“Help yourself. I’m calling because I won’t be able to make seven-thirty with Puzzle Man tonight.” Heat told him about the unexpected call from Salena Kaye and the proposed surrender meeting.
When she finished, Rook said, “Of course you told Kaye you wouldn’t show.”
“I did.”
“And yet, you’re informing me you can’t make our meeting. What the hell are you doing?”
“I’ve been thinking it over, and I have an excellent hunch why Salena reached out. I need to see this through.”
“A hunch? Flaky hunches and wack theories are my department. Are we going to be one of those old couples with matching track suits and his-and-hers aluminum foil hats?”
“As long as we don’t start to look alike.”
“And I can’t talk you out of this?”
“No more than you can convince me to let you come. She said alone, and this woman’s got experience and a secret agent’s radar. She’ll know if I’ve got backup.” Nikki chuckled. “And besides, what are you going to do, squirt her with one of your fountain pens?”
He paused. “You should at least call Callan.”
“No.”
“He not only has a stake in this, too, he’ll know how to back you up, undetected. Did you hear him talk about his surveillance dome over Tyler Wynn the other night?”
“And how did that work out?” She let that sink in and continued, “Rook, listen to me. There are too many leaks screwing everything up at every turn. I’m not telling anyone.”
“You sure?”
“And neither are you. I mean it.”
“Fine. What do I tell Puzzle Man?”
“Tell him to figure it out.”
“Zinggg. Do you at least have a plan?”
“I do.” Then she said, “And I’ve got until eight-thirty to come up with it.”
According to the Web site for the East River Heliport, New York City ordinances closed them for air traffic at 8 P.M. daily. Heat made a check of the time. Almost six. She didn’t stop to close the window on her monitor. She rolled her chair away from her desk, made a holster check, grabbed her jacket, and hurried to the door. She got to the hall, stopped, and made a U-turn and came back into the bull pen.
“You all right?” asked Hinesburg.
“Uh, yeah, just a little hassled for time.” Heat unlocked a drawer and took out an extra clip for her Sig Sauer. “Oh, Sharon?” she mimed a phone with her thumb and pinkie. “Check the hard drive, will you? Make sure that phone call recorded? And nobody else goes near it.” Then she left. She didn’t look back. She didn’t even take the sheet from her pad on which she’d written the time and place of her meeting.
Somehow Nikki didn’t think she’d forget.
She got there early and flashed her badge so the attendant would let her park in the rehab center lot at East 34th Street. He even moved a cone to open a spot for her where she could sit in her Crown Victoria and observe the entrance to the heliport across the service road that ran underneath the elevation of the FDR Drive.
One hour to go. The sun wasn’t due to set for about fifteen minutes; however a storm front pushing in from the Ohio Valley had cast a high curtain of black thunderheads against the western sky-enough to cause the cyclists using the esplanade’s bike path between her and the heliport to switch on their helmet lamps. The air thrummed, trash swirled, and the last Sikorsky of the day ascended over the East River, rotated, and banked a graceful turn east toward Long Island. Ten minutes later the fluorescents switched off in the mobile office trailer that served as the headquarters and boarding area for the helicopter facility. Two cars exited, the last one stopping as the driver, who wore a white shirt with epaulettes, got out and padlocked a chain through the gate before he left, too.
She waited, watching everything closely now. The number of joggers and cyclists dwindled, and cars became sparse, with only an occasional taxi passing by on its way somewhere else at that hour. Then the lights around the helipad all cut off, all at once: the orange floodlights, even the red aviation lamps that ran along the edge of the pier. Strange. Could they be on a timer, or had they been doused deliberately?
A truck from a paper shredding company blasted its horn at an ambulette servicing one of the nearby hospitals. While the drivers exchanged shouts and fingers in front of the heliport, she momentarily lost sight of the area. When they cleared away, everything seemed as before.
Five minutes away, close enough. She reached up to switch off the dome light before she opened the car door and got out.
As a precaution, she walked half a block down the road to cross over beyond the heliport’s line of sight. Keeping to the shadows, she arrived at the one-story modular office-trailer for the helicopter operation. The building just fit beneath the underbelly of the FDR, with about five feet of headroom to spare. The side facing the road had no doors, only four unlit windows. She lowered her head as she passed them and came to the north end of the structure, near the gate. Her vision had adjusted enough to the darkness when she got there to see that the chain around the gate now hung free. It had been popped, and the heavy-duty padlock swung at the end of it, tapping lightly against steel pipe. She drew her gun and squeezed through the opening.
The knob of the entrance door inside the gate wouldn’t turn, and a serious deadbolt above it was likely engaged. There wasn’t enough light for her to see in the crack if the brass tongue had been thrown. She moved on, inching forward, pressing herself against the corrugated steel siding toward the landing area. She brought her service weapon up to an isosceles brace and peered around that corner.
A fresh wind rolling down from Hell Gate blew across the blacktop helipad before her. The only other sound to compete with Manhattan’s ubiquitous white noise of traffic came from the lapping of the East River against the pilings. The area was empty but for a single, parked helicopter occupying the space designed for five choppers. Nylon tie-down straps held its rotors in place, although they rocked slightly in the night air. The Sikorsky remained as it had landed, nose-in toward the building, with its tail above the red and white striped curb that marked the edge of the pier as a guide for pilots as they approached over the river. The craft appeared every bit like a stealth bomber’s cousin at that moment: an ominous form, pitch-black except for a faint glow coming from inside. Curiously, that glow was the most foreboding thing on the pier. Because it beckoned to her in the darkness.
She waited with her back against the steel, measuring risk. Twenty feet of exposure stretched between her and the helicopter. To her right, at the south end of the tarmac, a vacant parking lot-minimal worry there. To her left, a parking lot full of double-decker stacked cars bordered the north end of the blacktop. Lots of cover. That’s where trouble would come from.
Her eyes became attracted to that light, and she made a decision. She broke across the open space, a crouching silhouette cleaving to the shadow of the helicopter when she got there. She panted, listening. A dinner yacht churned by, a charter spilling party sounds and light. Only when it left did she dare to move and peek inside the cockpit window.
It was empty. She ducked quickly to stay in the shadows and ran a memory recap. The glow had come from the rear compartment. Duckwalking a little over a yard, she used the body of the chopper for cover. Then she rose up and peered in the window of the rear door.
What she saw stopped her heart.
Salena Kaye stared back at her from the passenger seat through dead eyes. Her mouth hung open in a frozen scream, exposing smashed and missing teeth. Welts and cigarette burns marked her face. A picklock protruded from the nearest ear canal, above a dried flow of blood and plasma that had streamed down the side of her neck, staining the shoulder of her white T-shirt. The handle of a large, military-style knife jutted out of her sternum above an oval blotch of red. And around the knife’s knuckle grip, someone had tied a string. An orange string.