Deadly Heat (31 page)

“Then what do you call it?”

Sharon Hinesburg passed by with a take-out bag, and they held their conversation. When she went inside the precinct, Rook said,
“First of all, before I can keep a secret, I have to know it’s a secret. I thought we were all kind of working on the same team here, trying to stop the bad guys from unleashing a plague.”

“Being on the same team is one thing, Rook, but that doesn’t mean you can go reporting to other people. Especially Yardley Bell.”

“You don’t like her.”

“It’s not about liking her.”

“You’re still jealous because we have a history.”

“It’s not that, either. I just don’t trust her.”

“Why not?”

“Nothing I can pinpoint. It’s an instinct.”

“Hey, I’m the one with hunches and instincts, and you hate that.”

“Well now it’s my turn. And as irrational as it may seem, I want you to respect that.” They regarded each other a moment, and in spite of the argument, all the good feelings held fast. Maybe that’s what a relationship was, she thought. She reached out and he took her hand. “Look, you know what I’m juggling. All I’m saying is, with everything else I have to look over my shoulder about, I don’t want you to be another one.”

He reached out his other hand and she took that, and they faced each other. He smiled. “So. We good?”

Heat regarded him and knew that, above all else, Jameson Rook was a good man she could trust. Nothing else mattered. “We are good.” She squeezed both his hands and they walked in together.

While Nikki received her shot of an antiviral, she thought through her day for any clue where she might have picked up that smallpox marker. A disturbing notion came to her. After quick calls to Benigno DeJesus and Bart Callan, the orange string Rainbow left on the pillow got priority-messengered to the DHS lab for testing. A certain conspiracy-hungry boyfriend would be quite proud of her.

One thing Heat did know for certain: There was no way in hell she would spend another minute in sweats at the cop shop. She opened her
bottom file drawer where she kept what she called her emergency wear: backup apparel for those days she spilled coffee or got blood on her clothes.

After a quick change and a review of the Murder Boards, she decided it was time to hit the phones again. That was how an investigation worked. You got a new scrap of information and followed it up by talking to someone about it. Sometimes you got another scrap that moved you forward, sometimes not. But you kept making rounds, occasionally feeling like a tethered pony walking a circle at a kids’ zoo, but you just continued plodding until something shook loose.

First call went to Carey Maggs at Brewery Boz. He came on the line sounding extra-Brit, which was to say deliciously cranky and jovial about it. “Catching you at a busy time?”

He chuckled, “Is there any other kind? You know, just running a business and saving the world in a failing economy. I’m like your Clark Kent, only not slim enough for the tights, I suppose.”

She thought of the peace march he was sponsoring that weekend, and her heart ached wanting to warn him about the looming terror possibility, but where did something like that stop? There were hundreds of public events, conventions, bike-a-thons, and street fairs on the weekend calendar. Maybe if Rook optioned her article to Hollywood, he’d have enough money to give everyone in New York City an award at SUNY and get them all out of town. Putting that aside, she broke the news to Maggs about Ari Weiss: that his old friend had not died of a blood disease at all, but had been murdered.

“Christ in heaven,” he sighed.

Weiss’s murder was not only new information, the stabbing matched her mother’s so closely that Nikki texted Maggs a picture of her killer, Petar Matic. She heard the chime on his cell phone as it arrived, then a deep exhale and some tongue clicking from Maggs’s end as he studied it. “Know what? I have seen this guy.”

“You’re sure?”

“No doubt. It’s the greasy long hair and the slacker eyes. Who is he?”

“He was my boyfriend.”

“Uh-oh, low bridge, sorry.”

“… Who killed my mother.” She heard a whispered curse and continued, “It’s likely he stabbed Ari as well. Do you recall when you saw him, and where?”

“I do very well because I called the police about him. He was hanging about in the front of my apartment building a number of times and I wanted him dealt with.”

“When was this?”

“Good lord, Detective, it was near Thanksgiving. Same week as Ari was staying with us. And same week as…”

“It’s all right, Carey, I know what else happened that week.”

Heat could hear the strain in Maggs as he absorbed the startling news she’d dropped on him about his old friend. But she pressed forward. He could recover later. Right now, she needed a new lead. “Carey, I want your help with something, if you’re up for it.” He sounded emotional but croaked out a yes, so she asked, “You mentioned Ari wasn’t real social or political. Do you recall if he had any colleagues in the science world with whom he was close? Was there anyone in particular he talked about, or teamed with on any special projects?”

After some thought, Maggs said, “None that stuck in my brain. Sure, I’d cross paths with his crowd for a beer or to watch football at Slattery’s, but to me they were, basically, this blur of boffins.”

She didn’t want to lead him with a name, so she asked, “Do you recall any foreigners?”

He laughed. “You’re joking, right? That was most of them.”

And then she said it. But Maggs didn’t recall any Vaja Nikoladze by name, so she texted him his photo, too, and waited for him to look at it. “Sorry. He meets the boffin test, but I don’t remember him hanging out with Ari.”

Nikki chalked up another disappointment, but at least she’d gotten her ID of Petar, firming up his connection to Ari Weiss’s murder.

Rook convinced her to step out with him for a quick bite at the new Shake Shack that had just opened on Columbus, but they didn’t get
that far. In fact, Detective Raley called them to a stop in the precinct lobby. “What’s up, Sean? You spot something on the Coney Crest tapes?”

“No, still screening them. But Miguel and I just got a hit on something else. Trust me, you will want to see this.”

“I think the Shake Shack will have to manage without us,” said Rook.

When Heat came back into the bull pen, Ochoa had the results up on his monitor at Roach Central, which is what the pair had dubbed the corner where they had pushed their desks. “OK,” he said as Heat sat in his chair, “we’ve been scouring the NYPD license plate surveillance cams from last month for any sign of that van that was hauling around the body of your mom’s spy partner. We track the van, we find the lab, right?”

“We do,” said Rook.

“We hope,” said Heat.

“We scored,” said Ochoa. “Big-time. Here’s the first hit. And yes, it’s from the night she was killed. ” He clicked the mouse and a blurry image of the plate came up. The location read, “E-ZPass Lane 2, Henry Hudson Bridge.”

“Is this right?” asked Heat. “All the way up there?”

Roach nodded in unison. “It’s correct,” said Raley.

“But we wondered the same thing,” added Ochoa. “We asked ourselves, What’s the van—and the body—doing coming down into the city from way up there? So we ran some further checks.”

“I love you, Roach,” said Heat.

Raley continued, “We combed a net of traffic cams at on-ramps in Westchester County and north.”

“It wasn’t as hard as it seems, since we knew the general time and exact date.” Ochoa clicked again and the screen filled with four shots of the same plate at different locations. “So, backtracking, here’s where we see the first appearance of the van on its drive south toward New York City.” He double-clicked the top image. When it opened, the location stamp made Heat gasp.

That maroon van could have been coming from any number of places when it got photographed getting on the Saw Mill River Parkway at Hastings-on-Hudson, but Nikki Heat could only think of one. Rook said it out loud. “Vaja.” In a single mouse click all the reasons—all the instincts—she’d had about holding on to the biochemist as a person of interest seemed to be borne out. Heat only prayed it wasn’t too late.

“Roach, saddle up.” She turned to the other detectives in the bull pen. “Feller. Rhymer. You, too. We’re taking a ride to Westchester.”

“What about me?” Detective Hinesburg came in from the kitchenette holding a plate of deli salad scoops. Suddenly it was PE class, all the teams had been chosen, and everyone started getting very busy avoiding eye contact. Heat simply didn’t want Sharon there. And she sure didn’t want to ride with her. She wasn’t about to foist her on Roach or Feller and Rhymer, either.

“I need you here to hold the fort.” Nikki felt bad for that, but in a way she knew she’d get over it in a hurry. In truth, Hinesburg could take care of a few things that would get Heat on the road faster. “Start by calling the State Police, Troop K. Tell them we are en route for a seal and seize at a place off Warburton Avenue in Hastings and need an assist. Give the Troop K lead my cell. I’ll coordinate logistics from the car.”

“Got it,” said Hinesburg, seeming content to be relevant. “What about town police?”

By then Heat and the others had reached the door. “I know the locals and have them in my contacts. I’ll handle them myself after I notify DHS.”

“What’s this guy done, anyway?” she asked.

“I hope nothing yet.” And then Heat rolled.

They took up observation positions where the Old Croton Trailway ran along a wooded hill above Vaja Nikoladze’s property. “Got just about one more hour of daylight,” said Ochoa. He turned to his left to indicate the low sun’s reflection kicking off the glass skin of the Manhattan skyline twenty-two miles downriver. From that distance, it could have been Oz.

Heat didn’t bother to look. Her focus remained through her binoculars, studying the secluded acreage below. She scanned Nikoladze’s metallic blue hybrid, which sat empty, nosed against the weathered rail where the gravel drive met the pasture beside his house. The freshly painted Victorian showed no sign of life from her vantage point. All the curtains were open but to no movement, no passing forms or shadows. And no lights inside. A breeze rustled the pink blossoms of the stand of rhododendrons near the kennel on the right side of the pasture. Nikki had never seen all the dogs he kept in there, but on her first visit the month before, she met the Georgian shepherd Vaja had anointed to reclaim the glory of his beloved show dog that had suddenly died. It crossed her mind at that moment to wonder what unexpected tragedy befell the biochemist’s dog, and if what she had read on Nikoladze’s face as grief had actually been self-reproach. Heat listened for the dogs but only heard the stir of wind mixing with the clatter of a northbound train behind the trees at the back of the meadow as it traveled along the Hudson River.

“Callan’s landing now,” said Heat, adjusting the volume in her earpiece.

Rook turned to her. “Why couldn’t we take a chopper?”

“Dude,” said Feller. “We got here in like a half hour. In case you didn’t notice, we are waiting for the slicks with their f-ing chopper.”

“Maybe it’s not so much wanting to ride in one. I was sort of hoping for once in my life I could turn to someone and say, ‘Prepare the chopper.’ ”

Raley said, “Go ahead man, hit me one time.”

“No, I couldn’t.”

“Really, here’s your chance, go ahead.”

Rook considered a beat and said, “Prepare the chopper.”

“Eat shit,” said Raley. Ochoa held out a fist and the partners bumped.

“Boys,” said Heat.

“That’s fine,” said Rook. “I know you’re just ripping me because you see me almost as a brother cop.”

“Hey, if that works for you, bro,” said Ochoa.

They met Agents Callan and Bell down on the road, around a bend that concealed them from being seen from Vaja’s property. Callan greeted Heat’s team and said, “Sorry for the delay—we had to set down in some nature preserve.”

“Mayberry doesn’t have a copter pad,” said Yardley Bell.

Nikki spread a map on the hood of her car. “No sweat. Gave us time to set up logistics. We own the area, basically. State Police have closed this road to traffic between Odell Avenue and Yonkers Yacht Club. To the west, it’s just railroad tracks and river. East is woods and the trail up the hill, where we had our OP. Detective Feller is up there maintaining surveillance.”