Frozen Heat

THREE

Rook disappeared to the battered desk in the corner where he used to perch during his old ride-along days, dragging along the same orphaned chair with the loco wheel he always ended up with. Heat immediately got on her computer to make her manpower grabs before Captain Irons realized he had just gotten his pocket picked. Detective Rhymer made a good fit from Burglary, so she put in her bid for him. As partners, Malcolm and Reynolds-also from the Burglary Unit-were nearly as formidable as Roach. She had heard the duo was already out on loan working undercover for Surveillance and Apprehension, but she sent an e-mail to their skipper anyway, asking for their use and nesting her personal IOU between the lines.

Randall Feller returned to Heat’s desk showing no hint of bother over basically getting hip checked by Rook minutes before. The detective, like everyone else in that room, had his head solidly on task. He gave her the photocopy he had scored of the truck driver’s route sheet for her to examine. “I’m going to hit the bricks with this and get interviewing at his stops before shifts change and people’s memories go south. So you know, I’m tearing Raley away from his work wife so he can come with me and eyeball security cams.”

“Ochoa will understand for one day. Their bond goes deeper than that,” she said with a dry smile before he left.

One of the administrative aides called across the chatter of the bull pen that Lauren Parry was on hold from the coroner’s office. Heat snatched up her phone before she finished her sentence. “Your e-mail said not to worry about being a pest,” said the medical examiner.

“You, Lauren? Never. Especially if it’s good news.”

“It is.”

“You have an ID on my Jane Doe?”

“Not yet.”

“Then it’s not good news to me, girlfriend.” Nikki gave her jab a light touch, but the truth lived inside the soft wrapper.

“What if I told you I’m already starting to get some pliability in the joints?”

Heat picked up a pen and sat at her desk. “We’re upgrading to pretty good news, Laur. Keep going.”

“First off, this tells us our Doe is not frozen solid.” The detective pictured a Thanksgiving turkey coming rock-hard from the freezer and nudged the thought aside. “The significance of this is helpful in multiples, Nikki. I put her in front of oscillating fans to bring her gradually to ambient temp so I wouldn’t destroy tissue, and the joint movement means we should be able to test sooner than later.”

“How soon?”

“This afternoon.” And then the ME added, “But beyond that, her semifrozen state tells us she did not get put aboard that truck at midnight at the food packer. That many hours inside an insulated container at subzero would have solidified her pretty good, so you can hypothesize-at least for now-that she was loaded somewhere along the route after the truck left early this morning.” Heat considered pulling Detective Hinesburg off her assignment at the loading dock and then rejected it. Better Sharon do a little wheel-spinning there than a lot of damage elsewhere. “This also means there’s a shot I can give you a more accurate time of death since there may not be any rupturing of cell walls by ice crystals. If we’re lucky there, I can get a decent measurement of melatonin from the pineal gland and urine for an accurate TOD window.”

Detective Heat had worked enough autopsies to grab hold of all the indicators and form the right questions. “Are you seeing any hypothermia?”

“Negative.”

“So we also can assume she was already dead when she became exposed to the frigid temps?”

“I’d definitely make that bet,” said Dr. Parry. “One more thing. I should have enough digital flexibility to get some fingerprints for you soon. I know you need these yesterday, but I’m being patient so I don’t tear tissue by being hasty.”

“How soon?”

“Hasty girl.”

“How soon?”

“Within the hour, for sure.”

“Hey, Lauren?”

“Yeah?”

“This is good news,” said Nikki. “Thanks for being a pest.”

After she hung up, Rook came over to join her and said, “You do know that if we weren’t in your workplace, I’d give you a shoulder rub or a hug or both.”

“Thank you for not.”

“You’re my hero, seriously. I don’t even know how you are coping.”

“Don’t,” she said. “Please, not here, not now.”

“‘Nuff said.” He raised both hands in a surrender gesture. Rook knew her well enough to know that, in spite of all the passion that boiled inside, Nikki came factory-equipped with a firewall that kept it locked up. Her feelings ran deep and hot, which made it a life’s work for her to compartmentalize. Jameson Rook unexpectedly held some keys to those locks and wisely let the subject drop. He switched gears with a survey of the room, which buzzed with a level of activity he’d never seen before. “Looks like you’ve got the taskmaster thing down, Detective Heat. Or is it taskmistress? So hard to know these days.”

“It’s a start” was all she allowed.

“And what are you planning to do?”

“Me? Keep riding herd. Beg, borrow, and steal a bunch of uniforms to get out and canvass with the Jane Doe photo, as soon as I have a clue where to show it. Maybe I’ll take a drive down to Thirtieth Street to surf the autopsy when she thaws.”

“I think you and I have more important work to do.”

Nikki gave him the wary squint he’d seen so often. “Why am I not liking this already?”

“Cute,” he said. “Always your first reaction. Until what? Sweet vindication.” He left for the Murder Boards, and, after hesitating, she surrendered and followed. When Nikki got there, he faced the two boards, balancing his hands like scales. “Is it I, or does there seem to be a bit of an imbalance?”

“First off, plus ten for grammar.”

“All part of the writer’s toolbox,” said Rook.

“And, secondly, yes, I focused my briefing on the new murder. The details of my mother’s case are too vast to post on one board.” She tapped her temple. “But trust me, it’s all in here.”

“Which is why,” he said, matching her move by tapping the nearly blank board, “we need to concentrate our efforts here.”

“Rook, I have been there. I have lived it for over a decade.”

“Not with me, you haven’t.”

“But I cannot lose traction on the new case.”

“Come on, you yourself said solve one, solve the other.” He swept his arm to the bustling squad room. “You’ve already got one plate spinning beautifully. What’s to lose by sorting through the cold case with your experience and my fresh eyes?”

“But that means going backward. More than ten years.”

He smiled and nodded. “With apologies to Prince, we’re going to partner like it’s 1999.”

“Prince may forgive you but rule me out.” Rook held his ground, affirming the logic of his idea by letting brash silence and flickering eyebrows do the work. At last, she said, “We don’t have time to go through the whole case.”

“Well, how about we start by talking to the lead detective on it?”

“He retired,” she said, the quickness of her reply designed to tell him she not only kept up on the details but that this would be no small undertaking. “Who knows where he is now?”

“I don’t know about right this minute, but at noon today Carter Damon, NYPD, retired, will be at P.J. Clarke’s on West Sixty-third having lunch with us.”

“Rook, you are incorrigible.”

“I know. I tried being corrigible once. Lasted a summer right before puberty. Corrigible was kinda dull. Incorrigible was not only more fun, it got me laid a lot. Which is also fun.” He checked his watch. “Ooh, quarter to twelve. Subway, or are you driving us to our appointment?”

Rook didn’t say much on the short walk to the 79th Street station. He kept the walk brisk to thwart Nikki from changing her mind and staying at the precinct to probe the new lead rather than traveling back in time with him. Standing in the aisle of the subway car for the two-stop ride south, she did say, “You actually knew the name of the lead investigator and where to find him?”

“Let’s just say I needed a hobby during my recuperation. A guy can only watch so many telenovelas.” The doors parted and she followed him out onto the platform.

The subway station at West 66th Street was always busy around lunchtime; however, damage from the earthquake made the pack of humanity extra dense that day. The rails and underground structure had been OK’d by MTA engineers, but superficial damage still needed a cleanup and the platforms there were halved by caution tape to keep riders away from all the tile that had broken off the walls. Many subway stops in the city had public art installations themed for their neighborhood, and their stop; the one for Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts had an impressive wall mosaic stretching the length of the station. Whole chunks of the masterpiece had fractured in the morning shake, sending glass bits of costumed warriors, opera singers, and back-flipping gymnasts to the floor. The elevator up to the sidewalk had also been tagged out of service, and Heat and Rook found themselves blockaded by an elderly woman struggling her walker up the steps. They introduced themselves to her by first names and each offered Sylvia an arm to grip for the remaining five steps. A stranger behind them, a hard-looking gangsta from Uptown with a neck and arms full of scary ink poked Heat’s shoulder. Then he volunteered to carry the old woman’s walker. Welcome to New York City in an emergency.

Up top, Sylvia left them for the Barnes amp; Noble, singsonging her thank-yous to Heat, Rook, and the gangsta, who had quietly gone his way in the opposite direction, toward Juilliard. Nikki noticed he had a clarinet case over his shoulder.

Walking through Dante Park where Broadway crosses Columbus, they saw a small band of demonstrators rallying under the Philip Johnson Timesculpture shouting warnings of doom to them about the omen of the quake. One shook a homemade sign at Nikki as she passed. It read, “The End Is Near!” Crossing the street to the restaurant, she paused to look back at the words on the sign and hoped so. Then Jameson Rook took her elbow and escorted her back to the beginning.

The P.J. Clarke’s at Lincoln Square had only opened for business two years before but already vibed old New York saloon, the sort of joint where you could get a great burger and a brew or order something icy fresh from the raw bar without a health care card. The original P.J.’s, which opened on the East Side more than a century before, was where Don Draper and his fellow mad men hung out, as did real-life throwbacks like Sinatra, Jackie-O, and Buddy Holly, who proposed to his wife there on their first date. When Nikki Heat followed Rook across the distressed wood plank floor to their table, she only spotted one familiar face. He wasn’t a celebrity but he made her knees go weak.

Carter Damon might have retired from the NYPD, but a cop’s habits run deep, and he sat with his back to the wall so he could monitor the room over his Bloody Mary. He stood to shake both their hands but kept his gaze on Nikki, even as he gripped Rook’s. Something broken lurked in that look; something that, for her, read sadness or awkwardness or, maybe, vodka. Perhaps all of the above.

“You grew up,” Damon said as they all sat. “I just got older.” Sure, he had more salt in with the pepper of his brush cut and cop-stache, and some pouches had begun to swell his eyes, but Damon, at fifty, still had the lean body of a guy who kept himself in shape. He fit perfectly into the image frozen in her head from the first time she saw him on the worst night of her life.

“I’m sorry for your loss” had been his first words. Nikki, nineteen years old then, looked up at the floating head from where she sat in the living room chair beside the piano. She hadn’t even noticed him approach. Lost in a fog, she had been transfixed by her mother’s blood, still damp but cooled on the thighs of her jeans from when Nikki had cradled her body on the kitchen floor until the paramedics and the policewoman finally coaxed her away. As Detective Damon had introduced himself, camera flashes from the kitchen strobed behind him, each one making her flinch. When he had told her he would be the detective investigating this crime, the defining word-”crime”-came punctuated, like chain lightning, by a double strobe that jolted her, ripping away her haze, and hurtled her into an alertness, a hyper-clarity, that had made every minute detail store itself like digital video. She had noticed his gold shield clipped to the breast pocket of his sport coat, but instead of a dress shirt underneath, he had worn an old, stained Jets tee with a threadbare collar, as if he had rushed there from home, his Thanksgiving eve turned upside-down by a phone call from Dispatch at the Thirteenth Precinct. Nine-one-one from a Gramercy Park apartment. Units responding. Report probable homicide. Suspect or suspects fled before discovery.

Nikki had been two blocks away, in the spice aisle of the Morton Williams supermarket, when it happened. In hindsight, it always seemed so trivial, so banal, to be running her fingertip along the alphabetical row of jars, her biggest problem in the world trying to find cinnamon sticks-sticks, not ground-while her mother was drawing her last breaths. Elated to find them, she had cell-phoned to do a victory dance and to ask if she needed anything else. After six rings the answering machine grabbed the call. “Hello, this is Cynthia Heat. I’m unable to come to-” and then a squeal of feedback as her mother picked up. She’d been kneading crust for the pies they were baking and had to wipe the butter off her hands before she could get to the phone. And, as usual, she didn’t know how to turn off the answering machine without disconnecting, so she let it roll, recording everything while Nikki listened.

“I may need evaporated milk. I have an open can in the fridge, let me see how much is left.” Then a crash of glass followed by her mother’s scream. Nikki had called out to her loud enough to turn heads in the market. Her mother hadn’t answered her, only screamed again, and the phone dropped, smacking onto the floor. By then Nikki had bolted from the market, forcing open the in door with all her strength, dodging cars across Park Avenue South, calling to her mother, begging her to speak to her. In the background, she had heard the muffled voice of a man and a brief scuffle. Then her mother had whimpered, and her body dropped hard beside the phone, followed by the clang of a knife also hitting the floor. Then Nikki heard suction, as the refrigerator door opened. The wine bottles, chilling on the door for their Thanksgiving feast, had tinkled. Then she heard the snap and hiss of a soda can popping open. A pause, then footsteps walking away, followed by silence. She still had a block to go when she heard her mother’s weak moan, and her last word. “Nikki…”

“Thank you for coming on short notice,” said Rook.

“You kidding? Whatever I can do.” He glanced at Nikki again. “I will admit, though, this is tough for me.” He drank down another swallow of his cocktail, observing her over the rim. Nikki wondered if Carter Damon was tasting failure.

“Me, too,” she said.

Damon set down his glass. “Sure, I bet it’s ten times worse for you. But as a cop yourself now, you’ve got to know how it gnaws at you. The ones you never solved. They keep you awake.”

Nikki gave him the best smile she could muster and said, “They do,” letting her neutral reply politely acknowledge a fellow detective’s pain over justice left unserved, without letting him off too easy for not getting the job done.

Her response had an effect. His face ashed and his attention went to Rook. “Is this meeting about an article? You going to write a story about this case? Because I think you pretty much covered it in the one you did a couple months ago.” There it was again. How Nikki hated that article. Favorably as it portrayed her, as one of the city’s top homicide investigators, CRIME WAVE MEETS HEAT WAVE, Jameson Rook’s cover profile for a major national magazine, gave Heat fifteen minutes she wanted back. Damon must have clocked the disdain in Nikki’s expression, and he lobbied her, saying, “It’s not like there’s anything new to bring to the party.”

“Actually, there is,” said Rook.

The ex-cop’s shoulders drew back, and he raised his head a little taller as he took the writer’s measure, too experienced, too wary to buy some journalist at face value. But when he saw Detective Heat’s nod of affirmation, he said, “Well, hot damn. Seriously?” He smiled to himself. “You know, they say don’t cash out, never give up hope…”

Carter Damon’s words rang hollow to Nikki because he had done exactly both. But she hadn’t come there to cast blame. Rook’s strategy to revisit history with fresh eyes held enough merit for her to play it out. So she briefed the ex-lead on the developments of the morning: the Jane Doe knife vic in her mom’s suitcase. He perked up with every detail, nodding with his full body. When she finished, he said, “You know, I remember logging that stolen luggage.” He paused while the waiter took drink orders. Nikki asked for a Pellegrino and Rook a Diet Coke. Damon pushed his unfinished Bloody Mary across the red-and-white checked tablecloth and said, “Coffee, black,” and the instant the waiter cleared earshot, he inclined his head back to stare at the ceiling and recite from memory. “Large American Tourister, late seventies vintage. Blue-gray hardside with a chrome T-bar pull handle and two wheels.” He tilted back to Rook, since he knew Nikki knew the rest. “We figured it for carrying the haul from the burglary.”

Rook asked, “Is that where you left it, as a homicide to cover an apartment burglary?”

Damon shrugged. “Only thing that made sense.” But then, when Rook peeled the elastic band from around his black Moleskine to take notes, the ex-detective bristled and said, “This isn’t for an article.” When they both shook no, he cleared his throat, no doubt relieved he wouldn’t appear in print as the cop who couldn’t bring it home. “There had been a burglary along with it.”

“When?” asked Rook. “Nikki got back to the apartment within minutes of the murder.”

“Whoever did the burglary did it before. The theft came from the back of the apartment, the master bedroom and the second bedroom-slash-home office. Could have even been done while the two ladies were in the kitchen. They had the mixer going, the TV on, busy talking and whatnot. But my money is it came down during the substantial time gap after she left for the market.”

Rook turned to Nikki, having heard this for the first time. “I took a walk.” The muscles tightened in her neck. “That’s all. It was a nice night. The weather was mild for then, and so I just walked for about a half hour.” She crossed her arms and turned profile to him, clearly shutting down that subject.

“What got stolen?”

“It’s all in the report,” said Damon. “She has a copy.”

“Broad strokes,” said Rook.

“Some jewelry and small decorative pieces, you know, antique silver and gold. Cash. And the desk and files got a good cleaning out.”

Rook asked, “How common is that? Jewelry, gold, and papers from a desk?”

“It’s different. But not unheard of. Could have been an identity thief going for socials, passports, and like that. Or just an amateur doing a quick grab to sort later.” He picked up on the skeptical glance Rook gave Nikki and said, “Hey, we’d ruled out everything else.”

“Take me through it,” said Rook.

Carter Damon said to Nikki, “You have all this.”

The ex-detective had a point. But the value of this began and ended with Rook hearing the first-person take from the official investigator, not his girlfriend and victim. “He’s new,” she said. “Humor him.”

The drinks came and they waved off ordering. Damon blew across his coffee, took a sip, and started counting on fingers. “One, we ruled out Nikki. Obviously not on premises, we have her alibi on the phone machine married to the time code on the supermarket security cam, end of that story. Two, no sexual assault.”

“But that doesn’t mean it couldn’t have been a motive, even if it never happened, right?” asked Rook.

The ex-cop made a face and bobbed his head side to side. “I don’t like it. That’s not to say you don’t get both a burglary and an assault, because you do see that. But in a tight time frame like this one-and I’m assuming it came down in the half hour she took her walk-experience tells me it’s going to be one or the other. I think Mrs. Heat spotted the burglar and that was that.”

“Three,” said Rook, waiting.

“Three. We cleared her dad. Touchy subject, but always the top of the list is husbands and, especially, ex-husbands. The Heats’ divorce had been recent but, by all accounts, amicable. And just to dot the i’s, Jeffrey Heat alibied clean. He was away on a golf vacation in Bermuda, where we had local authorities notify him of the murder.” Rook side-glanced to Nikki, who remained stoic, giving him her profile, as before. At least until Damon asked her, “So how’s your dad doing now?” and some unseen string pulled her face taut. “You in touch with him lately?”

“Can we move this along?” Heat checked her watch. “I need to be getting back to the squad.”

“Sorry. Sore subject?” She didn’t respond so he’d ticked off another finger for Rook. “Four. Her mother hadn’t reentered the dating pool yet, so there were no suitors to shake down.” Nikki made an impatient sigh and took a long pull of her mineral water. “Workplace conflicts,” he marked with his pinky finger, “none. Cynthia Heat tutored piano and everyone was very happy with her. Except, maybe, for a couple of eleven-year-olds who hated doing scales.” He went back to counting on his forefinger. “Enemies? Check the box that says ‘none apparent’: no neighbor disputes in the apartment building; no legal disputes pending.”

Nikki jumped in, questioning him for the first time. “Did you ever get any trace on that speeding blue Cherokee that had the fender bender at the end of our block that night?”

“Hm. No, I put the word out, but you know how they are. They never got back to me. It’s a crapshoot, no plates and all in a city this size.”

Then she said, “Mind if I ask when the last time was you checked Property to see if any of the stolen jewelry or antique pieces got fenced or pawned?”

“Hello. I retired three years ago.” A family at the next table turned to stare. He softened his voice and leaned forward to her. “Look, we all did our best with this. I gave it my shot. So did your old skipper.”

“Montrose?” The family looked again, and it was Nikki’s turn to tone it down. “You talking about Captain Montrose?”

“You didn’t know? Your skip reached out to me right after you joined his squad. He asked me to take him through my investigation, and he didn’t find anything, either. But he must have thought a hell of a lot of you to do that.”

“Captain Montrose was a special man,” she said simply as she absorbed this news.

“Guess you gave back.” He took a sip of his coffee. “I know all about what you did to clear his name.”

“It’s what you do.”

Damon made a side nod referring to Nikki as he spoke to Rook. “And I saw on the news how you took a nine in the chest saving this one.”

“It’s what you do,” said Rook.

“I took a bullet my rookie year in uniform.” He tapped the tips of two fingers to his right shoulder. “Getting shot was a picnic compared to the rehab, am I right?”

“Torture,” said Rook.

“Hell on a daily schedule.” Damon laughed.

“With brief moments of purgatory. I have a visiting sadist named Gitmo Joe.”

“Your therapist calls himself Gitmo Joe?”

“No, I do. Actually it’s Joe Gittman.”

“Love that,” said Damon. “Gitmo Joe. Any waterboarding?”

“Might as well be. He comes over every day and makes me wish I had some sleeper cell to throw in just to make him stop.” That made Damon laugh again, until he caught Nikki staring at him and it withered.

“Two thousand three,” she said. “The last time you checked Property for those fenced items was 2003. Seven years ago.”

“How do you know that?”

“Four years before you retired.”

“If you say so.”

“February 13, 2003, was your last Property check.”

When the waiter returned and read the tension, the silence that hung there sent him away without a word.

At last, Carter Damon leaned forward with something resembling a plea deep inside the red rims of his eyes. “Nikki… Detective… Sometimes the trail runs cold, you know that. It’s nobody’s fault. You move on.” When she didn’t reply, he continued, lowering into a hoarse rasp. “I worked your case. I. Worked. It.”

“Until you stopped working it.”

“Do I need to tell you how many people get murdered in this city?”

“And just how many of my mothers have been murdered?”

He shook his head and retrenched. His moment of vulnerability hardened into defensiveness. “Nuh-uh, no you don’t. That’s too easy. See, to you it’s one case. To me, it ended up being one case on my list. I couldn’t help that. The job swamps you.”

“Mr. Damon,” she said, shunning the respect of using his former rank. “You’re talking as if you actually did the job. Seems to me you stopped working about four years before you retired.”

“That’s not fair.”

“Funny,” she said, “I’ve been thinking the same thing.”

“Hey, bitch, if you think you can solve this, then do better.”

Heat rose. “Watch me.”

Rook tossed some cash on the table and left with her.

They splurged on a cab for the twenty-block ride uptown to the precinct so Heat could work her cell phone on the way instead of losing signal underground. After Rook gave the driver the address, he said to her, “You know the doctor said I had to get some weight back on me, and may I point out you are not helping me meet my goal?”

She scrolled through her messages and said, “What are you babbling about, Rook?”

“This morning we skipped breakfast, but I suppose that’s OK because it was to have wild sex.” Rook caught a flash of eyebrows in the rearview mirror and leaned forward, framing his head in the plexi window for the cabbie. “It’s all right, she’s my cousin, but my second cousin.” Nikki slouched down in the seat, trying not to laugh, because that’s what Rook did-especially when the grim darkness reached for her-make her laugh and keep on. He turned back to her and continued, “And now what happens? We have lunch with Mr.-not Detective-Carter Damon… and don’t think I didn’t catch the nuance of the omission… and my total nutritional intake from that repast came from a diet soft drink.”

“Who says repast?” she said, finishing a voice mail and pressing call back.

“A wordsmith delirious from low blood sucre.”

Nikki held up her palm. “I’m calling Lauren Parry.”

“Perfect, the coroner. If I don’t eat, I’ll be seeing her soon enough.”

Rook dropped her at the precinct and held on to the cab to take him back to his loft in Tribeca so he could do some independent research and read the case file Nikki had promised to e-mail him. After she sent it off, Heat assembled her squad for a midday update around the Murder Boards beginning with the news from Lauren. “I just got word from the ME that our Jane Doe now has a preliminary time of death, which would have been the night before last, in a window of ten P.M. to two A.M. ” She paused to let them keep up with their notes, then continued, “They were also able to lift some clean prints that Detective Ochoa has already circulated on the database. So far, no hits, but let’s hope. Forensics news. They found residue on her skin of a cleaning solvent generally used in labs.” Nikki used a capped marker to point to the grime smudge on the knee of the victim’s pants. “Also, early results of this dirt, as well as similar material on her shoes, contained elements linked to train environments.”

She took a moment to survey her group. “Nice to see Detective Rhymer in the big kids part of the building again.”

Detective Ochoa led the traditional chorus of “Welcome to Homicide, Opie,” using the Southern transplant’s house nickname.

“Rhymes, you’ll be partnering with Feller when he gets back from screening security video with Raley. Why don’t you get a head start running a check for missing pharmacists, lab techs, medical professionals, and so forth? Any other profession you can think of that would need to use industrial strength lab solvent, hit them, too.”

“Like, maybe, Ochoa’s dry cleaner,” said Detective Reynolds, kicking off a string of catcalls aimed at Oach.

“Ah, yes,” said Heat, “the irrepressible Detectives Malcolm and Reynolds, in the house. Going to put you two right to work checking out the rails and subways to see if she worked for any of them. So, flash her picture around the MTA offices, the Long Island Rail Road, PATH, and MetroNorth. As you can see,” said Nikki, gesturing to the overhead shot of the victim in the suitcase, “she is dressed like a manager or an executive, so start there with HR, but don’t rule out conductors or yard workers.”

“Got it,” said Detective Malcolm.

“And ask railroad security to screen their cams for you. Jane Doe may not be an employee but a commuter who tried to escape her killer on the tracks.”

In the back of the bull pen, Raley and Feller burst in and then stopped short, seeing the briefing still in progress. She read their excitement and said, “Meeting adjourned.”

As Heat closed the door to the glorified closet up the hall where Raley tirelessly screened security video, Feller said, “You were right to have us check cams near the delivery drops.” He picked up the truck driver’s route sheet and showed Nikki where he had made ticks in order down the page leading up to a deli address with a Sharpie circle around it. “This footage comes three doors from the driver’s last stop, at a gyro place in Queens, before he left for Manhattan.”

“Northern Boulevard near Francis Lewis and Forty-fourth Ave.,” added Raley while he keyed some commands on his computer. “We lucked out. I pulled this from a jewelry store that’s had so many smash and grabs, they recently upgraded their video to HD. You won’t be unhappy.” He made sure she was ready and hit play.

The video showed blue velvet in the store’s empty window display, which had been cleared out at closing for overnight security. The time stamp read just before five-thirty that morning and registered only light traffic with just the occasional taillight rolling by in the darkness. The sidewalk remained empty until a figure appeared from the parking lot behind the P.C. Richard electronics store across the street. He had his head down, and a drape of hair fell across his face, obscuring it. But Heat’s attention focused on the blue-gray American Tourister he rolled behind him by the T-bar through the crosswalk toward the jewelry store. The man turned his back to the camera as he used both hands to tug the heavy luggage up the access incline from the gutter to the sidewalk. The case lost balance on its way up. It would have toppled over, but he flung an arm out to trap it before it could fall, and the shadows defined some major arm muscles pressing the sleeves of his T-shirt. With the suitcase steady now on its two wheels, he continued on, passing directly by the store window, where the bright light inside must have caught his attention because he turned to look in the window. Raley froze the frame and grabbed a crisp, high-def, full-face shot of their man. His deep-set eyes almost looked right into the lens. The frozen glance left Nikki momentarily speechless as she realized she could be looking into the face of her mother’s killer.

“You OK?” asked Feller.

She only said, “What do we gather from this shot?”

Raley looked at notes he had already made. “I make him about forty-five, give or take. I’ll go with five-eleven to six feet, and two hundred, maybe two-ten considering those guns. Some kind of tattoo peeking out the neck of the shirt. Nose broken years ago, and all around a pretty hard look to him.”

“I’m betting he’s done time,” Feller said. “I know a yard face when I see one.”

“Wonder if that’s where he’s been for ten years,” added Detective Raley.

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Heat cautioned, saying it as much for herself to hear as the other two. “Write up your physical description to accompany the APB. Make a close-up of the tatt, and get it to the ink and scar database at RTCC. Even though it’s a partial, they’ve worked wonders finding matches with less. And, yes, let’s do make sure we get this still frame checked against prison records when we circulate it. Which should be immediately, or sooner.”

“Already created the JPEG,” said Raley. “Anything else?”

“Yes. You truly are King of All Security Media.”

An herbal scent greeted Heat when she opened the door to Rook’s apartment. The entry and kitchen were dark, and she caught the ambient dance of candlelight against the walls and the brushed metal appliances. The flickers came from the great room on the other side of the counter, along with dreamy New Age music. Nikki quietly slipped her keys onto the hook, hoping he wouldn’t be disappointed when she asked for a rain check on the romantic evening. After the wrenching day she’d just experienced, pizza, CNN, bath, and bed held all the allure she needed. Hell, she might even skip the food and TV.

“I’m in here,” came his voice, sounding a little throaty and disconnected, as if he’d gotten a head start on the Sancerre. Nikki stepped into the kitchen and peered across the counter to discover Rook in the dusky light, prone on a massage table. He had a towel across his ass, and a strikingly gorgeous woman in nurse’s scrubs kneaded one of his hamstrings, her long fingers just a little too close to that perfectly rounded cheek. Rook made introductions without lifting his head from the foam donut. “Nikki, this is Salena. Salena, Nikki.”

Salena looked up briefly at her, only long enough to show perfect teeth through her smile. She whispered a hello then resumed her interest in the spot where the upper thigh met the hem of his towel. “Mmm,” said Rook.

Salena said, “This is very tight.”

“Mm-hm,” he answered.

“Excuse me,” said Nikki. She left them and found her way up the dark hallway of his loft to the bedroom and closed the door.

When he came to her afterward in his robe, he found Nikki cross-legged on the bed, working her laptop. “You didn’t have to hide in here.”

“Well, I wasn’t going to stand out there while you were having your ‘me time’ with your masseuse.”

“Actually, licensed physical therapist. The agency sent Salena over to replace Gitmo Joe. How cool is that?”

She closed the lid of her MacBook. “He still sick?”

“No, he quit. So it’s Nurse Salena for the rest of my rehab. It’s only a few more sessions, but I can live with that.” He did a few twists and bends. “I’m feeling better already.”

“He just quit?”

“I think he knew I never liked him. Sadist. Dude probably didn’t like it that I talked back and offered too much resistance.”

“That wasn’t a problem with Salena. Not from what I saw.”

“Are you jealous? Seriously? That was a therapeutic session from a licensed professional.”

She laughed. “Complete with tea tree oil and Enya. Jeez, Rook, I felt like I walked into a porn video.”

“There is no Enya in porn video.”

The door buzzer sounded. “I’ll get that,” she said. “I ordered us a pizza.”

He followed her out of the room. “Ooh, pizza delivery. Now we are talking porn video.”

They ate camp-style, right out of the box, while she filled him in on the surveillance HD Raley pulled from the jewelry store cam and the forensic news about the lab solvent and train residue on Jane Doe. When they were finished eating, he said he’d do the dishes and did so by dropping the pizza carton into the recycling. “Good call on the pie,” he said. “Although I can’t decide whose I like best. Original Ray’s, Famous Original Ray’s, or Swear to God, Folks, This Really, Really Is Ray’s.”

They adjourned from the counter to the dining table, where that afternoon he had spread the printouts he’d made of the PDF case file she sent him alongside his typed-up notes from their meeting with Carter Damon. “In case you’re wondering, Detective Heat, that was a very useful exercise for me to be able to sit down with that guy.”

“I’m glad somebody got something out of it. All I got was pissed.”

“I hadn’t noticed.”

She scanned his notes and said, “But I can’t see anything new that you got. Damon was right, it’s all information already in the case file.”

“What I got is a sense of his laxness. Maybe he wasn’t when he started the case, but this is a detective who dropped the ball when it got hard and the investigation called for some old-fashioned doggedness. To me, Carter Damon is Sharon Hinesburg without the nail extensions and push-up bra. The headline for me is that we have to go back ourselves and dig deeper.”

“I disagree. Much as I don’t like Damon’s slacker mentality-”

“-more cop-out than cop-”

“-these are dead ends. Captain Montrose always drilled us to follow the hot lead. And that means we focus on the fresh trail off that suitcase.”

“We can do both.”

Nikki ignored him, plowing onward. “And when we ID our Jane Doe, we’ll be even closer.”

“Why are you resisting this?”

“Beer?” she said, and left him for the fridge. Nikki had just finished pouring them each a perfectly cloudy Widmer Hefeweizen when her cell phone rang. After she listened briefly, Heat said, “Got it. Meet you downstairs from Rook’s in five,” and hung up. “That was Roach. If you want to come, you’d better wear more than a robe.”

“Where are we going?”

“Queens. They found our guy with the suitcase.”