“The babesiosis? We could wait for the lab or I could tell you my guess right now. Let me show you why I asked you to come down.”
They suited up and followed the medical examiner into the big room. As they got closer, they could see that, although it had begun to skeletonize in places and showed a bit of tissue decomposition, the body remained remarkably intact. “You know me,” said Lauren, “I’m never one to go out on a limb without test results.”
Heat said, “Yes, but you do love to milk every bit of suspense you can out of something.”
Even behind her mask, they could tell the ME was smiling. “It’s people. I just love live people.”
“Consider us sufficiently tantalized,” said Heat.
“Fine. I predict the lab report will say Ari Weiss did not die of blood disease, but from blood… loss.” With a flourish, Parry snapped the sheet covering Weiss’s torso. When Nikki saw the large stab wound, it took her back to her mother’s own knifing, and the implications hit her with a rush.
They hit Rook, too, but he was slightly more demonstrative. “Best. Exhumation. Ever.”
The Caller ID on Nikki’s cell phone displayed “WHNY TV.” She slid into the driver’s seat outside OCME and held the phone up to Rook. “Not sure I want this.”
“I’d take it. I believe Channel 3 does its Dialing for Dollars contest about now between Grace Under Fire reruns. You could win cash and valuable prizes from their proud sponsors.”
Figuring she’d have to deal with the interview request sooner or later, Heat pressed Accept. “Detective, it’s George Putnam,” said the Channel 3 news director. “You know that little stunt you pulled the other night, hijacking Greer Baxter’s segment?”
“Listen, Mr. Putnam,” said Nikki, as she keyed the ignition and gestured for Rook to buckle up, “I’m not going to apologize for using the media to aid an investigation.”
“I’m not looking for an apology. I’m calling because someone responded to your plea. He doesn’t sound like a crank, and he says it’s urgent. Hold on, I’m conferencing him in.” After the briefest pause, Putnam said, “You’re on with Detective Heat. Tell her what you told me.”
The man’s voice sounded subdued, just above a whisper. “Hey, I can’t talk too loud. She’s here.”
“Who?” asked Heat, unconsciously lowering her tone to match his.
“The lady whose picture you showed on TV. I’m manager at Surety Rent-a-Car on Fulton. She’s at the counter now.”
Heat checked over her shoulder and gunned the car out into traffic. “You sure it’s her?”
“No. But it sure looks like her.”
“What’s she doing?”
“Asking to rent a truck.”
In spite of the gymnastics required to access on- and off-ramps, the FDR won the toss for fastest route from Kips Bay to Lower Manhattan. Heat figured whatever time she lost in backtracking to get on and off the highway, she more than made up for by circumventing the one-ways and surface snarls.
She pushed it, racing there Code Three, to the delight of her ride-along journalist. When they passed the South Street Seaport to turn up Fulton, Heat killed the siren so-if the woman really was Salena Kaye-they wouldn’t tip her off to their arrival. While Nikki concentrated on her wheel work, she handed Rook the phone to speed-dial Bart Callan at Homeland Security, who put out the call to his agents to meet and intercept.
Rook spotted the Surety Rent-a-Car sign ahead on the right, adjacent to an underground parking garage. “I’m serious,” said Heat, “stay with the car.” With that she notched it in park and hopped out right in the middle of the street, leaving the engine running and the gumball flashing as she jogged two doors up the sidewalk and into the garage entrance with her hand on her hip.
An Asian man in a long-sleeved shirt and a tie pushed open the glass door to the rental office as Heat approached. “Detective, that way. She saw you.” He pointed urgently into an alcove of putty-colored cinder block in the corner of the garage, where a motorized overhead wheel spun, feeding a bright yellow upright conveyor belt down a three-foot hole in the concrete floor. Heat paused.
A man lift.
She had seen these things before; man lifts were in use all over the city at construction sites and parking garages. She’d never been on one and had never hoped to be. Not since she was a uniform and had to guard the remains of the parking attendant who fell off one. What she really remembered was the poor guy’s elongated blood smear circulating on the continuous-loop belt until somebody turned it off.
Nikki checked the street, hoping to see some DHS backup. Then she addressed the man lift. The next toe-step fed by. She grabbed the guard handle, and got on.
Falling didn’t worry her as much as the vulnerability. Disappearing down a hole in the floor was one thing. Riding feet first through a hole in the ceiling to the level below with your back exposed to an open garage made you a sitting-or hanging-duck. So Heat flouted OSHA safety rules and one-handed the grip, turned out from the belt instead of facing it, and held her Sig in the free hand. Heat hopped off on Level 2, found cover behind a metal trash can, and scanned the line of parked rentals under the humming fluorescents.
Out on Fulton, horns blasted. Rook accepted car horns as just the brass section of the New York soundtrack, but when he turned and saw the long line jammed by Heat’s hasty parking job, he got out, waved to the queue as he came around the trunk, and got in the open driver’s side door. “Technically, I am still in the car.” He put the transmission in drive and eased the Crown Victoria to the side, still double-parked, but leaving sufficient room for others to pass.
Before Heat made a move, she looked up. The last time she’d found herself in a parking structure with Salena Kaye, she’d dropped on Nikki from above. Know your enemy, she thought, then crept forward, easing the soles of her shoes on the concrete, both to hear better and not to be heard as she ducked down to see under the cars.
A sound.
One tiny piece of grit, cracking under a shoe.
Heat rotated her head toward it. The instant she moved, a muzzle flashed across the hood of a Jetta and the air sizzled beside her ear. The slug hit the wall behind her, and concrete dust and paint fragments stung her cheek. She called, “NYPD, drop it,” then rolled away from that spot for cover, coming up beside the engine block of an SUV.
The next shot punctured the Escape’s hood. This time Heat returned two rounds from her Sig Sauer, aimed behind the flare. And waited.
She listened through heavy earwash as the gun echoes withered. She heard nothing. No movement, no moans. What to do?
A good cop is always thinking tactics and cover.
With ample cover and the anticipation of backup, Nikki decided to hold position.
But the game changed. Headlights blazed and an engine turned. A white Japanese compact squealed out of a parking slot and fishtailed away from Heat toward the exit ramp. Heat rose, braced on the hood of the SUV, and squeezed off another 9. The back window of the Versa spider-veined, but the driver turned the hairpin corner and disappeared up the ramp toward ground level.
Heat raced for the stairwell.
The Nissan’s horn sounded a long and constant bleat, even frying the air outside the parking garage as it zoomed up the incline from below. Pedestrians heard it and scattered on the sidewalk to either side of the entrance as it flew out of the mouth of the structure and crossed the driveway out onto Fulton.
Jameson Rook floored the Crown Victoria Police Interceptor and T-boned the Nissan Versa, broadsiding the compact when it hit the street. The impact lifted the two nearest tires half a foot off the pavement and pushed the small car sideways into the rear of a cement truck, deploying the airbag in Salena Kaye’s face.