Deadly Heat

FIVE

“This is Detective Heat.”

“Got your attention, did I?” The voice sounded male, but distorted, the way 20/20 electronically disguises voices of mob witnesses and whistle-blowers.

“It’s a start,” said Nikki. She sat at her desk, and when she swiveled in her chair, she saw that the entire squad had gathered around her. “So. Tell me what you’re calling about.” There was a loud click and the line went dead. She stared at the phone and had started to tell the others he’d hung up when her line rang. She jumped on it. “Heat.”

The distortion made him sound even more chilling. “Do not fuck with me. Pull that casual chatty bullshit again, I’m gone. Got it?”

“Got it.”

“I’m going to talk, and you’re going to listen.” Nikki looked over at Raley where he coordinated the call trace at his desk. “What’s this shit in the paper about it could be two people? Do I have to prove it’s not?”

“No,” she said immediately.

“We’ll see. I get to decide that, cover girl.” All of her training had taught Heat to remain dispassionate in these kinds of calls. But her heart bumped at the reference to her magazine cover. She tried to bat away the personalization. He had other ideas. “Think you’re so smart, Detective Heat? How smart do you feel running around like a rat in a maze? You smell a clue but you can’t see it. You need something to unlock that door.”

Nikki wanted to keep him talking, not just for the trace but to get a handle on him. “You don’t have to make this a contest.”

“Sorry.” Then he laughed, a digitally altered Darth Vader. “Tell you what, cover girl. Maybe I’ll give you a hand on the next one.” And then he clicked off again. Heat stood to look over the other detectives at Raley, who shook his head and hung up his phone.

Nikki went into the restroom and splashed water on her face again and again. It just seemed like something to do when all she wanted was to be alone. Drying off, she felt the paper towel tremble in her hands as she took in the magnitude of what had just happened. A challenge had been laid down. An already baffling case had suddenly taken on a new dimension for Heat, who now found herself matching wits against a serial killer, with innocent lives at stake over how good she really was. “Cover girl,” she muttered into her hands. Nikki peeled the wet towel off her face, chucked it, and left the room without so much as a glance in the mirror.

When Heat came back into the bull pen, she found another unsettling surprise waiting. “Je suis retourné!” Jameson Rook slid off her blotter and stood beside his roll-along bag. Grinning through traveler’s stubble, he held his arms open wide as she approached. She wouldn’t ice him in public, but the hug Nikki gave him wouldn’t exactly have lighted up the Kiss Cam at the Garden. “Brr,” he said in a low tone. Then added, “See, I’ve been working on my empathy.”

“Not the best time, Rook.”

“Let me guess.” He held up his copy of the Ledger. “I saw this in the airport when I got off the plane.”

Raley walked by, holding out a transcript of the phone call. She made a no-look snatch as he moved on, distributing it to the squad as they assembled around the Murder Boards. “The serial killer reads the Ledger, too, and he just called.”

“You spoke to him?”

“I did.”

“Then I got back just in time.” He breezed past her and took an empty seat with the detectives. Determined to ignore this new distraction, Nikki took her place up front.

“An assignment,” said Heat as she surveyed the room. “I need someone out at Reception to monitor incoming calls so if our serial killer tries me again, he gets right through.” Her gaze fell on Detective Hinesburg. “Sharon, you’re elected.”

Hinesburg made the face of snippy annoyance. “Fine. Your party.”

“You’re right,” said Nikki, who waited for Hinesburg to saunter off to the precinct lobby, figuring that if the detective was out of earshot, she couldn’t learn anything to leak to the paper. Heat addressed the rest of the group. “Before we begin, has anyone not read this?” She held up her copy of the tabloid.

After a moment of silence Ochoa said, “Want me to ask Detective Hinesburg?”

When the squad’s knowing laughter settled, Heat said, “Yeah, I have a feeling Sharon’s caught up.” She waited out a few more chuckles then brought them to business. “Most of you heard my side of the two calls we just got. And you’ve all got the transcript. Detective Raley also has dubbed an audio copy off our digital call server. Rales?”

He opened the WAV file on his laptop speakers. At first, Rook and the detectives started to read along. But as the chilling call continued, enticingly sinister because of the digitally futzed voice, they all abandoned their hard copies and leaned forward, staring instead at the computer, as if it were the man himself instead of the playback device for a killer’s audio bit stream. When it finished, Detective Raley clicked it off.

Complete silence followed.

Heat broke it by asking, “OK, what did we learn?” She bisected the Maxine Berkowitz Murder Board with a vertical line and began a brainstorm list in the open white space.

“It’s him,” said Detective Feller. “He worked in the hold-backs that didn’t get leaked: the skate reference and the rat in the maze thing? It’s him.”

“For now, let’s say so,” Heat agreed, and saw bobble-heads.

“Tech-savvy,” said Detective Reynolds. “Not everyone out there knows how to alter his voiceprint like that.”

Rook couldn’t resist. “There’s an app for that?”

“Raley,” said Heat. “As my King of All Surveillance Media, find out if there is.” Rales nodded and made a note. “What else?”

“Dude’s controlling,” called out Ochoa.

Heat said, “No kidding,” and wrote the trait on the board. “The way he hung up on the first call to let me know who’s boss.”

“And the second call,” added Rook. “It was all about making his points his way, in his own time, like a billiard champ running the table.”

Detective Rhymer said, “I’d put smart up there, too.” As Nikki posted that, he continued, “He knew exactly how long to stay on the call to beat the trace, and he also knew how to push your buttons, talking about case frustration…”

“… Calling you a cover girl,” said Reynolds. Nikki’s eyes went to Rook’s and then away.

“I think this guy’s beyond smart and controlling,” said Malcolm. “I say he’s pissed. Check it out.” He skim-read from the transcript, “ ‘Do not fuck with me.’… ‘I’m going to talk, and you’re going to listen.’… ‘Think you’re so smart, Detective Heat?’ ”

“That’s not just pissed,” said Raley.

“That’s competitive,” finished his partner. “Talking about making it a contest, and maybe ‘helping you’ with the next one.”

“That’s the biggest clue of all,” said Heat. “And the worst.” She didn’t have to voice it. The caller already had-that there would be a next one.

Later that morning, Roach came to Nikki’s desk. “Rook was right,” said Detective Ochoa.

“There is an app for that.” Raley picked up. Across the room at his squatter’s desk, Rook overheard and came to join them as the media king briefed Heat. “There’s not only an actual app, but we found a slew of consumer software out there for altering voices. All you need is a laptop to change how you sound.”

His partner continued, “You can do the Darth Vader like our man, or girls can sound like old ladies, or men can pretend to be women…”

Rook jumped in. “That’s why I always say…”

“ ‘Check the Adam’s apples,’ ” said Roach in a singsong chorus.

Heat stayed on task. “So this is all widely available?”

“Maybe not as much as skate wheels and string,” said Raley, “but close. Plus a hobbyist could probably go to his neighborhood Radio Shack and find all he needed to build his own electronic voice box.”

“Then we start calling Radio Shacks.” As Nikki said it, she knew-and they knew-it could be tail chasing. The kind of thing she’d put Sharon Hinesburg on. “We have to take every shot.”

They split off to work it, and she called after them, “And ask Detective Rhymer to reach out to the app vendors.” To Heat’s irritation, Rook stayed put. “A little busy,” she said, picking up a report.

“Well, when are we going to talk about this? And you know the ‘this’ I mean.”

She gestured to the bull pen with the file. “I doubt the Homicide Squad Room is the optimal place to talk about your romp in the South of France with an old flame.”

“No, the Homicide Squad Room is perfect. Because this is murder for me.”

“Very glib, Pulitzer Man. We’ll definitely talk. But I have enough distraction to deal with right now, and two murders to work.”

“Make it three.” They turned to Detective Feller as he made his way over from his desk. “Can’t be sure it’s your boy’s doing, but another one just turned up.” And just like that, another ball got juggled up in the air.

In the category of extended-stay, hybrid hotel-apartments, the HMS pressed the envelope. The über-hip HMS, acronym for Home Meet Stay, catered more to the actor in town for a movie shoot than the road warrior looking for a plexi cylinder of Cheerios at a breakfast bar. On the way through the dour, mood-lit lobby, Detectives Heat and Feller had to pause while Rook got snagged by an Irish rock legend who was camping there while he scored a Broadway musical. Rook freed himself with a vague promise of cocktails sometime, and they moved on to the crime scene upstairs.

A pair of uniforms stood a little taller when Heat got off the elevator on nine and walked the herringbone carpet toward their posts at an open door. Camera flashes from inside popped against their backs, briefly printing their shadows on the opposite wall.

“African-American male, age sixty to sixty-five,” recited the medical examiner on their arrival in the bedroom of the suite. “Photo ID on the deceased indicates he is one Douglas Earl Sandmann.” The top mattress had been pushed aside, and Heat and the other two had to move around the bed for a look at the victim, whose body reclined faceup on the box spring.

Feller asked, “Isn’t this the exterminator dude from those TV commercials?”

“Oh, my God, it’s Bedbug Doug,” said Rook, who then recited the deceased’s catchphrase, “ ‘We squash the competition!’ ”

“Easy, Rook, we get who he is.” Nikki turned to her friend Lauren Parry, whom she had been seeing too much of lately for the wrong reasons. “What about COD?”

“Prelim cause of death is asphyxia. But not strangled like Maxine Berkowitz. Mr. Sandmann was suffocated by a mattress.”

“Ironic on so many levels,” said Rook. “But mainly because Bedbug Doug was killed with a bed.”

Heat forgave his irreverence because Rook had made a point. “Just like the restaurant inspector being killed by a pizza oven and a Channel 3 reporter getting strangled by a TV cable.”

Detective Feller walked the room, which had not been disturbed, except for the upset bed and bedding. “If he was done here, there’s no sign of struggle.”

Dr. Parry, waiting out the body temp reading, said, “I picked up chloroform traces here on the front of his coveralls. Forensics roped off some scrape-and-drag depressions in the living room rug. They’re testing the fibers for chloroform spills.”

Heat turned to the responding officer. “Who found him?”

“Housekeeping. Manager says there’s a supermodel coming in to do a calendar shoot, and the maid was checking to make sure the apartment was ready for her.”

“So this isn’t the victim’s room?” asked Heat.

“No, but he does have a bedbug contract with the building.”

“So why was he here? Did they call him in to check out the room?”

“Manager says no. He didn’t even know the guy was up here.”

Nikki sent Feller off to interview the manager more fully, and sent the pair of unis in the hall to knock on some doors to ask if anyone heard or saw anything. Lauren completed her field testing and ballparked the time of death window between midnight and 2 A.M. “Which means,” said Rook, “that your serial killer had already murdered him when he called you this morning.”

“If this is his work,” said Nikki. “We don’t know that yet.” She crouched down and lifted the dust ruffle with her gloved hand to look under the bed.

Rook scanned the dresser and stuck his head inside the armoire housing the TV. He lifted up the Bible inside the nightstand and said, “Death, where is thy string?”

“Got it,” said Lauren Parry. They came to her side, and she indicated about an eighth of an inch of red string, barely noticeable because it was wedged between the victim’s shoulder and the box spring.

“OK to move him?” asked Nikki.

The ME said to hang on, called in the crime scene unit photographer to document the string and its position, then gave Heat a nod. She and Rook stood back while Parry and her technician rolled the body on its side. The CSU shooter positioned himself and clicked; his flash strobed at what they found underneath: a length of red string tied to a length of yellow string, tied to a length of purple string. The end of the purple string was knotted through the hole in the head of a futuristic-looking door key.

“I need you, and pronto, Heat,” called Captain Irons as she double-timed past his office door toward the squad room. In spite of her low opinion of him, as the skipper, Wally deserved a briefing. So she reversed field and caught him up on the murder of Bedbug Doug. When she’d finished and turned to go, he said, “Not done yet, Detective.” Nikki stopped, not having a second to waste, hoping he could make it quick. “Do you know the pressure I’m under? Do you know how many times I get called about bringing this to a resolution?”

“Yes, sir, I can only imagine they’re all over you at One PP.”

He made a face and shrugged. “No, actually, the commissioner knows we’re busting our humps. I’m talking about the media.”

“Seriously? This is about media pressure?”

“Listen, Heat, this has been on my mind, so I might as well get it out.” He gestured to a chair and they sat. “I know you’re spending your time on your other… more personal case. But now that we have a serial killer and people are paying attention in the press, you have to stop chasing that dog and put your focus where I need it.”

She had been waiting for this shoe to drop. She had known that her dimwit commander, who’d initially been so alarmed by Nikki’s poisoning attempt that he tried to bench her ass, would forget all that. Had known that he’d whimper about her split focus. Had known that because his coconut couldn’t hold two thoughts at once, he’d assume nobody else’s could. It pissed her off that Irons talked so casually about this “other case” when it was her own mother’s murder she was trying to solve. But as Nikki had waited for this inevitable chat to come down, she’d been forming a strategy.

Cement heads like Wally Irons had to be managed, not cornered. Heat needed to set her personal anger aside and be effective, because much more was at stake than justice for her mom. Nikki felt in her bones that something else was coming from this Tyler Wynn conspiracy. Otherwise all this new activity-including the attempt on her life-wouldn’t be bubbling up. So instead of outboxing the Iron Man, she’d outsmart him.

“Sir, although my connection to the Tyler Wynn investigation started personally, there is one thing I am dead sure of.”

“Which is?”

“That you and I are probably the only two cops in this department smart enough to see that this is all bigger than one homicide.” A white lie of flattery couldn’t hurt. In fact, it was pathetic to see how Wally lapped it up.

“True…” He smiled to himself, then to her. “True.”

“And when the handcuffs come out-and they will-who is going to be the hero of this?” She watched his eyes rise to the trophies on his bookcase. “One more thing, sir? What you have so wisely done here is put me on notice not to drop the ball on either of these cases. You have my pledge, Captain. I won’t fail you. Just watch.”

She held her breath while his brow creases deepened in some version of thought. Then Irons stood and said the magic words. “Just let me know if you get swamped.”

“Will do.”

“Meantime, the media’s storming me with ladders and torches. Can you give me something to tell them?”

“Sure,” she said. “You might even want to write this down.” She waited for him to uncap a pen with his teeth and turn to a fresh page of his legal pad. “ ‘No comment.’ ” And then she left to get to work.

Heat recited a download of the HMS crime scene for the bull pen. When she finished, Detective Rhymer said, “Trying to grab at any connection here. We found that rat with our first vic. Did Bedbug Doug, by chance, also exterminate rats?”

“Bedbug Doug?” asked Ochoa, incredulous.

“No rats, just bedbugs,” said Raley, reenacting one of Bedbug Doug’s TV commercials.

Rook couldn’t resist. “What about ants?”

Raley came right with it. “Nope, just bedbugs.”

“Raccoons?”

“Just bedbugs.”

“Skunks? Cockroaches? Opossums?”

“Nope, nope, nope. Just bedbugs.”

Heat said, “Are you done? Be done.”

“Got something,” said Detective Malcolm as he and Reynolds rolled chairs over from their shared desk. “A link between our first two victims.” The room hushed, and all heads tilted toward them. “Know how in ratings sweeps, TV stations do those shocking exposés about restaurant kitchen gross-outs? I just tracked down an ex-assignment editor at Channel 3. When they bumped Maxine Berkowitz off the anchor desk at WHNY, guess what her first ‘Doorbuster’ segment was? And who her prime on-camera source was from the Health Department?”

Nobody said it. But Heat took a red marker and drew a line connecting restaurant inspector Roy Conklin and Maxine Berkowitz. She tossed the dry erase pen on the aluminum tray of the whiteboard and said, “Malcolm and Reynolds, you rock.”

Feller said, “I wonder if Maxine B. ever did a ‘Doorbuster’ report on bedbugs or Bedbug Doug. That would connect them.”

“We’re all connected one way or another,” said Rook. “You can trace anyone to anyone in six hops. It’s like playing Six Degrees of Marsha Mason.”

Detective Rhymer said, “You mean Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon.”

Rook said, “Please. I grew up with a mom who’s a Broadway diva. In our house, it was always Marsha Mason.”

Roach interrupted with a report on the unusual key found under Doug Sandmann’s body. Raley posted photos of it as Ochoa recited from his notes. “It’s a high-security key. New technology from an Australian company. As you can see from the close-ups, it’s futuristic in design. Looks like a Star Wars X-Wing fighter and a barracuda made a baby.”

Raley picked up from his partner. “According to the manufacturer’s Web site, because of its dual shank and one-of-a-kind cutting, this key would fit only one in about seventeen thousand locks. Here’s the good part: Each set is registered. It’s the middle of the night in Australia, but hopefully, we can get a line on whose lock this fits, because it could be the next victim’s.”

“We’re also making rounds of local locksmiths who carry the brand,” said Detective Ochoa. “It’s high-end, so there aren’t that many.”

“So go to,” said Heat, and the squad dispersed. Her excitement at sensing some traction became muted by mistrust. This killer was a gamesman, a manipulator who had already murdered his third victim hours before he called to threaten it. Nikki only hoped they could move fast enough to save his fourth.

Heat’s e-mail chimed with a message from Bart Callan: “Ran Carey Maggs, per request. Your instinct right on. Clean returns on all data. PS: If you worked here, you’d be home now! Haha-BC.”

As she saved the e-mail, Detectives Raley and Ochoa speed-walked to her desk, both wearing eager faces. Raley said, “The lock manufacturer in Australia has a 24/7 help desk.”

Ochoa overlapped, “They tracked the serial number and said the lock and key set is registered through a locksmith on Amsterdam.”

“Did you call?”

“No answer,” said Roach.

“At a locksmith?” Nikki leaped to her feet. “Amsterdam and what?”

Heat and Rook pulled up behind the Roach Coach five blocks south, at 77th. As they came together on the sidewalk, Ochoa said to them, “Rales and I were just in this neighborhood running a check on that Rollerblade wheel.” He indicated the skate shop with a sign that read, “Central Park rentals by the hour or half day.”

Nikki’s attention went to Windsor’s Locks, the storefront next door. Something was definitely off. The window had an “Open” sign, but behind it the shop was dark.

“OK, now this is too weird,” said Rook, pointing. “Rats. Check it out. A pet store on one side with rats in the window and a roller skate store on the other?”

The pair of backup blue-and-whites Heat had called for pulled up behind her. Without taking her eyes from the store, she told the unis to cover the back. As the patrol officers deployed, she took the lead toward the glass door, flanked by Raley and Ochoa. They paused. Heat put one hand on the grip of her Sig Sauer. She reached for the door handle with the other.

“Wait,” said Ochoa. “You smell that?”

Heat sniffed. “Gas.”