Frozen Heat

SIXTEEN

The porcelain cup exploded in Nikki’s hand. She immediately dropped for cover behind the planter beside her chair and reached for her gun. When she did, she found the cup handle still in her fingers and let it fall to the pavement. Her shirt front was warm and wet. She felt for a wound, but the liquid was latte, not blood. She wondered, How did he miss with a laser sight?

The answer came when she turned to make sure nobody behind her had taken the slug. Patrons inside the cafe were oblivious to her but were reacting to something else: An aftershock large enough to make the overhead lamps sway and send the stacked glassware behind the espresso bar crashing onto the back counter. Also large enough to throw off the aim of a sniper.

Heat popped up for a fast recon. As soon as she did, the red dot traced across the planter toward her, and she gophered down just as the shot rang out and the bullet kicked up a spray of potting soil. But she had seen the source of the laser.

“Man, did you feel that?” asked the waiter as he stepped out the door.

“Get inside,” she shouted. His smile dropped when he saw the Sig Sauer in her hand. “Get everyone down. Away from this window.” He started to back up. “And call 911. Tell them, sniper on the High Line, shots fired. Officer needs help.” He hesitated. “Now.”

She chanced another peek and saw a dark form break from his position in the tall grasses and run north on the elevated path. Heat vaulted the planter to the sidewalk and dodged traffic across Tenth to go after him.

As she ran, Nikki kept an eye upward to make sure he didn’t stop to take another shot at her. She raced along the sidewalk past an hourly-rate parking lot and came to the public staircase leading up to the High Line at 18th Street. She powered up the four zigzag flights and emerged topside, crouching, panting, gun braced.

Then she spotted him in the distance.

Her sniper had a good head start and was already crossing over West 19th. A strange familiarity came over Heat as she followed him-the night chase, the rifle he cradled-it all took her right back to her pursuit of Don’s killer. She kicked up her speed, sprinting, all-out, so this one wouldn’t get away.

Nikki lost a step dodging a couple standing in the path beside a park bench. When she blew past, the woman said to her boyfriend, “What’s going on? She has a gun, too.” Heat told them to call 911, hoping Dispatch could track her progress. Maybe backup would be there to cut the shooter off where the High Line terminated in one block, and he’d come down the stairs.

But he didn’t take them.

When Nikki rounded a bend in the path, she caught his silhouette climbing over the top of the chain link fence to the construction zone for the park’s extension. The perp spotted her, too. He dropped to the ground, setting up for a shot. But unslinging the rifle took time. She stopped and braced against a light post to take aim.

He rolled in the dirt behind a pile of gravel and disappeared. Seconds later she spotted him. With his rifle slung across his back, he blasted through an opening in a debris curtain that hung from a crane.

Following him through that drape made her too vulnerable. If he was waiting for her on the other side, she’d be a big target. So when Heat got over the fence, she opted to lose a few seconds to pick her way around to the side of it rather than roll through the partition in the middle.

She crept through at the edge and paused. Where was he?

Then Nikki heard feet running away on crushed cinder.

Even in daytime, the work zone for the High Line’s new segment would have been challenging-an obstacle course of uneven dirt, piles of rebar, and stacks of old wooden crossties that had been ripped up and tossed aside for removal. But at night, it was plain treacherous. The only light in that section bled up from the street below. Everything on top where she ran became shadow and form, darkness and outline-including her perp.

When her eyes became better adjusted, Nikki pressed her speed but paid for it. She whiffed a massive pothole in the concrete and stepped right into it. Only a small crosshatch of rebar on one side of the hole kept Heat from falling right through it to the street below.

Nikki hated backing off her speed but resigned herself to a more careful pace and eased her sprint to a jog. Weaving around loose rocks and sharp metal, she approached the new section’s termination at 30th Street, the end of the line. Heat cranked it down to a walk. That’s when she saw the red dot cross the sawhorse beside her, then rise up her pant leg.

She dove behind a large plastic tub stenciled as “Clean Soil” and waited for the shot. It never came.

Heat rolled in the dirt. On the other side of the container, she came up in a brace. She spotted her sniper.

He was too far away to get an accurate shot. Plus he wasn’t aiming at her anymore. He back-slung his rifle again, vaulted the ornate deco railing, and balanced his heels on the edge.

She started for him. “NYPD, freeze!”

He turned and stared right at her, then looked down-and dove.

Nikki reached the spot where he had leaped and looked in amazement. Immediately below her stood the Trapeze School of New York, housed in a giant, inflatable white dome. Her perp had soft landed on it like it was a kid’s bouncy castle.

And fled.

Heat swung a leg over to follow but stopped when she saw him disappearing into a taxi across the street. She tried to get the medallion number, but it was too far away and it sped off too quickly.

Back at the sniper’s hide overlooking Cafe Gretchen, the tech from Evidence Collection knelt to show Heat the compressed earth and trampled grasses where he had fired at her. “Get the best casts you can of those footprints,” she said, thinking back to the work boot of whoever had ransacked Nicole Bernardin’s apartment. “See if they’re size eleven.”

She stood up and arched her back. “You OK?” asked Detective Ochoa.

“Yeah, just a little sore. Took an unexpected step into a pothole up there during the chase.”

“You’re lucky that’s all that’s sore.” Ochoa held up two plastic evidence bags, each containing a shell casing. “No shortage of stopping power here.”

Heat curled her right hand to form a circular hollow in her palm and closed one eye to peer through it like a sniper’s scope down at the cafe. Another ECU tech was busy inside the yellow tape excavating a slug from the planter beside her chair. Nikki felt a chill and turned back to Ochoa. “I don’t want the same thing to happen with this brass that happened to the glove.”

“Already with you. I’m taking these to the print lab myself and sitting with them all night, if I have to.” He started to go but took a step back. “No more close calls, OK?”

“I’ll try. Meanwhile, I’ll never complain about an earthquake again.”

Back down at street level, Heat found her waiter in the back of the cafe. When she handed him the money for her latte and tipped him, he said, “You’re kidding, right?” And then he looked at her and saw that she wasn’t.

A gleaming black Crown Victoria pulled up to the curb when she stepped back out front. Rook rolled out of the passenger seat and hugged her. “Now that I know you’re alive, thank you for interrupting my dinner. Seriously. Bless you.”

Wally Irons hauled himself from behind the wheel and ambled around the car to the sidewalk. “Heat, you’re going to give me a heart attack.”

“No, I think the mud pie will get you first, Captain,” said Rook.

Irons chuckled and said to her, “Jamie’s been like this all night. What a kidder.” Then he frowned. “In all seriousness, Detective, in light of recent events that I shouldn’t need to remind you of, what the hell are you doing exposing yourself to such a risky meet, alone and at night?”

“I appreciate your concern, sir, but I am working a case, and that’s not going to stop at sundown. Plus, my meeting was with someone I knew, who happens to be an ex-cop, so it didn’t seem like a risk to me.”

“Now what does it seem like?” asked Rook.

“A setup.”

“Who’s the ex-cop?” asked Irons.

“Carter Damon. He was lead on my mother’s case.”

“Oh yeah, I remember him. From the Thirteenth.” Irons surveyed the crime tape and the fractured planter beside Nikki’s tipped-over chair. “Let me ask you this. He ever show up?”

“No, sir.”

“You find that curious?” He inclined his head to Rook and muttered, “You should be getting some of this down.” Rook just winked and tapped his forehead with his finger.

Nikki said, “I found it curious enough to call the One Twenty-second in Staten Island to send some uniforms to drop by his house.”

“Already? Quick thinking,” said Irons, which only made her fume. She was so close to insubordination, it was lucky he spoke again before she could. “They get him?”

“No. And there’s an accumulation of mail and newspapers at his door.”

“Want me to put out an APB for Carter Damon?”

“Already done, sir.”

“Well, then.” The captain stood jangling pocket change, then pulled back his cuff to see his watch. “You know, Rook, since everything’s in hand here, we could-”

“Thanks the same, but you’ve already given me a lot to think about for one night. And I should probably hang out with Detective Heat.”

“Sure thing,” he said. The captain waited an awkward moment then got in his car. After he put it in gear, he powered down the passenger window and called across the front seat, “Alert me, twenty-four-seven, if there are any developments.” Then he drove off.

“Who talks like that?” said Heat.

“A man hoping to be quoted.”

She hated leaving Rook, so warm and naked under those sheets the next morning. He didn’t make it any easier. “Sure, use me and go to work. I feel so cheap.” And then he added, “There’s a twenty on the dresser. Get yourself something nice.” That’s when the pillow landed on his face.

Before Nikki got into the shower, she did her ritual check of personal electronics. She came back into the bedroom holding her cell phone. “Rook, listen to this. I got a text from Carter Damon at four-fifteen this morning. It says, ‘Heat. I am so sorry.’”

“For setting you up to be killed?” He looked at the text and handed the phone back to her. “Who says manners are dead?”

Nikki had already put in a good two hours when Rook strolled into the bull pen at nine. “Just got word from Detective Malcolm on Nicole Bernardin’s cremation,” she said. “Order came in from a mortuary that went out of business last year.”

“Let me guess. Seacrest Mortuary?”

“No, but I hear what you’re getting at. How bad is it, Rook, when even your wack conspiracy theories are nothing compared to this case?”

“Guess I just need to get wackier.” He handed her a Starbucks. “Here. Now try not to get a bullet hole in this one.”

“You know, I’m not one to give anyone the finger, even in jest, but I’m considering breaking my rule. You’re just that special.” She took the cup and saluted him with it. “What’s the story in Tribeca?” she asked.

“Fingerprint techs were still dusting my loft when I split. They’ll be most of the morning, but basically, they’re telling me not to hold my breath. Except for one set of yours, from opening it, there are no prints to get off the filing cabinet.”

“Wiped?”

“With extreme prejudice-a phrase that now seems apt. Same with the front doorknob and the door to the office. No prints even to lift.”

“I’m trying to reconstruct the pictures in that box to figure out what someone would want, but I’m drawing a blank. I should have kept them in a safe.”

“Like that would have stopped these guys.” He sat on her desk and she pried a sheet of paper from under one of his cheeks. “Carter Damon ever get back to you?” She shook no. “Send flowers? Edible Arrangement? A bullet with your name on it?” This time she did sneak him the finger. He smiled. “There’s hope for you yet, Nikki Heat.”

“I tried calling Damon. No answer and his voice mail box is full. I put Malcolm and Reynolds on checking his gym, his barber, the usuals. They also ran his ATM and credit cards for activity. Nothing. He’s off the grid.”

“You think he might have just set you up, or was he your sniper?”

“At this point, anything’s possible. But why? Because I pissed him off at lunch at P.J. Clarke’s? And why the text apology?” Her phone rang. It was Detective Ochoa.

“Tell me the lab did not lose that brass.”

“No, Raley and I camped out to make sure of that. In fact, I’m calling because we scored some nice, juicy prints and we have an ID on them.”

“That’s fantastic,” she said. “Bring him in.”

“I’m not thinking he’s your man.”

She slumped back in her chair. “Let’s hear it.”

“Raley, you on?”

His partner came on, conferenced in. “Yeah, so here’s the deal. I met with the guy we ID’d. He runs an indoor gun range in the Bronx. He’s a decorated combat vet with a stellar record. Nice guy, too.”

“None of that rules him out as our sniper.”

“True, but this does. He got paralyzed by an IED in Iraq and he’s in a wheelchair.”

“Then how did his prints get on those shell casings?” Nikki pondered that for a moment. “Sometimes these shooting ranges recycle spent brass and reload them. Your vet friend. Does he sell reloads?”

“Uh, yeah, in fact I saw a sign. You think our sniper bought his ammo from him?”

“I’m hoping so, Rales. I’m also hoping his name shows up in his sales records.”

Shortly after Rook relocated to his squatter’s desk to type up some of his field notes from the previous day’s interviews, Sharon Hinesburg came in and turned on her computer. At first, Nikki tried to ignore her, but the scent of a fresh mani-pedi made her cave. She picked up the sheet of paper Rook had been sitting on and stepped over to her. “Good morning, Detective,” she said.

“We’ll see.” Hinesburg opened her desk drawer carefully so she wouldn’t trash her new manicure.

“Listen, I’ve got everyone else deployed so I need you to run a check on someone for me.” She handed her the page. “His name’s Mamuka Leonidze. He may be out of the country. Notes are all here.”

Hinesburg flashed a brief, condescending smile. “Sorry. I already have an assignment, direct from the precinct commander. The OCME gas truck?”

“And how’s that going, Detective?”

“Slow.” She handed the sheet of notes back. “Give it to Rook. He’s not doing anything. He’s just writing.”

The administrative aide called across the pen, “Detective Heat, Feller on your line. Says it’s important.”

Heat let go the standoff with Hinesburg for the moment and grabbed the call. “You’ve got to be kidding,” she said, loud enough to get Rook to saunter over while she scrawled an address. “Be there in fifteen.” She hung up, tore the top sheet off the notepad, and said to him, “They found Carter Damon.”

“Where?”

“Floating in the East River.”

Lauren Parry had already set up shop on the East River piers off the FDR when Heat arrived. The traffic control uniform moved the sawhorse and waved her and Rook through, and she parked her Crown Vic between Randall Feller’s and the white OCME van. Detective Feller, who was a hundred yards out on the elbow of the L-shaped pier with Lauren and the body, spotted Heat and walked to the parking area to meet her. When he arrived, he pulled off his wraparounds and hooked the sunglasses by the temple in the V of his T-shirt. He wore a sober look, a stark contrast to his customary crime scene grabass face. Heat picked up on the change in him right off.

“Tell me what you know,” she said.

With years in the street and an orderly mind, he didn’t need to consult notes. “Harbor Unit hauled him out of the drink about an hour ago. A pilot for the helicopter service that leases the pier spotted him on approach and radioed it in.” Nikki could see the small blue airport shuttle chopper tied down on the pad at the end of the wharf, farther out in the channel. “Harbor said they’d been on the lookout for a floater. Middle of the night, a motorist called Bridges and Tunnels to say he saw somebody go off the Brooklyn Bridge.”

“Kersplat,” said Rook, getting a reproachful glance from Nikki.

“The eyewit says he wasn’t alone, someone was up there with him.”

“Did he say there was a struggle, or was Damon a jumper and somebody tried to stop him?”

“Unclear. Detective Rhymer is en route to get that statement now. Should be a solid witness, though. A cardiologist driving in for an early surgery at Downtown Hospital. Opie will brace the doc soon as he finishes his operation.”

Like Nikki, Rook must have also been thinking of suicide and the apology text she’d received at four-fifteen A.M. “What time did this come down?” he asked.

“About four-thirty.”

“Let’s go check in with Lauren,” said Heat, and she started to walk out onto the pier. Feller and Rook kept up and she asked, “Any note on him?”

“No but one thing you need to know, and it’s big. He’d been shot.”

That stopped Nikki in her tracks. The other two stopped with her. Rook said, “I wonder if he was shot by the sniper who tried to get you last night.”

Detective Feller said, “Definitely not.”

“You sound mighty certain,” said Heat.

“Because I am. Detective, I know who shot him.”

“You know who shot Carter Damon?” Feller nodded. “Who?”

“You.”