Her training kicked in and Heat drew her gun. A gasp rose from the crew, sharp enough and full of sufficient horror to let Soleil guess what had just happened behind her back. She slowed to a stop at the edge of the flight deck and turned to see Heat approaching, gun up, aimed at her. And then, without hesitation, Soleil Gray turned, and leaped over the edge.
Amid a clamor behind her from the frozen onlookers, Nikki rushed toward the side where the woman had gone over, trying to recall what lay six stories directly below her jump. Parking lot? Pier? The Hudson? And in those quick seconds, she also wondered, could someone survive a fall from that height even into water?
But when she got to the edge and peered over the side, Nikki saw something completely unexpected: Soleil Gray tucking and rolling her way out of a safety net suspended from the deck below. "Soleil, stop!" she called, and took aim again. But it was all for show. Heat certainly wasn't going to open fire on her under these circumstances, and the singer bet on that. Nikki reholstered about the same time she saw two men, stunt coordinators she would learn later, reaching for her suspect and pulling her out of sight onto the deck below, oblivious to what had just taken place above and unwittingly helping her escape.
Heat calculated options, thought of all the places to hide on a ship built to carry over 2,500 sailors, including all the mazes belowdecks. Then she thought of how slow the elevator or the stairs would be. "Roach," she said, "call down and have them seal the exit."
And then Detective Heat holstered her Sig and jumped over the side.
The pair of stunt coordinators helped her out of the net but then tried to subdue her. "What are you doing? I'm a cop."
One of them said, "She told us you were a crazed fan trying to kill her."
"Which way did she go?"
They sized up Nikki and pointed to a hatch. Nikki ran for it, taking the door cautiously in case Soleil was waiting on the other side, but she wasn't. Ahead of Nikki stood a long passageway and she went down it at a run. It terminated at a T, and Nikki paused briefly there, imagining, if she were Soleil, the direction she would choose in her scramble to escape. Her instincts made her turn left, rushing toward a stream of daylight and what felt like the direction of the wharf side of the ship.
Heat arrived at an open hatch, the source of all the sunlight. She paused long enough to bob her head through the opening and return it, once again cautious of an ambush. When she got through the hatch, she saw a metal staircase, probably the lower level of the same one Soleil had tried for topside before Roach appeared. She hoisted herself over the rail and descended the steps another level, to where they ended at a small deck near the stern, a semicircular balcony that hung out over the wharf and one of the carrier's power supply or warehouse sheds.
Then she spun, hearing shoes on the steps above her. "Rook?"
"God, you're fast. How do you do it? I'm still dizzy from the jump."
But Nikki wasn't paying attention to him anymore. She'd caught a flash of white and sequins in the sunlight on the pier below. Heat calculated the four-foot leap the singer had made across from the railing to the roof of the support shed and jumped it easily herself. While she ran across the shed's flat top to a metal spiral staircase leading down to the parking lot, she could hear Rook keeping pace behind.
The sole uniform they had left below had sealed off only the gangway, not anticipating a bold rooftop escape like the one Soleil had made, so there was no one to stop her when she came around the far side of the crew parking area, sprinting for the exit on Twelfth Avenue. Fifty yards behind her and gaining, Detective Heat called out to the security guard to stop her, but he was geared to protecting the singer and, instead, looked around for some unseen female assailant to stop, not Soleil herself.
She got out through the gate.
The pop star's curse quickly turned into a blessing when she saw the paparazzi loitering outside the fence, three of them with motorcycles. By now they were snapping her as she ran toward them. Soleil called to one of them by name. "Chuck! I need a ride, fast."
Chuck was already peeling out onto Twelfth with Soleil clinging to his back when Nikki got there. The other two paps with bikes were starting to saddle up to follow, but Heat showed her badge and pointed to the rider on the fastest bike. "You. Off. I need your bike for official police business." The paparazzo hesitated, weighing the legal penalty versus the loss of photo op, but he soon felt Heat's hand clutching his jacket. "Now."
Heat took off in pursuit and the other pap started to follow, but Rook arrived waving his arms, blocking him. He hit the brakes. "Rook?" said the photographer.
"Leonard?" said Rook.
Heat had to work to maintain her tail on Soleil and her paparazzo driver. He was reckless and ballsy, threading the needle between cars and zigzagging across lanes without a care about his series of near misses. As a cop in Manhattan, Nikki had seen how the celebrity shooters had increasingly begun to hunt in packs, often on motorcycles, and the image that always came to her was the pursuit of Diana in that tunnel in Paris. Now she was pursuing one of them and decided to exercise skill over daring so she didn't kill herself or a bystander.
But she was still able to keep up, if not overtake. It was evident that Soleil didn't have a destination; this was purely about evasive maneuvers, losing the tail. The path they took was a pattern of up one street, down another, through Midtown West. At one point, heading east on 50th, Soleil must have tired of the game, because Nikki saw her cast a look back, register Heat was still on their tail, and then shout something in the paparazzo's ear.
At the next corner her paparazzo, with the exclusive he could only have dreamed of, faked a right turn but instead cut a U, not only traveling the wrong direction on the one-way street but bearing down head-on at Nikki. Heat evaded, cutting to her right, and side skidded, nearly setting the bike down in the middle of traffic. But gearing down and steering into the skid, she made a U-turn herself, although almost clipping a parked FedEx truck as she swung her one-eighty.
Going the wrong way herself now, Heat flashed her headlight and used her horn. Fortunately the only close call she had was with a motorcycle driven by one of the other paps, with, she realized in disbelief, Jameson Rook on the back of the saddle, also in pursuit.
When they came to the end of the block, Soleil's driver cut a right and opened it up, racing north on Eleventh Avenue. Nikki kept pace, although she lost time slowing and creeping through the red lights instead of just busting them with impunity like the lead bike did. This was the time Heat wished she had her two-way so she could call in roadblocks or intercepts. But she didn't, so she kept her focus and grabbed speed where she could.
Eleventh Avenue became West End Avenue and shortly thereafter Soleil made another back glance that told Nikki to expect another stunt. It came at 72nd Street. Her driver carved a diagonal across the intersection, nearly getting popped by a bus, and then gunned it toward the Henry Hudson on-ramp. Heat followed cautiously through the intersection and had to lurch to a stop for an elderly woman on a walker, who shuffled into the crosswalk against the light and almost became Nikki's hood ornament. She waited until the yellow tennis balls slid by and then sped onward, but stopped at Riverside Drive and cursed.
She had lost them.
Heat almost got on the northbound Hudson but something stopped her. The traffic was thick, at a crawl. Even with the advantage of a motorcycle to squeeze through, that wouldn't be the escape route she would take. She heard a backfire and turned toward the sound. Behind the Eleanor Roosevelt statue at the opposite corner, a streak of white zoomed down the pedestrian path of the park that ran along the river. Nikki waited for an SUV to pass and then steered herself on a diagonal across the intersection, rode the handicap ramp up onto the sidewalk, and followed them into Riverside Park. Riding past the neighborhood dog run, she got yelled at by some of the pet owners. One of them threatened to call the police and she hoped they would. She sensed movement in her side mirror and knew without looking that Rook was
following.
Nikki kept it slow on the paved pathway that ran north along the river. Even though it was mid-afternoon on a chilly day, there were enough joggers, cyclists, and dog walkers to pop out of nowhere, and she felt as long as she could see the motorcycle ahead, she could bide her time and make her move farther upriver, where there was less access to the greenway.
Her break came after the Boat Basin and before the sewage treatment plant in Harlem that had been converted into a state park. The stretch of pathway between the two landmarks ran parallel to train tracks that were fenced in and therefore formed a barrier to pedestrian access. Nikki gunned it. The cycle ahead also took advantage of the open path, but Nikki had the faster machine and was gaining on them. Soleil, looking surreal in the distance, like an apparition in white sequins, kept back-checking and gesturing for her driver to go faster. He shouldn't have.
Just before the state park, the path took a jog to the right, curving sharply away from the river. It was a turn engineered for pedestrians, not speeding motorcycles. Nikki knew the terrain from her weekend runs along this part of the Hudson and slowed before she got to the curve. When she came around it, Heat saw the bike on its side. The paparazzo was sliding his leg from underneath, his forearm bleeding from road rash. Soleil Gray was a short distance off trying to run away, hobbling on one of her legs.
Rook's driver also took the blind curve too fast and Nikki had to goose her bike to avoid getting hit. The other rider careened past her and struggled against a wipeout. Just as it looked like they were going over, he managed to correct and brought the bike to a stop without falling.
"Take care of this one," said Nikki, "he's hurt." And then she drove her motorcycle across the grass after Soleil, who was pulling herself up and over the chain-link fence separating the path from the train tracks.
The West Side Line was historically the conduit for Manhattan freight service with its tracks emerging from a tunnel at 122nd Street and running along the bank of the Hudson River from New York to Albany. Nineteen years before, the line had been taken over by Amtrak for northbound passenger service out of Penn, and as Detective Heat dismounted her motorcycle, the low rumble of a locomotive signaled one of those long passenger trains was coming. Soleil jumped down from the fence and ran across the siding in an attempt to make it onto the other side of the rails before Nikki got there, buying herself getaway time as the Empire Service rolled past and blocked the cop. But the locomotive got there first, and now Soleil was walled in by the long, lumbering train as Nikki also began to climb the fence.
"It stops here, Soleil," she called over the groan of metal and the screech of steel wheels passing behind her suspect. "Get away from the track. Lie down and put your hands behind your head."
"Come closer, I'll jump."
Nikki leaped down from the top of the fence, landing on both feet, and Soleil made a move closer to the track and leaned, canting her body toward the train, making as if she was going to throw herself under its passing wheels. "I'll do it."
Heat stopped. She was thirty feet away. Even though it was a flat surface, the gravel made poor footing and the singer was quick. Nikki couldn't hope to cover that distance and stop her from hurling herself under a wheel. "Soleil, come on, step away from there."
"You're right. It does stop here." She turned to look down at the track, metal rusted and coated with dust and carbon on the sides but gleaming brightly, like a fresh sheet of aluminum foil, on top, where the wheels churned by and friction carried away all grime. When Soleil looked up, Nikki was a few yards closer, and Soleil shouted, "Nuh!" and so she stopped.
"Just be still, then, Soleil. Take a minute, I'll wait." Nikki saw all the signs she didn't like on her. The woman's posture was deflating. Her body was turning in on itself, making her seem small and alien to the show wardrobe she had on. Every bit of arrogance and hardness was gone from the singer's face. Her mouth trembled and Nikki could see red blotches surfacing through her stage makeup. And she kept staring down at those wheels grinding by two feet away from her. "Are you hearing me?" Nikki called over the noise, knowing she was but just trying to pull focus.
Soleil said, in a barely audible voice, "I don't think I can do this."
"Then don't."
"I mean go on anymore."
"You'll work it through." Both of them knew she had to arrest her, but the detective was trying to get her to look past the immediate. Move her out of The Now.
"What happened to that guy? You know, from yesterday morning?"
"He's fine. Be out of the hospital tomorrow." Heat was guessing but told herself this was the time for positive thoughts. She flashed back to Interrogation 1 the day before and the cut on Soleil's knuckle, the one she kept nibbling at. At the time she assumed it came from rehearsal, having seen how physical the routines were. The god of hindsight visited her, and she now saw it as the mugger's battle scar.
"I had to get it. He wouldn't let go, so I had to . . ."
"He's going to be OK. Come on, get away from there."
"I still have nightmares about it." Soleil ignored Nikki; she was off in her own conversation. "I can deal with jail, maybe. But not the nightmares. About what happened to Reed, I mean. I want that night back. It was so stupid." And then she shouted, "I was so stupid . . . And now I'll never have him again."
As Soleil broke down in sobs, Heat was torn between wanting her to go on and tell the story of what happened to Wakefield; an obligation to read her her rights so if this turned into a confession she could use it in court; and a human need to not lead Soleil into a place so dark she would take her own life. "Soleil, we can talk about this later. Come on, come to me, let's get you some help, all right?"
"I don't deserve to live. Do you hear me?" Her mood weather vaned from somber to angry. The biting tone Nikki was accustomed to receiving suddenly got turned inward. "I don't deserve to be here. Not after Reed. Not after what I did to him. Fighting, killing our relationship. That was all me. I called off the marriage. I hurt him so bad. . . ." And then the anger gave way to more sobs.
Nikki glanced down the track, wishing to spot the end of the train, but the line of passenger cars extended as far south as she could see. It hadn't gotten to speed yet and its slow roll made its length feel infinite to Heat.
"And then that night. Do you know the guilt I carry around about that night?"
Nikki assumed it was the night of Reed's death, but again she didn't want to tip Soleil over the edge by asking at a time of such vulnerability, so she said, "You won't have to carry it alone anymore. Understand?"
Soleil pondered that, and Nikki began to have hope that at last something she said was reaching her. That's when they both turned toward the noise. Three NYPD motorcycles rolled slowly with lights but no sirens down the path. Nikki turned the other way just as a Parks Department SUV was rolling up beside Rook from the other direction. Heat saw the change in Soleil and called out to Rook, "Tell them to stay back!"
Rook stepped to the driver's window and spoke to the Parks officer, who Nikki watched grab his microphone. Seconds later, the NYPD motorcycles must have gotten his call, because they braked and waited in the near distance, idling, the purr of their engines mixing with the squeaking and moaning of the lumbering train.
"I can't deal with it all, I can't," moaned Soleil. "It's all too much."
Nikki could finally see the end of the train about a hundred yards away and began calculating her rush.
"I just feel . . . hollow. I can't turn off the pain."
Fifty yards to go. "I'll get you through this, Soleil." Now only three more cars. "Will you let me help you?" Nikki extend her arms, hoping her gesture would be felt over the yards that separated them, across the crushed stone of the railroad siding. Soleil straightened her posture, looking like a dancer again. She raised her face to the sun with her eyes closed for a moment, then lowered it to look right at Nikki, smiling at her for the first time ever. And then she threw herself under the last car.
Chapte
r Sixteen
NYPD cordoned off a wide area around the scene of Soleil Gray's suicide to keep media and fans at a distance so the medical examiner, Forensics, and the chief's squad from One Police Plaza that routinely investigated any officer-involved death could do their jobs with privacy and focus. Other investigative personnel, including Parks and Rec and representatives from the train company and its insurance carrier were present but would have to wait their turns. To maintain the dignity of the deceased and to give the technicians privacy, a line of portable vinyl screens had been erected on both sides of the train tracks where most of the singer's remains were strewn. Twelfth Avenue had been closed off between West 138th and 135th Streets, but news photographers, paparazzi, and mobile TV newsrooms had staked out elevated vantage points both in Riverbank State Park and on the opposite side of the tracks, on Riverside Drive. OCME deployed a tent fly to mask the scene from the half dozen news choppers that had positioned themselves overhead.
Captain Montrose visited Detective Heat where she waited alone in one of the police personnel vans, still shaken, holding a cup of coffee that had grown cold resting in both her hands. He had just come from a huddle with the chief's unit and told her that their initial interviews of Rook, the two paparazzi, the Parks officer, and the motorcycle cops all corroborated her story that the woman jumped of her own volition and that Heat had done everything she could to diffuse the situation and prevent the suicide.
Naked Heat Page 25
