Richard Castle: Frozen Heat

All Rook could manage was a dry-throated “That was… Whoa.” And then he added, “The earth moved.”

Nikki laughed. “Feel good about you.”

“No, I think it literally moved.” He got up on one elbow to look at the room. “I think we just had an earthquake.”

By the time she came out from drying her hair, Rook had tidied up the fallen items in his loft and planted himself in front of the TV. “Channel 7 says it was a 5.8 on something called the Ramapo Fault Line, epicenter in Sloatsburg, New York.”

Nikki put her empty mug on the counter and checked her cell phone. “I’ve got service back. No messages or TAC alerts, at least not for me. What’s the impact?”

“They’re still assessing. No fatalities, some injuries from fallen bricks and whatnot, nothing major, so far. Airports and some subway lines closed as a precaution. Oh, and I won’t have to shake the orange juice. Want some?”

She said no and put on her gun. “Who’d have thought? An earthquake in New York City?”

He put his arms around her. “Can’t complain about the timing.”

“Hard to top.”

“Guess we’ll just have to try,” he said, and they kissed. Her phone rang, and Heat pulled away to answer. Without being asked, he handed her a pen and notepad and she jotted an address. “On my way.”

“You know what I think we should do today?”

Nikki slipped her phone into her blazer pocket. “Yes, I do. And as much as I’d love to-believe me, I’d love to-I’ve got to get to work.”

“Go to Hawaii.”

“Very funny.”

“I’m not joking. Let’s just go. Maui. Mmm, Maui.”

“You know I can’t do that.”

“Give me one reason.”

“I’ve got a murder to handle.”

“Nikki. If there’s one thing I’ve learned in our time together, it’s never let a murder get in the way of a good time.”

“So I’ve noticed. And what about your work? Don’t you have some magazine article you should be writing? Some expose of corruption in the dark corridors of the World Bank? A chronicle of your ride-along with a bin Laden hunter? Your weekend in the Seychelles with Johnny Depp or Sting?”

Rook pondered that and said, “If we left this afternoon, we could be in Lahaina for breakfast. And if you feel guilty, don’t. You deserve it after taking care of me for two months.” She ignored him and clipped her detective shield onto her waistband. “Come on, Nikki, how many homicides are there in this city in a year, five hundred?”

“More like five thirty.”

“All right, that’s fewer than two a day. Look, we peace-out to Maui today and come back in a week, you’d miss, maybe, ten murders. And not all of them would be in your precinct anyway.”

“You’re making a very clear point here, Rook.”

He looked at her, mildly taken aback. “I am?”

“Yes. And the point is, I don’t care how many Pulitzer Prizes you’ve won. You still have the brain of a sixteen-year-old.”

“So is that a yes?”

“Make that a fifteen-year-old.” Nikki kissed him again and cupped him between the legs. “By the way? So worth the wait.” And then she went to work.

The crime scene was on her way to the precinct, so instead of going up to the Twentieth first to sign out a car and double back, Heat got off the B train a stop early at 72nd Street to hoof it. The bomb squad had ordered a precautionary traffic shutdown at Columbus Avenue, and Nikki came up the subway steps near the Dakota to witness nightmare gridlock backed up all the way to Central Park. The sooner she finished her investigation, the sooner relief would come to the stuck drivers, so she quickened her stride. But she didn’t short her contemplation.

As always, on approach to a body, Detective Heat steeped herself in thoughts of the victim. She didn’t need Rook to remind her how many homicides there were in the city every year. But her vow was never to let volume dehumanize a single lost life. Or inure her to the impact on friends and loved ones. For her, this wasn’t lip service or some PR tagline. Nikki had come by it honestly years ago when her mother was murdered. Heat’s loss not only spurred her to switch college majors to Criminal Justice, it forged the kind of cop she vowed to be. Over ten years later, her mother’s case remained unsolved, but the detective remained unbending in her advocacy for each victim, one at a time.

At 72nd and Columbus she picked her way through the knot of spectators who had gathered there, many with their cell phones aloft, documenting their proximity to danger for whatever street cred that gave them on their Facebook pages. She reached down to draw back her blazer and flash her shield to the uniform at the barrier, but he knew the move and gave her the fraternal nod before she even showed it. Emergency lights strobed two blocks ahead of her as she headed south. Nikki could have taken the empty street but kept to the sidewalk; even as a veteran cop, it unsettled her to see a major downtown avenue completely shut in morning rush hour. The sidewalks were vacant, too, except for uni patrols keeping them clear. Sawhorses blocked 71st, also, and a few doors west of them, an ambulance idled in front of a town house that had shed its brick facade in the earthquake. She passed one of the green ash trees growing from the sidewalk planters and looked up through its budding limbs at dozens of rubberneckers leaning out of windows and over fire escapes. Same on the other side of Columbus. As she drew closer to the scene, dispatch calls from the roundup of emergency vehicles echoed off the stone apartment buildings in enveloping unison.

The bomb squad had turned out with its armored mobile containment unit parked in the center lane of the avenue, just in case anything needed detonating. But from twenty yards off, Heat could tell from body language that Emergency Services had pretty much stood down. Elevated above the roofs of vans and blue-and-whites, she caught a glimpse of her friend Lauren Parry walking around inside the open rear cargo door of a delivery truck in her medical examiner coveralls. Then she ducked down and Nikki lost sight of her.

Raley and Ochoa from her squad stepped away from a middle-aged black man in a watch cap and green parka, who they were interviewing beside the Engine 40 fire truck, and met up with her as she arrived. “Detective Heat.”

“Detective Roach,” she said, using the partners’ house nickname that amicably squashed Raley and Ochoa into one handy syllable.

“No trouble getting here,” said Raley, not asking, not expecting that she, of all people, would ever have any.

“No, my line’s running. I hear the N and the R are down for inspection where they go under the river.”

“Same with the Q train coming out of Brooklyn,” added Ochoa. “I made it across before it hit. But I’ll tell you, Times Square station was unreal. Like a Godzilla movie down there, the way people were screaming and running.”

“Did you feel it?” asked Raley.

She replayed the circumstances and said, “Oh, yeah,” trying to sound offhanded.

“Where were you when it hit?”

“Exercising.” Not a total lie. Heat side nodded to the armored blast container. “What are we working here that warrants the parade of heavy metal?”

“Suspicious package lit things up.” Ochoa flipped to the first page of his notepad. “Frozen food delivery driver-that’s him over there-”

“-in the green jacket-” chimed in his partner in their usual duet.

“-opens the back of his truck to unload some chicken tenders and burger patties at the deli here.” He paused to allow Nikki a beat to eyeball the All In Bun storefront, where a trio of cooks in checked pants and aprons slouched at the window counter waiting out the closure. “He slides a carton aside and finds a suitcase sitting there between the boxes.”