Deadly Heat (24 page)

“Sir, let me reassure you, I am capable of handling both.”

His ears reddened and plum blotches mottled his cheeks. “I am anything but reassured. Now, you may have all the big magazines and primo TV interview shows courting you, but this is still my precinct. And my order is, you got Wynn, this now goes to the feds. If not, well, I suspended you once before. Do we need to revisit?”

Heat flopped at her desk, barely containing her temper. Strictly speaking, Wally Irons stood on solid ground. The scale of her case had escalated beyond a murder. The skipper’s demand that she attend to the police work of his precinct—of the homicide squad she led—made sense. But Nikki didn’t want to make sense; she wanted to see it through. Thousands of lives in New York City were at stake. Heat asked herself which motivated her more, her obligation to stop the terrorists or the responsibility she felt to finish her mother’s work?

She decided they were one and the same, then went to her desk to make the call she didn’t want to make.

“Nikki Heat, I couldn’t be more pleased,” said Bart Callan. “On behalf of DHS, I am so glad you decided to join us after all.”

“Well, you sure put the home in Homeland, Special Agent Callan.” Nikki hoped using his title would quell the effusiveness before things got out of hand.

“Whatever I can do,” he said. And then Heat told him what that was.

Soon Nikki heard the muted phone ring across the bull pen and watched through the glass of the precinct commander’s office as the
federal card got played. Wally Irons nodded like a dashboard doggy to his caller, but he didn’t appear happy. That was all right by her. She’d try to be happy enough for both of them.

An hour later, Detective Heat stood before a joint Bioterrorism Task Force in the basement bunker of the United States Department of Homeland Security, six reinforced floors under Varick Street in Lower Manhattan. Facing a mixed conference table of military, police, and intel officers, including Callan and Bell, she briefed them on her path into the investigation, via an eleven-year-old cold case, and the developments of the prior month that led her to Tyler Wynn’s dying declaration on his last ambulance ride.

It all lived in her head, so she spoke without notes, fundamentally repeating the download she had given the squad that morning up at the Twentieth. She didn’t use a whiteboard, and felt a bit startled when her peripheral vision caught the large LED screen behind her filling with text as she spoke. One of the secretaries in the back of the room was keying in an instant PowerPoint of her report. Resources, she thought. This is what they mean by resources.

The group questioned her afterward, mainly for details she had decided to spare them, and she answered everything candidly, holding only one thing back: the code.

When Nikki sat, Cooper McMains, the commander of the NYPD counterterrorism unit, said he bought the logic of her clue construction that pointed to a bioterror event. The rest agreed. Without any dissent beyond the prudent caution to keep open minds for other possibilities, gears shifted to practicalities. Special Agent in Charge Callan reclaimed the lectern and outlined the basics. “Top priority, we need to know the what, when, and where of this strike. I’ll ask all of you to ramp up your eyes and ears with informants and to re-scrub all your data with this threat in mind. Obviously, we want hard focus on State’s designated groups on the Foreign Terrorist Organizations list, starting with al-Qaeda and all its cousins, plus Hezbollah, Mujahideen, FARC, Shining Path, and so forth.”

“What about the domestic watch list?” asked a brown-suited man with an academic’s goatee and bow tie.

“Wouldn’t rule it out. Especially if there’s some new alliance we don’t know about that’s forming, but Tyler Wynn’s CIA background tugs my sleeve to foreign. However…” He pointed a finger for emphasis and added, “Let’s not neglect the splinter cells. We’ve all seen how a pair of foreign exchange students with a chemistry set and a list from the hardware store can be a threat.”

“That’s a wide spectrum,” said the prof.

“Then we’d better be good,” he said. “And quick.”

As the Situation Room emptied, Heat met up with Callan at the door and said, “Now that we’re agreed on bioterror, there’s a thread I’d like to follow, and I’m telling you in advance because, as you’ll recall, it was an issue before. Vaja Nikoladze.”

“Forget Nikoladze, Detective,” said Yardley Bell, shouldering her way into the conversation. “He’s a nonstarter.”

Nikki’s expression appealed to Callan to intercede, but he seemed cowed by the other agent, so she engaged her. “Not to me, he isn’t. Let me count them off for you, Agent Bell.” Heat held her gaze and numbered with her fingers. “Nikoladze is a top biochemist. He’s a foreign national, a defector from the former Soviet Republic of Georgia.”

“Do you think I need a primer on Vaja Nikoladze?”

“And,” continued Heat, undeterred, “he was being spied on by my mother.”

“Here’s all you need to know about Nikoladze,” said Agent Bell. “He’s been a credible and productive informant in our system for years. Plus, our biochemist is in a disarmament think tank that promotes the demilitarization of science. If anything, your mom was using Vaja as an expert source.”

“You were the FBI liaison with my mother back then,” said Nikki to Callan. “Was that the relationship?”

“I honestly couldn’t tell you one way or the other.”

“Then I want to find out.”

“No, you want to be right and me to be wrong,” Yardley said. “Stop wasting time.”

Bell stalked out of the room. Callan said, “Heat, maybe there are more productive lines of investigation to focus on.”

“Sounds like an order.” The DHS man didn’t answer, except to smile. Nikki said, “Silly me. Here I was afraid if I joined your team I’d find it full of infighting and dysfunction.”

Captain Irons made a show of turning his back on Heat to stare out at 82nd Street when she returned from the DHS meeting. Somehow, she’d be able to live with that. She got to her desk, woke up her monitor, and began clearing accumulated e-mails. There were a few progress updates from the squad on the serial killer, but most of her inbox brimmed with statements taken throughout the five boroughs from Rainbow pretenders. Nikki concentrated on the reports from her own detectives while she stirred the strawberry compote from the side cup into her two-percent yogurt.

“I had a real lunch,” said Rook as he sauntered over. She moved some files from her desktop before he could sit on them—and just in time. “No yogurt on the fly for this man.”

Roach came over, passing a basketball, a long-standing brainstorming habit of theirs. Ochoa said, “Writer Boy’s been a sulky boy.”

Rook ignored them and went on about his lunch. “I took myself for a chilled seafood salad over at Ocean Grill on Columbus.”

Raley caught Ochoa’s pass. “He’s all bent because you went to the DHS deal without telling him.”

“A white tablecloth and real silverware.” He leaned toward her. “Excuse me, is that plastic spoon cracked?”

“Rook,” she said, “are you really bugged?”

“No, why should I be bugged?”

“Trust me, we had to listen to him. He’s bugged,” said Rales, who then passed the ball to Rook, who flinched instead of catching it.

While Ochoa shagged the ball from under a desk, Rook blurted, “All right, I didn’t go to Ocean Grill. I lost my appetite. A task force, Nikki. How could you go to the DHS Task Force without me?”

“Because it’s restricted.”

“Like that’s ever stopped me.” From anyone else, it would have seemed like an empty boast.

Detective Ochoa said, “My partner and I have been tossing around the idea of this van, the one that had Nicole Bernardin’s blood and traces of lab cleaning solution in it. No sit-down lunch for us, either.”

“What did you come up with?”

“OK, follow this,” said Raley. “Let’s suppose, like you said at the briefing, that Nicole Bernardin picked up some sort of biological toxin on herself while she was checking out whatever Tyler Wynn was into. Whoever caught her snooping around and killed her must have worried her body might register telltale contamination.”

Ochoa picked up. “Which is why they scrubbed her corpse before they dumped it. They didn’t want to set off any alarms.”

“And since Carter Damon’s van had both Nicole Bernardin’s blood and traces of lab cleaning solvent,” continued Raley, “I think it’s a good bet that van got used to transport her body from where she was stabbed and scrubbed to where she got left in the suitcase. So our thinking is, if we can figure out where Damon’s van traveled the night of her murder—”

“—We might just find the bioterror lab she discovered,” said Heat. She added a “might” but liked this feeling, the little spark that could possibly kindle a break.

“But how could you ever learn where the van traveled?” asked Rook.

Detective Feller chimed in from his desk. “Doesn’t Homeland Security have cameras that scan license plates at key intersections and toll plazas so they can track suspicious vehicles that enter and drive around the city?”

“They do. They’d have video archives,” Raley said. “So would NYPD.”

Heat thought about the experience she’d just had in the bunker and said to Roach, “Start with NYPD.”

“Your task force meeting was that good?” said Rook as Raley and Ochoa moved off to work the new lead.

“Shut up,” she said, hiding her smile in her yogurt. “Let a gal enjoy her lunch.”

“Sure. And while you do, let me share some thinking I tossed
around with my partner. I’ll admit it’s an imaginary partner, which is why I’m so glad you’re back.”

“Rook, are you having a reality break, or does this have a point?”

“My point,” he said, “is that if Tyler Wynn had so many foreign connections, why didn’t he get out of Dodge instead of hanging around a month after you put the APB out on his traitorous ass?”

“Simple. To see the plot through.”

“That’s where I bump. What was the first thing Wynn said to you after the blast?”

“He asked me if Salena Kaye did it.”

“No, exact quote, please, Detective.”

Heat pictured the old man down on the kitchen floor. It all replayed like a movie. “He said, ‘Was it Salena? Did Kaye find me?’ ”

Rook said, “See, now that’s not just big, that’s an XL.”

“He’s right.” Randall Feller couldn’t resist joining the spitball and came over. “The ‘find me’ part sounds like Wynn was hiding out from his own accomplice.”

Rook continued, “And if Salena Kaye turned on him, and he was still hiding in New York, it suggests that his own organization cut him off and he lost the resources to flee these borders undetected. I’ve seen this before with my European spy friends. One day you’re center car of the motorcade, the next you’re hiding in Dumpsters, afraid to show your face and unable to board an airplane.”

“The question is, why did they all of a sudden want him dead?” asked Feller.

“I hope to find that out,” said Heat. “Maybe because I compromised him by surviving. When I came out of that subway alive, Uncle Tyler got on somebody’s hit list because if we captured him, he might give up his co-conspirators.”

“Good a reason as any,” said Rook. “It also tells you why Salena hung around. To finish him off.”

“And me,” said Nikki.

“There she goes.” Rook winked at Feller, then turned to Nikki. “It’s all about you, isn’t it?”

“Do you think Salena Kaye killed him?” asked Sharon Hinesburg.
Randall Feller wasn’t the only detective unable to resist joining the brainstorming session. But such engagement was rare for Hinesburg. Maybe she was trying to turn it around, after all.

“Kaye would certainly top the list,” said Heat.

Feller crinkled his brow. “But isn’t poison her MO of choice?”

Nikki said, “Best choice is the one that’s effective.”

“And we’re sure he wasn’t building a bomb and it went off on him?” asked Feller.

Heat shook no. “There weren’t any bomb-making materials in his apartment.”

“Please,” said Rook in mock indignation. “This is Sutton Place we’re talking about. The condo board wouldn’t have it.”

“Concierge records indicate a package delivered to his apartment,” Heat explained. “Local messenger service, no trace. Probably bogus.”

“So if he wasn’t right beside the blast,” said Rook, “the package probably wasn’t rigged for opening.”

“That leaves a timer or a remote detonation.” Heat did another e-mail scan. “I’m still waiting to hear that determination. Forensics and Bomb Squad are both on that.”

“You’ve got a lot on your plate,” said Detective Hinesburg. “How about if I follow up and see what gives?” Nikki approved of the weak link trying to redeem herself and said sure.

Whether it was old-fashioned Heat Guilt or just to prove to herself that she could juggle it all, Nikki spent the rest of the day chipping away at the Rainbow case. She had finally surrendered to calling it that, which, hours later, constituted the only movement in the entire investigation. Satisfied that her squad remained diligent and engaged in the hunt for Rainbow, Heat allowed herself an indulgence. Like scratching poison ivy, she couldn’t restrain herself, even though she knew the act would likely do more harm than good.