High Heat

by Richard Castle

  “After he invoked God and Jesus Christ, he called on the lower power that is the NYPD.”

  “Oh?”

  “He laid it at our feet pretty good, saying that it would only compound this tragedy if the detectives of this fair city couldn’t solve the crime.”

  “Trust me, that—”

  “He wasn’t waiving his pom-poms for us,” The Hammer said, talking right over Heat’s attempt at reassurance. “He was putting a target on our back. That little press conference ran on all the major networks. Everyone in New York City and in the outlying areas otherwise known as the United States of America saw him put us on the spot. You should be aware the commissioner considers this case the department’s top priority.”

  “Well, Zach, I can promise you it’s—”

  “I’m not finished,” Hamner interrupted again. “You’ll know when I’m finished, because there will be a pause that indicates the end of a paragraph. Like this.”

  He left a second of airtime, then continued. “In the meantime, keep listening. The commissioner considers this our top priority, but not just because the perhaps-future commander in chief just put us in the crosshairs. It’s also because the feds are swarming all over this one.”

  “The feds?”

  “Did I stutter? Yes. The feds. They’re claiming that as an act of quote-unquote ‘domestic terrorism,’ it falls under their jurisdiction. For now the commissioner’s called bullshit on them, because it’s just one murder. And murder is our deal. But I don’t know how much longer he’s going to be able to hold them off. They’re threatening legal action.”

  “Well, I’ll keep that—”

  “Was there a pause? No. There wasn’t. Because once again, I wasn’t done. As I was about to say: the other thing that piqued the commissioner’s interest was the threat against your boyfriend.”

  “Husband.”

  “Whatever. The commissioner asked me if I felt that would distract you or hamper your ability to dedicate your entire focus to this case. I told him, to the contrary, I thought it would give you every motivation to solve it. He wasn’t convinced, but he said he’d give you a shot. So. What do you have so far? Come on. I need something to pass back up the ladder that shows you’re on top of this thing.”

  “Well, we’ve determined the victim is between five foot eight and five foot ten,” Heat said.

  “That’s great news if we’re considering buying her a graduation gown, but I don’t see how that helps us otherwise. What else do you got? Do we know who she is yet?

  “No.”

  “Do we know where she was killed?”

  “No.”

  “Do we have anything that resembles a lead?”

  Heat considered telling The Hammer about the scarf. But she could already hear him deriding her for sending one of her detectives on a shopping trip. There were some things she didn’t want echoing around the hall of One PP. A little holdback with the higher-ups seemed prudent.

  “I’ll take that as a no,” Hamner said. “Terrific. I’m glad my faith in you has been so well placed.”

  “Zach, I just—”

  “Listen, in case you haven’t figured it out yet, this is not a case. It’s the case. That means we have resources here. Whatever you need. You want a helicopter? Done. You want a squadron of uniforms combing through trash cans in Central Park? Done. You want undercovers who look like skateboarders, techs who crack code written in Japanese, search warrants for the mayor’s underwear drawer? It’s done, done, and done.

  “That’s the good news. The bad news is, by my math, you’ve got less than twenty-four hours before the feds find some bullshit excuse to take it from us. So if I were you, I’d get cracking. We clear?”

  Heat took a moment.

  “Hello?” Hamner said. “Are we clear?”

  “Are you at the end of a paragraph now?” Heat asked.

  “Yeah. I am. Don’t be a—”

  “Good. So am I.”

  Then she hung up.

  The sound of Heat slamming her desk phone receiver was still reverberating when her smart phone rang.

  Thinking it might be The Hammer choosing a different mode of harassing her, she nearly picked it up and threw it across the room. Then she saw the screen read: MARGARET.

  As mother-in-laws went, Margaret Rook was surely one of the more unusual. It wasn’t just any mother-in-law who had once been called “one of the most magnetic stage presences in the history of the Great White Way” by Ben Brantley in the New York Times.

  Now at an age she no longer allowed to be listed in press kits, she was considered one of Broadway’s grande dames. Her star-power alone could fill the Gershwin or the Palace. Even if all she was doing was making a cameo appearance, nostalgic audiences remembered how she once brought the house down singing the “Tits and Ass” song from A Chorus Line; or they recalled her evocative turn as Blanche DuBois in a celebrated revival of A Streetcar Named Desire.

  She used Tony Awards as paperweights around the house and sometimes ordered her son about as if he were a part of the stage crew. She was also something of an unabashed cougar, bouncing from one younger man to the next even younger.

  But underneath all the dramatics—and notwithstanding all of the silly flings—there was a mother who loved her son fiercely. There had been a lot of years, especially early on, when the high-paying roles hadn’t come her way, when she had bounced from summer stock to off-off-off-Broadway theaters just to keep a roof over their heads. And for all the men who had come and gone, it was really just the two of them for the majority of his childhood. It had created a special, if sometimes complicated, bond between them.

  The relationship between Margaret Rook and Nikki Heat was much more straightforward. Margaret recognized Nikki as the best thing to ever happen to her son, and she loved her accordingly.

  “Hi, Mom,” Nikki said, addressing her by the name that Margaret had absolutely insisted on after they returned from Reykjavík. At the time, Nikki had thought of it as a lovely gesture—in part because, up until this morning, she really had thought she had lost her own mother.

  “Darling,” Margaret said breathlessly. “I just saw the video and now I can’t get Jameson on the phone. Please, please tell me he’s standing in front of you right now.”

  “Sorry, Mom. I can’t get him, either.”

  “Oh my God, do you know where he is?”

  “I don’t. He’s out of town, working on a piece for First Press. That’s really all I know.”

  “But you don’t think…I mean, they couldn’t…They don’t…have him, do they? Those men?” Margaret asked, in a tone that was quickly climbing up the ladder toward hysteria.

  “I don’t know. I honestly don’t know.”

  “My God, my God,” she repeated. “I think I’m going to hyperventilate.”

  It was one of the rare times when Margaret Rook’s off-stage theatrics were fully justified.

  “I know exactly how you feel,” Heat said. “I would have called you, but…Well, honestly, I was hoping you hadn’t seen the video. Or at least that you wouldn’t see it until we already had Jameson home.”

  “I’m afraid Jean Philippe is terribly clever with computers,” Margaret declared.

  Jean Philippe was her newest paramour, a man who was far closer in age to her son than anyone wanted to acknowledge. He was French, which meant he was gifted in the kitchen and—though no one wanted to hear Margaret talk about it—in other more private parts of the house as well.

  “We heard about the threat on the news,” Margaret continued. “And then Jean Philippe got on the computer. And then, oh my goodness, that poor, poor woman. And then to hear those…those hooligans say my son’s name and to think about what they want to do to him, it was…It was the shock of my life, the shock of my life. I nearly fainted.”

  She hefted a groan that went high to low, like she was coming down an arpeggio. “Oh, would you listen to me go on? Me, me, me. How are you doing, darling?”

  “
I’m hanging in there. I’ve got a crime to solve, you know?”

  “I know you do, kiddo. I know you do. And there’s no one better in the world at that than you. That’s the only thing that’s keeping me going right now. My son may not be made of the stoutest stuff, but my daughter is tough as nails. I know those men won’t get to Jameson as long as you’re around.”

  “Thanks, Mom. We’ll get him home safe. Don’t worry.”

  They made promises they would contact each other as soon as they heard anything. Then they ended the call.

  Heat reached out to a photo of her and Rook during one of those wonderful Reykjavík days. They had spent the morning sailboarding on the Mediterranean. In the afternoon, they had alternated between making love and dozing. At night, Rook had whisked her off to the opera—Teatro Real was doing Madame Butterfly. Then they barely made it back to the hotel before they were all over each other again.

  The picture had been snapped just before a tired sun slipped beneath the western horizon, during the time photographers call “magic hour.” They were enjoying a pre-show glass of wine at a rooftop bar. The entirety of Madrid was spread out below them, like it had been placed there just for their enjoyment. They were dressed for the opera, with Heat in a stunning floor-length Vera Wang with a plunging neckline and a daring slit up the side, and Rook, his hair carelessly tousled by the wind, in a flawlessly crisp bespoke white tuxedo that would have made James Bond tear apart his closet in jealousy.

  Heat lifted the frame off her desk and traced her finger along Rook’s lips, as if caressing the glass was the same as touching the man himself. He was so handsome, with his chiseled jawline, his strong chin, his knee-melting smile. She had never told him this—because Rook could be so insufferably vain—but the first time she ever saw him in person, after years of admiring his work from afar, her heart really did skip a beat. Even now, years after that first meeting, there were times when she kissed him and it was so exciting, it felt like it was all new.

  She took a deep breath and, for a second, failed to hold off the terrible thought that kept assaulting her head: What if she had already kissed him for the last time? What if, right now, he was the one with the burlap bag over his head and his arms tied behind him, waiting in terror as these ISIS aspirants readied their video equipment so they could broadcast his execution? What if the only other person Nikki Heat had ever loved with her whole being also met a violent end?

  The only thing that snapped her out of that horrific waking nightmare was a knock at her door. Heat quickly dabbed at both corners of her eyes, where she could already start to feel the tears forming. She was thankful she wasn’t a cake-on-the-makeup kind of girl. Nothing to clump, run, or smear.

  “Come in,” she said.

  The duty sergeant came in behind the opening door and stood just inside the frame.

  “We got a call about a body,” he said. “It’s in a Dumpster behind a building on West 73rd Street. We got some uniforms heading there right now to secure the scene. They know not to touch anything. It’s the girl from the video.”

  “What makes you think that?”

  “Because,” the sergeant said. “The caller stated he found a body. What he didn’t find was the head.”

  Heat grabbed the first pool car she could lay her hands on, then gave its gas pedal a vigorous exercising as she tore off toward West 73rd Street, her siren blasting and her lights flashing the whole way.

  She pulled to a halt in front of a hydrant, leaving some NYPD-purchased rubber on the street, and snapped on a pair of blue nitrile gloves as she got out. Then she stopped herself.

  Her ritual. She almost forgot. It was something she did before walking into every murder scene. It was that moment she took to re-center herself and honor the person who had been lost—to remember it was a life that had been precious to family, to friends, to colleagues, to a community.

  And so Heat paused, just for a moment, and reminded herself that even though she was desperate to prevent another victim, she still owed it to the one on the scene to give the investigation everything she had.

  Then she got back to work. She looked at the building whose address the desk sergeant had given her. It was six stories, pre-World War II construction, and made of dark beige brick that would require a vigorous power-washing before it returned to its original light beige. It had a Vietnamese restaurant named Pho Sure, with a facade of dark wood affixed to the brick, at the street level, and apartments above.

  No surveillance cameras. At least none that Heat could see.

  A uniformed officer was standing in front of the narrow alleyway next to the restaurant with his arms crossed. Heat nodded at him as she ducked under the Do Not Cross tape, then hurried down the alley.

  When she reached the back of the building, she turned left and saw two more officers. One had a small notepad out and was talking to a white man with chest hair coming out of his shirt, who was standing on the back stoop. The other was kneeling next to a Hispanic man in a white apron, who was seated against the brick wall, hanging his head between his knees.

  The Dumpster was snuggled up against a chain-link fence that separated this building’s property from the building on 72nd Street. No one seemed to want to go near it.

  The kneeling cop looked up as she walked closer. He pointed toward the Dumpster.

  “Be careful, Captain,” he called out. “Our friend here left his breakfast right over there.”

  Heat’s eyes focused on the slick of vomit congealing in front of the Dumpster. A few feet away from that, a large white kitchen garbage bag, stuffed full, lay on its side. She continued on toward the cop with the notepad.

  “Captain, this is Gus Kosmetatos,” the cop said. “He owns Pho Sure. He’s the one who made the call. That’s his dishwasher. He’s the one who discovered the body. His name is Jose. He wouldn’t give us his last name. He doesn’t habla a lot of ingles.”

  “He’s from Guatemala,” the hairy-chested guy, Kosmetatos, said in an accent that was pure Flatbush Avenue. “He’s only been with me a month. I don’t think they trusts cops where he’s from. Or here, if you know what I mean. But he checks out. I swear, I personally looked at his green card.”

  Which may have been a forgery. Not that Heat cared. If a Vietnamese restaurant with a Greek-American owner wanted to hire an illegal Guatemalan immigrant for a dish boy, that was business as usual, as far as the city of New York was concerned. If any authorities wanted to make an issue of it, they would have to be federal ones.

  “We’re not concerned about anyone’s immigration status, Mr. Kosmetatos,” Heat said. “Tell me about what happened here.”

  “We don’t open ’til eleven. I was just in the office, getting some things done. Jose was cleaning up, getting things ready for the line chefs. They come in around ten. I guess he went out to empty the garbage. I wasn’t even paying attention, when all of a sudden he starts yelling like crazy.

  “I don’t got a lot of Spanish, but I know enough to get by, you know? Seems like the Spanish are the only ones willing to work for me these days. So Jose keeps saying ‘sin cabeza, sin cabeza,’ and I’m like ‘What is he going on about?’ So I go outside and I see him doubled over, puking his guts out, pointing at the Dumpster and—”

  Kosmetatos looked toward the Dumpster and flinched involuntarily. “I used to work as a butcher at the A and P, back when I was a kid. I think that’s the only reason I didn’t ralph, too.”

  “So you went over and had a look?” Heat asked.

  “Yeah. Awful stuff. I heard about it on TV this morning, what those ISIS sons-a-bitches did. But to see it…”

  “Did you touch anything?” Heat asked.

  “Nah, all I did was look. I probably didn’t get closer than about ten feet.”

  He added: “I know the cops don’t like you to mess with the body. I watch this show on TV. It’s got this hot lady cop and her husband, this guy who writes books. It’s clever, the solutions they come up with. The writer guy is pretty sm
art.”

  “You can’t believe everything you see on TV, Mr. Kosmetatos,” Heat said.

  “Yeah, I guess you’re right. Well, anyhow, point is, I know to keep my distance.”

  “Thank you. Do you by any chance have any security cameras installed on this building?”

  “No. I don’t. Sorry. The landlord doesn’t like them. He lives in the building and he said he doesn’t like the feeling that Big Brother is watching him.”

  “Okay. Thank you, Mr. Kosmetatos. We’re going to have to ask you and the rest of your staff not to come out here for the next few hours while we gather evidence. I’m sorry for the inconvenience.”

  “Hey, once word gets out about what’s back here, I don’t think I’d be able to make ’em come out here.”

  Heat thanked him again, then moved over to the dishwasher, kneeling next to him. To the surprise of the uniform, who had assumed they would be calling a translator, Heat began speaking in fluent Spanish.

  “Good morning, Jose. My name is Captain Nikki Heat. I’m with the New York Police Department and the only thing I’m concerned about this morning is solving this murder. Do we understand each other?”

  Jose brought his chin up for the first time since Heat entered the alley. His face was still white.

  “Yes, ma’am,” he replied, also in Spanish.

  “Can you tell me what happened?”

  Jose told the same story as his boss had, looking all the while like he had not only lost his breakfast, but lunch wasn’t going to much appeal to him, either. He finished with “…and then I opened the door to the Dumpster, and there she was.”

  “Did you touch her?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  Heat looked toward the Dumpster for a moment, but did not yet walk over.

  “Jose, were you working last night as well?” Heat asked.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Did you empty any garbage before you left last night?”

  He thought about it for a moment and said yes.

  “About what time?”

  “Just before my shift ended. A little before eleven.”