like a toxic fog in the halls of the Twentieth Precinct. In any other field, after the startling death of a leader, business would have closed for the day. But this was the New York Police Department. You didn’t clock out for sadness.
For better or worse, Nikki Heat knew how to compartmentalize. She had to. If she didn’t put an airtight lock on her emotional doors, the beasts pounding on the steel plates to get out would eat her alive. The shock and sadness, they were to be expected. But the raging howls she worked hardest to silence came from guilt. Her last days with her mentor had been contentious and full of suspicions; some voiced, some merely contemplated-her own dirty secrets. Nikki hadn’t known where it was all leading, but she had clung to a tacit belief that there would be a resolution that would make the two of them whole again. She never imagined this tragedy cutting short the story Nikki thought she was telling. John Lennon said life was what happened while you made other plans.
So was death.
Blunt as they had been back at the crime scene, Nikki took the advice of Feller and Van Meter and sat down to unpack the facts of the Montrose death without prejudice. Detective Heat got out a single sheet of paper and penciled details. Making her own private Murder Board on the page, she especially focused on the captain’s strange new behaviors in the days ramping up to this dark one, logging them all: the absences, the agitation, the secretiveness, his obstruction of her case, his anger when she insisted on doing the sort of investigative work he had trained her to do.
Heat stared at the page.
The questions lingering in the back of her mind stepped forward and raised their hands. Clean or dirty, did Captain Montrose know what the stakes were? Was he trying to protect her? Is that why he didn’t want her looking into the Graf murder too deeply? Because if she did, a bunch of armed guys were going to try to stack her garbage in the park? Were they CIA contractors? Foot soldiers from drug cartels? A Colombian hit squad? Or someone she hadn’t even landed on so far?
And did these guys go for him next?
Nikki folded her sheet of paper to put in her pocket. Then she thought a moment, took it out again, and crossed over to the squad’s Murder Board to write it up there. No, she was not buying the suicide. Not yet.
“This is an official call,” said Zach Hamner, making Heat wonder what their other conversations had been. “I just received a formal complaint from an organization called…” She could hear papers rustling on his end and helped him out.
“ Justicia a Garda.”
“Yes. Nice pronunciation. Anyway, they are alleging harassment and racist statements based on a meeting you had with them earlier today.”
“You can’t be taking this seriously,” she said.
“Detective, do you know how much money the city of New York paid out over the last decade in claims against this department?” He didn’t wait for her reply. “Nine hundred and sixty-four million. That’s pocket change short of a billion with a B. Do I take claims seriously? You bet. And so should you. You don’t need something like this coming up right now. Not with your promotion pending. Now, tell me what happened.”
She gave him a brief recap of the meeting and the reason for it. When she was finished, The Hammer said, “Did you have to show the mug shot of the gang banger? That’s the inflammatory part.”
“Sergio Torres tried to kill me this morning. I will damn well show his picture to everyone connected to this case.” When Hamner said he got it, she continued, “And one more thing. Conducting an investigation is hard enough without outsiders second-guessing my case work.”
“I am going to chalk that up to your obvious stress from the day you’ve had. By the way, our condolences on the loss of your commander.” Nikki couldn’t shake her memory of The Hammer standing outside the ambulance that morning whining, “Where the fuck is Montrose?”
She figured one push-back was enough for this call, so she let it go. “Thanks.”
“Where do you go from here?” he asked.
“Back to what I was doing. Finding out who killed Father Graf. And maybe my boss.”
Zach’s chair creaked. He must have sat up. “Hold on, wasn’t that a suicide?”
“We’ll see,” she said.
Rook met her with a cocktail when she opened her apartment door. “I hope you’re up for a mojito. This is a recipe I picked up in a dive bar near a beachside landing strip in Puerto Rico.”
She traded him her coat for the drink, and right there in the entryway, they raised their tall glasses up in a toast. But Heat and Rook didn’t clink right away. Instead they held each other’s eyes a long moment, letting the intimacy of their stillness speak. Then Nikki set her glass down on the foyer table, saying, “First things first,” as she folded her arms around him and they hugged.
“I figured after your day, you would be in the mood for some red meat,” he said when they moved into the kitchen.
“Smells amazing.”
“Roast beef tenderloin-simple-simple-just salt, pepper, and rosemary, plus the usual sides, mashed potatoes, brussels sprouts.”
“Comfort food. Rook, you don’t know what this means right now… . Oh, yes you do.” And then she took another sip. “You don’t have time to do this, what with bringing me clothes and trying to write your article.”
“Done! E-mailed it off two hours ago and came over here to take care of you. I was going to make kabobs, but after your morning in the park, I figured skewers would be too darkly comic, even for me.”
“And yet you mentioned them.”
“What can I say? I’m an enigma inside a conundrum inside a condom.” Nikki started to laugh but caught herself. Her face became drawn and she sat at the counter. She stayed there, perched on the bar stool, through her mojito and a glass of a surprisingly perfect red from Baja California, while Rook carved and served. He transferred the place settings from the dining table to the counter and they ate there, the informality of it relaxing her. She was hungry but only managed a small portion, choosing instead to fill him in on things she hadn’t told him about her difficulties with Captain Montrose. He told her she didn’t have to talk about it if it was painful, but it wasn’t, she said, it was therapeutic, a chance to let out the burden she carried.
Nikki had already told him just before strip Proust that there had been tension with Montrose, but this time she told him the details. She shared the unsettling suspicions that arose in her beyond the captain oddly showing up at Graf’s the night he was killed: how he obstructed her case in every way, plus the blood on the priest’s collar that coincided with the bandage on his finger. And then there was the baffling recurrence of TENS burns… on Graf, on the male dancer, and on a victim in an old murder case Montrose had worked when he was a Detective-1.
Rook listened intently without interruption, interested in her story but more eager to let her download and relieve the pain she bore. When Nikki finished, he asked, “The suspicions you had, did you share them with anybody? Internal Affairs? Your new friends downtown?”
“No, because they were only, you know, circumstantial. He was in a world of hurt already. You open that lid, it’s Pandora’s Box.” Her lower lip quivered and she bit on it. “I opened the door a crack about it with him this morning. He kind of boxed me into it, and let me tell you, it hurt him. It really hurt him.” She tilted her head back and squinted, refusing to let herself cry, then continued, “I’m ashamed to admit it now, but there was a part of me, this morning in the park.. .?”
He knew where she was going. “You wondered if he could have been part of it?”
“Only for a second, a second I hate myself for, but he gave me this warning at the end of our meeting. It had to cross my mind.”
“Nikki, there’s nothing wrong with thinking things. Especially in your work, come on, it’s what you do.”
Her head bobbed in acceptance and she forced a thin smile.
“Did you ever get an ID on your attacker, the Human Popsicle?”
“You are a sick man, Jameson Rook.”
He bowed theatrically. “Thank you, thank you.”
Then Heat told him about Sergio Torres. How his rap sheet was the legacy of an ordinary gang banger but he was trained like a soldier.
“I don’t get it,” said Rook. “How does a mundane metropolitan miscreant master menacing military methods and maneuvers? Mystifying.”
“… Yeah…” Nikki cocked an eye at him. “I was sort of thinking the same thing…”
