She ran to the end of the front counter and knelt beside the man, pressing her fingers to his neck. The carotid bumped against her touch. Ochoa joined her. Holding her breath in the toxic air, she nodded to Miguel to indicate the locksmith was still alive. Getting him out would be a challenge. He was short and slender, but unconsciousness had made him dead weight. Heat’s aching lungs burned for air, and in the strain of lifting him, she gasped in a breath she instantly regretted. The rotten eggs smell from the mercaptan in the gas made her throat clutch and her head go light. Nikki lost her grip and the man fell against her. She quickly jammed her thigh under him and stopped the fall. Fighting nausea, she got a better hold and clawed his work shirt. Together she and Ochoa managed to lug him to the window, where the new, sure hands of the arriving FDNY crew took him from them, lifting the victim over the ledge and onto to a gurney, where paramedics took over.
Heat and Ochoa stood bent over on the sidewalk, coughing and gasping. Both took hits off the oxygen they were offered. In the short minutes it took them to recover, New York’s Bravest had already killed electrical power to the building, shut off the gas main, and cranked up portable fans to vent the fumes.
Rook gave Heat and Ochoa each a bottle of water, and both chugged. “While you were in there, I went in the pet shop and got everyone out. Ever see Pee-wee’s Big Adventure? I was this close to running out with two handfuls of snakes.”
The paramedics said they had rescued the locksmith just in time. Glen Windsor had stabilized on oxygen, and they were about to transport him to Roosevelt for observation. Heat said she wanted to ask him a few questions first. The paramedic didn’t like that, but Nikki promised to keep it brief.
“Thank you,” said Windsor looking up from the gurney at Heat and Ochoa. “They said I almost didn’t make it.” An EMT asked him to keep his oxygen mask on, but he said he was fine, took a hit, and held it resting on his chest.
Nikki saw the tremble in his hand. An ordeal like this would take its toll on anyone. The locksmith was young, maybe about thirty, but for a small guy built slim like a pro bowler, it must have been extra rough on his body. “Mr. Windsor, we won’t keep you, but I’m wondering if you can tell me what happened.”
“Shit, you and me both.” The pale guy on the stretcher had an affable soft-spokenness that reminded Nikki of Detective Rhymer, in whose mouth profanity sounded quaint instead of offensive. “Sorry,” he said. “Another quarter in the swear jar for me.” He took one more pull off the O2 mask and continued, “It was a slow day for business. I was sitting, just doing the Angry Birds at the counter. Next thing, I hear something behind me, and before I can turn, this hand comes around over my face. That’s all she wrote till I woke up out here.”
“Was there a rag in the hand?”
He shrugged. “Sorry, just don’t remember.”
“Did you smell anything? Something sweet, maybe?”
His face lit up and he nodded. “Now that you say, yeah. Sort of like cleaning fluid or something.” Heat whispered an aside to the EMT to have the ER check him for chloroform.
“What time did this happen?”
“Let’s see. I was waiting for lunchtime. About noon.” Nikki looked up the block at the bank clock. That would have been almost an hour ago. She felt a hot trail going cold by the minute.
“Sorry, Detective Heat,” said the paramedic. “You’re going to have to continue this later.” Heat thanked Glen Windsor for his time as they wheeled him to the back of the ambulance. Then she appointed one of the uniforms to ride with him and stay by his side at the hospital until she got there.
“Got your gas source right here,” said the FDNY supervisor when Nikki came back inside Windsor’s Locks, using the door this time. He pointed to the open metal hatch on the heating unit embedded flush in the wall of the shop. He had to shout over the din of the ventilator fans. “See here? Pilot’s out, the combustion motor’s been disconnected, and somebody pulled the stopper plug out of the test feed joint. Nothing to stop the gas and nothing to burn it off, so it just streamed out and filled the room. I don’t want to think about what this could have done.”
Detectives Feller, Malcolm, and Reynolds arrived to assist them in the search for clues. “And by clues, you mean string, right?” asked Rook. “ ’Cause it don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that string.”
“Let’s just strike a match and end this,” said Reynolds to Malcolm.
The first wave of the search yielded none of the earmarks of the prior crime scenes. As the fire crew declared the atmosphere safe enough to turn off their fans, Heat stared at the one positioned at the open back exit and asked the supervisor to find out if his men opened the door themselves or found it ajar.
“Found it that way,” said the uniform next to her. Officer Strazzullo had been among the patrolmen that Heat sent to cover the alley then called back for the evacuation. “When we accessed the alleyway, the back door to the shop stood open about yay.” He sectioned about eighteen inches of air with his hands.
“Dang,” said Detective Feller to Heat. “Bet you almost had him, and he booked.”
Raley asked her, “You think he could have been in here when we rolled up?”
Heat didn’t say anything. Instead, she stepped out the open door to the alley. The rest followed, and when they joined her, Nikki stood beside a Dumpster positioned under the fire escape ladder leading to the roof. “Officer Strazzullo, was this bin here when you arrived?”
“Sorry, I don’t recall.”
“Can I play out this scenario?” asked Feller. “Our killer’s inside when you approach, Detective Heat. You interrupt his job on the locksmith-‘Uh-oh!’-and flush him out the back door. He hides behind this Dumpster…” The detective acted it out, tracing steps from the back door and hiding behind the bin. “He’s here when Strazzullo arrives-this close to a collar-but then the cavalry gets called back out front and he gets away.”
“Looks like an escape setup to me,” said Ochoa, eyeballing the short distance from the Dumpster lid to the fire escape ladder. “Right after Strazzy got called away to work the evacuation, our boy climbed up on the bin, and poof.”
“Could be how he came and went, both,” agreed Raley.
Detective Heat boosted herself on top of the bin and ascended the fire escape ladder with teeth clenched. On each rung, she silently voiced anger and frustration at the killer being this close to capture-if he truly had been there.
If.
The others followed her up, and they all walked the roof in a line, searching the flat, grimy surface for anything that told them if.
They found it at the far end of the rooftop. Everyone saw it at the same time. And knew.
One end of a length of red string had been tied to the knob of the door to the access stairs and fluttered in the warm breeze. The string had many colors, following the pattern of the other homicides. Red was tied to yellow. Yellow was fastened to purple. And purple was knotted to a new piece of string, this one green.
Heat had already stationed officers to cover all exits of this building, including the stairwell. Silently, she drew her service piece and held it up at-ready beside the door. All but Rook, who was unarmed, did the same and took tactical positions. She nodded, and Detective Feller yanked the door open. Inside, at the top of the steps, stood Officer Strazzullo and his partner. Everyone holstered.
They looked down at the threshold at a broken piece of cinder block. Feller bent, and when he lifted it, a small piece of paper, slightly larger than a postage stamp, that had been underneath it fluttered off in the wind. Raley chased the scrap across the roof so it wouldn’t blow away, and picked it up with his gloves.