Naked Heat

by Richard Castle

  "You kidding? Like crazy," said Rook. "But he had the pillowcase around my head real tight and had me in a choke hold."

  "Did he have a weapon?" asked the detective.

  "A knife. Yes. He said he had a knife."

  "Did you see it?"

  "I had a pillowcase blindfolding me. Plus, last year I got taken hostage in Chechnya by some rebels. I found that you live longer if you don't ask to see the knife."

  "Good call," said Nguyen. "What next?"

  "Well, he sat me in this side chair, told me not to move, and started to tape me down."

  "Did you ever see him? Even through the pillowcase?"

  "No."

  "What did his voice sound like?"

  Rook thought a moment. "Southern. Like Wilford Brimley." And then he added, "Oh! But not the look-at-that-Wilford-Brimley's-doing-TV-commercials-now Wilford Brimley. Younger. Like from Absence of Malice or The Natural."

  "So . . . Southern." Nguyen made the note.

  "I guess that would be easier to fit on the APB than Wilford Brimley's IMDb credits, yes," said Rook. "Southern, it is."

  Nikki turned to Nguyen and said with simple authority, "The accent was North Texas."

  Nguyen turned an amused side glance to Heat, who smiled and shrugged. He turned his attention back to Rook. "Did he say anything else to you, say what he wanted?"

  "Never got that far," answered the writer. "His cell phone rang, and next thing I know he leaves me sitting there and goes out."

  Heat interjected, "He must have had somebody outside watching the street who tipped him that I was coming up."

  "So we have an accomplice," said Nguyen, making that note.

  Rook continued with his story, "While he's out, I try rocking myself over to the desk, where I have scissors and a letter opener. But I tipped over. And there I was, stuck. He came in here briefly and left, then a while after that I heard all sorts of commotion out there. And a gunshot. And then nothing until now."

  Rook listened silently as Nikki recounted in detail to Detective Nguyen the story of how she had decided to drop by and pick Rook up, and how she'd gotten ambushed at his front door. And then she described the essentials of the fight in the great room and the pursuit that came afterward.

  When she was finished, Detective Nguyen asked if she could come to the precinct to meet the sketch artist. She said she would and he left, leaving Forensics behind for prints and samples.

  Waiting for the elevator to arrive and take her and Rook down, Nikki found her badge in her blazer side pocket and clipped it on her hip. Rook turned to her and said, "So. You just came over without my OK? What if I had been 'entertaining' someone?"

  They got on the elevator, and as the doors closed, she said, "That'll be the day, you entertain anyone. Anyone but yourself." He looked over at her and laughed, and then she did, too. And when they stopped laughing, they still held eye contact. Nikki wondered if this was going to turn into a kiss, and her mind was racing to figure out how she felt about that when the car reached the lobby and the outer door opened.

  Rook pulled the elevator gates open for her and said, "Close call, huh?"

  Nikki decided which way to take it. "Yeah. But we'll catch him."

  The sketch artist was waiting for them when they got to the First. So were Raley and Ochoa, who took the typewriter ribbon from Heat to run up to Forensics. Raley held up the evidence bag holding the cartridge. "Do you think this is what the Texan was looking for?"

  Heat could hear that soft drawl asking, 'Where is it?' and the memory of it made her inner ear tickle. The columnist's ransacked office, the missing filing cabinet, the looted trash, and absent typewriter ribbons . . . Clearly someone was trying to get their hands on whatever Cassidy Towne was working on. And she knew if he didn't get everything he was looking for, he'd kill again.

  There were only three remaining sketch artists in all for the NYPD. Nikki's was a detective who did his sketching on a computer using software to cut and paste facial features onto the graphic he was creating. As an artist, he was fast and he was good. He asked Nikki precise questions, and when she was unsure of the most descriptive term she could use to explain some of the Texan's features, he guided her to choices, making use of his experience and his degree in Behavioral Psychology.

  The result was a portrait of a lean, groomed man with short gingery-red hair, parted on the left; narrow, alert eyes; a sharp nose; and a look made earnest by thin lips and hollow cheeks.

  Heat's sketch result was added to the sheet, with her description of the suspect: early forties, six-one, 165 to 170 . . . (muscular but lean, she thought; more Billy Bob than Billy Ray). Last seen wearing a tan sport coat with bloodstain, dress white Western shirt with pearl buttons, brown dress slacks, and brown pointed cowboy boots. Known to be carrying an eight-inch knife. From the computer database of blades, Heat was able to find a picture of his weapon, a Robbins & Dudley 3-Finger Knuckle Knife with a cast aluminum molded grip.

  With that done, Rook waited in the lobby while Heat met with the shooting team from Police Plaza. The meeting didn't take long, and she left it still carrying her gun on her hip.

  Detective Nguyen had offered them each a ride home in a blue-and-white, and Rook said, "Look, I know we had plans for a drink, but I'd understand if you wanted to bag it for the night."

  "Actually . . ." She looked up at the wall clock in the lobby. It was almost nine-thirty. And then she looked at Rook. "I'm really not up for a bar tonight."

  "So, rain check? . . . Or has the fact that we cheated death made us fated to kick it out privately?"

  Nikki saw she had a half-hour-old text from Don, her trainer with benefits. "Still good for tonight? Y/N?" She held the phone in her hand and then glanced up at Rook, who looked just as frayed as she must have from an evening with a killer. But the post-trauma fragility she felt wasn't just from her throw-down with the Texan. She was still recovering from the fear throb she'd felt when she walked down the hall to Rook's office afterward, not knowing what she would find in there.

  "We could compare notes on the case so far," he said.

  She looked thoughtful. "I suppose we could do that. Take a fresh look at the evidence."

  "Do you have wine?"

  "You know it." Heat put her thumb on her keypad, pressed the N, and said to Rook, "Not your place, though. I'm not much for yellow tape and graphite dust, either." When they reached the blue-and-white, she gave the uniform the address of her apartment, and they both got in.

  Heat handed Rook a glass of Sancerre while he stood in her living room, in front of the John Singer Sargent poster he'd given her last summer. "You can't hate me too much, you've still got my Sargent prominently displayed."

  "Don't flatter yourself, Rook. It's all about the art. Cheers." They clinked and sipped. Then she said, "Let's keep this informal. You relax, enjoy some TV, whatever. I'm going to get a bath and soak some street chase off me."

  "Sure, no problem," he said, picking up the TV remote. "Take your time. I think Antiques Roadshow is in Tulsa tonight."

  Nikki gave him the finger and disappeared down the hall. She went into the bathroom, set her wineglass on the vanity, and opened the taps over her bathtub. She was just reaching for her bubble bath when he knocked on the doorjamb.

  "Hey, what if I had been 'entertaining' somebody?" she said.

  "With what," he said with a sly grin, "a little pony play?"

  "You wish," she said.

  "Just wondering if you were hungry."

  "Now that you mention it, yes." Funny, she thought, how adrenaline shuts that part down. "Want to order in?"

  "Or, if you don't mind, I could scrounge your kitchen. No booby traps, I trust."

  "None," she said. "Knock yourself out, I'll just enjoy the fact that I'm soaking while you work."

  "Love this thing," he said and stepped to her claw-foot bathtub. He rapped his knuckles on it and the cast-iron bonged like a church bell. "If the asteroid ever hits, this is where you should duck and co
ver."

  A half hour later, Nikki emerged in her robe, brushing her hair. "Something smells good out here," she said, but he was not in the kitchen. He wasn't in the living room, either. "Rook?"

  Then she looked down on the rug and saw a trail of cocktail napkins leading to the open window and the fire escape. She went back to her bedroom for her slippers, stepped through the window onto the metal stairs, and climbed them to the roof.

  "What are you doing?" said Nikki as she approached. Rook had set up a card table and two folding chairs and lit votive candles to light the meal he had prepared.

  "It's a little eclectic, but if we call it tapas we'll never know it's just stuff I scrounged." He pulled a chair out for her. She put her wineglass on the table and sat.

  "This looks great, actually."

  "It is, if you're not too hungry and can't see the burn marks in the dark," he said. "It's basic quesadillas cut into quarters and then there is smoked salmon with some capers I found in the back of your pantry. Out of sight, out of mind, you know." He must have been nervous because he kept on. "Is it too chilly up here? I brought the blanket off the couch if you need it."

  "No, it's nice tonight." Nikki looked up. There was too much ambient light to see any stars, but the view of the New York Life Tower a few blocks away and the Empire State Building beyond it were a splendid enough view. "This is brilliant, Rook. A nice touch after the day we've had."

  "I have my moments," he said. As they ate, she watched him in the candlelight, thinking, Now what was my issue here? On the street somewhere beneath them a car rolled by blasting classic rock with mega bass. It was before her time, but she knew the Bob Seger song from the clubs. Rook caught her staring at him as the chorus blared out that what they had in common was the fire down below.

  "What's wrong, did I overdo the candles?" he asked. "Sometimes I can come off kind of Mephistophelian when lit by flame."

  "No, the candle's working." Nikki took a bite of quesadilla and said, "But I do have something serious I need to ask you."

  "Sure, but we don't have to do any heavy lifting tonight. I know that was the plan but that can wait. I've almost forgotten how you crushed my spirit this afternoon."

  "But I need to know this and I need to know right now."

  "OK . . ."

  She wiped her hands on her napkin and looked him in the eyes. "Who has black pillowcases?" Before he could answer, she continued, "It's been bugging me since your office. Were those your black pillowcases?"

  "First of all, they aren't black."

  "So they are yours. I ask again, who has black pillowcases? Besides Hugh Hefner or, I don't know, international arms dealers?"

  "They are not black. They are the darkest of dark blue, called Midnight. You'd know that if you had hung around long enough to see my autumn bachelor linens."

  She laughed. "Autumn linens?"

  "Yes, seasons change. And by the bye, those sheets are eight hundred and twenty thread count."

  "I can see what I've been missing."

  "I'll bet," he said, dropping the wiseass from his tone. He paused and added, "You know exactly what you've been missing, and so do I."

  Nikki studied him. Rook was not looking at her but into her, the candle flame dancing in his eyes.

  He pulled the bottle from a bowl of ice and came around beside her to pour. When her glass was full, she rested one hand on his wrist and put the other around the bottle to take it from him and place it on the table. Looking up at him standing over her, Nikki held his gaze as she took his wrist and drew his hand inside her robe. She tensed with a shiver as his cool palm rested on her breast. And held her, warming.

  Rook slowly lowered, bending himself to kiss her, but it wasn't fast enough for what was building inside Nikki. She clawed the front of his shirt roughly and pulled him to her. Her excitement made him come alive, and he fell onto her, kissing her deeply and drawing her close.

  Nikki moaned, feeling a spreading warmth, and arched backward as she rose up to him. Then, sliding herself off the chair, she laid herself down on her back on the flat of the rooftop. Their tongues reached for each other, searching in some wild, aching desperation. He untied the sash of her robe. She unbuckled his belt. And Nikki Heat softly groaned again and whispered, "Now. Now . . . ," and moved herself to the long-past beat of the "Fire Down Below."

  Chapter Eight

  Something stirred Rook awake. A siren, likely an ambulance, judging by its chirps and guttural honks, announcing itself at an intersection over on Park Avenue South before fading into the night. It was one part of New York living he never got used to, the noise. For some it became background they could tune out. Not for him. It challenged him in the day when he wrote, and he never got an unbroken night's sleep because this was the city that never did. Somebody should write a song about that, he thought.

  With the eye that wasn't buried in the pillow, he read the luminous dial of his watch on the nightstand: 2:34. Three hours more sleep before the alarm. He smiled. Hm. Or maybe two hours. He slid backward across the bed to dock himself skin-to-skin with Nikki. When he reached the middle of the bed, he felt the sheet and her pillow. Both were cool.

  Rook found her in the living room, perched on the window seat in a sweatshirt and a pair of Gap drawstring bottoms. He stopped in the hallway entrance and watched her, a catlike silhouette in the bay window with her knees pulled up to her chin and her arms wrapped around her shins, contemplating the street below. "You can come in," she said without turning from her view of the block. "I know you're there."

  "Aren't you the trained observer, Detective," he said. He moved behind her and folded his forearms loosely around her neck.

  "I heard you the second your feet hit the floor in there. You move about as subtly as a draft horse." Nikki settled back and lounged against him.

  "You'll never hear me complain when the comparison involves a horse."

  "No?" She turned her face up to his and smiled. "No complaints here, either."

  "That's good. And saves me the trouble of leaving a survey card."

  Nikki sniffed a little chuckle and turned back to the window, this time resting the back of her head on his abdomen, feeling the warmth of him on her neck.

  "You thinking that he's out there somewhere?" asked Rook.

  "The Texan? Oh, he is for now. Just for now."

  "You worried he'll come here?"

  "I hope he does. I'm armed, and if that's not enough, if he'll hold still long enough, you can subdue him with one of your famous nosebleeds." She leaned forward and head-nodded over the sill. "Besides, Captain put a patrol car out front." As Rook leaned over her to see the roof of the blue-and-white, pressing his weight on her shoulders, Nikki added, "Doesn't he know the city's in a budget crisis?"

  "Small price to protect his star detective."

  A change came over her. She uncoiled her legs and moved from him, sliding herself around to put her back to the window. Rook sat beside her on the cushion. "What?" he said. When she didn't answer, he leaned a shoulder against hers. "What's got you up and sitting here at this hour?"

  Nikki reflected a moment and said, "Gossip." She turned her head halfway to him. "I've been thinking about how ugly gossip is. How it victimizes people, but how as much as we say we hate it, we still feed on it like it was crack."

  "I hear you. It ate at me every day with Cassidy Towne. They call what she did journalism--hell, I even said it was the other day when I argued with Toby Mills's spin doctor--but, when you get down to it, Cassidy Towne was as much about journalism as the Spanish Inquisition was about justice. Although, Tomas de Torquemada had more friends."

  "I'm not talking about Cassidy Towne," said Nikki. "I'm talking about me. And the rumors and gossip I've had to deal with since you put me on the cover of a national magazine. That's what got me all shitty with you in the car today. Someone made a snide comment insinuating that I slept with you for the publicity."

  "It was that lawyer, wasn't it?"

  "Rook, it
doesn't matter who. It's not the first of those I've had to deal with. At least that was an overt remark. Most of what I get are looks or I catch people whispering. Since your article came out I feel like I'm walking around naked. I've spent years building my rep as a professional. It's never been called into question until now."

  "I knew that shyster said something to you."

  "Did you even hear what I just said?"

  "Yes, and my advice is to consider the source, Nik. He's just working on your head to get some sort of psychological leverage in the case. His client's going down. Richmond Vergennes will be an Iron Chef, all right. Ironing in the Sing Sing laundry."

  She tucked a knee up and scooted to face him, resting a palm on each of his shoulders. "I want you to listen carefully because this is important. Do I have you?" He nodded. "Good. Because I'm telling you about something that's going on with me that's a big deal, and you're spinning off on your own side road. You think you're with me but you're running parallel. Understand what I mean?"

  He nodded again and she said, "You don't."

  "I do. You're upset because that lawyer made an unfair crack."

  She took her hands off his shoulders and folded them in her lap. "You're not hearing me."

  "Hey?" He waited for her to face him. "I am hearing you, and here's what you're feeling. You're feeling like your life was rolling along fine until my article came out, right? And what did I do? I put you where you aren't comfortable--thrust into the spotlight with everybody looking at you and gossiping about you, and not always to your face. And you're frustrated because you tried to tell me it wasn't what you wanted but I had it so in my head it was good for you that I did everything but consider your feelings." He paused and took both her hands in his. "I'm considering them now, Nik. I'm sorry for how I made you feel. I thought I was doing a good job and apologize that I let it get complicated."

  She hardly knew what to say, so she just stared at him a moment. At last she said, "So. I guess you were listening."

  He nodded to himself and said, "We just had a Dr. Phil thing there, didn't we?"