath, bide our time, and confer with the DA first thing in the morning.”

Irons said, “You just want to drag this out so you can satisfy your own personal curiosity about every little detail and loose end about your mother.”

Heat said, “Listen to me, Captain, nobody wants to see this guy sent away forever more than I. But that means getting it right so he doesn’t walk because someone got hasty and sloppy. We have him. Our job now is to make it stick.” Irons started to interrupt, but she plowed right over him. “And what if he’s not posturing? What if he does know something that will help us arrest conspirators and prevent someone else from getting killed? Do you call that just a loose end?”

She didn’t wait for Irons’s permission. Nikki opened the door to the hallway where a pair of uniforms waited on post. “Take my prisoner down to Holding.”

It felt like any normal workday in the bull pen, except it was coming up on two A.M. on the biggest night of Heat’s career as a detective. Nikki had Ochoa hitting the phones, extending her initial APB on Tyler Wynn to CIA, DHS, and Interpol, as well as making sure the spy’s name and image made all airport checkpoints plus Amtrak police and Port Authority PD. She’d sent Feller and Rhymer to search Petar’s apartment with special instructions to quarantine all documents, receipts, photos, and computer data. Detective Hinesburg was MIA again, so Heat put Detective Raley on scrubbing those OCME security tapes that had been sitting around to see if they could get a face to go with the gas truck driver who’d sabotaged the toxicology test. No detail of the case existed in isolation for her anymore. Every thread they could eventually connect to Petar would keep him from walking.

Rook came over to Nikki’s desk when she hung up her phone. “Malcolm and Reynolds checked in while you were on your call, so I took the message for you. Let’s see if I got all this. They said they’re glad you’re not dead… At least I think that’s what they said.” He shrugged. “Oh, well. And then they gave me an update on the Forensics work at Carter Damon’s storage unit. How’m I doing?”

“Ass like yours, you could be my personal secretary anytime. What’s up with the van?”

“They found a set of work boots in it. Size eleven, same as the kind that stomped through Nicole’s apartment. Lab will check them for a carpet fiber match.”

Nikki moved over to the Murder Boards, where she made a notation for the boots next to the other data for the Bernardin apartment. “What else?”

“Traces of blood in the cargo area inside the van. Malcolm said he knew you’d be all over that, and assured you that DeJesus is handling that personally.” He waited while she logged “Blood/DNA” on the board, and then he continued, “Finally, they have good lifts off all surfaces and door handles. They’re running fingerprint IDs now.”

When she capped her marker, he asked, “So who were you on with so long?”

“Prefecture of Police in Paris, France.”

“That’s a toll call, you know.”

“Worth every penny.” He followed her back to her desk and she picked up her notes. “Get this. No record of any attack on Tyler Wynn. No record of his death. No record of him being in the Hopital du Canard. No record of him leaving the country.”

Rook stroked his chin. “Were we even there?”

“No. Not according to hospital records or detectives in Boulogne-Billancourt. They never spoke to us. It never happened.” She tossed her notes on the desk.

“How are you bearing up?”

“It’s like a Road Runner cartoon. I’m fine, as long as I don’t stop and look down.” She touched his arm. “And how about you? How’s your poor wrist after grinding on that bolt half the night?”

“Hey, five more minutes and I would have cut through that thing. How do they make it look so easy on Storage Wars?”

“Real life is never like TV,” she said.

“Especially reality shows.”

Nikki’s phone rang and she picked it up. “Homicide, Detective Heat.” The color left her face. She dropped the phone on her desktop and rushed to the door.

Rook chased after, “What’s wrong?”

“Everything.”

Heat didn’t wait to use the lockbox. She just handed her Sig to the guard as she raced into Holding. Sprinting past cells of drunks, burglars, and public urinators, she arrived at the back where the isolation cell door stood open and three officers in blue gloves knelt over Petar.

He had pitched forward off his bunk and lay sprawled on his back with a fresh, open gash in his forehead where his head had smacked the concrete. His eyes bulged in their sockets, and his skin was deep purple with crimson webs of capillaries coloring it. His tongue looked blue enough to be called black and protruded from his open mouth from a pool of froth that capped a trail of pungent, bloody vomit that ran down his neck and onto the floor. The crotch of his orange coveralls was drenched with his urine and his bowels had released in death.

The officers rose up from him. One ran out, clutching his mouth. Nikki found herself taking an unconscious step back and bumped into Rook. One of the uniforms said, “We tried to CPR him, but he was gone by the time we got the cage unlocked.”

“Did anyone see what happened?” she asked.

She was speaking to the officers, but one of the other prisoners said, “He just got his dinner and started retching something fierce.” The prisoner added a demonstration, but Nikki turned away to survey the cell.

A food tray sat on the floor with an empty plastic juice bottle tipped on its side. Nothing else had been touched. “Nobody gets near him until the ME,” said Heat. “And nobody in here eats or drinks anything until we know what poisoned him.”

“And who,” said Rook.