Frozen Heat (2012)

by Richard Castle

  “None of that rules him out as our sniper.”

  “True, but this does. He got paralyzed by an IED in Iraq and he’s in a wheelchair.”

  “Then how did his prints get on those shell casings?” Nikki pondered that for a moment. “Sometimes these shooting ranges recycle spent brass and reload them. Your vet friend. Does he sell reloads?”

  “Uh, yeah, in fact I saw a sign. You think our sniper bought his ammo from him?”

  “I’m hoping so, Rales. I’m also hoping his name shows up in his sales records.”

  Shortly after Rook relocated to his squatter’s desk to type up some of his field notes from the previous day’s interviews, Sharon Hinesburg came in and turned on her computer. At first, Nikki tried to ignore her, but the scent of a fresh mani-pedi made her cave. She picked up the sheet of paper Rook had been sitting on and stepped over to her. “Good morning, Detective,” she said.

  “We’ll see.” Hinesburg opened her desk drawer carefully so she wouldn’t trash her new manicure.

  “Listen, I’ve got everyone else deployed so I need you to run a check on someone for me.” She handed her the page. “His name’s Mamuka Leonidze. He may be out of the country. Notes are all here.”

  Hinesburg flashed a brief, condescending smile. “Sorry. I already have an assignment, direct from the precinct commander. The OCME gas truck?”

  “And how’s that going, Detective?”

  “Slow.” She handed the sheet of notes back. “Give it to Rook. He’s not doing anything. He’s just writing.”

  The administrative aide called across the pen, “Detective Heat, Feller on your line. Says it’s important.”

  Heat let go the standoff with Hinesburg for the moment and grabbed the call. “You’ve got to be kidding,” she said, loud enough to get Rook to saunter over while she scrawled an address. “Be there in fifteen.” She hung up, tore the top sheet off the notepad, and said to him, “They found Carter Damon.”

  “Where?”

  “Floating in the East River.”

  Lauren Parry had already set up shop on the East River piers off the FDR when Heat arrived. The traffic control uniform moved the sawhorse and waved her and Rook through, and she parked her Crown Vic between Randall Feller’s and the white OCME van. Detective Feller, who was a hundred yards out on the elbow of the L-shaped pier with Lauren and the body, spotted Heat and walked to the parking area to meet her. When he arrived, he pulled off his wraparounds and hooked the sunglasses by the temple in the V of his T-shirt. He wore a sober look, a stark contrast to his customary crime scene grabass face. Heat picked up on the change in him right off.

  “Tell me what you know,” she said.

  With years in the street and an orderly mind, he didn’t need to consult notes. “Harbor Unit hauled him out of the drink about an hour ago. A pilot for the helicopter service that leases the pier spotted him on approach and radioed it in.” Nikki could see the small blue airport shuttle chopper tied down on the pad at the end of the wharf, farther out in the channel. “Harbor said they’d been on the lookout for a floater. Middle of the night, a motorist called Bridges and Tunnels to say he saw somebody go off the Brooklyn Bridge.”

  “Kersplat,” said Rook, getting a reproachful glance from Nikki.

  “The eyewit says he wasn’t alone, someone was up there with him.”

  “Did he say there was a struggle, or was Damon a jumper and somebody tried to stop him?”

  “Unclear. Detective Rhymer is en route to get that statement now. Should be a solid witness, though. A cardiologist driving in for an early surgery at Downtown Hospital. Opie will brace the doc soon as he finishes his operation.”

  Like Nikki, Rook must have also been thinking of suicide and the apology text she’d received at four-fifteen A.M. “What time did this come down?” he asked.

  “About four-thirty.”

  “Let’s go check in with Lauren,” said Heat, and she started to walk out onto the pier. Feller and Rook kept up and she asked, “Any note on him?”

  “No but one thing you need to know, and it’s big. He’d been shot.”

  That stopped Nikki in her tracks. The other two stopped with her. Rook said, “I wonder if he was shot by the sniper who tried to get you last night.”

  Detective Feller said, “Definitely not.”

  “You sound mighty certain,” said Heat.

  “Because I am. Detective, I know who shot him.”

  “You know who shot Carter Damon?” Feller nodded. “Who?”

  “You.”

  SEVENTEEN

  The two bullet holes in Carter Damon had Nikki Heat’s name on them. The medical examiner had already cut the shirt off his corpse, and both upper-body entry wounds matched with the rounds she’d put in him the night of Don’s killing.

  Lauren Parry squatted in a catcher’s stance on the deck of the pier, where his body had been placed by the Harbor Unit, and indicated the wounds with the tip of her stick pen, beginning with the one in the left side of his neck where it met the shoulder. “Let’s start with this one here.”

  “That’s from the shot I got off through the passenger window of the taxi.”

  “When I do the postmortem, my money says this one was nearly fatal. You were on the curb, as I recall from your Shooting Incident Report, so this would have come down at an angle, probably getting awfully close to the subclavian vein or the jugular, or both. If you’d outright hit one of those, he’d have died in minutes, if that long. So, I’m thinking a tiny nick, and assume he did a lot of slow bleeding over the past few days. But I’ll know better down in B-Twenty-three,” she said, referring to the autopsy room number.

  Heat knelt on one knee beside her and pointed to the second wound, the one on his chest. “What are those marks around the entry hole?”

  “Good eye. Those marks you see are from sutures. They must have torn open when he hit the water coming off the bridge.” She put her face an inch from the wound. “Uh-huh. I see thread fragments.”

  “But we checked ERs,” said Nikki. “No reports of him, anywhere.”

  Rook said, “Are you saying this guy stitched himself up? Talk about macho. Take that, Chuck Norris.”

  Lauren said, “I highly doubt he did this himself. This is a professional-looking job.” Then, when she saw Nikki duck over the other bullet hole, she added, “I couldn’t see any evidence of work done on the other wound.”

  “Why one and not the other?” asked Detective Feller.

  “The other wound is high-risk because of proximity to veins and arteries. Whoever took care of him knew to leave it alone.”

  “So,” Nikki said, “Damon got some kind of aid, but off the books.” She stood and stretched her back. “And he wasn’t dead when he went in the river?”

  “Doubtful. See all the bruising here?” Lauren traced her finger along the discoloration on his face and chest. “That seems consistent with impact when he hit the water. And I just saw evidence of clotting where the sutures tore on wound two. That wouldn’t happen if he’d been dead. I’ll be able to check for mast cells to confirm when I get back to my microscope. Also, I’ll check his lungs in the post. If he was alive, he’ll have river water in them.”

  As the detectives and Rook left for their cars, Lauren held Nikki back to speak in confidence. “I’m still stressing Nicole Bernardin’s messed-up tox test.”

  “Obviously not your fault, Laur. And Irons is on it now.”

  “Is he? I had Security pull our surveillance tapes so they didn’t get recorded over, but when I called Captain Irons to arrange getting them, he said to call Detective Hinesburg and I never got a call back.”

  “Typical,” said Heat. “I’ll put Raley on it. He’s King of All Surveillance Media, you know.”

  “What about Irons? Won’t that piss him off?”

  “Doctor, as long as he’s out of my way, I truly don’t care.”

  The atmosphere in the bull pen was crackling when Heat walked in, and she called a squad meeting to
kick up the momentum. But first, she had to clear a few gnats out of the way. Lon King had left Nikki a message reminding her to make a shrink appointment. She balled up the note and trashed it. Dealing with the Iron Man wasn’t quite as easy.

  The captain found her in the kitchen while she was getting coffee. “Detective Heat, I assume, since Carter Damon is off the boards, we can now close this case out and release our overtime personnel?”

  “How is it over? He was one player, the way I see it.”

  “He killed your Navy SEAL friend, right? He probably did the lady in the suitcase, too.”

  “Probably isn’t the same as proving. And there’s still my mother.”

  “So you don’t think it’s convenient he was lead on that case?”

  “Good question,” she said. “If you’ll excuse me, Captain, I’m going to do my job and investigate it.” She left him standing in the kitchen without a glance back.

  Detective Heat still had plenty of questions troubling her. With Sharon Hinesburg off God knew where, and Irons in the kitchen making toaster waffles, she was able to share them with her brain trust gathered at the Murder Boards. In the green square she had created for Don’s case, Nikki printed “Carter Damon” in block letters and said, “OK, we solved Don’s killing.”

  “We? More like you and Mr. Sauer,” said Detective Malcolm, kicking off a small round of applause that she quelled with one glance.

  “But,” she continued, “one solve opens a slew of other questions.”

  Raley said, “Sure, because Don wasn’t the target, you were.”

  “Correct. So we’re right back to, why come after me?”

  “Simple,” said Reynolds. “You were digging into your mother’s case.”

  “But I was always digging into that case. Does anyone here doubt a week went by that I didn’t check into it?” Nobody challenged that. “And why would he be the one to come after me?” She turned and wrote under Carter Damon’s name: “What stake in murders?”

  “I know why he came after you,” said Rook. “You lit up the radar. Not just by digging into your mother’s case—you were digging way back in her case. That upset somebody. If not Carter Damon, somebody he worked with.”

  “Or for,” said Feller, finding himself in rare agreement with the writer. “I mean, Damon was a blunt instrument. Guys like that follow instructions, take their pay, and spend Saturdays waxing the car.”

  Ochoa said, “I agree. It can’t be just one dude. And Carter Damon sure didn’t take those shots at you up on the High Line.”

  Detective Rhymer came in from interviewing the eyewitness from the Brooklyn Bridge. “What did you get?” Heat asked before he even sat.

  “Mixed. Dr. Arar was driving in from Park Slope this morning at four-thirty. He was mid-span when he thought he saw someone ahead tossing a garbage bag over the side. Then he got closer and saw the garbage bag had arms and legs. So he hit the brakes just as the guy went over. He says he stopped and honked his horn at the person tossing him over, and when he did, she started running the opposite way.”

  “Hold on,” said Heat. “She? Your eyewit says the other person was a woman?”

  “He has no doubt.”

  “What’s the description?”

  “Five-nine or -ten, athletic build, dark clothing, hat.”

  “Did he see her face? Can we work up a sketch?”

  “That’s the mixed part. He says it was too dark, and she didn’t turn to look at him. Just put her head down and booked.”

  Malcolm asked, “How does he know for sure it was a woman?”

  “I asked him the same thing. He said he’s a doctor, and he knows a woman when he sees one.”

  “I always check for Adam’s apples,” said Feller. “Avoids a lot of awkward surprises when you get them home.”

  When their ribbing died down, Raley asked Heat, “What about your sniper last night? Is it possible you were chasing a female instead of a male?”

  Nikki said, “I don’t know. I never saw the Adam’s apple,” and started her next round of assignments. She sent Malcolm and Reynolds out to Staten Island to assist the 122nd Precinct in its search of Carter Damon’s house. Among the rest of the unit, she divvied up checks of his phone records and financials. To be thorough, she had Feller check the four people on Joe Flynn’s piano tutoring list for alibis during her High Line attack. Rhymer got the task of re-canvassing ERs and pharmacies now that they knew Damon had received some sort of medical aid.

  “Happy to,” said Opie, “but didn’t we cover that base last week?”

  “We did, and now we can do it again—but with a photo of Carter Damon to e-mail them.” She capped her marker and said to the group, “This is a good time to remind all of you: Do not get complacent. I know it feels like we’re starting to get traction with some hot leads, but this can just as easily go the wrong way if we don’t stay sharp and do the donkey work. That’s the way we’ll bring these cases home.”

  When the squad had deployed, Heat dispatched a uniform to First Avenue to pick up the OCME security cam data Lauren Parry had secured. Nikki would hold it for Raley to scrub after he’d run Damon’s financial checks. Or she might even drop it in Sharon Hinesburg’s lap, if the diva detective ever made an appearance.

  Nikki phoned Lauren to let her know to expect the video pickup. “Oh, this isn’t a call to say, ‘Come on, girl, hurry up, what’s taking so long with my autopsy?’”

  “No way.” Heat paused then said, “Well, since you brought up the autopsy …”

  Her friend chuckled and told Nikki this was good timing, she had just completed it. “First off, yes to water in the lungs. Carter Damon was breathing when he went in. Also, around the torn sutures, I did find mast cells, white blood cells, and lymphocytes. That’s what I look for under the scope when I want to know if a live body was trying to heal itself.” Nikki heard a page of notes turn on Lauren’s end and the medical examiner continued, “Here’s an interesting wrinkle. Not only had that chest wound been sutured, whoever did it removed the bullet. Not the most elegant job, but good enough. So we’re dealing with a reasonable degree of competence.”

  “What about the neck?”

  “Minor graze of the jugular. Toldja! Who’s better than me?”

  Nikki said, “You need to spend more time with people. Preferably living.”

  “Too much work. Anyway, that slug was still lodged there. Of course, I saved it for ballistics, but I’m sure it’ll match the nine-millimeter from your gun.”

  Rook came back to loiter on her desktop when she’d hung up. “Know what I can’t shake out of my brain since the pier this morning? Small thing, but, ask yourself—What was the odd sock about Carter Damon’s body?”

  “I regret the day I ever taught you about odd socks.”

  He ignored her and said, “Give up? I’ll tell you: No old scar from getting shot when he was a rookie. Remember he told us about that at lunch?”

  “Maybe you just didn’t see it.”

  “I didn’t see it because there wasn’t one.”

  “Well, I happen to know he’s still on a mat down at the ME’s. Want me to call Lauren back to check?”

  “You don’t have to. I had one of the administrative aides call down to Personnel.”

  “Rook. You used one of our aides to make a call for you?”

  “I had to, since Personnel has this ‘thing’ about civilians accessing confidential police records. Anyway, Carter Damon never got shot. Why would the guy lie about that?”

  Rook was right, it was a small thing. But Heat knew small things often made critical jigsaw fits, and noted it on the Murder Board, although Rook complained she had written it in tiny letters.

  That afternoon, through the buzz of phone conversations from detectives making rounds and lunch orders getting delivered because nobody wanted to take a break, came a holler from Rhymer at his desk. “Got one!” Opie sounded like he’d hooked a big fish. In a sense, he had.

  Heat drove Rook and Dete
ctive Raley up to the Bronx as fast as she could get there. Having rolled through every yellow light and punching the accelerator when they were about to turn red, she double-parked in front of Price It Drugs and hustled inside.

  The pharmacy sat three blocks from where Carter Damon had abandoned his jacked taxi the night Nikki shot him. In addition to blast e-mailing Damon’s photo to ERs and drugstores in all the boroughs, Detective Rhymer had gotten a map and worked the phones in concentric circles radiating out from the dumped cab. The first walk-in clinic he’d called came up zip. His next try was a small drugstore on Southern Boulevard near Prospect. The owner, who was elderly and not so big on e-mail, had missed the earlier alerts but pegged Damon by the detective’s description. He confirmed it when Rhymer faxed him his photo.

  Diligent as she was eager, Detective Heat showed her copy of Carter Damon’s photo to the owner to double-check in person. “Yes, that is him,” said Hugo Plana, also reaffirming that the wounded Damon had staggered in just before closing at midnight, the night of the shooting. “He came in on his own, but I don’t know how,” said the old man. He took off his bifocals and handed the photo back to her. “He was a mess. Blood here and here.” Hugo pointed to the two bullet wounds Heat had given the ex-cop. “I asked him if he wanted me to call an ambulance and he shouted at me, ‘No!’, like that. Then he told me he wanted some gauze and some scissors and antiseptic to dress the wounds. He started to pass out, so I helped him to one of the chairs over there in the prescription waiting area.”

  “How come you didn’t call the police?” asked Rook. “Guy came into my place like that, I’d sneak a call, no matter what he said.”

  The old man smiled and nodded. “Yes, I understand. But, you see, we are a small, independent pharmacy. A family business. In this neighborhood, I see a lot of folks in bad shape. My goodness, it’s unbelievable. Sometimes a fight, sometimes a turf war—sometimes, I don’t want to know. When they come for help, I help. I’m not here to ask too many questions or to bust them. They trust me. They’re my neighbors.”