Heat Wave

TWENTY

“Stop squirming,” said Noah Paxton. Rook started to turn his head to say something to his assailant, but Paxton jammed the muzzle of the gun hard into his skull.

“Ow. Hey.”

“I said hold still, damn it.”

“Do as he says, Rook.” Nikki still had her Sig Sauer up, keeping a bead on the small sliver of Noah Paxton that was showing behind his human shield. She didn’t need to turn to know that Raley and Ochoa were doing the same thing with their weapons behind her.

Rook raised his eyebrows contritely and looked at her like a kid who’d broken a living room lamp with a baseball. “I am really sorry about this.”

“Rook, be quiet,” said Nikki.

“From now on, I’ll do what I’m told.”

“Start now by shutting up.”

“OK.” Then he realized he was not shutting up. “Oops, sorry.”

“I want you to drop your guns,” said Paxton. “All of you.”

Heat didn’t say no because a direct verbal confrontation could heighten tensions. Instead she maintained her isosceles stance and let that be her answer. She spoke in a calm tone. “You’re smart enough to know you’re not getting out, Noah, so why don’t you let him go and end this peacefully.”

“You know, she makes sense,” said Rook. Heat and Paxton told him to shut up at the same time.

Paxton’s left hand held a handful of the back of Rook’s shirt in a bunch to keep him close. He gave it a tug. “Back up.” When he didn’t move, Noah gave a sharp pull. “I said move. That’s right, go with me, easy, easy.” He led Rook backward, taking baby steps to the elevator. When he saw that the three detectives were moving forward, matching his pace, he stopped. “Hey, stay back.”

Heat and Roach stopped but didn’t retreat.

“I’m not afraid to use this,” Paxton warned.

“Nobody said you were.” She was calm but sounded in command. “But you don’t want to.”

Paxton moved the gun away slightly to adjust his grip, and Rook slid forward, only to get jerked back. “Don’t be stupid.” Noah again pushed the muzzle hard against the soft bone behind Rook’s ear. “All it takes is one. Do you have any idea what this will do to you?”

Rook nodded as much as he dared. “Scrambled eggs.”

“What?”

“Like a hammer hitting a plate of—Never mind, I don’t want to talk about it.”

Paxton tugged his shirt again and they continued to back toward the elevator. And again the detectives advanced with them. As they all drew closer to the elevator, Nikki looked at the panel above the door. It indicated that the car was waiting there on six.

Heat spoke in a barely audible voice. “Rales.”

“Yo.”

“Lose that car.”

Behind her, Raley keyed his mic and spoke quietly. “Lobby, call elevator down from six immediately.”

Paxton heard the elevator softly kick into motion right behind him. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” He turned quickly over his shoulder, in time to see the 6 digit go dark and the 5 light up. He didn’t move enough for Nikki to get a clear shot, but while he was distracted, she took two steps closer.

He turned back and saw her. “Stop right there.”

Heat stopped. She had closed the gap and he was ten feet away. Not close enough yet, but closer. She couldn’t see Paxton’s face, just his eye, looking wild peeking out from the gap between the gun barrel and Rook’s head. His voice was building to a rage. “Now you boxed me in.”

“You’re not leaving. I told you that.” She worked to keep the calm in her tone to counter his fury.

“I’m going to shoot.”

“It’s time to put your gun down, Noah.”

“His blood will be on you.”

Rook made eye contact with her and mouthed, Shoot. Him.

She had no shot and said so with the smallest head shake.

“You screwed up everything, Detective, you know that? I wish Pochenko had finished the job on you.”

Nikki’s eyes fluttered and a weight sank in her gut.

“You did that?” said Rook.

“Let it go, Rook,” said Nikki, struggling to let go of it herself. Behind her she heard F-bombs muttered by Raley and Ochoa.

“You sent that animal to her apartment?” Rook’s nostrils flared. “You sent him to her home?” His chest expanded with each breath as his outrage grew more heated. “You son of a…bitch.” He spun his body away from the pistol, hurling himself. A loud gunshot echoed in the hall as Rook dropped hard to the floor.

Paxton fell to one knee beside him, moaning, with blood streaming from his shoulder onto Rook. His gun was on the rug beside them and Noah grabbed for it.

Nikki lunged and body-tackled him. She slammed Paxton onto his back and pinned him down with her knees on his chest. He had the gun in his hand, but he hadn’t had time to raise it. She held her Sig Sauer inches from his face. His eyes flitted to his gun hand, calculating.

“Go ahead,” said Detective Heat. “I need a new blouse anyway.”

At La Chaleur, the sidewalk café outside the Guilford, the after-work crowd was craning to watch the police activity. The sun had just gone down, and in the quieting darkness, the flashing lights from the cruisers and ambulances reflected in their cosmos and eighteen-dollar glasses of Sancerre.

Over between the café and the front steps of the apartment building, the lights strobed on the backs of two plainclothes cops facing Detective Heat. One of them put away his notebook. They each shook her hand. Nikki leaned back against the warm stone façade of the Guilford and watched the shooting investigation team cross away to their black Crown Victoria.

Rook stepped over and joined her. “ ‘Go ahead, I need a new blouse anyway’?”

“I think that was cool for short notice.” She tried to read him. “What, too girly?”

“Got Noah’s attention.” He followed her gaze to the incident investigation pair as they drove off for downtown. “Nobody told you to hand in your badge and gun, I hope.”

“No, they expect this will clear just fine. They were actually amazed I didn’t kill him.”

“Didn’t you want to?”

She thought a beat and said, “He’s alive.” The detective let that simple fact provide all the details. “If I need vengeance kicks, I just Netflix Charles Bronson. Or Jodie Foster.” She turned to him. “Besides, I was aiming at you. You’re the one I wanted to kill.”

“And I even signed that liability waiver.”

“Lost opportunity, Rook. It’s going to haunt me.”

Roach stepped out of the building and came over. Ochoa said, “Paramedics are bringing him out now.”

Nikki waited until they carried Paxton’s gurney down the steps and rolled it up to the curb before she walked over followed by Raley, Ochoa, and Rook. In the harsh utility light shining down from above the ambulance door, Noah’s face was the color of an oyster. She checked with the paramedic standing with him. “Is he OK for a quick chat?”

“A minute or two, but that’s it,” said the EMT.

Heat stood so she loomed over him. “Just want you to know one good thing came out of that little hostage drama up there. Your gun. It’s a twenty-five. Same caliber that killed Pochenko. We’re running ballistics on it. And giving you a paraffin test for gunpowder residue. What do you think we’ll find?”

“I have nothing to say.”

“What, no spoilers? Fine, I can wait for the results. Do you want me to call you with them, or would you rather wait to hear them at your arraignment?” Paxton looked away from her. “Tell me, when you raced over here to get your hands on those paintings, were you going to use it on Kimberly Starr, too? Is that why you had the gun with you?”

When he didn’t answer, she spoke to her team. “Kimberly owes me.”

“Big-time,” said Raley.

Ochoa added, “You probably saved her life when you arrested her.”

Noah rolled his head back to face her. “You already arrested her?”

Heat nodded. “This afternoon, right after I found the paintings in the basement.”

“But that phone call to me. The one you wiretapped…”

“She was already in custody. Kimberly made that call for me.”

“Why?”

“Why else? To get you to come to my art show.” Nikki gave the sign to the paramedics and stepped away so the last picture the detective saw was the look on Noah Paxton’s face.

The heat wave broke late that night, and it did not go quietly. As a front from Canada bullied its way down the Hudson, it collided with the hot, stagnant air of New York and spawned an aerial show of lightning, swirling winds, and sideways rain. TV meteorologists patted themselves on the back and pointed to red and tangerine splotches on Doppler radar as the skies opened and the thunder ripped like cannon fire through the stone and glass canyons of Manhattan.

On Hudson in Tribeca, Nikki Heat slowed down to avoid splashing the diners huddled under umbrellas outside Nobu, praying in vain for open cabs to get them uptown in the downpour. She turned onto Rook’s street and pulled the police car into an open space in a loading zone up the block from his building.

“You still pissed at me?” he said.

“No more than usual.” She put the car in Park. “I just get quiet after I clear a case. It’s like I’ve been turned inside out.”

Rook hesitated, something on his mind. “Anyway, thanks for the ride in all this.”

“No problem.”

Frankenstein lightning hit so close that the strobe flash lit their faces the same time as the thunder crack. Tiny hailstones began to pepper the roof. “If you see the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse,” said Rook, “duck.”

She gave up a thin laugh that turned into a yawn. “Sorry.”

“Sleepy?”

“No, tired. I’m way too cranked to sleep.”

They sat listening to the storm rage. A car crept past with water up to its hubcaps.

At last, he broke the silence. “Look, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking and I just don’t know how to play this. We work together—well, sort of. We slept together—most definitely. We have smoking hot sex one time, but soon afterwards, don’t try holding hands, not even in the relative privacy of a taxicab.

“I’m trying to figure the rules. This isn’t yin and yang, it’s more like yin and yank. The past few days I’ve been going, OK, she doesn’t mix the hot sex and romance so well with the single-mindedness of the police work. So it gets me wondering, Is the solution for me to give up our working relationship? Stop my magazine research so we can—?”

Nikki grabbed him into a deep kiss. Then she pulled away and said, “Will you shut up?” Before he could say yes, she grabbed Rook again, throwing her mouth back onto his. He wrapped his arms around her. She undid her seat belt and drew closer to him. Their faces and clothes became drenched in sweat. Another flash of lightning lit up the car through windows fogged by the heat of their bodies.

Nikki kissed his neck and then his ear. And then she whispered to him, “Do you really want to know what I think?”

He didn’t speak, he only nodded.

The low rumble of thunder finally reached them. When it tailed off, Nikki sat up, reached for the keys, and killed the ignition. “Here’s what I think. I think after all this, I’ve got energy to burn. Do you have any limes and salt and anything fun in a bottle?”

“I do.”

“Then I think you should invite me up and see what we can get going tonight.”

“Bite your tongue.”

“Just wait.”

They got out of the car and made a dash toward his building. Halfway there, Nikki took his hand and ran alongside him, giggling as they raced together up the sidewalk. They stopped at his front steps, breathless, and kissed each other, two lovers for the night getting soaked in the cooling rain.