Driving Heat

by Richard Castle

  “Same for his bank card?” asked Heat.

  “Affirm,” said Rales. “If Rook—or anyone—taps an ATM for his cash, we’ll know in seconds and have cars and a chopper swarm it. We’re sending a detective from the First Precinct to check out Rook’s loft in case there’s been a forced entry or signs of it being tossed.”

  Flywheels were spinning so fast in Nikki’s head that, in her impatience, she started to read ahead on the board so she could assess the coverage without waiting through Raley’s recitation. The list felt comprehensive: Run silver minivans through the DMV. Check for minivans reported stolen, starting in the last twenty-four hours (painstaking without access to the database, but they would assign the manpower to do it by hand). Assign an administrative aide to call the Crime Stoppers anonymous tip line every half hour. Get in touch with 911 Dispatch for any calls reporting fights or…gunshots.

  With that the to-do list had taken a sharp left into corrosive areas. Nikki’s mouth went dry, and she crossed her arms so she could wedge her hands into her armpits and hide how much they were shaking. At the end of his bullet points, Raley concluded with, “That’s one front we’re hitting.”

  “But we’re hitting a second front just as hard,” continued Ochoa. “And that’s to step it up and push harder on the Lon King and Fred Lobbrecht murders.” He must have caught Heat’s reaction to that and started to explain. “Our theory is—”

  “The murder case is tied in to his kidnapping,” Heat said, interrupting. “Solving that case equals saving Rook.”

  “Exactly. We don’t know how—”

  “But we know they’re linked,” said Raley. “So the last thing we can afford to do is drop the ball there.”

  Heat nodded. “Agreed. The clock is running.”

  Detective Ochoa indicated the busy squad room. “That’s why we called in extra investigators from Robbery-Burglary. So our squad can keep flogging the homicides. Meantime, everyone has canceled their lives for this. We are going to find him, Captain.”

  “And if we don’t have solid leads—” added Raley.”

  “We are going to follow up on every single weak one no matter how tangential it looks until we get Rook back safe and alive,” finished Ochoa.

  The alternative sickened Heat, so she told herself for the hundredth time that there was no alternative. “Keep it rolling, bring him home,” she said. The thank-you was implied; making it explicit would only cause them to lose a step in a fast race. But on the way to her office, Nikki paused for the briefest second to appreciate the fact that her squad co-leaders had set aside whatever differences they had for the sake of the mission. The fact that they were back together working as the Roach machine gave her heart hope that they actually might find Rook.

  Heat closed her office door and placed another call—one that pride had made her procrastinate over, but pride would not help find Rook. It went to the 703 area code, and the operator in the big glass building in the woods Nikki pictured outside Washington, DC, answered on the first ring. After a short interval—mercifully without lite jazz—there came a double click and a single electronic purr. “You’ve reached voicemail for Senior Agent Bell. You may now leave a message.”

  Figuring that the encrypted line would be secure enough, Heat left a lengthy message describing Rook’s kidnapping to Yardley and urging her to call so they could talk more about Tangier Swift. Trying to keep the throat squeeze of desperation out of her voice, she said, “It’s ten past one A.M., but call anytime with anything.” Before hanging up, she added for emphasis, “Anytime.”

  So much for hiding her desperation.

  Lon King, PhD

  Counseling Transcript

  Session of Mar. 21/13 with Heat, N., Det. Grade-1, NYPD

  LK: You’ve been away for some time.

  NH: Not so long.

  LK: You canceled your last session. And the makeup one, as well.

  NH: Best of intentions, but real life intervenes. Casework, the usual. You know.

  LK: It wasn’t discomfort over our prior conversation?

  NH: Of course not. Just busy.

  LK: Then you won’t mind if we go back to where we left off. In my notes here you were just about to talk about commitment to Rook. [Note—NH avoiding eye contact, restless] I’m sensing this might be a sensitive area for you, Nikki. Is it?

  NH: No. I mean, we are engaged. That’s commitment, right?

  LK: Is it?

  NH: Yes. Absolutely. We are going to do this.

  LK: Very concrete. As a high achiever, I have no doubt you are committed to the event. My question is, how does it make you feel?

  NH: Like it’s the time of my life. [Long pause] Crap. I’m sorry. I just got a text from the precinct. I have to go. Sorry.

  LK: Duty doesn’t call anymore. It texts. But this is something you need to explore. Your comfort zone when things get too emotional is your task orientation.

  NH: It’s a big job, and I’m dedicated to it.

  LK: Yes, it’s quite a drive you have. The thing I would ask you, is are you driving toward something, or driving something away?

  Just before dawn after a night without sleep, Nikki sat on hold with the graveyard-shift DMV supervisor she had chased down in Albany to gate-crash the Records Section and run out a list of silver minivans for her. While he slowly—so damn slowly—took down the information, Heat tried to pry open the bottle of Tylenol she had found in the break room’s first-aid drawer so she could tame the throbbing knot behind her ear where the goon had soccer-kicked her. Nikki’s quaking fingers managed to pop the top, but the force of the action sent all the tablets clattering over her desktop to the floor. Screw it. Heat selected two off her blotter and dry-swallowed them.

  As she wrapped up her call to the DMV, she heard someone walking on gravel and turned. But it wasn’t gravel. It was Detective Ochoa treading across Tylenol. His face registered something she had not seen all night: hope. Then he said one welcome word: “Tipster.”

  “Tell me,” she said, rising to her feet, adrenalized. With a cop’s reflex, she noted the time: 5:42 in the morning.

  “Just came in. A guy in town for dinner last night from Port Chester saw Rook get taken. He said it didn’t look right, and tailed the silver minivan as far as he could.”

  “He credible?”

  “Gave the full plate that matches your partial.”

  “Why’d he wait so long?”

  “Said he was with someone he wasn’t supposed to be with, and didn’t want to get found out. Guess he got a conscience.”

  “Let’s hear it for cheaters,” Heat said, pulling on her blazer. “Have him show me.”

  To make sure he didn’t wiggle off the hook, Detective Feller picked up Alvin Speyer outside his Times Square hotel and chauffeured the philandering plumbing contractor to where he had last seen the kidnap van. They followed Montgomery Street under the FDR into the parking lot of Pier 36, where Detective Heat was waiting between the cargo warehouse and the big Parks & Rec basketball complex. Raley and Ochoa wanted to be there, too, but she had come alone, not wanting to overwhelm an already apprehensive eyewit with a heavy turnout of detectives.

  Heat crossed the blacktop to her tipster after he got out of the passenger seat and gave him her most welcoming smile and a friendly handshake. She had already slid her badge further back on her belt so that he wouldn’t spot it and freeze up. She made out Speyer to be about forty-six to forty-eight, with the kind of cheerful bad-boy face that some women find irresistible, and the faded-glory level of fitness you see in suburban sports coaches. Nikki wondered if the previous night’s Gotham slumber party had been with a soccer mom or a lucky customer, then banished all that as distracting. “Hi, Mr. Speyer, I’m Nikki,” she said, careful to keep it informal. No sense introducing rank-caused jitters. “I want to thank you for your cooperation, and I want to assure you, right off, that your assistance will remain just between us.”

  “Good. ’Cause I’ll end up in court if it gets out I
was here. According to my wife, I’m supposed to be in East Meadow on a big condo contract all this week.”

  “Your secret’s safe with me.” In order to move away from the subject of adultery before he retreated, she added, “Why don’t you describe exactly what you saw.”

  Speyer massaged the back of his thick neck and said, “Sure. We were heading to dinner up at Neary’s, you know, that Irish spot, when this asshole in a silver van cuts me off and hits the brakes right in front of me. I give him a dose of horn, but then I see these three big dudes coming, and figure I’d better cool it. Then I see they’re wrestling this guy who no way wants to go with them. My lady says we should get out of there, but my dad was a fireman, you know? It’s in the blood to help. I tell her let’s just follow and see what’s what, you never know. Then when I see this lady get dropped in the gutter, I say, ‘No brainer, we’re on these dudes.’”

  Speyer described the route, and Heat was happy to see Randall Feller taking notes behind him, out of his view. From the East Side they had taken the FDR south past the Williamsburg Bridge, finding their way to South Street and then to the place where they now stood. “We didn’t want to get too close. Who knew what the fuck they were up to. Or carrying. So I hung back there near the street and watched. They pull up to that ramp down there.” He made a chop with one hand toward an incline to the East River. “Then they drag the same guy out and take him down to this motorboat that’s waiting. They load him in and it takes off.”

  With her heart lashing her rib cage, Nikki asked, “What about the man? Did he seem all right? Hurt? Was he struggling?”

  “Naw, he wasn’t fighting at all. He seemed sort of out of it. Upright, but these guys were big, and they were basically carrying him one on each shoulder.”

  “Drugged?”

  “I’d say so. Or they’d fucking cold-cocked his ass. He had a lot of blood on his shirt.”

  Nikki felt herself lose feeling in her hands and feet.

  Feller picked up on it and stepped in to distract her. “Tell us about the boat.”

  “Not much to tell, and we didn’t hang around, I’ll tell you that.”

  Every detective knows that when an eyewitness says there’s not much to tell, it’s only because they haven’t been asked the right questions yet. Randall had a few. “Did it have any numbers? Maybe a name or markings?”

  “I’m sure it had numbers and such, but it was too far to read.”

  “Could you see what color it was?”

  “It was night, much darker than now.” They looked east. The sun was not yet up, and oystery clouds hung low.

  Heat had regained her equilibrium and joined in. “But I see some lights there on the pier; they’re still on.”

  “Hmm, I’m thinking blue. The boat was blue.”

  “Good,” said Feller. “All kinds of blue, Alvin. Navy, powder, light, dark?”

  “Light and bright. Kinda like the sky, I’d say.”

  “Sky blue.”

  “Yeah, I’d definitely call it sky blue. Open boat, too. Like a skiff. Big outboard. That thing hauled.”

  “So you actually saw it leave?” asked Nikki. “Did you see where it went?”

  “It was foggy, so I lost it. But the direction was sort of that way.” He straight-armed toward Brooklyn.

  Nothing definitive—but more than they had had five minutes before.

  Detective Feller didn’t even need to be asked. He had made some good contacts in the Harbor Unit and Coast Guard earlier in the week in chasing down leads on Lon King’s kayak and volunteered to hop on them right away to check boat registries and set up patrols of the waterfront for a sky-blue skiff, especially concentrating on a zone from Williamsburg to Red Hook.

  Heat called the description in to Ochoa so helicopters could cover the harbor as well as streets and backyards, in case the skiff had been trailered and hauled. The detective said he would alert cruisers to be especially watchful for the silver minivan in Brooklyn, in case that was its destination, as well.

  On her drive back to the precinct, Nikki’s panic dueled with hope. But there was nothing like a lead to bring faith, so she clung to that. For dear life.

  The King of All Surveillance Media had seen happier days. Heat popped into his screening room up the hall from the bull pen, where he was painstakingly scrubbing his copy of the footage from the Sidecar’s speakeasy cam, which so far had offered no good imagery of the abductors. The frozen frame on his monitor was of Rook, wincing in reaction as hands clutched him from behind. Nikki had to look away from that picture of him and hurried out.

  She had just entered her office when Detective Rhymer beckoned her through the glass to come into the squad room.

  Opie stood at his desk, indicating four thick manila accordion files stuffed with documents that were marked with a rainbow array of sticky tabs. “Roach assigned me to dig deeper into financial matters for our decedents. Lon King came out pretty much as projected. Big dips to cover gambling debts until there was no more to dip from. I’m sure he was living off his artist partner’s commissions. With the cyber snafu, I had to go old school looking into Fred Lobbrecht. That meant going the paper route. Hard copies, so nothing got sucked into the ether.” He patted the files. “Just came from his bank branch. Very interesting. Here’s a guy who went along and along on his state trooper salary. No spikes up or down. Nothing out of pattern—until…” He drew a printout from one of the accordion files and displayed it for Heat. “Until a month ago, when the last ten years of his mortgage suddenly get paid off.”

  “A definite spike,” said Heat.

  “The Odd Sock, Captain,” saidOpie, tossing Heat’s own lexicon back at her. “Now where do you suppose a guy who’s been a career state trooper gets that kind of money without buying a Pick 10?”

  “I don’t know. Rich uncle? Perhaps one in the automotive biz?” Of course, a huge windfall never smelled right in a murder investigation. But what did it mean? A big lump sum could point to any number of things: a bribe, hush money, compensation to a mole among the safety watchdogs, even an extortion payment squeezed out of Swift by Lobbrecht. What Rhymer had turned up in that bank statement could even reframe the actions of some fellow whistle-blowers who had suddenly changed careers: one to decamp to the Everglades on a manatee rescue mission, the other to drive fast cars and live out a Clarence Clemons fantasy in Bronx rock ’n’ blues bars. Heat knew that kind of independence either comes from a life change or ready cash. It was time to go back to the whistle-blowers to ask a few more pointed questions about their dead colleague—and to see if they passed the smell test.

  Detective Rhymer set out for Throggs Neck to reinterview Nathan Levy. Detective Aguinaldo was tasked to stir up Abigail Plunkitt, who still had not checked in from Florida. Heat made a call downtown to set up a forensic accounting study of both Tangier Swift and of his corporation, SwiftRageous, hoping to find some telltale payment that coincided with Lobbrecht’s windfall. It was going to take some time, they told her. The cyber intrusion had overwhelmed their office, but they would do their best. The bureaucratic response hit Nikki like a kick in the gut. Rook’s life hung in the balance. She damn well needed more than a checked-out worker bee doing her best. She hung up and dialed One Police Plaza to cash in the offer from Zach Hamner to kick some municipal ass.

  After that, Heat headed to NoHo to see what there was to learn about Fred Lobbrecht at Hudson University.

  The officers in the blue-and-white detailed to Wilton Backhouse confirmed to Heat that the professor was inside the Practical Science and Engineering Annex. Before she stepped away, the driver raised a clenched fist and said, “You hang in, Captain.”

  She returned the gesture and said, “Always.”

  Crossing Thompson Street, Nikki was amazed at how word spread, even when the department’s intranet was down. The small gesture also gave her greater hope that more eyes in that city were alert for Rook than she had imagined.

  Heat startled Backhouse, who was in his offi
ce with the door open to the hallway while he collected materials for a morning lab. “Embarrassing,” he said when he had recovered his composure. “I’ve been jumping at everything. Noises, even freakin’ door slams get me.”

  Heat understood why his nerves would be frayed and tried to assuage him. “It’s all good.”

  “Are you shitting me? Are you serious? You don’t think I know about Nate Levy? He calls and tells me about the goddamn drone taking a shot at him, and you’re saying it’s all good? You people can’t even keep your computers running, and I’m supposed to feel safe and snug because there’s two cops playing Sudoku in a police car out front?”

  “We’re doing everything we can to bring this to a close.” This guy needed to be calmed down, so she tried enlisting him. “Help me do that. Do you have time for a quick chat?”

  He flicked a glance at the Pebble on his wrist. “Ten minutes, anyway. I’ve got a session on impact elasticity and coefficients of restitution.” He seemed put off when Heat took it upon herself to close his door, but set down his laptop and files and settled onto the yoga ball he used for a desk chair.

  The rest of his office looked lived-in, but more utilitarian than homey. The window behind him looked out to a dark air shaft between buildings through bent venetian blinds. The overhead fluorescents gave light that was good but too bright for Nikki’s headache. Technical books stuffed with papers filled gray metal shelves on two walls; the rack above his desk held DVD collections of Bladerunner, Lord of the Rings, The Matrix, and Firefly bookended by a pair of miniature blue British phone booths, which she recognized from Rook’s obsessive viewing as being from Dr. Who. That jibed with his tee shirt, which read, “Daleks Do It with Directed Energy.” She took in the unframed wall art behind him. Side-by-side posters of Benedict Cumberbatch: one as Kahn from Star Trek Into Darkness; the other as Julian Assange, the famous whistle-blower, a role Cumberbatch had played in The Fifth Estate.