Heat Rises

Eight

Special Investigations owned that city block and would control it for as long as they pleased. Rook, who liked Montrose and knew how much the captain meant to Nikki, had wanted to come along for support, but she said no. She knew what it would be like. Immediates only. And she was right. Even Heat and Roach had to park outside the yellow tape and walk; that’s how tight that crime scene was. The press called Nikki’s name as she passed, but she kept her eyes front, ignoring them — especially Tam Svejda, who hopped sideways along the no-go line, shouldering her way between reporters and making desperate pleas for a comment.

There was a lull in the precipitation, but the afternoon sky hung low and sullen. The three detectives strode wordlessly, crunching over pellets of sidewalk salt toward the middle of 85th, where strobes were flashing in front of the rectory of Our Lady of the Innocents.

Nikki recognized the shooting suits from the castle. The pair clocked her as she approached, gave a nod, then went back to their business. Heat had never seen these two before in her life, and now here they were again, crossing paths the second time that same day.

Montrose’s Crown Victoria sat parked in front of a fire hydrant and was ringed by portable isolation barriers of white plastic sheeting stretched on aluminum frames. Nikki stopped on the sidewalk a car length away, not knowing if she had it in her to proceed. Cameras inside the barrier flashed like lightning punching against the gloom. “We can do this, if you’d rather,” said Ochoa. She turned and saw the sadness behind his cop mask. Beside him, the skin around his partner Raley’s lips was white from pressing them together so hard.

Nikki did what she had done so often on this job. She put on her armor. There was a switch inside her, the one that sealed off her vulnerability, like triggering a fire door in the Met. For the space of one long breath, which was all it took, she made the silent acknowledgment she always made to honor the victim she was about to meet, threw the switch, and she was ready. Detective Heat said, “Let’s go,” and entered the crime scene.

The first thing she took in was the quarter inch of ice and frozen slush coating the entire top of the car, notable because there was a clear circular patch about the size of a DVD on the roof above the driver’s seat. Raising herself up on her toes, she saw the dimple of the bullet’s exit point. She bent forward to look through the back window, but it was like trying to see through a shower door. Then the shooter from Forensics took another picture inside the car, and the slumped body formed a horror movie silhouette.

“Single head shot,” said the voice. Nikki rose up and turned from the rear window, and one of the suits, Neihaus, was on the curb with his pad.

“You have positive ID this is Captain Charles Montrose?” was the first thing she said. When he nodded, she asked Neihaus to say it. “You’re absolutely certain Charles Montrose is the victim?”

“Yes, I have matched him to his ID. But speaking of, you knew him, right?” He tilted his head toward the open passenger door, and she felt her stomach swim. “Going to need confirmation, you know that.”

“That’s him.” Detective Ochoa rose up from his crouch at the open car door and walked back toward them. He showed his palms to Nikki and shook his head slightly, signaling Don’t. And for the hundreds of victims she had seen in the hundreds of awful ways people can die and what it does to their bodies, and for the traumatic day she had had already, Nikki decided there was no point testing her armor.

“Thank you, Detective,” she said in a formal tone.

“No problem.” His face said anything but.

Nikki shifted gears, asking Neihaus, “Who found him?”

“Guy from a cleanup crew looking for a parking place to get in the Graestone.” In near unison, Heat and Roach looked up the block. A commercial van from On Call, a smoke and water damage recovery company, was double-parked at the rear service gate of the prestigious Graestone Condominiums. Detectives Feller and Van Meter were interviewing a man in coveralls. “Says he was mad he couldn’t find a spot while some jerk had parked at the hydrant, and he was going to give him some shit. Surprise.”

“How about witnesses?” She had to ask, even knowing that if anybody had seen or heard anything, a 911 call would have preceded the accidental discovery by the van’s driver.

“None so far. We’ll canvass, of course, but you know...”

“Did you ask the housekeeper if he had some reason to be here at the rectory?” Nikki asked. “Her name is Mrs. Borelli. Have you talked with her?”

“Not yet.”

“You want some extra manpower?” said Heat.

“I know this is your skip and your precinct, Detective, but this one’s ours.” Neihaus gave them his most assuring look. “And don’t worry, this is family. Commissioner’s going to give us any resources we need.”

“You go over the car yet?” said Raley.

“No note, if that’s what you mean. Forensics is on latents, that’ll take a while. His weapon’s down on the front floor mat. Nothing unusual in the vehicle on first go-over. Trunk’s got the standard-issue kit, vest and whatnot. Oh, and two canvas grocery bags of canned dog food. Must have had a pooch.”

“Penny,” said Heat, her voice cracking as she continued, “a dachshund.”

On their walk back to the Roach Coach, Feller and Van Meter hailed them and they stopped. “Sorry about the captain,” said Feller.

“It’s fucked up” was Van Meter’s take.

“You get anything from the On Call driver?” asked Nikki.

Feller shook his head. “Just the details of the discovery. No unusual activity.”

Nikki said, “You know what? No way this is isolated. Whatever’s going on here, I don’t know what it is except that it is bigger than we suspected.”

“I hear that,” said Ochoa.

“Bunch of paramilitary types come after me in the park, trying to kill me... ,” she said. “Guys with no history or connection to me, at least not from the one I put down. Now, a couple of hours later, Montrose is dead....”

“In front of Graf’s rectory? I’m sure not buying coincidences,” agreed Raley. “Something’s up.”

Detective Feller said, “Look, I know how you felt about him, it’s a big loss, I’m sorry for you. All of you. He was a good man. But...”

“But what?” she said.

“Come on, let’s be objective. With all respect, you’re too close,” said Van Meter. “Your skipper was under huge pressure. 1PP had his nuts in a vise, his wife dies...”

Feller picked up his partner’s point. “It’s no secret how unhappy the man was. Nikki, you know this is going to come down as a suicide.”

“Because it is,” from Van Meter. “You’re going all Area 51. He ate his piece.”

The urge to scream at them overwhelmed Nikki, but instead she sought her cop’s detachment, and when she had reclaimed it, she let herself examine what they were saying. Was it possible with all those pressures — plus all the strange behaviors she had witnessed — that the Cap had taken his own life? Her boss, who had snooped the rectory and had so obviously worked to cut off her investigation, was slumped in his car with a bullet in his head. And people were sure it was suicide?

Was it suicide?

Or was he involved in something? Could the captain have crossed over and gotten into something dirty? No, Nikki dismissed those thoughts. She couldn’t imagine the Charles Montrose she knew doing anything like that.

Detective Heat shivered. She didn’t know what was going on, but she knew one thing. Standing there on the snow, deep in the coldest winter in a century, she saw herself on the tip of an iceberg. And all around her in the water were sharks.

The purple bunting was already hung above the main entrance to the precinct when they got back. Of course, business in the house was still being conducted, but the air was somber. On the trip through the lobby to Homicide, Heat noticed that the uniforms wore mourning bands across their shields. Conversations everywhere she passed were hushed and had the odd effect of making the ring of telephones sound louder. Captain Montrose’s office remained empty and dark. There was also a seal on his door.

Detective Rhymer gave her an interval to settle at her desk before he came over. After they shared brief condolences, he handed her a file. “Just came in. An ID of your dude from the park.”

Detective Heat flipped open the cover and a mug shot of the rifleman she had stabbed at Belvedere Castle stared back at her. Sergio Torres, DOB February 26, 1979, was a shoplifter turned car radio thief who did enough jail time to hook up with Latin gangs on the inside. That relationship earned him a few new stretches stacking time for carjacking and assaults. She closed the file on her lap and stared into the near distance.

“I’m sorry,” said Rhymer. “I should have waited.”

“No, no, it’s not that,” said Heat. “It’s just... This is not sitting right. I mean, Torres had no military background. I saw this guy in action. He had skills. How does a gang banger get trained like that?” Her phone rang.

It was Rook trying her again. It must have been his tenth call. And for the tenth time, Nikki didn’t pick it up, because if she did, she’d have to talk about it. And once she did that, it became real. And once it became real, it was all over. And Heat couldn’t afford for it to be all over right now.

Not in front of everyone else. Not while she was going for lieutenant.

“Hey?” said Ochoa. “Timing sucks, but before all this went down I set a meet with Justicia a Garda and they’re here. Want me to try to push it to tomorrow?”

Heat gave it serious thought. No, she had to power forward. Keep paddling or risk sinking. “No, don’t cancel. I’ll be right there.... And Miguel? Thanks for stepping in like that, ID-ing the captain.”

“Before you thank me you should know something,” he said. “The God’s truth? I couldn’t look.”

“Thank you for coming,” said Nikki as she entered the waiting room. She was met by silence. A man and woman, both about thirty, sat across the table from Detective Ochoa, arms folded, without so much as a glance her way. Heat couldn’t help but notice that they also still wore their coats, another nonverbal cue.

As soon as Nikki sat, the woman, Milena Silva, spoke. “Mr. Guzman and I are here as hostile participants. Also, I am not only one of the directors of Justicia a Guarda, I have a law degree, so you have fair warning before you begin.”

“Well, first of all,” began Heat, “this is just an informal meeting...”

“In a police station,” said Pascual Guzman. He looked around the room, clawing fingertips through his Che beard. “Are you recording this?”

“No,” she said. It bugged her that they were trying to run her meeting, so she pressed on. “We invited you here to help give some background on Father Graf, to help us find his killer or killers.”

“Why would we know anything about his killers?” said Guzman. His co-leader put her hand on the sleeve of his olive-drab coat, and it seemed to calm him.

Milena Silva said, “Father Graf was a supporter of our human rights work for many years. He marched with us, he organized with us, he even traveled to Colombia to see firsthand the abuses of our people at the hands of the oppressive regime your government supports there. His death is a loss to us, so if you are thinking we are involved in his killing, you are mistaken.”

“Maybe you should look at your CIA.” Guzman punctuated his shot with a pointed nod and sat back in his chair.

Heat knew better than to level the playing field by engaging in polemics with them. She was more interested in Father Graf’s last hours and, especially, if there was any bad blood in the movement, so Nikki kept to her own agenda. “Father Graf was last seen alive at your committee offices the other morning. Why was he there?”

“We don’t have to share the confidential strategies of our group with the police,” said the woman with the law degree. “It’s a First Amendment right.”

“So he was there for a strategy session,” said Nikki. “Did he seem upset, agitated, acting out of the ordinary?”

The woman fielded that one, too. “He was drunk. We already told your cobista here.” Ochoa’s face revealed nothing at the insult and he remained quiet.

“What kind of drunk? Falling down? Disoriented? Happy? Nasty?”

Guzman loosened the knit scarf around his neck and said, “He became belligerent and we asked him to leave. That’s all there is to know.”

Prior experience told Nikki that when someone declared that that was all there was to know, the opposite was true. So she drilled down. “How did he show his belligerence, did he argue?”

Pascual Guzman said, “Yes, but — ”

“What about?”

“Again,” said Milena Silva, “that is confidential under our rights.”

“Did it get physical? Did you fight him, have to restrain him?” When the two didn’t answer but looked to each other, Heat said, “I am going to find out, so why not just tell me?”

“We had an issue — ” began Guzman.

Silva chimed in, “A private, internal issue.”

“ — And he was irrational. Drunk.” He looked to his companion and she nodded to go on. “We were... passionate in our disagreement. Shouting became shoving, shoving became punching, so we made him leave.”

“How?” She waited. “How?”

“I... threw him out the door.”

Nikki said, “So it was you who fought with him, Mr. Guzman?”

“You don’t have to answer that,” said Milena Silva.

“Where did he go?” Heat asked. “Did he have a ride, get a cab?”

Guzman shrugged. “He went away is all I know.”

“This was about... ,” Heat looked at her notes, “ten-thirty A.M. Early to be drunk. Was that common for him?” This time they both shrugged.

“Your organization is well armed back in Colombia,” said Heat.

“We have the spirit to fight. We are not afraid to die, if necessary.” It was the most animated she had seen Pascual Guzman.

“I understand some of your members even attacked a prison and helped Faustino Velez Arango escape.” The pair exchanged glances again. “Yes, I know Faustino Velez Arango.”

“Dilettantes and Hollywood stars pretend to know our famous dissident writer, but who has read his books?”

Nikki said, “I read El Corazón de la Violencia in college.” Ochoa regarded her with an arched brow. She continued, “How much of that... fighting spirit... did you bring here?”

“We are peaceful activists,” said the woman. “What use would people like us have for guns and rifles here in the United States?”

Heat wondered the same thing, only not rhetorically. She placed the mug shot of Sergio Torres on the table between them. “Do you know this man?”

“Why?” asked the lawyer.

“Because he’s a person I’m interested in knowing more about.”

“I see. And because he’s Latino and a criminal, you ask us?” Guzman stood and tossed the photo. It fluttered halfway across the coffee table and landed facedown. “This is racist. This is the marginalization we rise up to fight against every day.”

Milena Silva stood, too. “Unless you have a warrant to arrest us, we are leaving.”

Nikki was done with her questions and held the door for them. When they were gone, Ochoa said, “You read El Corazón de la Violencia?”

She nodded. “Lot of good it just did me.”

The remainder of the afternoon she spent using her focus on work to fend off the malaise that had settled like a toxic fog in the halls of the Twentieth Precinct. In any other field, after the startling death of a leader, business would have closed for the day. But this was the New York Police Department. You didn’t clock out for sadness.

For better or worse, Nikki Heat knew how to compartmentalize. She had to. If she didn’t put an airtight lock on her emotional doors, the beasts pounding on the steel plates to get out would eat her alive. The shock and sadness, they were to be expected. But the raging howls she worked hardest to silence came from guilt. Her last days with her mentor had been contentious and full of suspicions; some voiced, some merely contemplated — her own dirty secrets. Nikki hadn’t known where it was all leading, but she had clung to a tacit belief that there would be a resolution that would make the two of them whole again. She never imagined this tragedy cutting short the story Nikki thought she was telling. John Lennon said life was what happened while you made other plans.

So was death.

Blunt as they had been back at the crime scene, Nikki took the advice of Feller and Van Meter and sat down to unpack the facts of the Montrose death without prejudice. Detective Heat got out a single sheet of paper and penciled details. Making her own private Murder Board on the page, she especially focused on the captain’s strange new behaviors in the days ramping up to this dark one, logging them all: the absences, the agitation, the secretiveness, his obstruction of her case, his anger when she insisted on doing the sort of investigative work he had trained her to do.

Heat stared at the page.

The questions lingering in the back of her mind stepped forward and raised their hands. Clean or dirty, did Captain Montrose know what the stakes were? Was he trying to protect her? Is that why he didn’t want her looking into the Graf murder too deeply? Because if she did, a bunch of armed guys were going to try to stack her garbage in the park? Were they CIA contractors? Foot soldiers from drug cartels? A Colombian hit squad? Or someone she hadn’t even landed on so far?

And did these guys go for him next?

Nikki folded her sheet of paper to put in her pocket. Then she thought a moment, took it out again, and crossed over to the squad’s Murder Board to write it up there. No, she was not buying the suicide. Not yet.

“This is an official call,” said Zach Hamner, making Heat wonder what their other conversations had been. “I just received a formal complaint from an organization called...” She could hear papers rustling on his end and helped him out.

“Justicia a Garda.”

“Yes. Nice pronunciation. Anyway, they are alleging harassment and racist statements based on a meeting you had with them earlier today.”

“You can’t be taking this seriously,” she said.

“Detective, do you know how much money the city of New York paid out over the last decade in claims against this department?” He didn’t wait for her reply. “Nine hundred and sixty-four million. That’s pocket change short of a billion with a B. Do I take claims seriously? You bet. And so should you. You don’t need something like this coming up right now. Not with your promotion pending. Now, tell me what happened.”

She gave him a brief recap of the meeting and the reason for it. When she was finished, The Hammer said, “Did you have to show the mug shot of the gang banger? That’s the inflammatory part.”

“Sergio Torres tried to kill me this morning. I will damn well show his picture to everyone connected to this case.” When Hamner said he got it, she continued, “And one more thing. Conducting an investigation is hard enough without outsiders second-guessing my case work.”

“I am going to chalk that up to your obvious stress from the day you’ve had. By the way, our condolences on the loss of your commander.” Nikki couldn’t shake her memory of The Hammer standing outside the ambulance that morning whining, “Where the fuck is Montrose?”

She figured one push-back was enough for this call, so she let it go. “Thanks.”

“Where do you go from here?” he asked.

“Back to what I was doing. Finding out who killed Father Graf. And maybe my boss.”

Zach’s chair creaked. He must have sat up. “Hold on, wasn’t that a suicide?”

“We’ll see,” she said.

Rook met her with a cocktail when she opened her apartment door. “I hope you’re up for a mojito. This is a recipe I picked up in a dive bar near a beachside landing strip in Puerto Rico.”

She traded him her coat for the drink, and right there in the entryway, they raised their tall glasses up in a toast. But Heat and Rook didn’t clink right away. Instead they held each other’s eyes a long moment, letting the intimacy of their stillness speak. Then Nikki set her glass down on the foyer table, saying, “First things first,” as she folded her arms around him and they hugged.

“I figured after your day, you would be in the mood for some red meat,” he said when they moved into the kitchen.

“Smells amazing.”

“Roast beef tenderloin — simple-simple — just salt, pepper, and rosemary, plus the usual sides, mashed potatoes, brussels sprouts.”

“Comfort food. Rook, you don’t know what this means right now.... Oh, yes you do.” And then she took another sip. “You don’t have time to do this, what with bringing me clothes and trying to write your article.”

“Done! E-mailed it off two hours ago and came over here to take care of you. I was going to make kabobs, but after your morning in the park, I figured skewers would be too darkly comic, even for me.”

“And yet you mentioned them.”

“What can I say? I’m an enigma inside a conundrum inside a condom.” Nikki started to laugh but caught herself. Her face became drawn and she sat at the counter. She stayed there, perched on the bar stool, through her mojito and a glass of a surprisingly perfect red from Baja California, while Rook carved and served. He transferred the place settings from the dining table to the counter and they ate there, the informality of it relaxing her. She was hungry but only managed a small portion, choosing instead to fill him in on things she hadn’t told him about her difficulties with Captain Montrose. He told her she didn’t have to talk about it if it was painful, but it wasn’t, she said, it was therapeutic, a chance to let out the burden she carried.

Nikki had already told him just before strip Proust that there had been tension with Montrose, but this time she told him the details. She shared the unsettling suspicions that arose in her beyond the captain oddly showing up at Graf’s the night he was killed: how he obstructed her case in every way, plus the blood on the priest’s collar that coincided with the bandage on his finger. And then there was the baffling recurrence of TENS burns... on Graf, on the male dancer, and on a victim in an old murder case Montrose had worked when he was a Detective-1.

Rook listened intently without interruption, interested in her story but more eager to let her download and relieve the pain she bore. When Nikki finished, he asked, “The suspicions you had, did you share them with anybody? Internal Affairs? Your new friends downtown?”

“No, because they were only, you know, circumstantial. He was in a world of hurt already. You open that lid, it’s Pandora’s Box.” Her lower lip quivered and she bit on it. “I opened the door a crack about it with him this morning. He kind of boxed me into it, and let me tell you, it hurt him. It really hurt him.” She tilted her head back and squinted, refusing to let herself cry, then continued, “I’m ashamed to admit it now, but there was a part of me, this morning in the park... ?”

He knew where she was going. “You wondered if he could have been part of it?”

“Only for a second, a second I hate myself for, but he gave me this warning at the end of our meeting. It had to cross my mind.”

“Nikki, there’s nothing wrong with thinking things. Especially in your work, come on, it’s what you do.”

Her head bobbed in acceptance and she forced a thin smile.

“Did you ever get an ID on your attacker, the Human Popsicle?”

“You are a sick man, Jameson Rook.”

He bowed theatrically. “Thank you, thank you.”

Then Heat told him about Sergio Torres. How his rap sheet was the legacy of an ordinary gang banger but he was trained like a soldier.

“I don’t get it,” said Rook. “How does a mundane metropolitan miscreant master menacing military methods and maneuvers? Mystifying.”

“. . . Yeah...” Nikki cocked an eye at him. “I was sort of thinking the same thing...”

“Have you looked into whether he was connected to the Mara Salvatrucha gang? The MS 13s supposedly called a hit on all NYPD cops about a year ago,” he said. “And, breaking news from my recent arms trip, the cartels are giving paramilitary training to MS 13 gangsters to fight their drug war in Mexico.”

“I’ll check that out tomorrow.” She slid off the bar stool and excused herself. A few seconds after she disappeared down the hall, she called out, “Rook? Rook, come here.”

When he reached the bathroom, she was standing near the window. “Have you been in here since you got here?”

“I think the answer is evident in the lowered toilet seat. No.”

“Look at this.” She stepped to the side, indicating water drops from melted ice dotting the windowsill. She pointed to the latch. It was unlocked. “I always lock that.” She grabbed a flashlight from the cabinet under the sink and shined it on the latch. A minute abrasion in the brass tongue gleamed where it had been jimmied. It was nothing Nikki would have noticed had it not been for the droplets.

Together they made a survey of the apartment. Nobody was hiding and nothing was missing or out of place. Mindful of the careful snoop somebody had performed at the rectory, Heat took extra care to notice the little things. Nothing was disturbed. “You must have scared him off when you came in, Rook.”

“Ya know, my days of droppin’ in unannounced may be over.”

They locked up and went downstairs to tell The Discourager, who was parked across the street. “Want me to call it in?”

“Thanks, Harvey, but I’ll do it in the morning.” The last thing she wanted then was an evening of bright lights and forensic dusting. It wouldn’t kill Rook and her to use the other bathroom for one night. “Just wanted to give you the heads-up.”

Rook said, “Hey, Harvey, don’t you ever sleep?”

The veteran cop looked at Heat. “Not after today, I don’t.”

Nikki took what she insisted was a well-deserved bubble bath in the guest tub while Rook did the dishes. He waited for her in the living room, surfing ESPN, missing football season, glad MLB was days away from Pitchers and Catchers. At eleven, he switched off the TV. “You didn’t have to do that for me,” she said.

Nikki was in a robe, her hair wet, and looking comfortably dazed by the hot bath. She folded into him on the couch, smelling faintly of lavender.

“I think we already know the lead story,” he said.

“Yup. Precinct Captain dies in apparent suicide.” She turned to him, just inches away. The relaxation left her face. “They’d be wrong. He never would have done it.”

“How can you be sure?”

“Same reason I knew he didn’t kill Graf.”

“Which is?”

“He was Captain Montrose.”

The instant she said it, the doors to all the compartments Heat had so carefully closed off flew open. The seals broke, and a day of emotion — from the flight for her life in Central Park to the trauma of Captain Montrose’s death — rushed out to seize her. Rook watched the wave take her. She quaked and her eyes dripped tears. Then she cried out, throwing her head back in a release that startled even her. He opened his arms, and Nikki grabbed him desperately, clinging to him, shaking, sobbing and sobbing, as she had not in ten years.