If she let the fear in, it would paralyze her. If she contemplated the horror facing her, she’d be done. So before the tsunami of feelings that bore down on Nikki could immobilize her, she threw the cop switch. She made her emotional disconnect. She became all about balls and action. She went to work.
Throwing herself low, Heat rolled backward on the rug, to where the corner of the entry hall met the end of the counter, and snapped off the lights. A table lamp still burned in the living room, but any dimness helped give cover. Protected by the wall, Nikki stood on shaky legs and grabbed for her Sig Sauer and cell phone off the granite countertop. Her arm bumped one of the beers and it sailed into the kitchen, slamming against the oven door. The bottle was still spinning when she knelt at Don’s side, hitting 911 send while she pressed two fingers to his carotid.
“911, what is your emergency?”
“This is Detective Heat, One-Lincoln-Forty, reporting a ten-thirteen, officer needs help, shots fired.” With eyes on the door, Nikki spoke as low and calmly as she could, giving her address and cross street. “One man down, deceased.” She took her fingers off Don’s neck, wiped his blood on her gym shorts, and gripped her Sig. “Shooter has a shotgun. Shooter still at large.”
“Help is on the way, Detective. Can you describe the shooter?”
“No, I never saw-”
The chilling sound of a pump-action racking a round snick-snicked on the other side of the door. Nikki let the phone drop to the rug. Light that had been streaking in the gaping hole from the outside hallway got blocked out, eclipsed by movement. From her mobile on the floor, the small voice that kept asking, “Detective Heat? Detective, are you there?” grew smaller as Heat duckwalked back, taking cover once more around the corner and under the kitchen counter. Keeping in a low crouch, she peeked around the edge just as the fat muzzle of the single barrel poked through the ragged hole it had put in the wood. She knelt again, this time with both hands in an isosceles brace against the wall. “NYPD, drop it!” she called.
The barrel adjusted its aim an inch toward her. Nikki spun back around the corner for cover. A deafening blast filled the room and tore fragments from the wall beside her. Before he could rack another round, Heat rolled out, braced, and, with ten quick reports, emptied the magazine of her Sig in a diamond cluster under the shotgun. She heard a man moan, and the black barrel chafed as it tipped upward and retreated from the hole in the door. But amid the muffled neighbors’ voices of alarm coming through walls and windows, she heard another round getting pumped into the shotgun. Heat dove in the darkness, across the entryway to the living room, ejected her clip, and snatched a fresh magazine of 9mms from the gym bag she had left on a chair.
As she tiptoed through the entryway with her back hugging the wall, Nikki’s cross trainers crunched on bits of glass from lamps and a mirror shattered by the lead spray. She pressed herself against the cold plaster beside her front door to listen. After half a minute, she heard soft retreating footfalls on the carpet. Then a pause before a squeak of hinges and the hollow slam of a metal door. Heat pictured it as the service stairwell up the hall to the left. The elevator was still out and the shooter was avoiding the main stairs. Or wanted her to think so.
Heat heard a knob turn and a door hitting its security chain. A woman’s voice she recognized as her neighbor Mrs. Dunne’s said, “I don’t see anything, Phil. Smells bad, though. Come here, is this gunpowder I smell?” Nikki took it as a sign the shooter had left the hall, but she entered it cautiously, gun at the ready.
She walked to the right first to make sure he wasn’t faking her out and hiding in the open main staircase. After she’d cleared that, Nikki moved back with her Sig up in both hands, toward the service door with the creaky hinges. Nikki stepped over two spent shotgun shells and then saw Mrs. Dunne’s face pinched in the open sliver of her door. Heat put a finger to her lips to signal a shush, but the woman spoke in a whisper as loud as her normal voice. “Are you all right, Nikki?” When she didn’t reply, the old lady said, “Want me to call 911?” Nikki nodded, just to get her out of there, and Mrs. Dunne said, “OK,” and finally went.
The prospect of using that squeaky door didn’t thrill Heat, but she didn’t have much alternative if she wanted to pursue. Questions pinged in her head in milliseconds. What if he was waiting there to cut her in half when the door opened? What if he wasn’t alone? Should she take the main stairs instead and hope to cut him off on the sidewalk? Her questions all led to bad options and caution signs. She pressed her ear to the metal. Listening told her nothing about what lay on the other side, and time ticked onward. The caution signals flashed again. Nikki ignored them.
She took a step back, hit the push bar with her hip to fling the door open, and rolled onto the landing, coming up in a squat with her weapon raised and her lower back to the cinder-block wall.
It was dark in there. Except for ambient light from the first floor, all the overhead bulbs were dead. Unscrewed, she figured. Whoever had done this had a plan.
Nikki listened for anything. Breathing, movement, footsteps on the metal stairs, a stomach gurgle… but heard nothing. Nothing but the plink of water hitting the landing beside her. Water? Even if the roof leaked, it hadn’t rained in days, and there were no exposed pipes in that stairwell. Heat felt the corrugated metal landing until the tip of her finger found the drip. She rubbed her fingertips together. They were sticky. Not water, she thought. Blood. Dripping from above.
She could wait him out or take him out.
Since he was lurking, expecting her to go down the steps, Heat decided to try to draw his fire and hit him before he could re-rack. A good strategy as long as she was quick, had a clear shot, and he didn’t have another gun. To fake him out, she would turn the darkness he had created to her advantage. She felt along the threshold beside her and located the heavy wooden wedge the super used for a doorstop. Rising up, but stooping to keep underneath the protection of the metal staircase, she walked toward the turn in the landing as if to go downstairs. Instead, she lobbed the wedge down.
He fired immediately at the decoy. Heat swung around the railing and fired two shots upward but must have missed because she heard him scampering up the stairwell toward the roof, two floors above. As she followed, Nikki heard the metal door above her open and slam.
At the top she confronted another damned door with more vulnerability on the other side of it. By then he could have set up a hide behind a vent or a chimney and be waiting to saw her off. But when she listened, she could hear him beating feet away from her across the flat of the rooftop. She ripped the door open and raced out, praying he didn’t have a partner.
Detective Heat got her first look at the shooter as he reached the far side of the rooftop and turned to descend the front fire escape. Male about five-ten, strong build-possibly Caucasian-but no features to ID. He wore a gray hoodie topped with a black Yankees cap, and a dark mask or scarf over his nose and mouth. Nikki also got a look at the shotgun, a short barrel with a pistol grip that he held in gloved hands. He rested the stock on the lip of the roof and took aim from the ladder. She dove behind a chimney. He fired and peppered the brick with the spray of lead.
At risk of losing him, Heat dashed for the other fire escape, the one on the back of her building. Lucky was one thing, but the exposure from descending open stairs above a man with a shotgun would be pressing her luck, and that would be stupid. And deadly.
She rode the bottom ladder down on its springs and made a short dismount four feet to the service alley and flattened against the side of the building. Heat made a fast recon around the corner and pulled back. He wasn’t waiting for her; the narrow driveway between apartment buildings was empty. Then she heard running. Nikki peeked again and caught a flash of him sprinting by on the sidewalk. She charged up the service drive after him.
When Heat passed through the gate at the top of the incline and looked up the sidewalk, it was empty. He couldn’t have rounded the corner at Irving Place already. She sprinted down to it, passing into the construction zone for the building being renovated there. Slowing at the end of the sidewalk, she knelt at the corner wall formed by the temporary plywood work barrier and carefully looked down that stretch of sidewalk but saw no one. Where could he have gone? She remembered the outhouse back near the construction trailer. Heat backtracked to it, approaching it cautiously. But it had a padlock on it. So did the trailer door.
She went back to the corner and turned south toward East 19th Street, moving vigilantly under the corridor of scaffolding that wrapped around the building. Sirens approached, but Nikki couldn’t chance losing her man by breaking off the chase to go back and meet them. When she reached the corner at 19th, she stopped again, and once again saw no shooter. A man walking a Chihuahua and a golden retriever approached from the west, but he told her he hadn’t seen anyone matching the description. She asked him to go to her building and tell the police
