“What’s this, Detective?” Heat turned. Captain Montrose had come up behind her. He must have read their surprise, and explained, “I was on my way to 1PP for a meeting and heard the ten-thirteen. Now, am I to infer that you were being tailed but you didn’t report it?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “I could have called in protection.”
“I wasn’t sure. And I didn’t want to draw resources without more certainty.” Heat left out the part about how the strain between them made her hold back.
The old Montrose would have taken her aside for a chat. But New Montrose snapped at her right there in front of her colleagues. “That’s not a call for you to make. I’m still your commander. My job isn’t yours... yet.” At that, the captain turned and crossed the sidewalk to confer with the CSU team gathered around the bullet hole in the service door of the high-rise.
An ass-kicking in front of the family is an uncomfortable thing for everyone, and in the dead air that followed, the other detectives busied themselves trying not to make eye contact with Heat. She turned her face upward into the sleet and closed her eyes, feeling the hundred little stings of the sky falling.
When she got back uptown, Nikki made a quick stop to do an appear ance check outside the door to the bull pen, where the fluorescent overheads created a poor man’s mirror in the window of Montrose’s dark office. It wasn’t about vanity; it was about dried blood. At the shooting scene in Brooklyn Heights, EMTs had given her wipes to clean her face and neck, but her clothes were another story. The emergency shirt and slacks she usually kept folded in her desk file drawer were still at the cleaners following a latte mishap, so the rust-colored spray on the collar of her blouse and in the V pattern down the front where her coat had been open would have to do. While Nikki made her appraisal, she heard Detective Rhymer’s soft drawl coming around the corner from the squad room.
Heat couldn’t hear all he was saying, just snippets because he was speaking in hushed tones. She picked up phrases like “. . . wheel spinning and make-work...” and “He said, ‘Screw it, life’s too short...’ ” and then “. . . Heat’s more worried about her freaking promotion...”
Listening in was tantalizing but made Nikki feel skeevy, like she was in a soap. What had Phyllis Yarborough said a few hours before? Something like “transparency means no shame”? So Heat turned the corner to face whatever she would face.
What she found was Detective Rhymer leaning in gossip mode with Sharon Hinesburg at her desk. Both sat upright in their rolling chairs when they saw her walk in. “Damn, look at you,” said Hinesburg, hopping to her feet. “Who took the bullet, you or the dancer?” She was extra loud, the way people get when they’re diverting attention. Or hoping to.
Nikki ignored her and gave a puzzled look to Rhymer. “Are you and Gallagher done working your list of dommes already?”
He rose, too, albeit more tentatively. “Not quite. We came back so I could drop Gallagher off.”
Nikki scanned the room and didn’t see his partner. “What, is he sick?”
“Gallagher, he, ah... He requested a reassign back to Burglary.” The detective turned to Hinesburg as if he’d find some help, but Sharon was letting him deal his own hand. The whispers Nikki had just overheard sufficed for her to do the math. Another day talking to dominatrixes felt like a waste to Gallagher and so he booked out. Apparently with some opinions expressed about Detective Heat on his exit. “You know,” continued Rhymer, “we had some cases hanging that needed some attention, and he must have just felt, you know, obliged to mind them.”
Heat knew it was bull but didn’t expect Opie to throw in his partner. This latest piece of unrest created by her coming promotion tasted bitter, but she set it aside. Her immediate concern was that she was suddenly down one investigator. “In that case, I’m glad you hung in, Ope.”
“I’m here, Detective.” But then he couched it. “Long as I can be, that is.”
At the Murder Board a few minutes later Heat selected a new marker color and printed the dancer’s name in the upper left corner where there was plenty of white space. “Probably doesn’t feel like it to him, but it’s Horst Meuller’s lucky day,” she told the squad. “The slug they pulled from that door was a .338 Magnum.”
Raley said, “Any brass?”
She shook no. “My guess is he either never threw the bolt since it was one shot, or if he did, the casing ejected into the vehicle and left with him.”
Ochoa let out a low whistle. “.338 Mag. Man... Hunters use those loads to drop grizzlies.”
“And, apparently, pole dancers,” said Heat. “I want to find out why. Detective Rhymer, dig deeper on Horst Meuller.”
“I thought you wanted me to check out the freelance dommes,” he said.
Nikki stopped herself and for the hundredth time thought about her contentious meeting with the captain and all the lines of this investigation he had closed down. She clenched her teeth and reversed herself, trying not to choke on her own words. “Stay on the BDSM canvass. When you finish, let me know. Then we’ll see where we are with Meuller.”
“Are you sure Meuller was the target?” asked Raley. “If that SUV was tailing you, seems like maybe you’re the one who got lucky this morning.”
“As a trained sleuth that possibility did not escape my notice,” said Nikki, tugging at her bloodstained collar and triggering a laugh from the squad. Heat turned to the board and sketched a looping arc from Meuller’s name to Father Graf’s. “What I really want to do is see what the connection is, if any, between these two victims. Hopefully, our dancer will survive and be able to shed some light. Meanwhile, let’s treat these two incidents as related.”
“By interviewing random dominatrixes?” said Detective Rhymer.
His instincts were right; it was her orders that were wrong, and she knew it. But she followed the edict. “Dommes for now, Opie. Clear?”
“What about the money in the cookie tins?” asked Raley. “Want me to contact the archdiocese, see if they have any suspicions about the padre doing some skimming?”
Once again, Heat came nose first against one of the brick walls Montrose had put up. It was an obvious trail to follow; why had the captain obstructed it? “Leave that to me for now,” she said.
Hinesburg reported that she had no hits yet on the man in the surveillance photo Father Graf’s housekeeper reacted to. “Which only means he may not have a criminal background.”
Nikki said, “I’ll call Mrs. Borelli and press her. But keep working it and all the other stills.” Heat opened the folder of surveillance pictures and took one out. It was of a man and a young woman coming down the stairs into the lobby of Pleasure Bound. The woman was laughing with her face turned up at her companion, but his was obscured by a Jets cap. Nikki posted it on the board with a magnet. “Had a thought about this one. See on his arm there, the tattoo?” First Raley and then the others rose to gather closer. The tatt was of a snake coiled around his left upper arm. “Real Time Crime Center keeps a data bank of scars and tattoos. Why don’t you have RTCC run it, Sharon. See if you get any matches.”
“Detective?” said Ochoa. “I know that woman.”
Raley said, “Something you want to tell us, pard? You in the lifestyle and holding back?”
“No, seriously. I talked to her yesterday. Know that domme who’s over in Amsterdam? Whatsername... Boam? Andrea Boam?” He tapped the picture with his pen. “That’s the roommate I talked to.”
“Pay her another visit,” Nikki said. “Let’s see what this roommate knows about charming snakes.”
Heat had to wade through a dozen messages on her voice mail from people who had seen her on the TV news at that morning’s shooting scene and hoped she was OK. One was from Rook, who also insisted on treating her to a non-takeout dinner, “in a sit-down restaurant like a respectable woman.” Zach Hamner left word, as did Phyllis Yarborough. Nikki appreciated the sentiments but could see how easy it would be to keep up with all the bonding outreach from 1PP and never get her work done. She saved the messages to answer later. Lauren Parry down at OCME, however, got an immediate callback.