Richard Castle: Raging Heat

She already knew the answer. And the pair, who recently had been asking to be given more responsibility, didn’t need to debate. Raley said, “Better than ready.”

Ochoa finished the thought. “Roach-Ready.”

“Good. Bring along Detective Rhymer as support, but this is your show.” Heat couldn’t help but notice the two seemed a little taller when they rolled to West End Ave. “Detective Feller, you set for a ride with me to Flatbush?”

But it was Rook who answered, “You bet.” And, as he saw Feller approach, he added, “Shotgun.”

Rush hour crept the opposite way when they came out of the Battery Tunnel, so the unmarked Taurus Police Interceptor sailed along through Red Hook and Gowanus, turning off Flatbush Avenue onto Avenue D a mere thirty minutes after Heat, Rook, and Feller buckled up outside the precinct. “You don’t care that I have a tendency to get carsick,” said Rook from the rear seat.

Detective Feller didn’t turn around, just said, “Only if you blow chunks on the back of my head.”

Nikki caught a glimpse of Rook appealing to her in the mirror, and when she ignored him and went back to looking for the address, he added, “I don’t know if I can live in a world where shotgun doesn’t mean shotgun.”

They drove right past the building the first time because the street numbers had been pried off the doorframe, leaving only half of a brass 4 dangling sideways from a nail. Heat killed the engine and surveyed the flophouse, a six-story walk-up of graffitied brick, sections of which had been slathered over by brown paint in a sorry attempt to hide the tags. Some teenage girls, huddled clannishly on the stoop, registered the cop car, and split for the bodega next door. A plastic bag of trash flew out an upstairs window. It broke apart on the dead lawn and Feller said, “Home, sweet home.”

“You might think about waiting here.”

Rook groaned in protest. “This again? Really?”

When he had first started riding along, before they were in a relationship, Heat made him wait in the car for fear of liability. And later, because he meddled. Then she gave it up because he had — more or less — proven he knew how to behave himself. Sometimes. Why did she revert today? She glimpsed him again in her rearview and knew why. That jewelry receipt. It impacted her more than she knew. Nikki was worried something could happen to him.

“Maybe I should go back where I’ll be safer, like hanging off a broken footbridge in the Congo.”

“Stay close, writer boy,” was all she said.

They passed some chalky dog turds on the landing of the third floor, and, as they trudged up one more story toward Fabian Beauvais’s room, Rook asked what they guessed the monthly rent ran in an apartment building like this. Feller said, “You don’t go monthly here, dude. This is weekly, at best. No lease, no ID, no job, no prob.”

“It’s an SRO,” said Heat.

“Right. Single-room occupancy.”

Detective Feller scoffed. “More like squalid, wretched, odious.”

“Uh, actually,” said Rook, “that would be SWO.”

Feller stopped on the top step of the fourth floor and turned to look down at him. “You’re still pissed I got shotgun, aren’t you.”

“No, I write for a living, and, with all due respect to the erroneously dubbed three Rs, wretched isn’t spelled with an R, but with a—”

“Hey!” called Heat just as two men the size of NFL tight ends rushed from the hallway at Feller’s back, shoving him from behind. He flew forward, his body plowing into Heat and Rook. All three tumbled as the pair leaped over them and bolted down the stairwell, skipping half the steps. Detective Feller grabbed the banister and pulled himself off Heat, who rolled herself to her feet and sprang off in pursuit.

Flying around the turn on the second floor landing, Nikki heard the entry door slam below her and so wasn’t surprised when she reached the front stoop and saw the men had already gained fifty yards on her. She ID’d herself and called a freeze as she sprinted after them, now with Feller and Rook a dozen paces behind.

At Kings Highway the men separated and, just as Heat hand signaled for Feller to take the one who split left, something unusual happened. Each hopped into a waiting car — one of two nondescript, plateless sedans that sat waiting for them — and then sped off, roaring with far more muscle under their hoods than those little cars should have packed. One of them, a Japanese import, cut a wild, bounding diagonal across the concrete median and fishtailed with the other into the distance until the sound of their souped up engines faded like dying flies.

They returned to the fourth floor more quietly. Attentively, too, with Heat and Feller resting hands on holsters. Rook hung back on the landing while the cops flanked the door to listen. They shook no to each other. Nikki examined the lock for jimmy marks, but the serially abused relic had more scratches than shine. The two detectives shared ready nods. Heat turned the key the manager had given her and in they went, announcing “NYPD” and fanning out textbook-style to clear the compact room, closet, and lav.

In contrast to the grubbiness of the building, the Haitian’s SRO revealed itself to be tidy and immaculate when Feller peeled the aluminum foil off one of the windows to let in the sun. The futon on the floor was neatly made with a week’s worth of T-shirts, underwear, socks, and a pair of jeans folded and stacked in the blue plastic basket beside it. A so-called kitchen, really just a thirty-six-inch Formica counter with a puny, stainless steel sink dropped into it, gleamed. There was no stove, not even a hot plate, but the old microwave oven, which Heat popped open, was empty and smelled like the Mr. Clean with Febreze on the shelf above it.

Rook said, “This place would go for five thousand a month in Manhattan,” then pressed PLAY on the portable CD unit on the empty bookcase. Rap Kreyol from Barikad Crew blasted and made them jump. He switched it off and said, “Sorry, sorry.”

“What’s your take?” asked Feller after a quick once-over of the place.

“You mean beyond the fact that Fabian Beauvais was a neatnik and liked Haitian rap?” Heat turned a circle in the middle of the room. “No personal effects, no pictures, no books, no magazines, only take-out containers in the trash? I’d say he hardly lived here.”

“How does an illegal who resorts to Dumpster diving afford a place he doesn’t live in? Doesn’t make sense.”

They spread out to search the room. It wouldn’t take long with three of them and a place that size. Heat took the kitchenette, Feller the shelves and boxes, Rook went into the tiny closet, which lacked even a door. As was the case throughout the whole SRO, the primary repair element was duct tape. It was wrapped around the spigot of the kitchen faucet, it held the empty curtain rod up above the bed, and where Rook stood in the closet, dusty, gritty, and gummy old pieces of it held down the curling linoleum on the floor. But a one-foot strip of shiny and new silver tape was plastered in one corner. “What do you think?” asked Rook. When they joined him, he said, “One of these things is not like the others.”

Heat and Feller got on bent knees. She took a documentary shot with her iPhone. The other detective took out his blade and cut the length of the tape, opening up a seam in the flooring that curled up. He pulled it back, exposing a rectangular hole in the under-boards, and nested in it was an envelope. Even though she wore gloves, Heat plucked the envelope out by the edges. It was thick and unsealed. And there were several fingerprints on it in what appeared to be dried blood. She folded back the closure, knowing what she’d find, just not knowing the amount.