Richard Castle: Raging Heat

“…You there? Hello?”

“Uh, yeah.” She gathered herself and tried to reset the course of the call. “Listen, you still haven’t explained why you spied on me.”

“Due diligence is not spying, Detective Heat.” The Hammer was not only back in his wheelhouse but strutting the deck. “This is proper vetting for a key position. We needed to see who you are associating with to make sure we don’t have any surprises. Like gym rats turning up naked and dead on your parlor floor.”

Heat wished Zach was there so she could throttle his face to a bloody pulp with the phone. Don — a hero and ex-Navy SEAL — had no longer been her no-strings sex partner that night he came over to shower after a combat-training workout. Instead of rising to the bait, though, she calmly replied, “My personal life is my own. But we both know that man took a shotgun blast instead of me, and I’m here now because of him.”

“Un-fucking-flappable. See, this is why we need you, Heat.” Maybe it would be worth the drive to headquarters to give him a beatdown there. “And so you know, I’ve taken the step of confidentially clearing your transfer with your precinct commander.”

“What? Irons knows?”

“Transparency. We’re your NYPD.” And then, proving the fine-tuning of his antenna, Hamner said, “I’m vibing hesitation. You are aboard for this, right?”

He broke her pause with, “I’ve been down this road with you once already. You only get so many of these. This is last call, Heat.”

She swiveled her chair from her view of Rook. “I get it. Tell me when you want to meet.”

“Excellent,” he said.

The moment she hung up, Rook came up behind her and startled her. “Who the hell ground decaf in this when I was gone? Smell.” He held out his coffee grinder. “What did The Hammer say about your IAB tail?”

Nikki mulled their conversation of the night before about Rook’s travel absences — then thought about the ring receipt — and punted. No sense making waves right then. “You know him. Double-talk. He says it was just some Internal Affairs zealots getting out of hand. You know how those men in black are.” Before Rook could question her further, she gave the grinder a cursory sniff. “Want me to dust it for prints?”

“‘Unity Makes Strength,’” translated Rook to the squad as Heat posted a hard copy of the tattoo JPEG on the Murder Board. Hearing him say those words made it difficult for her to meet his face when she turned to continue her briefing. But she did, and the corners of his eyes crinkled from that smile that made her heart skip again. And then flutter once more from the pair of secrets she held: the job offer that threatened to make her the globe-trotter for a change and finding the engagement ring receipt in his Simple Human trash can. Neither was so simple to Nikki.

Just before the meeting, Rook had cornered her in the break room, telling her that they needed some Us Time and asking how she felt about canoodling in their favorite booth at Bouley that night at nine o’clock. Her bobblehead nodding felt stupid and inadequate, so she’d said yes loud enough to turn heads in the hallway. “I’ll take that as a yes!” he’d bellowed back, then inhaled deeply. “Mm, Bouley. I can already smell the wall of apples in the vestibule.”

Randall Feller got a text, jogged out of the meeting, and returned in less than a minute holding a cellophane evidence bag. “Look what CSU found.” He lofted it like an auction item on his way up front to hand it to Heat. “A nylon zip tie. Those of us who’ve worked crowd control and riot duty will recognize this puppy as a double-cuff disposable wrist restraint. And it’s got blood on it.”

“Where’d they make the find?” asked Nikki.

“Food cart vendor who works Eighty-first and Central Park West reported it. Apparently, the bloody zip tie landed in his chestnuts.”

“ Schproing ,” said Ochoa, kicking off the inevitable gallows laughs.

Rook joined in with, “I can eat around the nylon, but is blood gluten free?”

Heat didn’t have to settle them down. Detective Raley accomplished that by observing the wrist restraints would explain why the victim’s hands were tucked behind him when he crashed into the planetarium. The room grew very still indeed.

“Gentlemen, I believe we are leaving the realm of accidental death as a possibility,” said Heat as she block printed WRIST RESTRAINTS on the whiteboard.

While Feller stepped out to get the evidence bag to Forensics for labbing, Rhymer reported no missing persons hits yet, even though he’d been checking in hourly with all the agencies. Detective Ochoa had met with similar dead ends on the aviation front. He said he contacted all the local airfields for lists of takeoffs and landings, then followed up with the pilots, and tower personnel, none of whom reported any unusual activity, visually or over the radio. The only aircraft over the area during that time were radio station traffic, government, and police helicopters.

“What about the tourist choppers?” asked Rhymer.

“All grounded. Low ceiling, no customers.”

A lull of contemplation ended with Ochoa saying, “Come on, Rook, let’s hear it. Close Encounters castaway? Rocket pack malfunction? Bring it.”

But Rook remained pensive. “Sorry to disappoint, but I know as well as you do, it’s going to be tough to speculate on a means, let alone a motive, without knowing who our victim is.”

“Buzz killer,” said Raley. “I was kind of hoping for more, you know, Rook signature whack theories.”

“Oh, they’ll come,” said Nikki as she dismissed the squad. “Meantime, you all know the drill. Keep thinking, keep digging, keep checking, repeat as needed.”

Taking her own advice, Heat worked the phones, too. She struck pay dirt with the Real Time Crime Center. “Listen up, everybody,” she announced walking to the center of the bull pen. “Turns out our John Doe’s ink is in the tattoo database. It took a while to process because this is far from the only Haitian coat of arms tatt in the system, but the detectives down at RTCC gave it some extra scrutiny and, thanks to spotting a small scar creating a ridge in the slogan, we have a match. Our alien now has a name.” She uncapped a dry erase and recited as she printed it on the board. “Fabian Beauvais.”

“Which is the identical name the fingerprint lab just gave up,” said Detective Rhymer, cradling the phone at his desk. “Hey, two hits at the same time. Are we supposed to hook our pinkies, or something?” Opie got a sense of the room and blushed. “Forget I said that.”

“See how this jibes with your info, Ope.” She referred to her new spiral notepad, the red Clairefontaine Pupitre that Rook brought her as a souvenir from France. “Beauvais was indeed Haitian. An illegal who got in the system with a prior arrest for trespassing.”

Rhymer nodded. “They busted him and some of his pals for Dumpster diving on private property. Midtown North turned him over to ICE for processing and a hearing date. Beauvais bonded out then…surprise, surprise…bail skipped.”

As Roach saddled up to check out the Haitian’s last-known address in Flatbush, Captain Irons waddled in from his office. “Patrol just responded to a call about a home invasion on West End Avenue and discovered a fatal.” He turned to go, then added, “It’s a pretty exclusive block. Let me know if it’s a VIP so I can do my thing.”

Everyone knew Wally’s thing was a press announcement. For the Iron Man, getting on TV was more than a duty; it was his passion.

Always thinking in contingencies, Heat knew this would happen eventually: dueling cases and a short staff. It was one thing to lament Detective Washington’s empty desk, another to be prepared when it came time to divide and conquer. Nikki beckoned Detectives Raley and Ochoa over. “Calling an audible. You two think you’re ready to take the point on this new case, the home invasion?”