Deadly Heat

THIRTEEN

Special Agent in Charge Callan didn’t make it optional for Heat to join him in the Homeland Situation Room for a meeting of his Bioterror Task Force. He drew her away from Rook and said, “Listen, you will be there. And if there’s some personality conflict between you and Agent Bell-”

“I think you know I’m more professional than that,” she said, interrupting him. “I know what’s at stake, and I would never let personal feelings interfere.” And then, for his benefit, she added, “Personal feelings on any level, about anyone.”

A hint of a smile, the first lightness Nikki had seen in him since his arrival on-scene, creased the corners of his mouth. “Guess we’re all pros here, then.”

“And given the very big clock that’s counting down, I need to put my energy where it can do its best: working the street. Do I have time to button up my loose ends here?”

Callan slid the cuff off his aviator-style watch as he led her back to his Suburban. “I’m jumping on this now, but if you think you can make better use of time in the field, do it. I’ve got people en route from the Pentagon and CDC, and they’ll be joining the meeting in-progress, also.”

Rook heard that and cleared his throat. Nikki said, “He can come, right?”

“I’m her wall. She bounces things off me.” He raised his hand in oath. “And it’s all off the record.”

The agent scrutinized him. “Yes, Mr. Rook can join us, if that means you’ll actually show up, Detective Heat.”

“Oh, we will,” said Rook.

“Parting orders?” said Agent Callan as he got in his vehicle. “Not a word about this. Not just press, Rook.” He addressed them both. “Not to anyone. No mentions to sweethearts, family, friends, anybody. In this era of social media, we don’t want word to spread and start a panic.”

“Right,” said Rook. “Who needs a viral threat to go, well, viral?”

“On second thought, Heat, leave him in the car.” He slammed the door and roared off to Varick Street with the hidden emergency lights strobing in the grill of his SUV.

“You look just like on TV,” said Alan Lew, manager of the Surety Rent-a-Car location. “Nothing like a police officer. You’re beautiful like a model. Or Bond girl.”

“Thank you, Mr. Lew. And thank you for calling in your tip. It was brave and extremely helpful.”

“The picture on that Web site, FirstPress? Didn’t do you justice.”

“Oh, you saw the article,” said Rook with a sly wink to Nikki.

“Yeah, it was OK. Good story. But the writing… not exactly Shakespeare, you know?”

Rook’s smile vanished. “I think the detective has some questions for you, sir.”

“We’re going to keep the rental agreement she filled out, if that’s all right.”

“Absolutely.”

“This photocopy you made is obviously of a fake ID and an alias.”

“I pretended the copy machine was slow so I could stall her until you got here.”

“Very resourceful. Can you tell me what she was doing during that time?”

He came around the counter and stood where Salena Kaye had been. Heat made a little sketch, out of habit, and marked the spot. Sometimes these interviews were perfunctory; sometimes they yielded clues. In her experience, motivated people like Lew made good witnesses, so Nikki paid close attention. “She was mostly right here the whole time. Looking around a lot. Watching me in the back when I called you. It took two tries to reach you, and I didn’t want her to get away.”

“May I?” asked Heat. Mr. Lew stepped aside, and she stood where he had and rotated. “Looked around like this?”

He nodded eagerly. “Except she was doing this.” He repeated her move, but mimed holding a cell phone to his ear.

“She was on her phone. Did you hear anything she said? A name?”

The manager said, “She didn’t say anything, she was just holding it.”

She turned to Rook. “Go to the entrance where I came in, so I can see you coming.” He trotted out to the sidewalk and walked in the garage driveway, as Nikki had. As soon as Heat saw him, she ran to the glass door and retraced Salena Kaye’s route to the man lift, timing herself. She walked back to the office, looking thoughtful.

A patrol officer came in. “Excuse me, Detective? Got an eyewit.”

Outside the deli on Cliff Street, a bicycle messenger said he saw Salena Kaye race off in a silver minivan. “Did you get a plate?” asked Nikki.

The eyewitness shook his head. “It didn’t have any plates.”

“Was she driving?”

“Some dude.” He didn’t get a description of the driver. “I was too focused on staying alive. Van almost creamed me, booking ass out of there.”

A technician from ECU had found Salena Kaye’s shoulder bag under the deli steam table. Rook said, for the benefit of all in earshot, “She must have dropped it-when I took her down.” Heat was too busy placing the bag’s contents out on a table to pay attention.

She laid out a slim Eagle Creek travel wallet with the fake ID, a credit card in the same alias, a few hundred in cash, a popular lipstick and compact available from any drugstore, and a hotel room key with the identification tag removed. Heat also found a clip of 9mm ammunition. “A gal always needs a spare,” said Nikki as she set it beside the other items. To her gloved touch, the outer pocket of the bag felt like it held another clip, but it turned out to be a cell phone. Nikki opened Recents and saw the last call received. It matched the time Kaye had been in the rental office. Using her own cell, Heat called the squad. Hinesburg picked up.

“Hey, Nikki,” she said, the only one in the house who used her first name, a trait residing about midpoint on her list of annoying qualities, “did that tipster guy ever reach you?”

“You heard about him?”

“Yeah, some guy called and said he spotted Salena Kaye and wanted to talk to you. I started quizzing him to make sure he wasn’t a crackpot, and he got all cranked and said he couldn’t waste time and hung up on me.”

Heat recalled the rental car manager saying he made two tries to reach her. “Detective, how come you didn’t tell me?”

“I am.” And then Hinesburg actually giggled.

“Detective.”

“You mean before? I didn’t bother you earlier ’cause I thought he was a nut job.”

As she had so many times dealing with Sharon Hinesburg, Heat made a silent three-count before she continued. “You have a pen? Write this down.” Nikki recited the Recents number from Salena Kaye’s phone and asked her to run it. “And Sharon? Do call me immediately when you get the trace.”

After she hung up, Heat furrowed her brow, considered the screwup potential, then pressed the speed dial for Detective Ochoa’s cell. When he answered, she gave him the phone number and asked him to trace it. “And Miguel, don’t let Hinesburg know you’re doing this. I asked her to run it, and I’m having second thoughts about her follow-through.”

“You mean just now?” He laughed and hung up.

“You think someone called and tipped Kaye off, don’t you?” said Rook.

Heat continued to go through the shoulder bag. “Could be. Why do you ask?”

“Because back at the rent-a-car, when you asked me to go out and reenact walking in-playing the part of you-there’s no way Salena Kaye could have spotted you without you spotting her, too.”

“Not unless she has X-ray vision and saw me coming through the wall when I was on the sidewalk.” She glanced up from her bag search and gave him a smile. “That’s good deduction, Writer Boy.”

“I walked a mile in your shoes, Nikki Heat.”

“You can stop now.”

“Stopping,” he said.

“OK, here we go…” From a fold at the bottom of the shoulder bag she pulled out a small plastic card, about the size of a supermarket rewards chip. “Somebody joined a gym.” She held up the membership card with the bar code on it so he could see. “Coney Island Workout.”

Macka, the owner of the gym, paused his chore of rolling towels and stacking them in cubbies to scan the bar code on the infrared gun at Reception. “She bought a month-to-month. This who you’re looking for?” He spun the computer flat-screen toward them. Salena Kaye’s unsmiling ID photo, taken right there against the powder blue wall, stared out. But the name matched the fake credit card and license, not her real one.

“That’s her,” said Heat. “Do you have an address?”

“Sure do,” he said and brought that file up for them to see. “It’s in Fairfax, Virginia.” No surprise to Heat. She turned away to scan the gym, hoping to find someone Salena worked out with-also a long shot; Kaye would be a loner and just use the facility to keep up her battle strength. Then Macka said, “But I know where she lives. You know, she’s kind of a looker. I was waiting for my bus one night and saw her go in the Coney Crest on Surf Ave.”

On their way there, Rook said, “Excuse me, you’re not going to check in with our cousins at Homeland Security?”

Heat knew she should, but answered, “It’ll slow us down,” speaking the perfect brand of truth: the one that also functioned as camouflage for a deeper truth. Someone may have tipped off Salena Kaye about Heat’s visit to the rent-a-car. Nikki simply would not take the chance that it could happen again, and made a field decision that this raid would be lightning-quick, minimal in size, and known solely by the actual participants. She only made two calls. One to Benigno DeJesus, whose evidence collection team had finished scouring Heat’s apartment, and the other to the Sixtieth Precinct to request some uniformed officers to establish a perimeter around the motel and provide backup. Detective Heat never said for what, and nobody asked her to. Everyone just assumed it was all about the Rainbow case.

The Coney Crest fell into that subcategory of lodging known as the SRO, or single residence occupancy-a weekly transitional rental for the increasing number of unfortunate souls who’d lost their homes in a bad economy. In police shorthand, SROs also functioned as flophouses for the marginally legal and folks hiding out: shitheads, robbers, and offenders. The thing most of these places had in common was few questions asked, bad smells in the halls, and names that sounded classier than the joint.

As Heat walked the second-floor breezeway toward Room 210, a trio of uniforms crept up the far stairs to converge with her in the open hallway. She paused to look over the rail at the cloudy swimming pool where Rook waited beside the broken diving board. The Coney Crest’s manager, no constitutional scholar, never asked for a warrant. The weary man with pouched eyes simply gave Nikki his passkey, even though he pointed out that the one Heat had brought from Salena’s bag would fit 210 and about a half dozen other doors in the place.

Detective Heat and the officers behind her took positions on opposite sides of the door. Using the silent signals and the plan they had worked out in the parking lot, Nikki knelt, slid the key in the lock, called, “Salena Kaye, NYPD, open up,” and unlocked the door. The nearest uniform booted it open and they all rolled in, covering one another and shouting don’t-move commands.

In fifteen seconds, it was over. They had cleared the bedroom, the closet, the bathroom, even searched the modest array of cabinets in the kitchenette.

“You didn’t really expect her to be in here, did you?” asked Rook when she allowed him in.

“Not really. Kaye’s a trained agent. She’d been burned, we had her key; she’ll never come here again.” She smiled at him. “But let a girl have her fantasies.”

“Every wish begins with Kaye,” he said.

Benigno DeJesus had no trouble finding the place. He had been to the Coney Crest so many times over the years that he’d joked to his forensics team about renting one of the rooms to keep as storage for his gear. While Heat’s go-to ECU detective snapped open his rolling case out on the breezeway and prepared to examine Room 210, he filled Nikki in on the results of his run of her apartment.

The report didn’t take long. The intruder had gotten in through a closet window. The busted latch had been invisible to her eye when she’d made her check of the place, but DeJesus’s inspection of the window from the outside revealed jimmy scratches and brass shavings on the sill from chiseling and prying. He found no sign of the missing hard drive from her lipstick cam or any evidence of DNA-translated as excrement (not uncommon) or results of sexual gratification-same with inconsistent hairs, fibers, or shoe scuffs. The orange string matched the same lot found on Joe Flynn’s boat. The lab had it, but as with the other strings they’d tested, the prospect of finding anything useful on it seemed bleak. “We did lift some prints, but it will surprise me if they aren’t yours, Mr. Rook’s, and your building super’s.” He put on his scrub cap and added, “I know it won’t make you rest any easier, but it’s like a ghost came to visit you.”

Instead of feeling spooked, Heat processed his comment dispassionately, as an investigator. She made a mental note to run cat burglars through the RTCC database downtown, then led him into Salena Kaye’s motel room.

The forensics detective stood quietly in the center of the room and simply looked around. After a few Zen-like moments of stillness, he asked, “Your raid team, how much did they disturb?”

“Minimal. Once they opened doors and cabinets to clear the room, I sent them out.”

“Good.” Finished with his overview, he continued, “Fingerprints will be tricky due to volume of room traffic in a place like this. But if she had visitors, you’ll want to know who, so I’ll do my best. We have some partials of Salena Kaye’s from your Starbucks cup, and I assume we’ll get more out of the shoulder bag you found.”

“Actually, I got it away from her,” said Rook. And, for a little extra hot sauce, he added, “During our fight.” Benigno regarded him a moment, said nothing, and got to work.

He began in the kitchenette because he’d spotted several plastic bags from a hardware store on the countertop-rather inconsistent with food preparation. “See here?” he said, holding one of the bags open with his gloved hands. “Ball bearings, bulk purchased nails, screws and nuts… I’m betting these are her shrapnel leftovers from the Tyler Wynn bomb. It’ll match, mark my words.” He opened and closed cabinets. When he got to the one beneath the sink, he knelt and shined a work light inside. Then he turned to Heat, speaking casually. “I’m going to stand down until you have the motel evacuated and call the bomb squad. Just a precaution, but take a peek.” She bent to look over his shoulder as he pointed to a plastic dish tub filled with cellophane bags, and an array of electronic parts. “None of it seems hooked up, but I see gunpowder, C4… even a backup remote control device. See that tan garage door clicker next to those firing switches and wires? That’s the same sort of radio controller that was used to detonate the package in Wynn’s apartment.”

Heat said, “I was told that got set off by a timer.”

“Not by me,” said the forensics man. “I know a timer from a radio controller.”

Heat turned to Rook, who had not only read her mind, but already had his scoff on. “Another thorough job by the Queen of Detail, Sharon Hinesburg.”

On the drive back to Manhattan, Heat put in a call to Detective Hinesburg-or, as Rook had christened her, Defective Hinesburg. “Oh, I was just about to call you.” Somehow Sharon always managed to sound as if she’d gotten caught playing Angry Birds and was covering. It occurred to Nikki that that may have been more than merely an impression. “You know that number you gave me to check out? Burner cell.”

“You’re sure.” Heat let her testiness come through.

“Yep. A prepaid phone, probably bought at a CVS or Best Buy. Not traceable.”

“The reason I’m asking if you’re sure is that you also said the trigger for Tyler Wynn’s bomb was a timer, and I just learned it was a remote. Maybe not the end of the world, but my main concern-Detective-is that I can count on you to actually complete an assignment when I give you one.” Nikki side-glanced to Rook, who was nodding feverishly and throwing shadow punches in the passenger seat.

“But I did.” The whine did nothing to endear her.

“Then why did you say it was a timer?”

“Because when you called on me, I got all flustered. I forgot which it was and said the first thing I thought of. I feel a lot of pressure in those Murder Board meetings.” Hinesburg paused, and Nikki could hear her swallow hard. “I feel like you hate me, and that makes it harder. I’m trying to do better.”

Heat felt like she was dealing with a preadolescent rather than a homicide detective, and cut her losses. “Here’s where you can start, Sharon. Do what you’re asked, and if you don’t know an answer, don’t make one up, OK?”

“See, you do hate me.”

After the call, Nikki growled in frustration and said to Rook, “Last thing I need in the middle of two monster cases is Sharon Hinesburg’s…”

“… Bullshit?”

“… Crap.”

“You go, Nikki.”

“I can deal with weakness. I can even handle a certain degree of incompetence. Sort of. But what I can’t have is a lack of confidence. And there aren’t enough make-work assignments just to keep her out of the way.”

Rook said, “You should just bag her.”

“I can’t, and you know why.”

Rook smiled as they entered the Midtown Tunnel. “Which is why I’d never sleep with someone I work with.”

On the sidewalk outside the Department of Homeland Security, Heat made a quick call to Detective Raley before she and Rook went in. “You’re still my King of All Surveillance Media, right?”

“I’m also clairvoyant,” Raley said. “I predict my future holds canceled dinner plans.”

“Uncanny. From now on, I’m calling you the Great Ralini. I just left Salena Kaye’s SRO in Coney Island. The motel has some actual working surveillance cams, and the manager is holding the tapes from the last few weeks. I’d like you to scrub them to log her comings and goings and pull video of any visitors she might have had.”

“On it,” he said, and jotted down the address of the Coney Crest.

“And Sean, keep this between us, but that’s one of the dives I asked Detective Hinesburg to check out a few days ago. She said she did.”

Raley didn’t need much prompting. “And you want me to make sure she actually showed up?”

“Wow,” said Heat. “The Great Ralini sees all.”

“Building a paper trail?” asked Rook when she hung up.

“He’s scrubbing the video anyway.” Nikki didn’t know what felt worse, sneaking a check on one of her own detectives or having to because that’s what happened when you lost confidence in a team member.

A whispered intensity crackled in the DHS basement bunker as Detective Heat and Jameson Rook stepped off the elevator and were met by their uniformed escort. Clearly the mode had shifted down there from serious to urgent. More personnel filled the darkly lit cavern than before, some squeezed double in the cubicles, scanning e-mail traffic, tracking suspects on the Watch List, and networking informants. Others monitored JumboTron displays of the power grid, reservoirs, and nuclear plants, as well as live cams of bridges, tunnels, airports, and harbor ship traffic.

Rook said, “If I ever buy a house in the burbs, I’m going to have a man cave just like this in my basem-”

A screeching, pulsing alarm broke the hush of the control center and a blinding light strobed above the two of them. Glass doors automatically slid shut in the offices lining the perimeter. A rolling metal shudder descended, sealing the door to the Situation Room. Inside its window, Nikki could see Agents Callan, Bell, and other members of the task force get up from the conference table and stare out. A squad of four personnel in moon suits and gas masks rushed out of nowhere, grabbed Heat and Rook, and scrambled them to a small room beside the elevator. Two of the moon suits waited outside; the other pair stayed in with them. One pressed a button that created a vacuum around the door seals they could feel in their ears, as if the room were an airliner gaining altitude.

“What’s happening?” asked Nikki. They didn’t answer, just separated her from Rook and began scanning both of them with sensors that resembled microphones on the ends of yellow garden hoses attached to whirring filter machinery.

“Nikki,” said Rook. He tilted his head to a sign on the door that she had to read backward: “Contamination Quarantine.”

Then one of the machines began to chirp and blink an array of yellow lights. The word “POSITIVE” flashed on the monitor.

The positive reading came from the machine testing Heat.