Deadly Heat

FIFTEEN

That maroon van could have been coming from any number of places when it got photographed getting on the Saw Mill River Parkway at Hastings-on-Hudson, but Nikki Heat could only think of one. Rook said it out loud. “Vaja.” In a single mouse click all the reasons-all the instincts-she’d had about holding on to the biochemist as a person of interest seemed to be borne out. Heat only prayed it wasn’t too late.

“Roach, saddle up.” She turned to the other detectives in the bull pen. “Feller. Rhymer. You, too. We’re taking a ride to Westchester.”

“What about me?” Detective Hinesburg came in from the kitchenette holding a plate of deli salad scoops. Suddenly it was PE class, all the teams had been chosen, and everyone started getting very busy avoiding eye contact. Heat simply didn’t want Sharon there. And she sure didn’t want to ride with her. She wasn’t about to foist her on Roach or Feller and Rhymer, either.

“I need you here to hold the fort.” Nikki felt bad for that, but in a way she knew she’d get over it in a hurry. In truth, Hinesburg could take care of a few things that would get Heat on the road faster. “Start by calling the State Police, Troop K. Tell them we are en route for a seal and seize at a place off Warburton Avenue in Hastings and need an assist. Give the Troop K lead my cell. I’ll coordinate logistics from the car.”

“Got it,” said Hinesburg, seeming content to be relevant. “What about town police?”

By then Heat and the others had reached the door. “I know the locals and have them in my contacts. I’ll handle them myself after I notify DHS.”

“What’s this guy done, anyway?” she asked.

“I hope nothing yet.” And then Heat rolled.

They took up observation positions where the Old Croton Trailway ran along a wooded hill above Vaja Nikoladze’s property. “Got just about one more hour of daylight,” said Ochoa. He turned to his left to indicate the low sun’s reflection kicking off the glass skin of the Manhattan skyline twenty-two miles downriver. From that distance, it could have been Oz.

Heat didn’t bother to look. Her focus remained through her binoculars, studying the secluded acreage below. She scanned Nikoladze’s metallic blue hybrid, which sat empty, nosed against the weathered rail where the gravel drive met the pasture beside his house. The freshly painted Victorian showed no sign of life from her vantage point. All the curtains were open but to no movement, no passing forms or shadows. And no lights inside. A breeze rustled the pink blossoms of the stand of rhododendrons near the kennel on the right side of the pasture. Nikki had never seen all the dogs he kept in there, but on her first visit the month before, she met the Georgian shepherd Vaja had anointed to reclaim the glory of his beloved show dog that had suddenly died. It crossed her mind at that moment to wonder what unexpected tragedy befell the biochemist’s dog, and if what she had read on Nikoladze’s face as grief had actually been self-reproach. Heat listened for the dogs but only heard the stir of wind mixing with the clatter of a northbound train behind the trees at the back of the meadow as it traveled along the Hudson River.

“Callan’s landing now,” said Heat, adjusting the volume in her earpiece.

Rook turned to her. “Why couldn’t we take a chopper?”

“Dude,” said Feller. “We got here in like a half hour. In case you didn’t notice, we are waiting for the slicks with their f-ing chopper.”

“Maybe it’s not so much wanting to ride in one. I was sort of hoping for once in my life I could turn to someone and say, ‘Prepare the chopper.’ ”

Raley said, “Go ahead man, hit me one time.”

“No, I couldn’t.”

“Really, here’s your chance, go ahead.”

Rook considered a beat and said, “Prepare the chopper.”

“Eat shit,” said Raley. Ochoa held out a fist and the partners bumped.

“Boys,” said Heat.

“That’s fine,” said Rook. “I know you’re just ripping me because you see me almost as a brother cop.”

“Hey, if that works for you, bro,” said Ochoa.

They met Agents Callan and Bell down on the road, around a bend that concealed them from being seen from Vaja’s property. Callan greeted Heat’s team and said, “Sorry for the delay-we had to set down in some nature preserve.”

“Mayberry doesn’t have a copter pad,” said Yardley Bell.

Nikki spread a map on the hood of her car. “No sweat. Gave us time to set up logistics. We own the area, basically. State Police have closed this road to traffic between Odell Avenue and Yonkers Yacht Club. To the west, it’s just railroad tracks and river. East is woods and the trail up the hill, where we had our OP. Detective Feller is up there maintaining surveillance.”

“Any sign?” asked Callan.

“Nothing. Car’s there, but that’s not definitive.”

Agent Bell asked, “What about his workplace?”

“Checked on that. I have excellent cooperation from local law enforcement,” Nikki said, trying to push back on her Mayberry dig. “They drove my Detective Rhymer to the institute, and he confirms Nikoladze is not there. They are remaining on-scene in case he shows, and to make sure no calls go to him.”

Special Agent Callan nodded approval. “Very thorough-for a local.” He snuck Heat a wink and asked, “How we going in?”

Heat opened up a sketch she had drawn of the compound on a blank sheet of printer paper. Just as she pulled out her red Sharpie to mark arrows for the raid, Yardley Bell interrupted. “Here, maybe this will be more helpful.” She unfolded a large, color satellite photo of the property. “This was taken just after noon today.”

Rook tried to take the brittleness out of the air. “Noon, huh? Well, maybe we should use Nikki’s since it was drawn ten minutes ago, so it’s more current.”

They took their positions on the road, behind bushes at the end of the driveway, and at key locations in the woods flanking the land to the north and south. Another contingent of State and Hastings police covered the railroad tracks behind the grove of hardwoods, to close the back door. Detective Heat’s plan had been to approach on foot in a platoon, using silence to provide surprise, with vehicles as backup to create a tight perimeter. She got overruled. But before that, she got undermined.

“First thing, Detective,” said Bell, “too much exposure on foot. You may sadly discover the surprise is yours.”

Callan became swayed. “Kinda ducks in a barrel, if he’s got a rifle.”

Before Heat could show where the cover would be and identify the house’s blind spots she had located, Yardley rolled over her. “Shock and Awe. Ever hear of that? There’s a reason… It works. Flip the plan, Detective. Roar in with the vehicles first, deploy the foot soldiers. Shock and Awe.”

Much as Heat had seen all week, Callan let his subordinate steamroll him. “Shock and Awe it is,” he said.

On Heat’s go signal they swarmed the place. SUVs and Crown Victorias with hell’s roaring fire under the hood thundered up the driveway, kicking up pea gravel and chewing lawn to the front door of the Victorian. Car doors flew open. Agents and cops rolled out. Using the vehicles for cover, Heat, Roach, Callan, and the others leapfrogged to the side of the house, squatting low as they moved along the latticework of the gallery porch.

Agent Bell executed the same tactic across the lawn. An SUV and two cars scrambled across the meadow to the kennel, depositing Bell and her team to hug the walls there. That’s when things unraveled.

As soon as all the vehicles were in, the double doors to the kennel burst open and ten Georgian shepherds ran out, barking and dashing in circles all over the compound. In the instant of surprise and distraction, an engine howled to life and an all-terrain vehicle screamed out of the building behind the cars and agents and headed for the woods. Bell and the others raised their weapons, but by then Heat had run across the grass from the house shouting, “Hold fire! Hold fire!” They had discussed it going in: They needed Vaja alive.

Yardley Bell peeled herself off the kennel wall and ran for one of the cars as she holstered her weapon. “I got him,” she yelled to Heat.

Still closing in at twenty yards, Nikki called, “We’re sealed off, he won’t get far.” Just as Heat made it beside the Crown Vic, the DHS agent slammed the door and fishtailed off, leaving Nikki to watch helplessly as she gunned it up the driveway to the road.

Rook saw the whole thing. Relegated to the rear flank, relaxing on a gurney in the back of a waiting ambulance, he first heard the dogs, then Nikki’s distant shouts. That got him out and upright on the pavement in time to hear the high-pitched engine of the ATV snapping twigs on its way through the woods to his left and the growl of the Police Interceptor flying up the road behind him.

Vaja’s four-wheeler broke out of the thicket and onto Warburton. Rook’s first impression was how small the Georgian seemed, looking like a kid joy-riding his dad’s quad. Nikoladze whipped his head Rook’s way, but was really looking past him at the oncoming car. He might have done better to keep crossing and try his chances in the woods across the lane. Instead, he gunned it and tried to make a run for it on the pavement.

In a swirl of wind and grit, the Crown Victoria blew past Rook and pulled beside Nikoladze, slowing slightly to pace him. Before reaching the curve where a hidden roadblock waited, Agent Bell brought the right quarter of her car to touch the rear of his quad and jerked the wheel, executing what every law enforcement officer and anyone who’s seen a freeway chase knows as a PIT maneuver. If it had been a car instead of an ATV, it would have spun, lost control, and stopped, facing the opposite direction. But it was an ATV.

It rocked wildly, nearly flipping over sideways. Nikoladze frantically worked the handlebars, steering madly to compensate and balance. The quad corrected, then set down hard with a bounce on its fat tires that sent the front end up in a wheelie. But the front end never came back down. It continued its rise up and over the head of the driver-until the rear wheels came up, too, and the entire vehicle went airborne-upside-down, backward. Unable to hold on with his knees, Vaja Nikoladze lost his grip and fell to the pavement on his back.

The ATV not only landed on top of him, it continued to rev and spin at a crazy high speed, churning the wheels and grinding axles all over his face and body, shredding his clothes and skin until it thumped over him like he was some meaty speed bump, crashed in the woods, and left him bleeding, lacerated, and dying on the road from a split skull.

Nikki Heat shifted in the front seat of her car, stirred from her nap by a rhythmic plunking of dew drops from a tree branch onto her windshield.

It sounded like a ticking clock.

Not quite awake, and determined to stay adrift just a few more minutes, she squinted to orient herself. Three flashlights moving in a line away from Nikoladze’s dog kennel swept the woods, forming shafts of light stabbing at the wooly fog that had woven through Hastings-on-Hudson after midnight. A forensic technician’s camera strobe flared out of the Victorian country house’s upstairs window. Amplified by the hanging mist, the flash took on the intensity of lightning without thunder.

In a few moments, Heat would resume her search of Vaja’s property with the DHS team. She tapped the Home button of her phone to check the time. Nikki had budgeted forty minutes of sleep and still had twenty precious more left to recharge.

Out there in the middle of a dark Hudson Valley pasture, she felt an odd sense of relief from the Rainbow case. Normally, the hunt for a serial killer constituted a race against time to prevent the murder of his next victim. Ironically, since Heat was his next victim, she’d bought herself a time-out. Also, what better way to feel safe than being surrounded by law enforcement at a crime scene? Nikki couldn’t do this every night, but for now, not going home and adhering to her usual patterns offered her a measure of safety.

She closed her eyes and replayed the fight she’d had with Yardley Bell after the collision, and cursed herself for losing her cool. Heat could have chalked it up to fatigue; the hours, the stress, and the intense pull of two major cases certainly gave her license to be on the raw side. But no, Nikki blamed herself for not controlling her temper. Simply put, she slipped her chain when the paramedics gave up on Vaja and Yardley’s response was to turn to Callan-and shrug.

People talked about seeing red. Heat saw a blaze of white, the way an electric spark touched off the magnesium powder in an old-time photographer’s flash lamp. The anger and frustration that had been building up during the week since she met Yardley Bell exploded. Nikki’s first words could have been more inspired, but shouting “How dare you?” right in the woman’s face got her off to a pretty good start at releasing her caged fury. Hours later, Heat still could see Bell’s expression and enjoyed the fact that she had brought her own dose of shock and awe to the day.

Rook and Roach must have feared Heat would hit her because they took hold of her shoulders and dragged her back a few feet from the agent, even as she continued to unload. It all came out: Bell’s smug intervention; forbidding Nikki to return and talk to Vaja when he was a legitimate person of interest; wasting critical time busting Algernon Barrett when the real suspect-“a freaking biochemist”-sat right there, untouched. “And then,” Nikki added, scolding her, “if that’s not enough, you not only spiked my plan for the raid-”

“I told you,” Bell shouted back, “it was a tactical clusterfuck to walk in.”

“Then what do you call driving in with all the cars committed so there’s no vehicle perimeter?”

“A fucking car wouldn’t have done any good when he headed for the woods, Detective.”

“And yours wasn’t much good when it came to capturing him alive, Agent.”

“Oh, please.”

“You recklessly caused the death of the one person who might have told us how to stop this terror plot. Vaja was twenty yards from heading into our roadblock. Why the hell didn’t you just let him go?”

“Because I am not going to-and never will-leave anything to chance. He dealt the play. I brought him down.”

“You certainly did. And now where are we?”

“Easy to throw blame, huh? Especially when you start to believe your own press. You think you have the smarts to figure it all out, but you can’t, so you disrespect me. Heat, you need to remember what every good investigator knows: You cannot get the whole picture-ever. There’s always going to be something that surprises you. Something you never saw coming. Or believed possible. Better pray it doesn’t kill you.”

Heat shrugged herself loose from her protectors and walked away to cool off.

With their prime suspect too dead to interrogate, the investigation suffered a forced reboot into forensic mode. The best of the best from Homeland Security showed up in a caravan of unmarked white panel trucks. Callan shooed the Staties and locals out of the area, fearing they’d probably trample more evidence than they found. Heat cut her own detectives loose to head back to the Upper West Side and keep working the Rainbow case. Certainly the looming catastrophe of a mass bio attack had tacitly dwarfed the serial killer investigation, but it had not set it aside. Death goes on.

“You don’t need to stay, either,” she told Rook.

“You going to be all right?”

“I already am. I just lost it. Past history,” she said. “Done.”

Rook studied her as only he knew how, searching Nikki’s eyes with a tender, caring appraisal that made her feel more human just for his closeness. Satisfied enough with what he saw, he said, “Truth is, I can stay here and be told to wait in a car, or spend the evening in my own office pulling together research for a new article I’m going to pitch Monday morning.” He smoothed a lock off her forehead with his fingertips. “And take that as a vote of confidence, Detective Heat, that there will, indeed, be a Monday morning.”

As he walked off, though, he couldn’t resist a parting Rook-shot. “That is, if you live upwind of New York. I hear Edmonton is lovely this time of year.”

A troop of cyber and bioforensics technicians joined their Homeland Security counterparts who distributed themselves throughout the house and kennel. They performed basic searches for material evidence, plus fingerprints, computer assessment, bioagent and chemical sampling, and photo-documentation. There was even an expert to blow the safe embedded in the floor of the master bedroom closet.

“By the way, safe’s empty,” Callan told Heat after the all clear. In the second bedroom, which Nikoladze had set up as a home office, he pointed to the overflowing wire basket under the shredder. “Motor on that thing is still warm. It appears the good doctor had a bit of a confetti party before we arrived.”

“Vaja knew we were coming,” said Nikki.

“He sure knew enough to hide in the kennel,” said Bell. She had been keeping her distance since their altercation, but professionals had a way of clearing air-or at least setting personal ugliness aside-in favor of a mission. “That could be because he spotted us, maybe caught a reflection of binoculars from the hill, you never know.”

“And it is possible he was a compulsive shredder,” offered Callan.

Heat said, “But put both together, and what do you think?”

“I think we keep looking,” said Bell.

The kennel disturbed Heat in a way that caught her by surprise. The Georgian shepherds all had been rounded up and taken to a local shelter for care and examination, so the long, vacant barracks with the pea green walls lit by harsh fluorescents gave off an eerie morgue vibe. It could have been Room B-23 at OCME, except it was above ground. There was only one cage, in the near corner. The dogs slept in a series of individual open pens that ran the length of the east wall; each had a waist-high enclosure that had been left open to give them freedom to roam.

As Heat walked the length of the outbuilding with Callan and Bell, she had the morose sense that she was retracing the steps of Nicole Bernardin the way she had only theorized in the bull pen with her squad. On that night a month before, Nicole would have been alone, snooping for evidence of Tyler Wynn’s deadly plot. It cost the agent her life. At the far end, they reached a wall of supply shelves full of dog food, vitamins, and grooming supplies. Beside it sat a bulkhead door. It didn’t exist in the zoning blueprints they had acquired, and it looked like it led to a basement. “Sorry, sir… ladies,” said the man in the white biohazard coveralls and gas mask. “No entry without a moon suit.”

“You guys love your drama,” said Callan. “This what you call an abundance of caution?”

“Sir, this is what we call saving your life. Our crew down in the basement has encountered evidence of bioagents.”

“I don’t know about you,” said Heat, “but I’m all for the moon suit.”

A few minutes later, after donning protective suits, including gas masks attached to metal air tanks on backpacks, they descended the aluminum steps to the basement in which Dr. Vaja Nikoladze, internationally acclaimed biochemist, Soviet defector, and peace activist, had built his laboratory to culture biological agents for terror. Nikki thought, This is a James Bond villain’s lair with bad lighting.

In size, it equaled the footprint of the building above and housed a fully stocked scientific lab, complete with test tubes and beakers, a centrifuge, and thermo-glass isolation chambers with safety glove sets built into the front panels. Four high-tech refrigeration units had labels stuck to the doors, but instead of the Little League pictures or dental appointment reminders found on most reefer doors, the labels were in Latin-some of the names Heat recognized from the CDC research she’d been reading: Bacillus anthracis; Vibrio cholerae; Ricinus communis; Filoviridae Ebola; Filoviridae Marburg; Variola major. Like sentries along a countertop stood numerous hermetically sealed, cylindrical stainless steel containers, each slapped with a bright orange sticker displaying the universal symbol for biohazard. “Love the stickers,” said Bell, her voice muffled by the mask. “As if he didn’t know what he was handling.”

“The question remains,” said Nikki. “Who was he handling it for? We still need to find them.”

Heat and the DHS agents left the basement to the technicians and their sampling equipment, ascending the steps burdened by the worst piece of news: There was a gap in the row of sealed canisters, and the space was marked with a circular ring left on the counter. It appeared that one of the twenty-gallon containers had been removed and was unaccounted for.

Topside, a forensic specialist on his knees inside the cage called them over. She indicated the drain in the floor and said, “This cage has been hosed and scoured with a laboratory grade solvent. It’s going to make DNA sampling a bear.” Then she rose and beckoned them to a spot on the inside cage wall where she held up an instrument that appeared to be an oversized cell phone. The plasma screen filled with an extreme close-up of the grating with a video-enhanced quality. “See what I’m picking up here?”

“That blood?”

“It is. And, unless one of those dogs is this tall, it’s probably human. I’ll swab and test.”

“Nicole Bernardin would have been the right height,” said Heat. “And she had a stab wound that would have been in her back about there.”

“I could see someone backing into that and leaving a smear,” said the forensic tech. “I’m also picking up fibers. Do you have the clothing from your victim?”

“I do.”

“Get it to me. I’ll be able to give you an answer in the morning.”

In her dream state, Nikki assumed that the tempo of the dew plink on her windshield had picked up until she opened her eyes to find one of the DHS agents softly rapping his knuckle on her side window. “Sorry, Detective, I tried not to startle you,” he said when she got out and stretched an unappeasable back cramp. “We finally found his cell phone.”

The evidence bag with the phone inside it sat on the galley table between Agents Callan and Bell in the RV command center. After walking more than four hours of grids in the woods, the flashlight team Heat had squinted at in her doze had located it not far from Nikoladze’s ATV escape path. “Mind if I see it?” asked Heat.

Yardley Bell pinched a corner of the plastic bag and handed it over to Nikki. While Heat unsealed the pouch, Bell said, “Oh, we ran a Customs check on the nutty professor. Vaja Nikoladze made three trips to Russia this year.”

“Probably accessed the smallpox culture there somehow and smuggled it out to grow here.” Nikki held up the phone. “Anybody got a stylus? I don’t want to touch the screen.” The communications geek at the console whipped his out with fast-draw speed and seemed quite pleased with himself. Holding the phone in her gloved hand, Heat opened the window for Recents.

“We’re way ahead of you,” said Bell. “Vaja got a call about forty-five minutes before the raid. We’re running the number now.”

Nikki looked at it and slipped the phone back into the bag. “You don’t need to. I know this number. It’s a burner. The same one somebody used to call Salena Kaye at the rent-a-car.” Heat zip-sealed the evidence bag then gave voice to what she had suspected ever since Tyler Wynn’s bomb went off. “Someone is tipping off our perps.”