Heat Wave

by Richard Castle

  She left them in the apartment to continue their investigation. After she left, Rook said, “I always wondered where all those Martha Stewarts came from. They must breed them on a secret farm in Connecticut.”

  “Thank you for not interrupting while she was spewing.”

  Rook shrugged. “I’d like to say that was sensitivity, but it was really because of the chair. It’s hard for a man to sound authoritative surrounded by toile. OK, now that she’s gone, can I tell you I get a vibe off her I don’t like?”

  “Uh-huh, I’m not surprised. That was a hell of a shot she took at your ‘profession.’ Accurate though it was.” Heat turned, in case her inner smile leaked onto her face, and started back to the balcony.

  He fell in with her. “Oh, please, I have two Pulitzers, I don’t need her respect.” She gave him a side glance. “Although, I did kind of want to tell her that the series of articles I wrote about my month underground with the Chechen rebels are being optioned for a movie.”

  “Why didn’t you? Your self-aggrandizement might have been a welcome distraction from the fact that her husband just died a violent death.”

  They stepped out into the afternoon scorch, where Raley and Ochoa’s shirts had soaked clean through. “What have you got, Roach?”

  “Definitely not liking suicide,” said Raley. “A, check out the fresh paint chips and stone dust. Somebody banged open those French doors pretty hard, like during a struggle.”

  “And B,” Ochoa picked up, “you’ve got your trail of scuff marks leading from the doors across the…what is this?”

  “Terra-cotta tile,” said Rook.

  “Right. Shows the marks pretty good, huh? And they go all the way to here.” He stopped at the balustrade. “This is where our man went over.”

  All four of them leaned to look below. “Wow,” said Rook. “Six floors down. It is six, isn’t it, fellas?”

  “Let it go, Rook,” said Heat.

  “But here’s our telltale.” Ochoa got on his knees to indicate something on the railing with his pen. “You’ll have to get close.” He backed up to make room for Heat, who knelt to see where he was pointing. “It’s torn fabric. Forensics geek says it’ll test out as blue denim after he runs it. Our vic wasn’t wearing jeans, so this came from someone else.”

  Rook knelt down beside her to look. “As in someone who shoved him over.” Heat nodded, as did Rook. They turned to face each other, and she was a little startled by his proximity but didn’t pull back. Nose-to-nose with him in the heat, she held his gaze and watched the dance of reflected sunlight playing off his eyes. And then she blinked. Oh shit, she thought, what was that? I can’t be attracted to this guy. No way.

  Detective Heat quickly rose to her feet, crisp and all business. “Roach? I want you to run a background on Kimberly Starr. And check out her alibi at that ice cream place on Amsterdam.”

  “So,” said Rook, rising beside her, “you got a vibe off her, too, huh?”

  “I don’t do vibes. I do police work.” Then she hurried away to the apartment.

  Later, on the elevator ride down, she asked her detectives, “OK, what was so funny that I could have killed you both with my bare hands? And so you know, I am trained to do that.”

  “Aw, nothing, just letting the giddy out, you know how it gets,” said Ochoa.

  “Yeah, nothing at all,” said Raley.

  Two floors of silence passed and they both started a low hum of “It’s Raining Men” before they cracked up.

  “That? That’s what you were laughing at?”

  “This,” said Rook, “may be the proudest moment of my life.”

  As they stepped back out into the blast furnace and gathered under the Guilford canopy, Rook said, “You’ll never guess who wrote that song.”

  “I don’t know songwriters, man,” from Raley.

  “You’d know this one.”

  “Elton John?”

  “Wrong.”

  “Clue?”

  A woman’s scream cut through the rush-hour noise of the city, and Nikki Heat bounded onto the sidewalk, her head swiveling to search up and down the block.

  “Over there,” called the doorman, pointing toward Columbus. “Mrs. Starr!”

  Heat followed his gaze to the corner, where a large man gripped Kimberly Starr by the shoulders and jammed her against a store window. It thundered on impact but did not break.

  Nikki was off in a sprint, with the other three close behind. She waved her shield and hollered at pedestrians to move as she wove through the after-work crowd. Raley fisted his two-way and called for backup.

  “Police, freeze,” called Heat.

  In the assailant’s split second of alarm, Kimberly went for a groin kick that missed wildly. The man was already on the move and she torqued herself down to the pavement. “Ochoa,” said Heat, pointing at Kimberly as she passed. Ochoa stopped to attend her while Raley and Rook followed Heat, dodging cars into the crosswalk on 77th. A tour bus making an illegal turn blocked their path. Heat ran around the bus’s rear end, through a puff of hot diesel exhaust, emerging on the cobblestone sidewalk that surrounded the museum complex.

  There was no sign of him. She slowed to a jog and then a race-walk across from the Evelyn at 78th. Raley was still on his walkie behind her, calling in their location and the man’s description: “…male cauc, thirty-five, balding, six feet, white short-sleeve shirt, blue jeans…”

  At 81st and Columbus Heat stopped and turned a circle. A sheen of perspiration glistened on her chest and fed a darkened V-pattern down the front of her top. The detective showed no sign of fatigue, only alertness, seeing near and far at the same time, knowing all she needed was a glimpse of any piece of him to put her back on the run.

  “He wasn’t in that good a shape.” Rook sounded a little winded. “He couldn’t have gotten far.”

  She turned to him, a little impressed he had kept up. And a little annoyed that he had. “What the hell are you doing here, Rook?”

  “Extra set of eyes, Detective.”

  “Raley, I’ll cover Central Park West and circle the museum. You take 81st to Amsterdam and loop back on 79th.”

  “Got it.” He cut against the grain of the downtown flow on Columbus.

  “What about me?”

  “Have you noticed I might be too busy to babysit you right now? If you want to be helpful, take that extra set of eyes and see how Kimberly Starr is doing.”

  She left him there on the corner without looking back. Heat needed her concentration and didn’t want her focus pulled, not by him. This ride-along was getting tired enough. And what was with that business back there on the balcony? Pulling up next to her face like some perfume ad in Vanity Fair, those ads that promise the kind of love that life just never seems to deliver. Lucky she shook herself out of that little tableau. Still, she wondered, maybe she had just bitch-slapped the guy a little too hard.

  When she turned to check on Rook, she didn’t see him at first. Then she spotted him halfway down Columbus. What the hell was he doing crouching behind that planter? He looked like he was spying on something. She hopped the fence of the dog park and cut across the lawn toward him at a jog. That’s when she saw White Shirt–Blue Jeans climb out of the Dumpster at the rear entrance to the museum complex. She kicked it up to a sprint. Ahead of her, Rook stood up behind his planter. The guy made him and took off down the driveway, disappearing into the service tunnel. Nikki Heat called out to him, but Rook was already running into the underground entrance after her perp.

  She cursed and leaped over the fence at the other end of the dog park, chasing after them.

  TWO

  Nikki Heat’s footsteps echoed back at her off the concrete tunnel as she ran. The passage was wide and high, big enough to truck in exhibits for both museums in the complex: the American Museum of Natural History and the Rose Center for Earth and Space, aka the planetarium. The orange cast of sodium-vapor lamps gave good visibility, but she couldn’t see ahead around the curve of the w
all. She also didn’t pick up any other footfalls, and coming around the bend, she saw why not.

  The tunnel came to a dead end at a loading dock and nobody was there. She bounded up the steps to the landing, from which a pair of doors fed off—one to the natural history museum on the right, the other to the planetarium on her left. She made a Zen choice and hit the push bar to the natural history door. It was locked. To hell with instinct; she went for the process of elimination. The door to the planetarium service bay popped open. She drew her gun and went in.

  Heat entered in the Weaver stance, keeping her back to a line of crates. Her academy trainer had drilled her to use the more square and sturdy Isosceles, but in tight quarters with lots of pivoting, she made her own call and assumed the pose that let her flow and present less target area. She cleared the room quickly, startled only once by an Apollo space suit dangling from an old display. In the far corner she found an internal staircase. As she approached, somebody upstairs threw a door open against a wall. Before it slammed shut, Heat was climbing steps two at a time.

  She emerged into a sea of visitors roaming the lower level of the planetarium. A camp counselor passed by leading a herd of kids in matching T-shirts. The detective holstered-up before young eyes could freak out at her gun. Heat waded through them, squinting in the blinding whiteness of the Hall of the Universe, speed-scanning for Rook or Kimberly Starr’s attacker. Over by a rhino-sized meteorite she spotted a security guard on his two-way, pointing at something: Rook, vaulting a banister and clambering up a ramp that curved around the hall and spiraled to the floor above. Halfway up the incline, her suspect’s head popped over the railing to back-check on Rook. Then he raced on with the reporter in pursuit.

  The sign said they were on the Cosmic Pathway, a 360-degree spiral walkway marking the timeline of the evolution of the universe in the length of a football field. Nikki Heat covered thirteen billion years at a personal best. At the top of the incline, quads protesting, she stopped to make another scan. No sign of either of them. Then she heard the screams of the crowd.

  Heat rested a hand on her holster and orbited under the giant central sphere to see the guest lineup for the space show. The alarmed crowd was parting, backing away from Rook, who was on the ground taking a rib kick from her man.

  The attacker drew back for another kick, and during the most vulnerable part of his balance shift, Heat came up behind him and used her leg to sweep his out from under him. All six feet of him dropped hard onto the marble. She cuffed him rodeo quick and the crowd broke into applause.

  Rook sat himself up. “I’m fine, thanks for asking.”

  “Nice work slowing him down like that. Is that how you rolled in Chechnya?”

  “The guy jumped me after I tripped.” He pointed under his foot to a bag from the museum store. “On that.” Rook opened it up and pulled out an art glass paperweight of a planet. “Check it out. I tripped on Uranus.”

  When Heat and Rook entered the Interrogation Room, the prisoner snapped upright at the table the way fourth-graders do when the principal walks in. Rook took the side chair. Nikki Heat tossed a file on the table but stayed on her feet. “Stand up,” she said. And Barry Gable did. The detective walked a circle around him, enjoying his nervousness. She bent low to examine his blue jeans for any rips that could match the fabric shard the killer had left on the railing. “What did you do here?”

  Gable arched himself to look at the scuff she was pointing to on the back of his leg. “I dunno. Maybe I scraped them on the Dumpster. These are brand-new,” he added, as if that might put him in a more favorable light.

  “We’re going to want your pants.” The guy started to unhitch them right there, and she said, “Not now. After. Sit down.” He complied, and she eased into the seat opposite, all casual, all in charge. “You want to tell us why you attacked Kimberly Starr?”

  “Ask her,” he said, trying to sound tough but shooting nervous looks at himself in the mirror, a giveaway to her he had never sat in Interrogation before.

  “I’m asking you, Barry,” said Heat.

  “It’s personal.”

  “It is to me. Battery like that against a woman? I can get very personal about that. You want to see how personal?”

  Rook chimed in, “Plus you assaulted me.”

  “Hey, you were chasing me. How did I know what you were going to pull? I can tell a mile away you’re not a cop.”

  Heat kind of liked that. She arched an eyebrow at Rook and he sat back to stew. She turned back to Gable. “Not your first assault, I see, is it, Barry?” She made a show of opening the file. There weren’t many pages in it, but her theater made him more uneasy, so she made the most of it. “Two thousand six scrape with a bouncer in SoHo; 2008, you pushed a guy who caught you keying the side of his Mercedes.”

  “Those were all misdemeanors.”

  “Those were all assaults.”

  “I lose it sometimes.” He forced a John Candy chuckle. “Guess I should stay out of the bars.”

  “And maybe spend more time at the gym,” said Rook.

  Heat gave him a cool-it glance. Barry had turned to the mirror again and adjusted his shirt around his gut. Heat closed the file and said, “Can you tell us your whereabouts this afternoon, say around one to two P.M.?”

  “I want my lawyer.”

  “Sure. Would you like to wait for him here or down in the Zoo Lockup?” It was an empty threat that only worked on newbies, and Gable’s eyes widened. Underneath the hard-ass face she fixed on him, Heat was loving how easily he caved. Gotta love the Zoo Lockup. Works every time.

  “I was at the Beacon, you know, the Beacon Hotel on Broadway?”

  “You do know we will check your alibi. Is there anyone who saw you and can vouch for you?”

  “I was alone in my room. Maybe somebody at the front desk in the morning.”

  “That hedge fund you operate pays for a mighty nice address on East 52nd. Why book a hotel?”

  “Come on, are you going to make me say this?” He stared at his own pleading eyes in the mirror then nodded to himself. “I go there a couple times a week. To meet somebody. You know.”

  “For sex?” asked Rook.

  “Jeez, yeah, sex is part of it. It goes deeper than that.”

  “And what happened today?” asked Heat.

  “She didn’t show.”

  “Bad for you, Barry. She could be your alibi. Does she have a name?”

  “Yeah. Kimberly Starr.”

  When Heat and Rook left Interrogation, Detective Ochoa was waiting in the observation booth, staring through the magic mirror at Gable. “Can’t believe you wrapped this interview and didn’t ask the most important question.” When he had their attention, he continued, “How did that swamp doofus get a babe like Kimberly Starr into the sack?”

  “You are so superficial,” said Heat. “It’s not about looks. It’s about money.”

  “Weird Al,” said Raley when the three of them entered the squad room. “‘It’s Raining Men’? My guess is Al Yankovic.”

  “Nope,” said Rook. “The song was written by…Ah, I could tell you, but where’s the sport in that? Keep trying. But no fair Googling.”

  Nikki Heat sat at her desk and swiveled to face the bullpen. “Can I break up tonight’s episode of Jeopardy! for a little police work? Ochoa, what do we know about Kimberly Starr’s alibi?”

  “We know it doesn’t check out. Well, I know, and now you do, too. She was at Dino-Bites today but left shortly after she got there. Her kid ate his tar pit soup with the nanny, not his mom.”

  “What time did she leave?” asked Heat.

  Ochoa flipped through his notes. “Manager says around one, one-fifteen.”

  Rook said, “I told you I got a vibe off Kimberly Starr, didn’t I?”

  “You like Kimberly Starr as a suspect?” asked Raley.

  “Here’s how it spins for me.” Rook sat on Heat’s desk. She noticed him wince from the rib kicks he’d taken and wished he would get himsel
f checked out. “Our adoring trophy wife-and-mother has been getting sweet lovin’ on the side. Her punch pal Barry, no looker he, claims she dropped him like a sack of hammers when his hedge fund cratered and his money supply pinched off. Hence today’s assault. Who knows, maybe our dead gazillionaire kept the little missus on a short money leash. Or maybe Matthew Starr found out about her affair and she killed him.”

  Raley nodded. “Does look bad that she was cheating on him.”

  “I have a novel idea,” said Heat. “Why don’t we do this thing called an investigation? Gather evidence, assemble some facts. Somehow that might sound better in court than, ‘Here’s how it spins for me.’”

  Rook took out his Moleskine notebook. “Excellent. This is all going to be swell in my article.” He clicked a pen theatrically to needle her. “So what do we investigate first?”

  “Raley,” said Heat, “check out the Beacon, see if Gable’s been a regular there. Show them a picture of Mrs. Starr while you’re at it. Ochoa, how soon can you pull together a background check on our trophy widow?”

  “How’s first thing tomorrow?”

  “OK, but I was kind of hoping for first thing tomorrow.”

  Rook raised his hand. “Question? Why not just pick her up? I would love to see what happens when you set her down in your hall of mirrors.”

  “Much as I live my day to provide you with top entertainment, I’m going to hold off until I learn a little more. Besides, she’s not going anywhere.”

  The next morning, amid flickering lights, City Hall put out the word for New Yorkers to curtail air-conditioning use and strenuous activity. For Nikki Heat that meant her close-quarter combat training with Don, the ex-SEAL, would be done with the gym windows open. His brand of training combined Brazilian jujitsu, boxing, and judo. Their sparring began at five-thirty with a round of grapples and rolls in eighty-two degrees and humidity to match. After the second water break Don asked her if she wanted to call it. Heat answered with a takedown and a textbook blood choke and release. She seemed to thrive on the adverse weather, fed on it, really. Rather than wearing her down, the gasping intensity of morning combat pushed out the noise of her life and left her in a quiet inner place. It was the same way when she and Don had sex from time to time. She decided if she had nothing going, maybe next week she’d suggest another after-hours session to her trainer, with benefits. Anything to get her heart rate up.