Sig, scanning the apartment promenade, the high-rise, the roof across the street. On the other side of the fallen dancer, Raley had his weapon out and was doing the same; even as he called in the 10-13, shots fired.
On Henry Street, an engine thundered and tires spun, whining for purchase in the ice. Heat ran in a low crouch for cover beside Ochoa at the Roach Coach, but it was too late. The SUV spun its tires and sped off, driving over the curb as it turned onto Orange and out of view.
Heat recognized the SUV. She called it in as graphite gray with heavy-duty tires, but that was the best description she could give. This time, it had no license plates.
FIVE
The two paramedics in the back of the ambulance were still working on keeping Horst Meuller from slipping away when the uniform buttoned up the rear doors and it rolled from the scene. Nikki Heat stood holding her breath against its issue of diesel exhaust and watched it lumber off in the sleet, following the same route the SUV had not a half hour before. A block down Orange Street, at the perimeter of the crime scene, the siren kicked on, a sign that, at least for the moment, there was still a life on that gurney.
Detective Feller handed Heat and Raley each a cup of coffee. “Can’t vouch for it, it’s from the Chinese place over there. But it’ll warm you up.”
Raley’s assist call had drawn a swarm. First on the scene had been the crew of New York’s Bravest from the 205 up the block. If the dancing German pulled through, he would owe it to his firefighter neighbors for slowing the bleeding within minutes. Cruisers from the Eighty-fourth Precinct and the neighboring Seventy-sixth were first cops on-scene, followed immediately by Feller and Van Meter in their undercover taxi. With their roving status, it was typical for Taxi Squad cops to be first responders to officer assist calls, and Ochoa threw a barb at the pair for letting the home blue-and-whites beat them.
Dutch Van Meter winked to his partner and lobbed one back. “Oh, by the way, Detective, how’d you do apprehending the vehicle after your pursuit?”
Ochoa had come up empty. The chase was perfunctory at best given the shooter’s head start, and they all knew it. But he had given it his best effort, able at least to follow the wide tracks in the freshly fallen sleet until he lost them on Old Fulton Street, which was more heavily traveled. He drove the Roach Coach on a honeycomb of the neighboring streets on his way back just to make sure, but no SUV.
On the other side of the yellow tape, the first TV news minicams were setting up. Nikki saw a lens pointed at her from under a blue Gore-Tex storm cover and heard her name. She rotated to present her back to the press line and once again grumbled a mental curse about her magazine cover.
Feller took a sip of his own coffee and made a face. “So none of you saw the shooter?” Steam rose as he poured it out into the gutter. Heat, Raley, and Ochoa all looked at one another and shook their heads.
“It was one of those split-second things,” said Raley. “We’re all focused on our prisoner, you know, and out of nowhere, bang.”
“More like boom,” said Ochoa. All nodded in agreement. “I make it a rifle.”
“Boom,” said Van Meter. “Not much to go on.”
Heat said, “I know the vehicle.” They all turned to look at her. “I saw it yesterday. Twice. Once in the afternoon on Columbus on the way to Andy’s and then last night in my neighborhood.”
“What’s this, Detective?” Heat turned. Captain Montrose had come up behind her. He must have read their surprise, and explained, “I was on my way to 1PP for a meeting and heard the ten-thirteen. Now, am I to infer that you were being tailed but you didn’t report it?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “I could have called in protection.”
“I wasn’t sure. And I didn’t want to draw resources without more certainty.” Heat left out the part about how the strain between them made her hold back.
The old Montrose would have taken her aside for a chat. But New Montrose snapped at her right there in front of her colleagues. “That’s not a call for you to make. I’m still your commander. My job isn’t yours… yet.” At that, the captain turned and crossed the sidewalk to confer with the CSU team gathered around the bullet hole in the service door of the high-rise.
An ass-kicking in front of the family is an uncomfortable thing for everyone, and in the dead air that followed, the other detectives busied themselves trying not to make eye contact with Heat. She turned her face upward into the sleet and closed her eyes, feeling the hundred little stings of the sky falling.
When she got back uptown, Nikki made a quick stop to do an appear ance check outside the door to the bull pen, where the fluorescent overheads created a poor man’s mirror in the window of Montrose’s dark office. It wasn’t about vanity; it was about dried blood. At the shooting scene in Brooklyn Heights, EMTs had given her wipes to clean her face and neck, but her clothes were another story. The emergency shirt and slacks she usually kept folded in her desk file drawer were still at the cleaners following a latte mishap, so the rust-colored spray on the collar of her blouse and in the V pattern down the front where her coat had been open would have to do. While Nikki made her appraisal, she heard Detective Rhymer’s soft drawl coming around the corner from the squad room.
Heat couldn’t hear all he was saying, just snippets because he was speaking in hushed tones. She picked up phrases like “… wheel spinning and make-work…” and “He said, ‘Screw it, life’s too short…’ ” and then “… Heat’s more worried about her freaking promotion…”
Listening in was tantalizing but made Nikki feel skeevy, like she was in a soap. What had Phyllis Yarborough said a few hours before? Something like “transparency means no shame”? So Heat turned the corner to face whatever she would face.
What she found was Detective Rhymer leaning in gossip mode with Sharon Hinesburg at her desk. Both sat upright in their rolling chairs when they saw her walk in. “Damn, look at you,” said Hinesburg, hopping to her feet. “Who took the bullet, you or the dancer?” She was extra loud, the way people get when they’re diverting attention. Or hoping to.
Nikki ignored her and gave a puzzled look to Rhymer. “Are you and Gallagher done working your list of dommes already?”
He rose, too, albeit more tentatively. “Not quite. We came back so I could drop Gallagher off.”
Nikki scanned the room and didn’t see his partner. “What, is he sick?”
“Gallagher, he, ah… He requested a reassign back to Burglary.” The detective turned to Hinesburg as if he’d find some help, but Sharon was letting him deal his own hand. The whispers Nikki had just overheard sufficed for her to do the math. Another day talking to dominatrixes felt like a waste to Gallagher and so he booked out. Apparently with some opinions expressed about Detective Heat on his exit. “You know,” continued Rhymer, “we had some cases hanging that needed some attention, and he must have just felt, you know, obliged to mind them.”
Heat knew it was bull but didn’t expect Opie to throw in his partner. This latest piece of unrest created by her coming promotion tasted bitter, but she set it aside. Her immediate concern was that she was suddenly down one investigator. “In that case, I’m glad you hung in, Ope.”
“I’m here, Detective.” But then he couched it. “Long as I can be, that is.”
At the Murder Board a few minutes later Heat selected a new marker color and printed the dancer’s name in the upper left corner where there was plenty of white space. “Probably doesn’t feel like it to him, but it’s Horst Meuller’s lucky day,” she told the squad. “The slug they pulled from that door was a. 338 Magnum.”
Raley said, “Any brass?”
She shook no. “My guess is he either never threw the bolt since it was one shot, or if he did, the casing ejected into the vehicle and left with him.”
Ochoa let out a low whistle. “. 338 Mag. Man… Hunters use those loads to drop grizzlies.”
“And, apparently, pole dancers,” said Heat. “I want to find out why. Detective Rhymer, dig deeper on Horst Meuller.”
“I thought you wanted me to check out the freelance dommes,” he said.
Nikki stopped herself and for the hundredth time thought about her contentious meeting with the captain and all the lines of this investigation he had closed down. She clenched her teeth and reversed herself, trying not to choke on her own words. “Stay on the BDSM canvass. When you finish, let me know. Then we’ll see where we are
