Heat Rises

Fifteen

If Nikki couldn’t have access to the Huddleston file, she would have the next best thing. She asked Eddie Hawthorne to walk her through the case. The ex-detective leaned far back in his plastic chair, and when his head left the shade of the umbrella, the sunlight that hit his hair made the black dye shine purple. His eyes worked back and forth as he searched his memory, and he exhaled loudly, girding himself for this unexpected heavy lifting. “Two thousand four,” he said. “Charles and I were working Homicide out of the Four-one and got the call about a gunshot victim in a car over on Longwood. That zone was pretty much junkie central, you know? Joke among the uniforms was, you hit a perp with your baton and the crack vials come falling out like a piñata. Anyway, so Charleston and I roll, figuring this was just another garden variety crack whack.

“We reset that notion pretty quick, though, as soon as we drove up and clocked the M5. The only Beemers in that zip code belonged to dealers and we knew them by heart. So we got ready to check out the vic, figuring on a kid from maybe Rye or Greenwich who saw Scarface one too many times and made the mistake of coming to the big city to bypass his pharmacological middle man. Profile was right, too, when we saw the body. Very early twenties, expensive clothes, Green Day CD still blasting an endless loop on the custom sound system. But then it kicks up a notch when Montrose says he knows this kid. Not personally, but from TV. Wallet and registration both ID him as Eugene Huddleston, Jr., son of the movie star, and then it all starts to tumble in place for us. He’d been all over the news, especially Access and ET, for his drug spiral. Nothing like Charlie Sheen, but enough for me and my partner to paint the picture. And why wouldn’t it make sense?” Eddie wasn’t just being rhetorical. Nikki could see he was seeking her understanding. She gave a mild shrug, enough to acknowledge how it could happen, but mindful, too, that a detective follows evidence and doesn’t lead it, which was probably the same homily that kept her captain awake in hindsight.

“How was he done?” asked Heat.

“Single head shot.”

“How, face? Execution style in back?”

“Temple,” said Hawthorne.

“Like a drive-up buy where the dealer sees the gourmet car and thinks fat wallet and puts one... here?” She pointed a finger pistol at Rook’s left sideburn.

“See, that’s where it started to fight our theory.” Eddie put a finger to his own right temple. “Entrance wound on this side. Passenger side.”

All these years later, Heat was back there in her mind with Montrose and Hawthorne, processing that first odd sock. “You sure he was done in the car?”

“No doubt. Brains and broken glass on the driver’s side.”

“The window was up?” Odd sock number two for Nikki; not inherently significant, just... odd. “What about the passenger window, open or closed?”

Eddie’s eye rolled upward while he thought. “Closed, yeah for sure, closed.”

“So whoever shot him was probably inside the car with him,” said Heat.

“Riding shotgun,” offered Rook. He saw their expressions, crossed his arms, and said, “All yours.”

Nikki continued, “And I assume no prints?”

“None that did us any good. Just his clubbing and party buddies, a few girlfriends, and plenty of no-matches.” Which meant no criminal records for the unknowns. “All the matched prints alibied out,” he said, a step ahead of Nikki.

“Anything else about his body? No signs of beating?” She wanted to know if Eddie knew about the TENS burns.

“Not beating, per se. His wrists had marks like he’d been tied up.”

“Or cuffed?”

He grew thoughtful. “Honestly, never thought of cuffs, but here’s what we did attribute it to. We check out the neighboring buildings, of course, and we come upon this empty loading bay inside a low-rise industrial space. Old sign said it had been one of those textile rental places that supply uniforms and coveralls to hotels and construction. Door’s unlocked and, inside, there’s nothing in the whole place but this wood frame lying in the middle of the concrete floor.”

Heat and Rook exchanged glances and Nikki said, “Describe it for me, Eddie.”

“Simple. Like a wood pallet hammered together, kind of crudely, but in the shape of a big X — about seven feet long, three wide. And the thing of it is, it had straps at each corner.”

“Like restraints,” said Heat.

“Yeah, but improvised. I think they were tie-downs, like you’d get for strapping a kayak to your roof rack. Of course, this was the point when me and Rose totally fell out of the drive-up-drug-deal-gone-bad notion. Somebody took that kid in there and lashed him to that rig.” When Hawthorne’s face grimmed up, it was like he was seeing something unpleasant right then and there instead of years ago. “In addition to the chafing at the young man’s wrists and ankles, he had these red marks like a bad sunburn. Only in blotchy areas all over his skin. I’m talking about his chest, his legs, his... his groin...” Eddie winced and said, “You get the idea. Charles and I worked it as best we could, but given the kid’s history of drugs and drug busts and all the crazy and dangerous stuff he got into, it went down as a sour drug deal.”

“What about the torture?” asked Rook. “Didn’t that play in?”

“Oh, yeah.” Hawthorne nodded. “OCME said it was electrical, something called a TENS. That just added credence to the bad drug deal theory, saying Huddleston wasn’t a drive-up target of opportunity but was probably dealing regularly with a player who the kid shorted on money, and the torture and killing was payback to make him an example to others or to increase the dealer’s status in the ranks.”

“I’m not accusing, Eddie, I’m just asking this to get into the load Captain Montrose was carrying,” said Nikki gently. “You guys didn’t take it any further?”

“We wanted to, but the Huddleston family, they were begging for closure. They’d had enough, so pressure came from downtown to move on, especially since there’d been official disposition. And then Charles got his promotion and took over the Twentieth, so it fell away.”

Heat handed him the mug shot of Sergio Torres. “This guy would have been doing some low-level dealing north of 116th and in the Bronx back then. Ever come across him?”

He studied it carefully and said, “No, but that doesn’t mean he wasn’t around. I was Homicide, not Narcotics.”

“Speaking of which, does this guy look familiar? He worked Narco around then.”

Eddie took the picture of Steljess and said, “Mad Dog.”

“What do you know about him?”

“Total dipshit, that’s all you needed to know. He was undercover but everyone knew he crossed over. Went native, you could smell it on him.” He handed the picture back. “I hear they drummed him out. Good riddance.”

“Well said,” from Rook.

After Heat took back the pictures, she said, “One more question, if you don’t mind, Eddie. Who was the big player then?”

“In drugs? Uptown and in the Bronx?” He chuckled. “One man, Alejandro Martinez.”

On the flight back to LaGuardia Nikki said, “Nice one, thinking about Eddie.”

“Not a problem. I am an investigative journalist, you know.”

“Oh? And I understand you also have not one, but two Pulitzers.” She drilled his ribs with her knuckle.

“Do I say that too often?”

“Not really. Maybe if you just carried the awards around it would be more subtle.” She laughed and said, “But you did put your talents to good use. Even if we don’t know all the answers to this yet, we do know one thing.”

“If you’re dyeing your hair black, keep out of direct sunlight?”

“Absolutely.” Then she grew serious. “At least we know Captain Montrose was working on something and not... you know.”

“Dirty?”

“And I knew it. And now that we’ve talked to Eddie, I truly know it. So thanks, times two, Pulitzer boy. For the idea and the plane ticket.”

Rook turned to her and said, “I don’t know who you’re trying to redeem, Montrose or yourself, but I do know one thing. I’m with you on either.”

Heat had multiple voice mails from Ochoa when they got off the plane. “What’s up, Miguel?” she said in the taxi line.

“Where are you? I hear jets.”

“At the airport. Rook and I just went to Florida.” And then she couldn’t resist adding, “For lunch.”

“Man, my frostbite has frostbite. I want to get suspended.”

“Oh, yeah,” said Heat, “best week of my life.”

“First off, Steljess did have his old cuff case and holster but no scrapes matching that leather bit. Same on Montrose’s leathers. OK, more on the captain. Raley and I went to Forensics and personally checked out the questions you had about his weapon. He had a full magazine minus one bullet.” Whatever relief Nikki had felt after meeting with Eddie Hawthorne flushed out of her. A deep sadness gripped her. Rook read it on her and mouthed a silent “what?” but she waved him off. Then Ochoa said, “But hang on. I checked his backup magazine from his belt and discovered something interesting.”

Heat said it first. “One’s missing.”

“Even better. Not only is one missing, the top load in his gun’s mag was the orphan from that spare clip.” Nikki could feel her spirits rise back up while Detective Ochoa continued, “No prints on the cartridge, which is also strange — not even Montrose’s.”

“Not just strange,” Heat said, “significant. I mean, come on, how does a dead man reload?”

Evening rush hour traffic back to Manhattan gave Rook an extra thirty minutes in the rear of the cab to work out a scenario to spin over Ochoa’s revelation. “This is big. No disrespect to the vaunted Mr. le Carré, but this is bigger than Call for the Dead. This is a dead man’s bullet. Hey, I think I have the title for my article. I should write it down. No, I’ll remember, it’s that good.” Nikki didn’t even bother trying to reel him in. He was not only more entertaining than the Taxi TV embedded in the driver’s seat back — she had the Sam Champion promo memorized by now, anyway — Rook was like the broken clock that managed to be correct two times a day. For once he was thinking out loud about something she wanted to hear. Because she was sorting it out, too.

“OK, here’s how it spools for me,” he said. “Montrose is parked in the car and bad guy X, in the passenger seat, has got his gun somehow. Don’t know how that happened but I say it did, otherwise this doesn’t play.”

Heat said, “We can sift the details later. Keep going.”

“Fine, so Montrose’s weapon is in the hands of his passenger, who has either been holding it on him or he takes the captain by surprise. Anyway, the passenger jams the gun under his chin, and pow. Which also explains why a chin shot and no eating the barrel.”

Nikki agreed so far. “And why Lauren expressed reservations about the trajectory.”

“Yes. Now, here is where we go a little Mission: Impossible, but stay with me because it’s absolutely feasible. Montrose is dead. The issue for the shooter becomes how do you sell this as a suicide if the residue is on your hands, not the victim’s? Answer: You hold the gun in the dead man’s hand and fire another shot. Problem 2: Then the magazine is down not one, but two bullets, leaving a lot of messy questions to complicate things. So what the killer does is fit the gun into Montrose’s hand, hold it out the car window, squeeze off the second shot to get residue on the captain, right? Then replace that second bullet by using gloved hands to take one of Montrose’s own bullets — guaranteed to match his weapon — from the spare mag on his belt. The killer slides that round into the top of the clip. It looks like a perfect one-shot suicide, and he splits.”

“You don’t often hear me say this, Mr. Conspiracy Theory, but I think you’re on to something.”

Rook said, “Yes, but it’s pure hypothesis, right? And that doesn’t hold water.”

“So leaky that if you took this theory to the Department, you’d need a mop.”

“We could give it a try. I mean you do know a good water damage service, don’t you, from the crime scene?”

They rode in silence a moment, Nikki staring at the silhouette of the Manhattan skyline in the greening sky of twilight. Then she pulled out her cell phone. “What?” asked Rook.

Heat didn’t answer. She dialed 411 and asked for the number of On Call water damage restoration.

Rook said, “I was joking, you know.”

DeWayne Powell from On Call met them in front of the Graestone Con dominiums, where Heat had seen him parked the day of Montrose’s shooting. “You got here fast,” she said.

“When you’re name’s On Call, that’s what you do. Besides, I have two brothers who are firefighters, so I like to do what I can to help out, you know?”

“Must be handy,” said Rook, “having a few of the Bravest in the family when you’re in the water clean-up business.”

DeWayne beamed a sunny smile. “Know how lawyers chase ambulances? I do fire trucks.”

“Tell me what you were doing here the other day,” said Nikki.

“I’m happy to go through it with you again, but I already told those other detectives everything I saw. Not much to add when you saw nothing.”

Heat shook her head. “I don’t mean about the shooting. I mean, why were you called in?”

They needed flashlights by then, but DeWayne had three in his van and they took them up on the roof. He shined his at an array of orange safety cones connected together by yellow tape. “That’s where I did my patching. Building’s going to redo the whole roof, so that’ll be it until spring.”

“And any idea where the leak came from?” said Nikki.

“Oh, absolutely.” DeWayne trained his light on the wooden water tank on stilts above them. It resembled the hundreds of cedar tanks atop all the buildings Heat had been looking at from the cab when she was checking out the skyline. “Folks on the top floor called and said they were getting flooded through the ceiling. With the freeze, we figured a busted pipe or whatever. But it was from the tank.” He waggled his light beam over a fresh cedar plank. “Leak drained a few hundred gallons before we got here. By then, water level was low enough it stopped by itself.”

“Don’t know what caused it?” Rook was looking straight at Nikki when he asked it. Both were thinking the same thing.

“Nah,” said DeWayne. “Water was done leaking by then, so it didn’t matter to me. Figured that wood just split in the cold. The tank guy couldn’t come till the next day, so I never heard what made the leak happen.”

Rook leaned and whispered in Heat’s ear. “My money’s on a bullet hole from shot number two.”

On the ride back to Rook’s loft, Nikki speed-dialed Ochoa. “You’ll be sure to let me know when I’ve depleted the favor bank, won’t you?”

“Hey, no problem. The way it’s going here at the Two-oh, it’s nice to actually engage in some real police work.”

“Iron Man?”

“Has no plan.” She could hear Raley laughing in the background. Ochoa said, “Raley wants me to tell you that Captain Irons has set up eight A.M. tomorrow for desk inspection. For real. If we can’t clean up the streets, at least we can tidy up our work areas.”

Heat said, “It’s probably best that this isn’t sourced from me, so in about ten minutes, you’re going to get a call from a DeWayne Powell. He’s the guy who discovered Montrose’s body. He’s going to report that the more he thought about it, the water leak he got called in to clean up was from a bullet hole in the water tank on top of the building near the captain’s car.”

“Jeez,” said Ochoa as he was struck by the implications. “Cap’s bullet went straight up, so this one...”

“Right,” said Nikki. “Could be the orphan slug from his backup magazine. Listen, my guess is if a slug punctured that cedar and got slowed by a twelve-foot-diameter tank of water, it probably didn’t exit.”

“We are all over it, trust me.”

“Good, but wait for DeWayne’s call. I just wanted to give you the heads-up so you took him seriously and had Forensics check out that tank.”

“Will do,” he said.

“And Miguel? This is all because of the job you and Rales did today double-checking his weapon and ammo. If we prove homicide instead of suicide, you’ve done this man a great service.”

“Hey, I’ll put on a mask and flippers myself, if I have to.” And as she looked up at the CNN JumboTron above Columbus Circle and saw it was minus-three degrees, Nikki knew that was exactly what he would do if it came down to it.

Rook was hungry, but she was too amped to eat, so he zapped the scar pariello that was left over from the night before while she pulled a dining room chair up to face Murder Board South and took a seat for her contemplation. “How was it?” she said when he ate his last bite.

“Even better as a leftover,” he said. “And how did you know I was done, do you have eyes in the back of your head?”

“No, I have ears. You stopped moaning in ecstasy.”

“Ah. So that’s how you know when I’m done.”

She turned to him wearing a sly smile. “I know when you’re done, mister. You’re done when I’m done.”

“It’s a beautiful thing,” he said. She turned her attention back to the board, then rose with a red marker and drew circles around Rook’s notation: “Montrose — What was he doing??” He said, “Guess we got the answer to that today, thanks to Eddie.”

“No, we got half of it. We know what he was trying to do, but we don’t know what investigative course he was following. And he kept it from me. Either because he had some pride thing about cracking it himself or he didn’t want to admit it if he failed.”

“Or... ,” said Rook. “More likely, he knew it was dangerous and was trying to keep you out of it. Even at the expense of pissing you off.”

She mulled that, then said, “Or any of the above. But what were his leads? Where was he going?”

“You could have Roach check his files, but, according to you, Internal Affairs beamed them up to the mother ship.”

“I knew Montrose, and if he wanted secrecy he wouldn’t have kept anything at the office. Especially with IA all over him.” Heat tapped the barrel of the marker against her lip and then tossed it on the tray, a decision made. “I want to break into his apartment.”

It was nine-thirty, still early enough not to freak out Captain Mon trose’s next-door neighbor, although Penny the dachshund went on high alert on the other side of the door after they knocked. As the multiple locks snapped open, they heard Corrine Flaherty shushing and saying, “Relax, Pen, it’s Nikki, you know Nikki.” She opened the door and the two women hugged. Corrine, dowdy and late fifties, primped her hair and said, “I’m glad you called, it gave me a chance to chase the men out.”

The long-haired mini dachshund turned absolutely inside out over Rook. She rolled onto her back in the living room, and he knelt on the carpet to administer a tummy rub while she melted, her caramel tail waving like a flag. “I’m next,” said Corrine, followed by a smoker’s laugh.

When she excused herself from the room, Rook stood and said to Heat, “So how are we going to do this, use her balcony to jump to Montrose’s like Spider-Man? I mean the movie, not the musical; it’s six floors down and I don’t have my health insurance card on me.”

“How would we get in the sliding door on his balcony if it’s locked, which you know it must be?”

“Hmm,” he said, “does Corrine have a hammer? I could break the glass with a mighty blow.”

“Here ya go, Nikki,” said Corrine as she came back from the kitchen with a key ring. “This one’s the knob, this is the deadbolt.”

Rook frowned as if deep in thought and said, “Spare keys. Very crafty.”

At Montrose’s front door Rook stepped in front of Heat, blocking her. “I’ll do this part.” He tore the police tape seals off the door and stepped back. “Wouldn’t want you getting in any trouble with the cops, ha ha.”

Once they were inside, Nikki felt a chill that had nothing to do with the low thermostat. They kicked up the temp and turned on all the lights, but it still felt like a place that would never be warm for her again. She kept her coat on and stood in the middle of the living room, turning a slow rotation, trying to put aside memories of the dinners she had enjoyed with the skip and Pauletta or the Super Bowl party the captain had invited her squad to three years before, after they got their citation for top case clearances. She shut those things out as best she could and simply observed.

On the way over the bridge to Queens, she had told Rook not to expect much, that Internal Affairs would have been over the apartment just like his office. She said to expect furniture but no files or anything like that. Those items would have been boxed and inventoried and shipped off for examination. When he asked her what she was looking for then, she told him whatever IA might have missed that she wouldn’t. “They were only investigating him. I’m clearing him.”

They worked together methodically, Rook following her lead and her instructions. The bathrooms were the first stops. Cops knew that’s where most people hid their valuables because there was so much to look through. But when they opened the cabinets, they saw that clearly IA had had the same thought, because the shelves were bare in the medicine chests and under the sinks of both bathrooms. The kitchen was much the same. Although a few items were left on the pantry shelves, most items had been cleared out and were no doubt gone over by downtown.

The second bedroom, which had been converted to a study, had been picked clean, as Heat had predicted. They could see the gaps on the shelves where books and videos had been removed. The desk drawers were empty, and there were compression lines on the rug from the footprints of absent filing cabinets. The master bedroom was an easy search. The bed had been stripped and the frame was empty; the mattress and box spring were leaning neatly against a wall. “Not looking so promising,” said Rook.

“It never does until it is.” But she was feeling the futility as well. “Tell you what, I’ll take the closet, you do the dresser, then let’s call it a night.”

Nikki was sliding suits on hangers along the wooden pole when Rook said, “Oh, Detective Heat?” When she stepped out of the walk-in, he was at the dresser. The top drawer was open.

“I’m not sure if this will be anything, but if it is, I figured you deserved the honors.” She slowly crossed the room to join him, then followed his gaze down into the open drawer.

Captain Montrose’s sock drawer. In it were about a dozen pairs of black and navy dress socks, folded and balled to marry the pairs. And toward the back of the drawer, a lone beige sock without a mate. Nikki looked up at Rook. Both were thinking it, but neither was saying it.

An odd sock.

Heat picked it up. Her heart raced when she did. “There’s something in it.”

“Come on, I’m gonna pee myself.”

Nikki opened the sock and reached inside. “It’s cardboard.” She pulled it out. It was a business card. For a talent representative. “This is for Horst Meuller’s agent.”

When she turned it over her throat contracted and she stifled an involuntary wail. She covered her face with one hand and turned away as she handed the card to Rook. He flipped it over. The ballpoint handwriting read, “Nikki, just be careful.”