When they had exhausted their options, they made the same rounds again with nothing in the end to show for it all but lost energy and time. “Know what the hell of this is?” said Heat. “The effort we’re putting into chasing our own people is pulling us away from heading off that event tomorrow.”
Rook checked his watch. “You mean today. It’s after midnight.”
“Excellent.”
“But the other side of the coin is they may do better at heading this off than we will. I mean ethical questions aside.”
Heat snapped at him, “We don’t put ethics aside, Rook. It’s not who we are. It’s not who I am, anyway. Don’t you think I would love ten minutes alone in a locked room with Carey Maggs?”
“You mean to work out your mom stuff, or to stop the smallpox attack?”
She thought about that and said, “I guess I have the luxury of not having to know the answer.” A moment passed and she asked, “What about your mom? Did Margaret get out of town?”
“Oh, yes, Oswego-bound, hours ago. I have a feeling that, at this very moment, Broadway’s ‘Grand Damn’ is in the lounge, on her third Sidecar, and the Drama Festival committee is wondering what they got themselves into.”
“You know, Rook, we’ve done our best. No points off if you want to leave. You have your place in the Hamptons.”
He took both her hands in his, looked into her eyes, and said, “Yeah, I’m outta here.” And after they both laughed at that, they kissed.
Since they were all alone, they made it count.
In the overnight Heat didn’t dare leave her desk. She dozed in ten-minute intervals in her chair and left her cell phone on ring instead of vibrate so she’d be sure to get any calls. Raley and Ochoa checked in just after four when they wrapped Brewery Boz. For the hell of it, she asked them to swing by Varick Street and door-knock the Homeland HQ to see if they could create some movement. They called back an hour later with no joy.
At sunup the commander of NYPD’s counterterrorism unit called from his staging area at the 69th Regiment Armory near Gramercy Park. He didn’t want Heat to think he had dismissed her, and reassured her that he had put calls out through all his sources to learn what he could about the whereabouts and status of the DHS agents and Maggs. Heat told McMains he was a good man and asked him to keep her posted. “And God help us all,” he said.
After too many days and nights in the same clothes, Nikki budgeted herself five minutes for a quick shower in the locker room, which did a world to make her feel sharper for the day ahead. After she toweled off, she smiled, amused that she was actually resorting to changing into her backup bag of backup clothes, and wondered if she should have a backup for that, too. The brown leather jacket she’d been wearing seemed a little warm for the forecast, so when Heat returned to the bull pen, she hung it on the coat rack and got down the blazer Yardley Bell had returned to her after its DHS bioagent sweep.
When she slipped it off the rack, she noticed a clear plastic evidence bag had been looped over the hook of the hanger. Thoughtfully, the Homeland Security scientists had emptied her blazer pockets and returned all their contents with an inventory slip. Nikki looked inside. She found a lipstick, her sunglasses, a notepad and golf pencil, and an open package of Reese’s peanut butter cups. She doubted she would want the remaining candy and took it out to throw away. Her hand froze above the trash can.
“Rook,” she called.
Couch springs groaned from the break room, and he appeared in the door with bed hair and one shirttail out. “What?”
She held up the blazer. “Now I know where I picked up my contamination. Come on.”
TWENTY
Detective Heat’s Crown Victoria ripped across West 79th Street rolling Code Three, full lights and siren. She had Rook speed-dial her phone for her so she could keep her hands on the wheel while she called the dispatcher to rally her crew and the counterterrorism unit downtown at the protest march Carey Maggs had helped sponsor. Rook held her cell with one hand and gripped the door handle with the other as she wove around slow cars or braked, then g-force accelerated through stoplights. At that hour on Saturday morning, traffic was light, and in record time she steered them around the rotary onto the Henry Hudson Parkway heading downtown.
In her call to Dispatch, she described what to be on the lookout for: a red 1870s London Fire Brigade wagon with a large copper boiler kettle on the back. “I believe that’s the container holding the bioagent, so proceed with extreme caution.”
Seeing clear lanes of straight highway ahead, Rook spoke to her, elevating his voice above the siren. “What was your lightbulb? What made you connect it?”
“The peanut butter cup,” she said. “I remembered I ate the peanut butter cup the morning I visited Maggs at his brewery.”
“You are amazing. How the hell did you remember something as trivial as that?”
“Because it wasn’t trivial. I was pissed at you when you called from Nice. With Yardley.”
“And the candy fits in because…?”
“Because I ate it in a rage binge. I was furious at you for being so goddamned stupid and completely insensitive.” She paused to make a quick maneuver around a sanitation truck. “Hey, some people kick trash cans, I break out the Reese’s.”
They rode in silence. At last, Rook said, “Glad I could play a role.”
It only took Heat and Rook fourteen minutes to get to Battery Park on the southern tip of Manhattan, but when they arrived, Emergency Services, the Hercules team, and the counterterrorism unit had already gathered at their staging area on State Street and Bowling Green in the plaza near the old Customs House. Nikki wove between riot cops and bright rows of pink tulips in full spring bloom until she found Commander McMains marking up deployment maps. “Hard to think of a worse scenario, Detective.”
They surveyed the situation across the street in Battery Park, where several thousand protestors had gathered behind the giant banner stretching across the Hope Garden declaring the Walk Against Global Oppression. Heat spotted the logo for Brewery Boz as corporate sponsor. “This is the event Carey Maggs has spent all year promoting. Doing all he could to draw a big crowd-so he can release the smallpox on them.”
“Sunny skies, gentle breeze, unfortunately a perfect day for it,” said the commander. “Latest guesstimate from the airship puts them at four thousand marchers. That includes kids and toddlers in strollers.” He shook his head. “And they’re still streaming in.”
“Why can’t you stop them?” asked Rook. “Just move them out.”
“Great idea, here you go.” The commander held a bullhorn out to Rook, then pulled it back. “Sorry for the smart-ass, but I’m going to guess you have limited experience breaking up a protest mob. They tend to fight you on that, and this group’s no different.” McMains shifted his attention to Heat. “When I got here, I got clearance to announce the bioterror danger to the organizers. They think we’re lying, just trying to disrupt their march.”
Nikki scanned the area and saw several hundred riot control officers adding gas masks to their preparations. “Any sign of Homeland Security?”
“Right here,” said Agent Callan. They turned as he and Yardley Bell stepped in to join them.
“What happened to my prisoner?” demanded Heat.
Callan gave an oblique reply. “Congratulations. Looks like you did better than us, after all.”
“I asked you, what happened to Maggs?”
“He’s not a concern right now, Detective. Let’s do the job first, all right?” He didn’t wait for a response but answered for her. “All right. Now describe this fire truck we’re looking for.”
Once more Heat swallowed her anger for the sake of the mission. “It’s a vintage London fire wagon Maggs restored as a promotion for this event.”