Frozen Heat

FOUR

The tattoo busted him. As Heat had hoped, the Real Time Crime Center had a match in its computer that connected to a suspect. A week before, the owner of a convenience store in the Bayside neighborhood of Queens had called in a complaint on a shoplifter. The surveillance cam picked him up, and even though the petty crime didn’t have the weight to make the news or light up an All Points, the RTCC logged the tatt into its database, and the hit came within minutes of Detective Raley posting his JPEG on the server. Uniform patrols flashed the picture around Bayside, and a night watchman at a used car lot recognized him as a guy he had seen hanging around lately. The break came when the security guard spotted him again a few hours after the uni visit and tailed him to a nearby house while he put in a cell call to NYPD.

Heat, Rook, Raley, and Ochoa rode in tense silence under the flashing gumball, shoulders swaying and knees bumping against the doors of the Roach Coach while Detective Raley threaded the needle through evening cross-town traffic to the Midtown Tunnel and onto the Long Island Expressway. The only gap in Raley’s concentration came on the straightaway passing the steel Unisphere at Flushing Meadows, when he side-glanced Ochoa in the shotgun seat and rabbit wrinkled his nose. His partner suppressed a smile about Rook, whose fragrant herbal massage oil had also hitched a ride in back. Heat picked up on it, but all she said was, “ETA?” Her succinct way of urging focus and speed.

Their Crown Vic rolled up to the tactical staging area at Marie Curie Park in Bayside six minutes later, and Raley angled it nose-out with the other police cars. Emergency Services Squad 9, including a unit of SWATs, stood by in black helmets and body armor. The ESS field commander greeted her as she climbed out. “You made good time, Detective Heat.”

“Thanks for waiting.”

“Listen. Going to let this be your show,” he said.

The underlying message of respect embedded in that gesture nearly choked her up, but she let it go with a crisp, “Thanks, appreciate that, Commander.”

“Got it all buttoned up for you,” he said. “Suspect is inside a single-family two-story on Oceania, next street over. Con-Ed records list the owner as a J. S. Palmer, although the bill hasn’t been paid for six months and the juice is off at the resident’s request.” He used the red filter on his flashlight, so he wouldn’t night blind her, and spread a map full of neatly drawn deployment markings on the roof of the car. “It’s the corner house here. I’ve got a tight perimeter covering all possible exits, including canines here and here. Blue-and-whites have Northern Boulevard choked off, and we blockaded Forty-seventh Avenue after you came through, so we own the streets. I also have a team inside the neighboring house, and we’ve moved that family out the side door.”

“Sounds like you’ve covered everything.”

“Not done yet.” He keyed his walkie-talkie mic. “ESU Nine to Chopper Four-one-four.”

“Go, ESU Nine,” replied a calm voice with a high-pitched purr behind it.

“Ready in five.”

“Confirm five minutes, on your signal. We’ll bring the daylight.”

Raley popped the trunk. Heat moved around to join him, Ochoa and Rook at the rear bumper. While the three detectives vested up, she said, “Rook, you wait here.”

“Come on, I promise I won’t get shot. I can wear one of those vests.”

Ochoa indicated the bold white lettering across his chest and back. “Check it out, bro. It says ‘POLICE.’”

Rook peered into the trunk. “Do you have one in there that says ‘WRITER,’ preferably in a large tall? You’re gonna like the way I look. I guarantee it.”

“Give it up,” said Nikki.

“Then why did you even bring me?”

Nikki almost let slip the truth and said, For the moral support. But she replied, “Because if I left you behind, I’d never hear the end of the whining.”

“That’s why?” said Ochoa, as the three detectives fell in with the SWAT unit. “I thought it was ‘cause Rook’s like the human Air Wick. Won’t need that cardboard pine tree in the Roach Coach with him around.”

ESU swarmed the house with a tactical precision that belied the laid-back demeanor of the commander and his team. Heat and Roach double-timed with the SWAT unit on foot, using the armored Bearcat vehicle for cover as it roared up the driveway. When the black truck came to a stop, the Bell helicopter thundered up the street and the pilot hit his Nightsun, beaming a dose of hot light to blind anyone looking out windows as the team deployed. They approached in efficient, textbook sequence, taking cover behind the porch rail, trash cans, and shrubs as they moved in. When Heat and the crew carrying the battering ram gained the front door, she knuckled it and called over the din of the chopper, “NYPD, open up.” After a pause too short to measure, Heat gave the go sign for the ram.

The thud of the door into the wall matched the pounding under Nikki’s vest as she entered the unlit house, leading the SWAT team in a surreal ballet of flashlight beams and rapid incursion. She called out, “NYPD, identify yourself!” but only heard the slap echo of her own voice in the near-vacant house. The assault force fanned out, a third rolling to the right side of the downstairs with Heat, a third going left, circling toward the dining room and kitchen, with Roach and the remainder heading upstairs to the second story and attic. The spotlight from the circling copter pierced the windows and crept along the walls, making the house feel like it was spinning. Each terse update whispered in Heat’s earpiece confused and disheartened her. “Dining room: clear.” “Kitchen: clear.” “Master bed: clear.” “Hall closet: clear.” “Attic: clear.” “Basement: clear.” The downstairs pincer groups met up in the kitchen, which smelled from enough stacked garbage to qualify for a cable TV hoarders show.

But no suspect.

“Garage status?” she said into her mic.

“Clear.”

The ESS commander came downstairs with Roach and met her in the living room. “Doesn’t make sense,” he said. “And there’s no place to hide. Closets are empty. Only a ratty mattress on the floor of the master.”

“On the vacant side down here, too,” said Detective Ochoa. He traced his Stinger LED across the nail hooks, illuminating the spots where pictures once hung above an unbleached rectangle in the hardwood the size and shape of a sofa. Now only a pair of mismatched patio chairs sat off to the side of a grimy, secondhand rug.

“Any false walls?” asked Rook, coming in the front door. “I know for a fact some of these old houses have fake doors behind bookcases.”

Heat sounded a familiar refrain. “Rook, I told you to wait outside.”

“But I saw the pretty light from the helicopter and it pulled me in against my will. It’s like Close Encounters for me. Or the rose ceremony on Bachelorette.”

“Outside. Now.”

“Fine.” He backed up to leave and stumbled to the floor, landing on his butt.

Ochoa shook his head. Raley helped him up and said, “See? This is why we can’t take you anywhere.”

“It’s not my fault. I tripped on something under that rug.”

“Well, lift your feet,” said Nikki. “On your way out.”

“Detective?” said Ochoa. He was down on one knee, running his palm across a lump in the stained green shag. He rose and whispered to her, “Hatch handle.”

They peeled back the rug and exposed a three-by-three square of plywood with a pull ring handle and hinges embedded into the floor. “I’m going in,” said Heat.

The commander cautioned her. “Let’s drop some gas down there first.”

“He’ll get away. What if there’s a tunnel?”

“Then we’ll send a dog.”

But adrenaline called her shots. Nikki slid her forefinger into the pull ring and threw the hatch back. She shined her light into the emptiness and shouted, “NYPD, show yourself.” A startled moan came from below.

“See anything?” asked Raley.

Heat shook no and swung a leg into the opening. “There’s a ladder.”

“Detective…” said the ESS commander. But too late. Overwhelmed by the drive to capture her suspect, Heat broke from procedure and descended. Ignoring the rungs, she slid down the outer rails, using the ladder like a firehouse pole. Nikki landed in a crouch, Sig Sauer ready in her right hand. She plucked the flashlight from her teeth and shined it across the cellar.

He stood completely naked in the center of the partitioned-off section of basement, staring at her with detached eyes that appeared to see and not to see. “NYPD, freeze.” Her suspect didn’t respond. Besides, he had already frozen, standing there motionless yet unthreatening as SWAT backup rained down to join her, training assault weapons with tactical-mount lights on him. “Hold fire,” said Heat.

She wanted him so dead, but she needed him alive.

All the flashlights revealed a sea of shoes surrounding him. Hundreds and hundreds of shoes: men’s and women’s, old and new, pairs and orphans-all in neat rows of concentric circles around the center, toes pointing at him. “So,” he said. “You came for my shoes.”

“What do you answer to, William or Bill?” Nikki waited again for him to speak and would wait as long as she had to. The suspect had remained silent since they sat down to face each other in Interrogation One ten minutes before. Mostly, he just studied himself in the observation mirror. Occasionally, he looked away, then back, as if to surprise himself. He rolled his muscular shoulders so that they flexed against the orange fabric of his jumpsuit.

At last he asked, “Is this mine to keep?” and seemed to mean it.

“William,” she said. “I’m going to call you what it says here on your rap sheet.” He broke eye contact and looked back in the mirror. Detective Heat studied the file again, although by then she had committed the salient facts to memory. William Wade Scott, male cauc, age forty-four. Basically a low-end drifter whose arrest record traced his movements through the Northeast following his dishonorable discharge on drug charges after Desert Storm in 1991. His beefs ran on the petty side, a ton of shoplifts and disorderly conducts, plus a few arrests that raised the bar, most notably a 1998 electronics store smash-and-grab in Providence that earned him three years as a state guest. Nikki tasked Ochoa to run a double-check with Rhode Island Corrections for the release date because that incarceration alibied him for her mother’s murder.

Behind the mirror in Observation Room 1, Detective Ochoa texted her, confirming William Wade Scott’s prison release in 2001-a year and a half after her mom’s killing. She read it passively, but Rook watched her fists ball under the table after she slipped her cell phone back into her pocket.

In the wake of so many setbacks on her mom’s case over the years, Nikki had hardened herself against despair, but this one stung. However, as ever, Heat’s response to disappointment was greater resolve. And a reality check. Did she honestly believe the killer would fall into her lap on the same day as the new lead? Hell, no. That’s what tomorrow was all about.

Rook turned to Raley and Ochoa in the Ob Room. “That still leaves him as a possible for the Jane Doe killing, doesn’t it?”

“Possible?” said Raley. “Yeah, possible…” The “not likely” was silent. After the raid in Bayside, neighbor interviews said the naked man in the basement was not the owner of the residence on Oceania Street but a homeless squatter, one of a number who had moved into nice, suburban neighborhoods throughout Long Island after residents simply walked away from upside-down mortgages. The block had filed several complaints about the man, but they grumbled that nothing had come of them. But Raley’s follow-up check on the absent homeowner suggested this vacancy hadn’t come from a mortgage walk-off. He pulled up an old 1995 New Jersey arrest against the owner for operating a hydroponic pot farm in the basement, which not only accounted for the floor hatch in his next residence-the Bayside house-but also his abandonment of the property to keep a step ahead of drug enforcement.

“OK,” said Rook, grasping for any good news, “there’s still the suitcase. He possessed the suitcase that connects to Heat’s mom. If he’s not the killer, maybe he knows him.”

Ochoa said, “She’ll get there. You watch. This is her art.”

“Why were you hiding from us in that basement?” Heat asked. No reply. “We identified ourselves as police. Why did you need to hide?”

He released his gaze from the mirror and smiled. “I don’t need to hide. I could get out of here now, if I wanted to.” Scott yanked up both wrists beside him, pulling his manacles taut and then releasing them. “These mean nothing to me.”

Nikki played along on the tightrope walk of trying to pull straight answers from a delusional, likely schizophrenic, man. But right then William Wade Scott was her best hope. If he wasn’t a good suspect, he might be a great witness. Acting unfazed, she moved a mental chess piece, a pawn. “Was it about the cigarettes you stole the other night?”

“This is all bullshit once I am taken up. You must know that.”

“Maybe I’m not as informed as you. ‘Taken up’?”

“To my vessel,” he said. “I received the special communication.”

“Of course. Congratulations, William.” Her affirmation surprised him and made him rivet her with a penetrating squint, listening intently. “Is that why you needed the suitcase? For your trip?”

“No, for the shoes! I found it and thought there’d be more shoes inside.” He leaned forward and winked. “They’ll be so pleased when I bring them shoes.”

She leaned forward, also. “But weren’t there shoes inside the suitcase? Didn’t you see shoes?”

“I… did.” He began to fidget but stayed with her. “But they were

… They were still on her.”

“On whom?”

“Her!” he said, then stooped over to grind his eye sockets with the heels of his palms. “I couldn’t take them off her.” He grew more agitated. “I couldn’t keep her.”

“Did you kill her?”

“No. I found her.”

“Where?”

“In the suitcase, pay attention.”

“Where did you find the suitcase?”

“Behind the nursing home around the corner.” He calmed and confided his big secret with a stage wink. “They throw out lots of shoes there.”

Heat made a hand gesture to the mirror, but inside the Ob Room, Raley and Ochoa were already on their way out the door for a return drive to Bayside and the nursing home.

“So when you saw her in the suitcase, why didn’t you take her back to where you found her?”

“The nursing home? Why? She was dead,” he said as if the logic of that should be obvious. “But I didn’t know what to do with her. A body is, well, it’s a complication to The Plan.” Nikki opted not to press and gave him plenty of line. He fidgeted some more and said, “I dragged her around all night. Then I saw it. A preservation vessel. It was perfect. Plenty cold inside. Even had a ramp.”

“You sure you don’t want to just crash?” asked Rook when he and Nikki got back to his loft. “It’s coming up on two A.M. No harm, no foul if you want a rain check.”

“I’m too wired to sleep. And besides, you promised me one of your Killer Caipirinhas, and I’m holding you to it, writer boy.”

“You’re on. Worth every bit of being held at gunpoint by an international arms dealer just to score his bartender’s recipe.” He opened the fridge to hunt fresh limes. She settled on the bar stool at the counter to watch the magic.

Long as the day had been, Heat’s fatigue couldn’t match her frustration. When Roach called in from the security office of the nursing home in Bayside, they had mixed news. Due to the late hour, they were fortunate to interview the same watchman who had been on duty the night before, when William Wade Scott said he found the suitcase there. Unfortunately, however, the facility had no surveillance cams at the disposal Dumpsters, which meant no pictures of the homeless man finding the suitcase and, worse, no shots of whoever left it there. The security guard did recognize the freeze of Scott rolling the luggage and verified seeing both him and the baggage leaving the property about two hours before Raley’s surveillance picture had been taken. He also said he saw Scott arrive empty-handed, validating his story that the case had been scavenged. Adding more cold water to the embers, he didn’t recognize the Jane Doe. Roach had called in the Evidence Collection Unit to survey the Dumpster area-a long shot that had to be covered-and then clocked out, telling Heat they’d return at sunup to interview staff and residents about the suitcase, Jane Doe, and whatever some nonagenarian insomniac might have seen staring out a window in the long night of the soul.

“What’s going to happen to Willie Shoetaker?” asked Rook as they clinked glasses.

“Real sensitive, Rook.” She sipped her cocktail. “But I forgive you because this Caipirinha is awesome. To answer your question, I Article Nined William Scott for an involuntary psych evaluation. It lets me hold him a few days, plus he’s better off in Bellevue. Not that I expect to get any more from him. I’m afraid he seems to be a gap in the chain, not a link.”

“Hey, you never know.”

“Don’t patronize me. I do know.”

Recognizing the rise of her firewall, Rook busied himself with his drink to fill the strained silence with something other than strain. After a decent interval, he said, “Well, here’s what I know. This may be a dead end, but only on one front.”

“Here we go. Are you back to 1999 again?”

“No. Before that. I want to look into your mom’s life.”

“Forget it, Rook.”

“Carter Damon said your mom was a piano teacher, right?”

“Tutor. Piano tutor.”

“What qualified her for that?”

Nikki scoffed. “Qualified? Pal, do you have any idea how qualified?” But then she was surprised by the answer he gave without taking a beat.

“You mean like an advanced degree from the New England Conservatory of Music while training to become a top concert soloist? That kind of qualified?” As she sat there just gawking at him, he clinked her glass and said, “Hey, you don’t get a pair of Pulitzers by being a slouch in the research department.”

“All right, so you have your special gifts, smarty. Where’s this going?”

“Riddle me this: What is Detective Heat’s First Rule of Investigation?” Before she could reply, he answered it himself. “‘Look for the odd sock.’ The odd sock being the one thing that doesn’t go with, or seems out of place in, all the evidence.”

“And?”

“And what is the odd sock of your mother’s life? Simple. Why have all that passion, talent, and classical training only to give it up to teach rich brats ‘Heart and Soul’?” He waited, same as he’d seen her wait out the homeless man through the glass.

“I… uh…” She lowered her gaze to the counter, having no answer to share.

“Then let’s find out. How? Let’s follow the odd sock.”

“Now?”

“Of course not. Tomorrow. Tomorrow’s Saturday. We’re going to Boston to visit your mom’s music school.”

“Do I have a say in this?”

“Sure. As long as it’s yes.”

They certainly seemed to know Jameson Rook at the front desk of the Lenox Hotel. After a short walk from the Back Bay Amtrak station, the two of them had planned to drop their overnight bags at the bell desk and move on with their day, but a beaming old gent whose nameplate read “Cory” welcomed the famous writer back and offered them a suite upgrade to something called “Heaven on Eleven” and early check-in. Looking out their top-floor room at the view of the Back Bay, Rook said to Nikki, “I used to come to this hotel a lot because it’s next door to the PL.” He made a nod to the Boston Public Library below. “Logged a lot of hours in there working on a romance.”

“Which book was that?”

“Not a book. Sandra, in the microfiche section.”

“You’re dating yourself.”

“I was then, too. Sandra proved immune to my charms.”

His phone buzzed. It was Cynthia Heat’s music professor from the New England Conservatory returning his call with apologies that she wouldn’t be available until the next morning. Rook set a time to meet,

thanked her, and then hung up. “I hereby declare this day to be an RTWOTC.”

“What’s RTW… whatever?”

“Romantic Trip While On The Case. And you call yourself a cop?”

They had set out to stroll Newbury Street to select one of the thousands of sidewalk cafes for lunch, but on Boylston, when they got a whiff of a gourmet food truck selling pulled pork Vietnamese noodles and rice bowls, a quiche on Newbury didn’t stand a chance. They unpacked the white paper bag on a park bench in Copley Square and began their impromptu picnic. “Nice view,” said Rook, pointing to the bronze statue in front of them. “The ass of John Singleton Copley and a twenty-four-hour CVS.” He put his hand on her knee and added, “Wouldn’t have it any other way.” When she didn’t reply, he repeated, “Wouldn’t have it any other way.”

“I should never have left New York.”

Rook put his container of noodles down to give her his full attention. “Look, I know it’s not your nature to take what feels like a step back in the middle of a case. Especially this one. Trust me, I know you are all about pure effort. But you have to try to see this as work. Even if it doesn’t feel like it every second, you are still investigating something my gut tells me is important. And remember, that squad of minions you browbeat are hard at it back home. This is good strategy. It’s divide and conquer, in action.”

“Doesn’t feel like it to me.” Heat set aside her rice bowl and made phone rounds of the investigation while he ate. When she had finished, she couldn’t mask her disappointment. “They came up empty at the nursing home.”

“Too bad. I halfway wondered if that lab cleaning residue might have come from there. They must have some medical solvents in a place like that.”

She shook her head. “Roach checked that already.”

“You know, we ought to have a name like that. A compressed nickname like Raley and Ochoa. Roach.” And then he added, “Only ours would be romantic. I mean there was Bennifer, right? And there’s Brangelina. We could be…”

“Done with this relationship?” She laughed. But he kept on.

“Rooki?… Naw.”

“Would you stop?”

“Or how about… Nooki? Hm, I like Nooki.”

“Is this how you lost Miss Microfiche? Talk like this?”

He hung his head. “Yes.”

A rain shower rolled into Boston, so they took things indoors, to the Museum of Fine Arts. They dashed through a downpour from their taxi, past a group of guerilla artists on the sidewalk with political works on display. One was a lovely, if unimaginative, acrylic painting of a greedy pig in a top hat and tails, smoking a cigar. It caught Rook’s eye, though, and as he ran by, he almost tripped over a sculpture of a three-foot-tall gold leaf fist clenched around a wad of cash. “What a way to go,” he said to Nikki once they got in the lobby. “KO’d by the ‘Fist of Capitalism.’”

Just by entering the museum, he sensed Nikki had become temporarily released from her cares. She grew animated, telling him the MFA had been a weekly pilgrimage when she went to college at Northeastern. She hooked his arm and took him to see all of her favorites in the collection, including the Gilbert Stuart oils of Washington and Adams and The Dory by Winslow Homer. Transfixed, Rook said with reverence, “You know, his water is the wettest you’ll ever see in a painting.” The John Singer Sargents triggered warm memories of the print of Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose Rook had given her when they first started seeing each other. Heat and Rook kissed under The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit, a masterpiece from the period when the artist made a living painting American expatriates in Paris. The four daughters didn’t seem to mind the PDA.

Another Sargent, on loan from a private collector, hung to the side by itself. Also painted in Paris, it was the artist’s portrait of a Madame Ramon Subercaseaux.

“I’ve never seen this one,” said Rook. “Isn’t it amazing?” But a shadow fell over her demeanor again. All Nikki did was grunt a cursory “uh-huh” as she moved on to the next gallery. He lagged behind to take in the portrait. It captured an elegant young woman with dark hair seated at an upright piano. Mme. Subercaseaux was posed turning away from the instrument. Her melancholy eyes stared out, meeting the viewer’s, and one hand rested behind her on the keyboard. The painting evoked the feeling of a pianist, interrupted.

Rook followed after Nikki, understanding her discomfort with it.

The showers had cleared out, and Heat asked him how much he would hate getting dragged along on a nostalgia tour of her alma mater, just across the street. “On an RTWOTC Saturday?” he asked. “First, I’d love to.”

“And second?”

“If I said no, I’d be kissing off any chance of hotel sex.”

“Damn straight.”

“Then what are we waiting for?” he said.

Frankly, the notion of a tour didn’t excite him, but he didn’t regret a bit of it, simply because he could see how the visit energized her. Rook watched Nikki’s cares shed at each point of interest and every old hang she showed him. She snuck him in the backstage entrance to Blackman Auditorium to see where, as a freshman, she played Ophelia in Hamlet and Cathleen, the summer maid, in Long Day’s Journey into Night. At Churchill Hall, where Heat studied Criminal Justice, they found the doors locked but she pointed to the fifth floor so he could see the window of her Criminology lecture hall. Looking up at it, he said, “Fascinating, the actual window,” then turned to her, adding, “That hotel sex better be mighty raucous.” He paid for that crack by having to endure small talk with her freshman Medieval Lit professor, whom she stumbled upon in the campus Starbucks grading Beowulf term papers. Crossing the quad took them to the bronze statue of Cy Young. Relishing her role as tour guide, Nikki proudly informed him it stood on the exact location of the mound where Young had pitched the first-ever perfect game when the site had been the old Huntington ballpark.

“Photo op,” he said, handing her his iPhone.

Nikki laughed. “You’re such a boy.”

“I wish. This is so I can pretend I know something about baseball. When you grow up without a dad, raised by a Broadway star, there are gaps. Swear to God, until this moment I thought Cy Young was the composer who wrote ‘Big Spender.’”

She snapped one of him aping the legendary pitcher, reading signs from the catcher. “Let me get a close-up.” She zoomed in on his face and, in the viewfinder, saw him looking past her, frowning.

Nikki turned to see what Rook was reacting to and said, “Oh, my God… Petar?”

The skinny man in the Sherpa cap and designer-torn denim who was walking past, stopped. “Nikki?” He pulled off his sunglasses and beamed. “Oh, my God. This is crazy.”

Rook stood by, leaning an elbow on Cy Young’s pitching arm, as he watched Nikki and her old college boyfriend hug. And just a little too exuberantly to suit him. Now he did regret the campus tour. This guy Petar went up his ass from the day he had met him last fall. Rook convinced himself it was not some possessive, irrational jealousy of an old flame. Although Nikki said that’s precisely what it was. Petar Matic, her Croatian ex, screamed Eurotrash, and Rook couldn’t believe Nikki didn’t see it. To Rook, this journeyman segment producer for Later On! a post-midnight talk show he looked down on as Fallon-lite, posed as if he held the pulse of late night comedy in his pale-fingered grip. Rook knew there was only one thing Petar Matic held the pulse of every night, and he tried not to imagine it.

“Oh, and James is here, too,” Petar said, parting at last from Nikki.

“It’s Jameson,” said Rook, but Petar was too busy delivering a man hug shoulder bump for it to register.

Nikki touched his cheek and said, “Look at you, you grew your beard back.”

“Just stubble,” Petar said. “Stubble’s like the new deal.”

“All the rage in Macedonia,” said Rook. Petar seemed oblivious to the jab and asked what they were doing there. “Just a getaway.” Rook draped his arm around her shoulder and said, “Nikki and I are grabbing a little alone time.”

“Thought I’d show him our old stomping grounds,” she said. “What about you?”

“I’m having alone time, too. But alone.” He chuckled at his own joke and continued, “I came up from New York for the day to guest lecture a Communications seminar about the future of late night talk shows.”

“Professor Mulkerin?” asked Nikki.

“Yep. Funny, I barely got a C in that class, and now I’m the star alum.”

“Well, it was great to see you,” Rook said, the verbal equivalent of checking his watch.

“You, too, Jim. I wish I had known. We could have planned dinner together.”

Nikki said, “Let’s!” The smile she gave Rook held the hotel sex card clenched in its teeth.

Rook forced a grin. “Great.”

On the cab ride back to the Lenox, since Nikki didn’t have a knife, she cut the silence with her tongue. “Know what you’ve got, Rook? Petar envy.”

“Don’t make me laugh.”

“You have a thing against him, and it shows.”

“I apologize. I just didn’t see dinner with your old boyfriend as part of the RTWOTC plan. Is this payback because I got a massage from a practitioner who happened to be somewhat attractive?”

“Rook, she was a Victoria’s Secret model without the angel wings.”

“You thought so, too, huh?”

“Your jealousy is transparent and over-the-top. Forget old boyfriend. Yes, Petar did try to rekindle when we ran into him last fall, but I ended that.”

“He hit on you? You never told me that.”

“Now he’s just an old friend.” She paused to peer up at the top of the Pru then said, “And yes, this still is an RT-whatever. But just to remind you, since you may have been too traumatized-or in denial after your gunshot-Petar was a huge help breaking that case. This is my chance to say thank you.”

“By having me buy his dinner?”

She looked out the window and smiled. “Win-win for me.”

He booked a table at Grill 23 for the simple reason that, if it was good enough for Spenser, it was good enough for him. After starting off with topneck clams and an extraordinary Cakebread Chardonnay, dinner wasn’t pure hell for Rook. Perhaps just purgatory. Mostly he smiled and listened as Petar gassed on about himself and his exciting behind-the-scenes role booking guests for Later On! “I’m this close to the big get,” he said, and lowered his voice. “Brad and Angelina.”

“Wow,” said Nikki, “Brangelina.”

“I hate those cute nicknames,” said Rook.

Petar shrugged. “Nikki, remember what they called us? Petnik?”

“Petnik!” She laughed. “Oh my God, Petnik.” Rook reached for the ice bucket and filled his own glass, wondering what the hell it was about scruffy waifs with sad, soulful eyes that attracted women. What was this magical allure of underachievement and unruly hair?

After a main course of memory lane conversation and Nikki’s fifth cell check of messages from the precinct, Petar came out of his self-absorption to observe that she seemed preoccupied. Nikki set down her fork, leaving a perfectly good duck fat tater tot still speared on it, and napkinned her mouth. The clouds that had parted for her rolled in on a new cold front. She told Petar about the new development in her mother’s case, pausing only for the plates to be cleared before she resumed.

To his credit-for once-Petar listened intently and without interruption. His face sobered and his eyes grew hooded by an old sadness. When she finished, he shook his head and said, “There’s no such thing as closure for you, is there?”

“Maybe I can close the case someday. But closure?” She dismissed the entire concept with the wave of a hand.

“I don’t know how you got through it, Nikki.” He rested his hand on her wrist. “You were very strong then.” Rook signaled for the check.

“Maybe strong is what broke us up.”

He smiled a little and said, “And not me cheating?”

“Oh, right.” She grinned. “That, too.”

On their way out, Nikki excused herself to the ladies’ room and Petar thanked Rook for the nice meal. “You’re a very lucky guy, Jameson Rook,” trilling the R, a remnant of the accent. “Take this the right way, OK? I honestly hope you’re luckier than I was. I could never get through that protective wall of hers. Maybe you won’t give up.”

In spite of himself, Rook had to admit maybe he and the old boyfriend had something in common, after all.

The April air had chilled overnight, and as they waited Sunday morning on the empty sidewalk outside of NEC’s Main Conservatory Building to meet her mom’s former professor, Nikki could see vapor trails from Rook’s nose. It reminded her of Lauren Parry’s breath inside that freezer truck, and she turned away to watch a bus roll by on Huntington Avenue. Then they both heard bouncy synthesized music followed by a man’s amplified voice singing the Flashdance song “Maniac.” The two of them turned all around, searching for the source.

“He’s up there,” said the gray-haired woman approaching from the bus stop. She pointed to an eighth-floor open window in an apartment building behind the NEC residence hall, where a black man in a red long-sleeved shirt and matching black leather vest and fedora sang into the mic of his karaoke machine. “That’s Luther.” She waved up to the window, and Luther waved back, still swaying and singing, his booming voice echoing off the face of the building. “Every morning, when he sees me, he auditions like this for the Conservatory. I told him once we don’t do pop, but he seems undaunted.” Professor Yuki Shimizu extended her hand and introduced herself.

The three of them ascended the foot-worn marble steps and entered through hallowed wooden doors into the vestibule. “I guess you know NEC is a national landmark,” said the professor. “The oldest private music institution in America. And no, I wasn’t here when it opened. It just feels like it.”

As they signed in at Security, Professor Shimizu said, “Pardon me for staring, but I can’t help it. You look just like your mother.” The old woman’s smile filled her entire face and warmed Nikki. “Take that as a supreme compliment, my dear.”

“So taken, Professor. Thank you.”

“And since it’s my day off, how about calling me Yuki?”

“And I’m Nikki.”

“Most people call me Rook,” he said. “But Jameson’s fine, too.”

“I’ve read your magazine articles.”

“Thank you,” he said.

A twinkle played in the woman’s eyes. “I didn’t say I liked them.” She threw a wink Nikki’s way and led them down a corridor to the right. In spite of the gray hair earned over seventy-six years, she strode with vitality and purpose, not a bit like she even knew what a day off felt like.

As they passed a rehearsal hall, a scattering of students awaiting their turns sat cross-legged on the brown and tan carpet, beside their backpacks and instrument cases, listening to iPods. From inside the hall, Bolero pounded against the closed door, all lush and percussive. Rook leaned over and whispered to Nikki, full of suggestiveness, “Mm, Bolero.”

Professor Shimizu, strides ahead of them, stopped and turned. “You like Ravel, Mr. Rook?” she asked, clearly having nothing wrong with her hearing. “Almost as sexy as Flashdance, eh?”

She took them downstairs to the Firestone Audio Library, where she had arranged a booth for them to meet in, for quiet and privacy. Once they all sat, she regarded Heat again and said, “Nikki, you became a police officer, right? So much for the apple falling from the tree theory.”

“Actually, I had planned on becoming a performer myself,” she said. “I went to college next door at Northeastern and was on track get my degree in Theater Arts when my mother was killed.”

Professor Shimizu surprised her. The old woman rose to her feet and crossed to Nikki’s chair, clasping both her hands in both of hers. “I have no words. And we both know none can fill that void.”

Rook could see Nikki blink away some mist as the woman returned to her seat, so he began for her. “Professor, may I go back for a moment to our metaphorical apple tree?”

She turned aside to Nikki. “Writers.”

“You feel her mom was quite promising as a performer?”

“Let’s talk about the whole student, Jameson. The goal of this institution is not simply to grind out performers like sausage. This is a school, but it is also a community. We stress collaboration and growth. That means artistically, that means technically, and, most importantly, as a person. They are all connected if one is to achieve mastery.” The old teacher turned to address Nikki. “Simply put, your mother embodied those values like few I have seen in my almost sixty years here, both as a student and as faculty.” She paused for effect and said, “And do I look like I’d blow smoke up your skirt?” Heat and Rook laughed, but the professor remained serious. “Your mother also confounded me, Nikki. She studied, she practiced, she inquired, she experimented, and then she studied and practiced some more-all so she could realize her passion, her dream of becoming a concert pianist of the first order. I knew she would get there. The faculty had a pool going about when she would get her first recording contract from Deutsche Grammophon.”

“What happened?” asked Rook.

“Wrong question. You mean, ‘What the hell happened?’” She looked at Nikki and said, “You don’t know either, do you?”

“That’s why we came to see you.”

“I’ve seen this sort of thing before, of course. But usually, it’s alcohol or drugs, or a man or woman derailing them, or burnout, stage fright, or mental illness. But your mother, she simply went to Europe on holiday after graduation and…” The professor lifted both hands off her lap and let them drop. “No reason. Just a waste.”

Rook broke the brief silence. “Was she really that talented?”

The old professor smiled. “You tell me.” She swiveled her chair to the console behind her and switched on the TV monitor. “Lights, please,” she said. Rook got up to kill the overheads and rolled his chair beside Nikki’s in front of the screen. The image that appeared there, 16mm film dubbed to VHS years before, fluttered and resolved. They heard applause and young Professor Yuki Shimizu, with jet-black hair and a polyester pantsuit, stepped to a podium. The subtitle lettering read, “Keller Recital Hall, February 22, 1971.” Beside them, Yuki whispered, “Anyone can pound out Beethoven and hide in the spectacle. I chose this because of its simplicity, so you could see all her colors.”

“Good evening,” said the professor on-screen. “Tonight, a rare treat. French composer Gabriel Faure’s Pavane, Opus Fifty, performed by two of our outstanding students, Leonard Frick, playing cello, and, at the piano, Cynthia Trope.” Upon hearing her mother’s maiden name, Nikki leaned closer as the camera panned to an impossibly skinny student with muttonchops and an explosion of kinky hair behind a cello. Then the TV screen included Cynthia in a sleeveless black formal with dark brown hair brushing her shoulders. Heat cleared her throat at the sight. Rook felt like he was seeing double.

The piece began on the Steinway grand, slowly, softly, plaintively; Cynthia’s elegant arms and slender fingers rode the keyboard like gentle waves and then became joined by the cello in harmony and counterpoint. “One bit of color, and I’ll shut up,” Yuki said to them. “This is a choral work, but in this arrangement, the piano carries that part. It’s amazing what she does with it.”

For six minutes they sat, mesmerized, watching and listening to Nikki’s mother-only twenty-weave under, inside, and through her partner’s plaintive cello line in graceful motion, playing fluid and sure, her swaying body connected to the music and the piano, a picture of natural poise on the bench. Then the velvety opening turned sharply dramatic, signaling distress, tragedy, and discord. Cynthia’s unruffled flow broke and she threw thundering, athletic stabs at the ivory. Her neck and arm muscles were sculpted into sharp definition with each of the concussions she delivered, etching the recital hall with crisp shocks of upheaval before returning seamlessly to the melodic, stately dance, with the whole effect of her contribution elevating the performance above melodrama to fully realize the composer’s intent, which was its sophisticated cousin, melancholy. At the end, her fingers gently shaped the notes into softness, not just heard but felt. Ending solo, her tender creation conjured a vision of puffy snowflakes gently lighting on frozen branches.

During the applause, her mother and the cellist stood for humble bows. Rook turned to Nikki, expecting to see tears glistening on her cheeks in the reflection of the video. But no, that would be melodrama. Her response was in tune with her mother’s in the piece-melancholy. And longing.

“Want to see one more?” asked the professor.

“Please,” said Nikki.

The video continued to roll as the duo quickly set up to became a trio and a classmate joined them on stage with her violin. Heat and Rook both reacted at the same time. Rook said, “Stop the tape.”

Nikki shouted, “No, don’t stop it, freeze it. Can you freeze it?”

Professor Shimizu punched the pause button and the image of the violinist froze as she brought her instrument and bow up, revealing a small scar on her outer wrist.

“It’s her,” said Rook, voicing what Heat already knew. “That violinist is our Jane Doe from the suitcase.”