Deadly Heat

by Richard Castle

  Kaye never looked back, just kept sprinting with purpose. And speed. Nikki made a quick scope of 23rd, hoping for a blue-and-white. In that split second, she collided with two teenagers backing out of a bodega, laughing at their Twizzler fangs. They all kept their footing, but when Heat cleared the boys, she spotted Salena popping the back door of a taxi.

  The cab was too far away to read its plate or medallion number. Heat memorized its missing-a-chunk bumper and the gentlemen’s club ad on the roof, hoping to find it again in the sea of rush hour taxis about to swallow it.

  She stepped out into the middle of the street, holding her shield out to drivers and signaling them to stop. An off-duty cab blasted its horn and accelerated off. A green Camry screeched to a stop just past her. Nikki rushed up and opened the driver’s door. The startled old man looked at her from behind the thick glasses of another decade. “Police emergency. I need your car. Now, please.”

  Without a word, the slack-jawed senior climbed out. Heat thanked him, got in, saw the tiny old woman looking at her from the passenger seat, and floored it.

  “Hold on,” said Nikki, taking a sharp left onto First. She’d briefly spotted the XXX from the strip club’s rooftop ad and scanned the avenue of cabs ahead of her to find it again. Her passenger said nothing, just clawed the dash with arthritically distorted hands while her seat belt clunked into lock mode. Up ahead, partially blocked from view by an ambulette, Heat picked out the taxi’s scarred bumper and then Salena Kaye’s face peering out the back window.

  Nikki punched it through the red light at 24th, offering calm reassurance. “You don’t have to worry, I’ve done this before.” The elderly woman just stared at her, saucer-eyed. But she nodded. The old gal was game. “You have a cell phone?”

  “It’s a Jitterbug,” she said, and held up her bright red phone. “Shall I call 911?”

  “Yes, please.” Heat tried to sound casual even as she lurched the wheel and mashed the brake. A gnarled forefinger tapped the large, senior-friendly keypad. “Say ‘Officer needs assistance.’ ” While Heat threaded through the uptown rush, keeping pace with the cab, her passenger repeated Nikki’s parceled-out messages to the emergency operator, asking her to radio for patrol cars to get ahead of them so they could wedge the suspect in a vise. “You did great.” As the woman snapped her Jitterbug closed, Heat threw a protective arm out across her. “Hang on, hang on.”

  Just beyond Bellevue Hospital, Salena Kaye bailed from her taxi and ran into the ambulance driveway. Heat checked her mirrors, pulled a hard right to the curb, and stopped. “You OK?”

  The old lady nodded. “Hot dog.”

  Detective Heat flew out of the car, sprinting after her suspect.

  Nikki eyeballed the row of FDNY ambulances parked at the trauma entrance, looking inside and between them all as she ran, but she couldn’t spot Kaye. She jogged deeper into the passageway, slowing to check behind some laundry bins. Then she caught it. A figure going over the wall at the dead end of the lot.

  Kaye had taken one of the spine boards stacked beside the ambulances to cover the razor wire. Heat used it, too, pausing at the top to get bearings on the suspect before her drop to the sidewalk. She landed with knees bent to absorb the impact, and tore off up the service road that ran between NYU Medical Center and the FDR.

  Ahead stretched a straight line of sidewalk. And a runaway killer.

  Salena Kaye had skills. She ran in a random zigzag pattern that made it futile for Heat to shoot from that distance. But her dekes and dodges also slowed her forward progress. Nikki kicked up the sprint until her lungs were seared.

  By 30th Street, just past the big white tent housing remains from the 9/11 attack, Heat knew she had her. Close enough to risk a shot, she drew. “Salena Kaye, freeze or I’ll shoot.” The suspect stopped, raised both hands, and turned to face her. But then a pair of orderlies from the medical examiner’s office stepped out of the rear courtyard for a smoke break. “Get back!” Heat shouted. The man and woman froze, blocking her shot. Kaye sprinted off through traffic, into a parking garage across the street.

  Gun out and pointed up at the car park’s ceiling of green steel girders, Nikki Heat tiptoed through the shadows, scanning every square inch, listening intently over the thrum of FDR traffic above for any sound that would give away Salena’s hiding place. The detective squatted to scout under the cars, with nothing to show for it but a sooty palm. Then she rose up and stood stock still. Just to listen.

  She never heard the blow coming. Salena Kaye pounced on top of her, dropping from the steel I-beams of the ceiling, taking her by surprise.

  Nikki knew better than to stay down in hand-to-hand combat. She pushed Kaye off and sprang to her feet, bringing her Sig Sauer around toward the woman still on the concrete. But Salena clearly had close-fighting experience. Her right leg scissored up in a blink, and the instep of her foot whacked Nikki’s wrist. The impact, square on a nerve, deadened feeling in her hand, and the pistol clattered across the deck and took a bounce off a car tire before it spun to a stop.

  Kaye kipped up, quick as a gymnast, and came at Heat with a rapid-fire pair of wrist blows to each side of her head, boom-boom. Nikki’s vision fogged and her knees jellied. She fought the blackout and recovered to find Salena going for her gun. Heat side-kicked her ribs, and the woman dropped. But then she caught Nikki off guard again with a jujitsu leg lock—a submission hold Heat had practiced herself—but now she was the victim of immobilizing pain as Kaye forced her knee to hyperextend. Unable to move, unable to free herself, she saw the dark form of her Sig Sauer on the cement and reached for it. Kaye pulled her back toward her, but in so doing, she released Nikki’s leg just enough for her to wiggle out of the lock. Heat threw herself forward on top of Salena, raining blows to her collarbone and neck. Kaye reacted by kicking both knees upward, somersaulting Heat right over her. Nikki landed hard on her back and lost her breath.

  “Hey, what’s going on?” shouted the security guard coming out of the kiosk. In the spilt second Salena paused to gauge the threat, Heat rolled for her gun. She scrambled wildly for it, snatching it barrel-first. When she came up in ready-fire, Salena Kaye was long gone.

  Heat pursued, hobbling on her sore knee. She jogged through the pain and caught sight of Salena making a right turn toward the river up at 34th Street.

  And then Nikki heard the helicopter.

  When she reached the intersection, Heat knew it would be close. A hundred yards away, a royal blue Sikorsky S-76 warmed up on the commuter helipad. A side door stood open, and the pilot, in a white short-sleeved shirt with epaulettes, lay on the asphalt beneath Salena Kaye, with both hands to his face and blood streaming through his fingers.

  For the second time that morning, Detective Heat drew her service piece and called a freeze. Kaye probably couldn’t hear her over the copter’s engine, but she saw Nikki. With a lingering look and a slow turn that spoke of arrogance, she climbed inside the S-76 and closed the door. Seconds later, as Heat reached the tarmac, the chopper lifted up about two feet and then rotated on an axis, its rear rotor spinning within a yard of Nikki, who plunged to the asphalt. Salena Kaye rotated again, brazenly presenting the helicopter’s side to Heat long enough to chuck her the finger. Then the chopper slowly drifted out over the East River, churning up a circle of spray.

  Heat got on one knee and braced her elbow on the other, taking aim with her Sig Sauer. She figured if she emptied the entire clip into the engine, she could, maybe, bring it down in the drink. She envisioned the shot, and then hesitated.

  It occurred to her that there could be an innocent passenger aboard.

  Nikki holstered and called for NYPD air support as she watched the Sikorsky become a dot against the morning sun over Brooklyn.

  Jameson Rook hurried into the Homicide Squad Room at the Twentieth, strode up to Heat, and locked her in a hug. “My God, are you OK?”

  Nikki gave the bull pen a sheepish scan and modeled a quieter voice for him. “I’m fine.” They un
folded from their embrace, and he revealed the Starbucks cup in his hand. “Brought you a fresh latte.”

  “Thanks, I’ll wait.”

  “I’ll taste test it for you.” He took a sip, made a ceremony of swirling it in his mouth, and swallowed, following the whole thing up with a lip smack and a satisfied “Ah.” He held it out and said, “See, it’s just fi—” Suddenly his eyes bugged and he made a choking gasp and brought his free hand up to his throat. She stared blankly. He miraculously recovered. “Too soon?”

  “Too late.” Nikki gestured to the squad room, where a grande cup labeled “Nikki” sat atop every desk. “These idiots beat you to it.”

  “Half hour ago, homes,” said Ochoa as he approached. “Shoulda seen Rhymer after his sip. Opie hit the deck bucking and snorting.” He smiled. “That frothing was inspired.”

  Rook said, “What is it about cop humor? So dark. So inappropriate. So awesome.” He had learned from day one of his ride-along with Heat that cops responded differently to sadness and stress than most folks. They hid their emotions in opposites. All this joking, acting out false poisonings, was more than grabass or gallows humor; it carried a message of affection that said, I’m worried you almost got killed. Or, I care. Rook figured it was in the same realm as why the Three Stooges never hugged.

  Ochoa wagged his notebook, signaling business. “Just hung up with a detective from the Seventieth over in Flatbush. She’s in the ball field where your chopper set down in South Prospect Park. Good thing you held fire. There was a passenger aboard. Some fashion CEO coming in from the Hamptons. He never got a chance to unbuckle his seat belt when they touched down and got skyjacked.”

  “Technically, if they were on the ground, wouldn’t that be ‘hijacked’?” asked Rook. He felt their glares. “Please. Proceed.”

  “The fashionista says Kaye speed-dialed a call while they were still over the river.” Detective Ochoa knew better than to drag out suspense and flipped a page to the witness’s quote. “She said, ‘Dragon, it’s me,’ then something he couldn’t make out that sounded like ‘busted play.’ Kaye never said anything else, just listened, then hung up. Five minutes later she was booking east across the empty Parade Grounds while he sat there with the rotors still spinning.”

  Ochoa peeled off to his desk, and Rook said, “I have to shake my head about Salena Kaye. To think of all the time that woman spent in my apartment giving me physical therapy. I have to say—helluva massage.” He paused, cheesily relishing something private, then grew serious. “Of course it kinda spoils the mojo, knowing she was really only there to plant listening devices for Tyler Wynn.”

  Just the sound of his name sent a twinge through Heat. Not just because it reminded her of the betrayal by the man behind her mother’s death. The CIA traitor still had some reason to want Nikki dead, and he’d sent his lethal accomplice Salena Kaye to poison her latte. If Nikki could keep herself from getting killed, she might even find out why.

  That sunny thought filled her head as she gathered her squad around the Murder Board. “Don’t bother sitting,” Heat said as she block printed “DRAGON” in all red caps across the top of the display. “We have an apparent code name for Salena Kaye’s controller.”

  “Isn’t that Tyler Wynn?” asked Rook.

  “We assume, yet never assume. You know that by now.” Nikki then turned her attention to Detective Hinesburg. She figured a straightforward task would be Sharon-proof, so she assigned her to run Dragon and any variations through the database at the Real Time Crime Center downtown. “When you’re done with that, see if it lights up anything at Homeland, Interpol, or DGSE in Paris.” She put Detective Rhymer on checking the cellular carriers to see if they could slurp a number off any towers near the river at the time of Salena Kaye’s phone call. Heat bet Kaye had used a burner cell, but she had to be thorough.

  Rhymer, as good-natured as his Virginia hometown, smiled and nodded. “Good as done,” said Opie.

  Next she posted a Google Map enlargement of the Brooklyn neighborhood where the Sikorsky landed. “It’s not likely the suspect had time to arrange a pickup. And good luck hailing a cab in an outer borough, right? But look here.” Heat pointed to the map. “The Church Avenue subway station is in the direction of her escape. Raley, get on the blower to the MTA. Start pulling security cam video from Church Ave to see if she got on a train and, if so, which direction. Then check pictures from stops along the line to see where she got off.”

  When she turned from the map, Heat caught Ochoa eye-rolling to his partner. “Problem, gentlemen?”

  Ochoa said, “I know, like, Rales is your King of All Surveillance Media, and all that. But we’re getting spread a little thin. We still have to get back in the field to brace more of the restaurant owners on Conklin’s roster.”

  “You’ll have to juggle both,” said Heat. “Like we all do.” She didn’t need to take it further. Nikki could see the impact on all their faces. Every detective in that room knew their squad leader not only juggled these two cases; she did it while someone was actively out to kill her. She adjourned, continuing to ponder the why of that. Heat didn’t have the answer yet, but the attempt on her life that morning told her one thing. Something new was up with whatever conspiracy had led to her mom’s murder ten years ago. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be working this hard to kill her now.

  On the drive with Rook to City Island to interview Roy Conklin’s widow, Nikki found her eyes on the mirrors a lot more than usual. When you know a professional wants you in the crosshairs, a little extra vigilance may get you a chance to see the next day.

  Heat was at risk, and nobody would have thought less of her if she bunkered up. Captain Irons was so worried about her safety, he’d even offered her administrative leave or vacation time, if she wanted it. Nikki had stomped out that idea on the spot. The cop in her would never hide in the face of personal danger. That was the gig. But she did feel a healthy nerve jangle. Who wouldn’t? So Heat did what Heat did best: She compartmentalized. Experience had taught her that the only way to move forward was to cage the beast—put her fear in a box. Because what was the alternative? To close herself inside her apartment? Run and hide?

  Not this detective. This detective would bring the fight to them. And check her mirrors.

  The phone rang as they crossed the Pelham Bay Bridge, where the Hutchinson River separated the urban Bronx from the expansive green woods surrounding Turtle Cove. Nikki fished her Jawbone earpiece from the side door pocket and got an earful from her friend Lauren Parry. “Do I need to remind you that I will kill you if you get yourself killed?”

  Heat chuckled. “No, you make that pretty clear. Every time.”

  “See?” Lauren kidded, but sisterly worry came through. “That’s why you’re still walking God’s earth. Because I will come after you.”

  Admonishment completed, the medical examiner filled in Heat on Roy Conklin’s postmortem. “Hard to call it good news,” said Lauren, “but Mr. Conklin was deceased before he went into the oven.”

  Nikki pictured the body. Envisioned the high-temp bake. “So he didn’t suffer?”

  “Doubtful. Cause of death was a .22 delivered to the base of the skull.” Heat answered Rook’s inquiring face by miming a finger pistol while the ME added, “Condition of the body and the small caliber hid the GSW from me on-scene. I found the slug when I opened him up. Ballistics has it now.”

  “What about my poisoning vic from Starbucks?”

  “He’s next up.”

  “Be sure to run a cross-check versus whatever killed Petar,” said Nikki, mindful of Salena Kaye’s earlier poisoning victim.

  “Gee, ya think?” said Lauren. “Leave the autopsies to me. You concentrate on staying alive.”

  Heat and Rook patiently waited out another round of Olivia Conklin’s sobs in the living room of the airy, seashore-themed two-bedroom that would never feel the same to her. The apartment, in a complex of neat gray clapboards with bright white trim, sat waterside next to City Island�
�s sailing school in the Bronx. In the distance beyond the balcony, Long Island shimmered under a spring sun. The view back at them from Great Neck might have been Jay Gatsby’s when he contemplated the green light shining across the water. But symbols of brightness, beauty, and optimism had no place in that room. It should have been raining.

  For Olivia Conklin, still wearing the crumpled business suit after her night flight home from a software training seminar in Orlando, the only solace was that her husband had been shot. When that’s the good news, it’s all downhill.

  Even though Heat despised this part of the job, it was the part she was best at. She connected, having once been in a similar chair filling Kleenex herself. So she navigated the interview gently, yet alert for signs of guilt, lies, and inconsistencies. Unfortunately spouses proved worthy suspects. With delicacy, she probed the marriage, money, vices, mental health, and hints of infidelity.

  “Roy only had one mistress,” she said. “His job. He was so dedicated. I know some people hear civil servant and think laziness. Not my Roy. He never left his work at the office. He took public health personally. He called them his restaurants and never wanted a sickness on his watch.”

  All this only confirmed the research Heat’s team had done so far. Roy Conklin’s finances were in line with his pay grade. Roach’s restaurant checks revealed a man consistently called tough but fair. Neither his wife nor his colleagues knew him to have any enemies, recent erratic behavior, or new people in his life.

  “It just makes no sense,” said Olivia Conklin. Then the new widow wailed out the single, heart-crushed word Nikki heard from all grievers after the sudden theft of a life. That word was the beacon that guided Detective Heat in her work: “Why?”

  As Heat and Rook walked back to her car, past the tidy row of Sunfish trailered in the sailing school parking lot, Nikki’s gaze roamed out to the glistening open water. She imagined the smart pop of Dacron as wind filled her sail and she tacked out into Long Island Sound. Then she pictured Roy Conklin standing right there his last living day and wondered if he’d savored that view or if his heart had felt too heavy with fear or guilt at some horrible secret he kept from his wife—a secret that got him killed and left her asking why. Or, Nikki speculated, did poor Roy never see it coming, either? Then her phone rang and yanked Heat into her other case. Sailing would have to wait. Back to juggling.