where she was, and he did. After the dog walker moved on, she waited. Nikki was just about to give it up and go back herself when she heard it.
Above her, one of the scaffolding planks creaked and a sprinkle of dust cascaded down onto the ground beside her. Unless New York was experiencing another aftershock, her killer was hiding above her, using the scaffolding as an elevated escape route.
Heat ducked between the lattice of support tubes and backed out into the street to see if she could spot him. No, her view was blocked by a waist-high plywood debris shield. The protective barrier ran continuously along the second floor of the scaffold, halfway to Park Avenue South, providing perfect cover for him all along the block. Making soft steps, she reversed course on Irving Place. Halfway back up the street, Nikki Heat started climbing pipe.
On the second-floor level Heat pushed through the nylon catch-netting, quietly rolled herself over the plywood barrier, and squatted behind a tool storage cabinet that sat chained to a stanchion. She braced her gun and peered around the metal Jobox. There on the scaffolding, at the far corner of the building, knelt the dark figure with the shotgun, waiting. She had gotten as far as “Drop i-” when he fired and lead shot hit the toolbox like a hail of bullets. When Heat looked again, he was gone.
Through the ringing in her ears, Nikki could hear the pounding of his feet as he ran away on the wooden slats. She followed. Pausing before she rounded the corner, Heat reconned and glimpsed him at the end of the plankway just as he jumped down the debris chute to the sidewalk below. Heat got to the opening, and just as she measured the risk of leaping down it right into his line of fire, his shotgun blasted, tearing a hole through the floorboards a yard from where she stood. She heard the metallic snick of the pump racking a new round. Nikki jumped to the other side of the chute. The next blast chewed through the exact spot she’d just moved from. He pumped in another round. Not sure where to stand, whether to just run away or to take her chances with a chute slide with her gun blazing, she heard a helicopter drawing near. He must have heard it, too, because someone from a window across the street yelled, “There he is. See? He’s getting away.”
Heat crossed her arms in front of her and jumped feet-first into the chute. She popped up, gun ready, over the rim of the debris bin and caught sight of him halfway to Park Avenue South, cradling his shotgun.
She vaulted the container and gave chase. He was wounded, so Nikki made good time on him. As he reached the intersection, she called, “NYPD, freeze!” Nikki had a perfect bead on him, a high-probability shot, too, but a laughing group of college students rolled out of the Magic Bottle and she held back. Resuming her chase, she sprinted to the corner and spotted him heading north, running against the downtown flow of cars. The traffic light was with Nikki. She crossed the street easily and followed him, cop and killer both hugging the curb of the center divider. At 20th Street she saw the front of her building jammed with emergency vehicles and flashing lights. A blue-and-white was making a turn to join the party, and she called out, “Police, here!” They didn’t notice her and drove on.
But the shooter heard her. He twisted for a look over his shoulder, saw Heat gaining, and made himself a moving target, weaving between the planters spaced along the median, then switching to the uptown lane, then hopping back over to the downtown side. Crossing the intersection at East 21st, Nikki got cut off by one of those stretch Humvee party limos when the driver realized too late he didn’t have the steering radius to make his turn. He flipped her the bird as she palmed her way around the hood of his vehicle, and by the time she had, her shooter had bought almost a block on her.
But he began to slow. On one of his over-the-shoulder glances, Heat could see a growing red stain on the chest of his gray hoodie. At 22nd, he gave up the run but not his flight. He aimed his shotgun at a taxi driver waiting at the stoplight, who bailed out instantly, hands up. Her suspect got behind the wheel and floored it through the red, clipping the tail of another cab crossing by, but recovering after a fishtail and bearing down on Nikki.
Heat took a side step up on the center divider, but he came for her anyway, roaring right at her spot on the curb. She braced for a shot, and when he saw that, he jerked his wheel hard right to spoil her aim, then slung the barrel of the shotgun out the side window, ready to deliver a blast as he went by. Instead of diving for cover, Nikki brazenly held her ground, made sure she had a clear field behind him, and squeezed off three rounds as he sped past. Two in the windshield missed him as he lurched the steering wheel evasively again, but the third shot, right through the open side window as he passed her, landed home. She saw the fabric rip where the neck of his hood met his shoulder, and his head wrenched suddenly to the side. He wove crazily in his lane but righted himself and continued speeding downtown. Nikki memorized the cab number and started walking back to her place.
For the shooting report, she also made note of where she was standing. Right across from the Morton Williams supermarket, exactly where her nightmare began ten years ago.
When Heat had finished her statement to the detective from the Thirteenth Precinct, Lauren Parry took a break from her work over Don’s body and handed her a glass of orange juice. “Found this in your fridge. Drink it. It’ll get your blood sugar back up.” Nikki took a small sip and put the glass down on the end table. “You didn’t drink any of that. What’s wrong, you feeling nauseous? Any chest pains? Dizziness?” The medical examiner checked her pulse. Satisfied Nikki wasn’t in shock, she handed her friend a box of sanitary wipes. “I’ve got to get back to my prelim. You clean up.” She gestured to the dried blood and tissue caked onto Heat’s legs and arms, adding as she stepped away, “Don’t forget your face, too.”
Nikki did none of that; only set the box of wipes down beside the orange juice and stared, eyes glazed, at the corpse of her friend. Voices pulled her attention to the doorway that stood open to the hall. Detective Ochoa came in first, grim-faced but sharing a low, discreet wave to his girlfriend, Lauren. His partner followed, Raley also glumly taking in the scene. Heat got up to meet them, and on her way over, Raley turned to look behind him. He said quietly to someone in the hall, “You sure you want to do this right now?” Rook appeared in the door and nodded to him.
As Nikki approached, he took her in his arms and pulled her to him. She wrapped herself around him and squeezed hard. They clung tight to each other a good while. When they finally separated, he still held her, resting a palm on each arm. “Thank God, you’re OK.” And then his gaze drifted over her shoulder to the body on the floor, naked except for the paper modesty towel Lauren had just finished draping over the groin. “Who’s this?” Rook asked.
Nikki sucked air deeply in through her nostrils, wondering where to begin. Before she could, the lead investigator stepped over. “Wondering the same about you. I’m Detective Caparella, Homicide.”
“Oh, Detective,” said Nikki. “This is my friend, Jameson Rook.”
Caparella noticed they were still holding hands and looked from him to her to the body. “Think I’d like to get a statement from you, if that’s all right, Mr. Rook.”
“Me? About what?”
Nikki said, “He really has nothing to do with this.”
“You know we need to cover the bases, Detective,” said the other cop. “Two boyfriends, one alive, one dead…?” He held his arm like a gate between Rook and Nikki, signaling this would be without her input. “Now would be good, sir.”
Heat used the time they were in the second bedroom for Rook’s interview to pluck some wipes from the box and clean herself off. As she dabbed her forehead, it occurred to her that Lauren probably had heard from her boyfriend Miguel that he and Sean had picked up Rook in the Roach Coach on the way there, and leaving the towelettes was her attempt to let her neaten up before he arrived. Scrubbing something crusty off her chin, Nikki turned to the back hallway, figuring it would be a short conversation since Rook didn’t even know Don had existed. That would certainly back up the answer she gave when Caparella had asked Heat if she was in any other relationships besides the one with the victim. He’d made a note when she mentioned Rook’s name, but she said, “He didn’t know him. Far as I know, he didn’t even know about him.”
If she had been in the other detective’s shoes, she would be asking the same questions-as he put it, covering the bases-but Heat wholeheartedly believed she was the target, not Don, who had fulfilled the wrong-place-and- time maxim in the most tragic fashion. The awkward part of the interview for her had been filling her colleague in on what she knew about Don, which amounted to so little, it might have come off like a dodge of the question: ex- Navy SEAL; single, so he said; they’d met at her gym two years ago when she signed up for hand-to-hand combat training; he was her instructor; the two began meeting outside formal classes for one-on-one workouts and then a beer after. And then a casual… physical… relationship. The other detective paused, frowning at his notepad, either processing, judging, or fantasizing, she couldn’t tell. Nikki knew it wasn’t the sort of thing easily explained to a disinterested third party, and his reaction made her worry anew how Rook-a decidedly interested third party-would
