“Oh, yes, and get this,” she said. “The serial numbers trace to cash used in a DEA sting years ago.”
Ochoa asked, “How does a stash from a fed drug deal end up in a priest’s attic?”
“Do we know who the DEA deal was with?” said Heat.
“Yeah, an Alejandro Martinez.” Hinesburg consulted her notes. “He cut a plea bargain for a deuce in Ossining and he’s out. Clean jacket since his release in ’07.”
Nikki crossed over to the board and started to write his name next to the notation for the found money. “Let’s see how clean this Alejandro Martinez is. Bring him in for a chat.”
They had just scattered to work their assignments when a familiar voice called from the door to the bull pen. “Delivery for Nikki Heat?”
Jameson Rook stepped in toting dry cleaning on hangers looped over his hand. “You know, I can’t just drop everything and keep coming here every time you get all bloody.”
Heat looked at the clothes from her closet, then at Rook, and then to Roach, arching a brow at them. Ochoa said, “We figured, you know, that he’d want to know how your day was going.”
Rook asked, “Did you really stab him with an icicle?” When she nodded, he said, “Please, tell me you said ‘Freeze,’ because that would be only perfect.” Rook was grinning, but there was worry behind it. He put his free arm around her waist. “Detective, you doing OK?”
“Fine, I’m just fine. I can’t believe you did this.” She took the clothes from him.
“Think they match.... You seem to have this sort of practical monochromatic thing going in your closet, not that I judge. All right, I judge. We need to take you shopping.”
She laughed and pulled a couple of items from the selection he’d brought. “These will do just fine.” She kissed his cheek, forgetting herself in a rare office display. “Thanks.”
“I thought you had protection. What happened to your Discourager?”
“Poor Harvey, you should have seen him. Mortified. In all his years he never got blocked like that.”
“How... discouraging. Whatever’s going on, you need better. When I went by your apartment, there was a car sitting up the block watching, I know the look.”
Nikki got a fresh chill and draped the clothes across the back of her chair. “How do you know it was watching?”
“Because when I walked up to it, he sped off. I yelled stop, but he kept going.”
“The yelling stop, that never works,” said Raley.
“Did you see him, get a description?” Ochoa had his pad open. Then he said, “You didn’t get a description, did you?”
“No,” said Rook. And then he took out his Moleskine notebook. “But would a license plate help?”
“Got it,” said Raley, hanging up the phone. “Vehicle you saw was regis tered to Firewall Security, Inc., a domestic protection division of... are you ready?... Lancer Standard.”
“We should get on them. Get over there right now,” said Rook. “These have got to be the guys who ambushed you. It adds up, the surveillance, the military tactics, let’s go.”
Nikki finished putting on her clean blazer and said, “First of all, there is no ‘we’ or ‘let’s,’ Rook. Your ride-along days are through. And second, there’s nothing to go on. Third, if they are up to something, I don’t want to let on that I know....”
Rook sat down. “When you get to the fifteenth reason, let me know. I believe this is like Little League; isn’t there a mercy rule?”
She put a hand on his shoulder. “You’re not totally wrong. Of course this guy Hays and Lancer Standard have my attention, but let’s go about this the right way.”
“Did you say ‘let’s’? Because I heard ‘let’s.’ ”
She laughed, shoving him so he spun a rotation in the chair. Then Nikki felt Ochoa’s presence, standing in the middle of the bull pen, ashen. The smile left her face. “Miguel?”
The detective spoke in a voice so low it would not have been audible if the room hadn’t gone completely silent. “Captain Montrose.... He’s dead.”
Eight
Special Investigations owned that city block and would control it for as long as they pleased. Rook, who liked Montrose and knew how much the captain meant to Nikki, had wanted to come along for support, but she said no. She knew what it would be like. Immediates only. And she was right. Even Heat and Roach had to park outside the yellow tape and walk; that’s how tight that crime scene was. The press called Nikki’s name as she passed, but she kept her eyes front, ignoring them — especially Tam Svejda, who hopped sideways along the no-go line, shouldering her way between reporters and making desperate pleas for a comment.
There was a lull in the precipitation, but the afternoon sky hung low and sullen. The three detectives strode wordlessly, crunching over pellets of sidewalk salt toward the middle of 85th, where strobes were flashing in front of the rectory of Our Lady of the Innocents.
Nikki recognized the shooting suits from the castle. The pair clocked her as she approached, gave a nod, then went back to their business. Heat had never seen these two before in her life, and now here they were again, crossing paths the second time that same day.
Montrose’s Crown Victoria sat parked in front of a fire hydrant and was ringed by portable isolation barriers of white plastic sheeting stretched on aluminum frames. Nikki stopped on the sidewalk a car length away, not knowing if she had it in her to proceed. Cameras inside the barrier flashed like lightning punching against the gloom. “We can do this, if you’d rather,” said Ochoa. She turned and saw the sadness behind his cop mask. Beside him, the skin around his partner Raley’s lips was white from pressing them together so hard.
Nikki did what she had done so often on this job. She put on her armor. There was a switch inside her, the one that sealed off her vulnerability, like triggering a fire door in the Met. For the space of one long breath, which was all it took, she made the silent acknowledgment she always made to honor the victim she was about to meet, threw the switch, and she was ready. Detective Heat said, “Let’s go,” and entered the crime scene.
The first thing she took in was the quarter inch of ice and frozen slush coating the entire top of the car, notable because there was a clear circular patch about the size of a DVD on the roof above the driver’s seat. Raising herself up on her toes, she saw the dimple of the bullet’s exit point. She bent forward to look through the back window, but it was like trying to see through a shower door. Then the shooter from Forensics took another picture inside the car, and the slumped body formed a horror movie silhouette.
“Single head shot,” said the voice. Nikki rose up and turned from the rear window, and one of the suits, Neihaus, was on the curb with his pad.
“You have positive ID this is Captain Charles Montrose?” was the first thing she said. When he nodded, she asked Neihaus to say it. “You’re absolutely certain Charles Montrose is the victim?”
“Yes, I have matched him to his ID. But speaking of, you knew him, right?” He tilted his head toward the open passenger door, and she felt her stomach swim. “Going to need confirmation, you know that.”
“That’s him.” Detective Ochoa rose up from his crouch at the open car door and walked back toward them. He showed his palms to Nikki and shook his head slightly, signaling Don’t. And for the hundreds of victims she had seen in the hundreds of awful ways people can die and what it does to their bodies, and for the traumatic day she had had already, Nikki decided there was no point testing her armor.
“Thank you, Detective,” she said in a formal tone.
“No problem.” His face said anything but.
Nikki shifted gears, asking Neihaus, “Who found him?”
“Guy from a cleanup crew looking for a parking place to get in the Graestone.” In near unison, Heat and Roach looked up the block. A commercial van from On Call, a smoke and water damage recovery company, was double-parked at the rear service gate of the prestigious Graestone Condominiums. Detectives Feller and Van Meter were interviewing a man in coveralls. “Says he was mad he couldn’t find a spot while some jerk had parked at the hydrant, and he was going to give him some shit. Surprise.”