High Heat

by Richard Castle

  The elephant didn’t look like a talker, so Heat went toward the desk with her badge out. “Officer, thank goodness!” a guard said. “A man in a turban just ran past without paying.”

  “Which way?” Heat asked through heavy breath.

  The guard pointed behind himself. “Glad to see you guys cracking down on these kinds of heinous quality of life crimes. You know—”

  Heat was already out of earshot, dashing into the Hall of Northwest Coast Indians. There, dioramas of indigenous people hunting, trapping, and fishing became a blur as Heat ran through. From the far side of the hall, she saw Qawi turning right.

  She continued following him through the Hall of Small Mammals, where it was now taxidermic minks, martens, squirrels, and badgers, staring at Heat with their fixed glassy eyes. But neither they, nor the short-tailed weasel, nor the red-backed vole, nor the collared peccary were any help in catching her suspect.

  Qawi turned right again, into a hall where small mammals had given way to larger ones: moose, bison, bear, the glamour animals of the stuffed wild kingdom. Heat hoped a particularly rapt group of fifth graders or a burly museum visitor would do a better job of getting in Qawi’s way. But Heat wasn’t going to shout out for them to help. She’d sooner direct civilians into the path of a tornado.

  Qawi exited the Hall of North American Mammals, and Heat thought he might be making a dash for the exit to Central Park West. She was about to make the radio call so the officers on horseback would be ready.

  But no. He had turned right again and was going up a set of stairs. Heat was now more worried than ever. He was essentially trapping himself on the upper floors. His only play now was to snatch someone.

  Unless he also had air support? Police Two was not a gunship. Was it possible he was heading for the roof, where a chopper would whisk him away?

  Heat reached the bottom of the stairs as Qawi was at the top. She saw him disappear in the direction of the Hall of Asian Mammals. Heat continued her chase, ignoring the lactic acid that was now stinging her legs and the accompanying ache in her lungs.

  She dashed into a room dominated by another elephant, this one no more talkative than the last. Heat again caught sight of Qawi just as he exited the other side. They were now in a part of the museum where, if Qawi wasn’t careful, he’d run himself into a dead end.

  Which wasn’t necessarily a good thing. Heat worried that once trapped, he’d be every bit as dangerous as the Siberian tiger whose diorama she was now sprinting past.

  Now out of the Asian Mammals room, there was only one way to go, toward the Hall of Asian Peoples. Heat bolted through it, past the Chinese Wedding Chair, the Yakut Shaman’s Robe, and the plaster of paris model of Peking Man.

  She had now lost sight of Qawi. Had he already cleared out the other side of the room? Had Heat slowed down without realizing it?

  Heat cursed herself. She was nearly out of the room, heading toward the Birds of Asia, when her peripheral vision registered slight movement.

  Something near the Traditional Clothing of the Persian/Arabian Gulf Area exhibit had moved. She stopped so fast she actually stumbled a little before sliding to a stop on the polished floor.

  The exhibit consisted of two figures, dressed in a suitable fashion. One was inside the glass, perched in front of a landscape of camels, tents, and desert.

  The other was outside the glass and sweating profusely.

  Heat approached with her gun raised.

  “Muharib Qawi,” she said, through ragged breath. “You are under arrest.”

  The imam raised his hands slowly.

  “I am unarmed,” he said, his chest heaving. “Please don’t shoot.”

  “Turn around. Hands on the wall.”

  Qawi complied.

  “I must say,” he said, as Heat patted him down for either weapons or explosives. “It is a great honor to be arrested by Nikki Heat. I have read all about you and your exploits.”

  “Muharib Qawi,” Heat said, gritting her teeth, “you most definitely have the right to remain silent. And I suggest you begin exercising that right immediately.”

  By the time Heat returned to the Twentieth Precinct, her first order of business was not justice, but mercy.

  Rook had apparently started singing while she was gone. Everyone in the precinct with functioning eardrums was begging her to make him stop.

  “Nobooooodddyy knows, the trouble I seen,” Rook warbled in an unconvincing bass. “Nobooooodddyy knows my sorrow.”

  The previous hour of Heat’s life had helped her learn three items of note.

  One: Miguel Ochoa was going to be fine. He had suffered what the army referred to as a million-dollar wound, which meant his butt was plenty sore but the rest of him was fine. He was at the hospital but was expected to be treated shortly. They were unsure of the identity of the shooter. But since they had not found weapons at the mosque—and Qawi had been the only person inside—it was assumed to have been friendly fire. Heat didn’t even want to think about the paperwork that was going to result in.

  Two: Masjid al-Jannah had not been booby-trapped. Nor had the dogs found any evidence of explosives. What investigators did find, however, was a large square hole that had been cut out of the carpet, in the exact area where the video showed the victim had been kneeling. There had also been bleach applied to the subfloor underneath. Those efforts, however, had not been sufficient to eradicate all evidence. Using a blue light, ECT had been able to find a substantial blood spill, then had procured a sample.

  Three: Jameson Rook couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket.

  Heat opened the door to her office just as Rook was raking his handcuffs along the spines of the radiator, like a convict in an old-time movie would run his tin cup along the bars of his jail cell.

  “Warden! Warden!” Rook called when he saw her. “I want my lawyer!”

  “Great, I’ll call Helen Miksit,” Heat said, dropping the name of a defense lawyer who was universally loathed by members of the NYPD.

  “You will?” Rook said, legitimately surprised.

  “No,” Heat said.

  Rook pouted.

  “If I let you go, will you promise to be on your best behavior?” Heat said. “We’ve got Qawi but his coconspirators are still unaccounted for. That means you have to stay here, got it?”

  Rook was already raising three fingers on his right hand.

  “Don’t even try and say ‘Scout’s honor,’” Heat warned. “I know you were never a Boy Scout.”

  “No, but when I was sixteen I almost got into a Girl Scout.”

  “You’re not helping yourself.”

  “Fine,” he said, changing his hand positioning to a split-fingered Vulcan salute. “Spock’s honor.”

  “Is that even a thing?” Heat asked.

  “If it’s not, it should be. Vulcans are a very honorable people,” Rook said. “But whatever you do, never trust a Vulcan who crosses his heart on the upper left side of his torso.”

  “And why is that?”

  “Because, as everyone knows, a Vulcan’s heart is on the right side of his torso, between the ribs and pelvis, about where the human liver is.”

  Heat studied him, then said, “Sometimes it astounds me you ever got laid.”

  “Tell me about it,” Rook said.

  “Okay, look, here’s the deal: I’ll let you watch my interrogation of Qawi, but you can’t go anywhere, okay? I can’t have you running off.”

  “Why would I want to?” Rook said. “Watching you break this guy will be better than the movies and I won’t even have to overpay for popcorn.”

  Heat smiled, un-cuffed him, then listened to his griping about wrist chafing on the way to Interrogation One. Raley was already there, as were Rhymer and Feller.

  Heat had instructed the detectives to leave Qawi for her. Forget delegating. This was one she had to do herself. There was too much at stake, starting with Rook’s life and liberty.

  Through the two-way glass, they could see Qawi seated
in the chair, his cuffed hands folded in front of him, his chin resting on his chest, his scraggly beard flowing down the front of his thobe.

  “He done anything or said anything I need to know about?” Heat asked.

  “He prayed about ten minutes ago,” Raley said. “But other than that, what you see is what you get.”

  “Has he been Mirandized?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Okay, then here goes nothing.”

  When Heat entered the room, Qawi looked up and spoke his first words before Heat had taken three steps.

  “Captain Heat, I am innocent,” Qawi said.

  “Innocent of what, Mr. Qawi?” Heat asked, choosing to remain standing.

  “The video. I heard about it on the news this morning and immediately found it on the Web. And I speak for all peace-loving Muslims across America when I say I am horrified by it. But I swear to Allah, I had nothing to do with it.”

  “Which is why you ran the moment you saw my officers,” Heat shot back.

  “I ran because I am not a fool,” Qawi said. “I have been in this country ten years. I know how it works here.”

  “And how is that, Mr. Qawi?”

  “When something goes wrong, you blame the Muslim,” he said, a mix of defiance and defeat in his tone. “America, it is a great country in so many ways. But it always needs someone to hate. Hate the German. Hate the Japanese. Hate the communist. Now, since 9/11, it is our turn. The Muslim is the boogeyman, the evil behind all evil. So now you hate us.”

  “Play the Islamophobia card somewhere else, Mr. Qawi,” Heat said. “It won’t work here.”

  “It is not a card to play. It is simply the truth. America has fallen into the trap of thinking that the religion defines the person. Really, it is the person who defines the religion. The Book of Joel instructs you to beat your plowshares into swords and let the weakling say he is strong. The Book of Isaiah instructs you to beat your swords into plowshares and let God be the judge. Yet they can both be found in the same Bible. The Quran is also filled with such contradictions. In some passages it instructs the faithful to kill infidels. In others, it teaches that if you kill a single individual, it is like killing all of humanity.”

  “Mr. Qawi, I’m not interested in a theology debate today. I’m interested in justice for a young woman who was butchered.”

  “Yes, I understand. And I had nothing to do with that.”

  “Of course you didn’t. And yet there was a hole cut out of the carpet at your mosque and a bloodstain underneath. And I’m sure when we run the sample we’ll find it matches the victim. Can you explain that?”

  Qawi brought his gaze up to Heat. “Probably not to your satisfaction.”

  “Try me.”

  “Very well. After Friday prayers, I traveled to Boston to visit my brother, whose wife has just had a new baby. When I returned on Sunday, I found this stain. That is all I can tell you.”

  “So the stain just, what, magically appeared?” Heat asked, not bothering to hide her incredulity.

  “Many people use that mosque. Not just the imam. It is open to the faithful twenty-four hours a day. I can’t account for everything that happens there.”

  “But you tried to clean the stain,” Heat said. It was a statement more than a question.

  “Well, yes. I didn’t know what it was. Not until this morning, when I saw the video. It was just this brown stain. So I asked our janitor to do something about it.”

  “Did you tell him to cut a hole in the carpet?”

  “No,” Qawi said. “He did that himself on Monday. He realized he was never going to be able to get the stain out. He said he had some leftover remnants from when the room was carpeted and that it would be better to graft a new piece in.”

  “How convenient,” Heat said. “But then, of course, when you saw the video this morning and you realized it had been shot in your mosque, you immediately understood what the mystery stain was and, like a good law-abiding clergyman, you called the police.”

  Qawi bowed his head. “No, I did not.”

  “Which showed you had a guilty mind, Mr. Qawi, a detail that you surely know American juries love. Now, look, I know you didn’t do this alone. And I also know you’re too short to have been one of the men in the video who did the actual killing. Which makes you the guy behind the camera. So it’s your lucky, lucky day, Mr. Qawi, that we caught you first. Because it means you can turn on your coconspirators before they turn on you.

  “But you have to start dealing now. And I mean right now. If you identify the men in the video and help bring them to justice, that will be noted and weighed at sentencing. It will also probably keep the case away from the feds and in the hands of the NYPD, which, believe me, is in your best interests. New York State doesn’t have a death penalty. The feds do.”

  Qawi was shaking his head. “But you don’t understand. I can’t turn over accomplices I don’t have. And I can’t confess to something I haven’t done. I am a peaceful person. Ask any of my parishioners.”

  “So peaceful you had a charge for making terroristic threats?”

  Qawi gestured excitedly. “This is exactly what I am talking about when I say the Muslim cannot get a fair shake! There was a man on our block. He insisted on putting his trash in front of the mosque. I told him this was offensive to Islam, that cleanliness was extremely important to our religion and to please put his trash in front of his own apartment. The next thing I know, this man files a report with the police, saying I had threatened to kill him!”

  “And yet you admitted to it as part of your plea bargain,” Heat said.

  “Making terroristic threats is a class D felony in the state of New York, as I’m sure you know, Captain Heat. If it went to trial and a jury decided to hang the Muslim no matter what, I would have been deported. The prosecutor agreed to turn it into a misdemeanor disturbing the peace. I accepted the deal just to make it go away, rather than taking the risk.”

  “Right. Of course, Mr. Qawi. Just like you ran because you were innocent and the bloodstains in your mosque were left there by all the other people who use it.”

  Heat was now directly across the table from Qawi. She lowered herself until her face was close to Qawi’s. “Who was she? The victim. Was she some weathergirl who you thought would be an easy mark? Was she a reporter who wrote something you didn’t like? Or was she just some girl who wasn’t even a journalist that you grabbed off the street? We’re going to find the truth eventually. You left evidence all over that body. We know about the kerosene.”

  Heat studied Qawi’s reaction as she said the word, thinking she might see a hint of fear, an involuntarily acknowledgement that his armor had another chink in it.

  But Qawi’s face betrayed nothing as he said, “I have no idea when you’re talking about, Captain.”

  “Of course you don’t,” Heat said, getting even closer to him. “Our investigation is only just beginning, Mr. Qawi. We are going to crawl inside and outside of that mosque and your life. And when we’re done, you won’t have a single secret left in the world. We’re going to put pressure like you can’t believe on every single person in your life, and they’re going to crack like fragile little eggshells, one by one. Because that’s what they always do.

  “Where did you hide the machete, Mr. Qawi? Is it back at your apartment? Because we’re getting a search warrant for that right now, and we’re going to find it. And when we do, I know you’re going to try and say you use it for clearing cobwebs from your living room. I can tell you by that point, I won’t be listening anymore. Because I won’t need you anymore. This is your chance, right now, right here, to confess. You’re already facing a long and difficult road. Your failure to cooperate will only make it worse.”

  She locked her brown eyes on his. Qawi couldn’t hold eye contact.

  For a minute, neither spoke.

  Then there came a knock at the door.

  “I’ll be back, Mr. Qawi,” Heat said, straightening herself. “Or maybe I won�
��t be. It might already be too late.”

  Heat stalked toward the door with an ear still cocked in Qawi’s direction, half expecting to hear a “wait”—or some similar admission of defeat.

  But all Qawi did as she departed the room was return to his same position, chin on chest, hands in front, gaze cast deliberately down.

  Heat returned to the small room on the other side of Interrogation One, where she found a group of detectives looking unusually grim-faced.

  “What’s the matter?” Heat asked. “Okay, so he’s going to be a tough nut. That’s not—”

  “The only vehicle registered to his name has E-ZPass,” Raley said, cutting her off. “It confirms his vehicle passed through the northbound toll plaza on the New England Thruway on Friday night. There’s no southbound toll to confirm when he came back, but—”

  “But he could have easily exited and doubled back, knowing he had created an electronic alibi for himself.”

  “Well, yeah, except I talked to the brother in Boston,” Feller said. “The brother says not only can he confirm Muharib was there, he can produce fifty witnesses who were with him at a party on Saturday night. They had a celebration of the new baby. The brother pointed me to a video posted on one of the guests’ Facebook accounts that shows Muharib very clearly. And, of course, it was time-stamped.”

  “That doesn’t mean anything,” Heat said. “Parry puts our TOD sometime between midnight and eight o’clock Sunday morning. Boston to New York is a four-hour drive. He could have easily—”

  “The brother also says Muharib led morning prayers on Sunday,” Feller continued. “Did the call and everything. There were at least another seventy-five witnesses to that one. And some of them would be people who aren’t friends and family.”

  Heat frowned.

  “You want, Opie and I can go up to Boston, start interviewing them, see if it checks out. But I don’t know. That’s a pretty big bluff for the brother to lay out there if it isn’t true.”

  Heat put her hands on her hips, legitimately stymied. Solving murder was usually a straightforward exercise in identifying the most likely candidate. Cheating husband dead? It’s the wife. The deceased had a big life insurance policy? Figure out the beneficiary. Someone runs from the cops? Catch him and you’ve found your killer.