Richard Castle: Frozen Heat

ME Parry’s pick of early sixties seemed right. Her hair was flatteringly cut to a shorter business length correct for a woman of that age and, from the roots that were starting to show some gray and dark brown in the part, her honey blond do, subtly streaked with caramel, indicated two things. First, she was a woman with some money who cared enough about her hair to have an expensive cut and a skilled colorist. Second, in spite of that, she was long overdue for a visit. “What kept her away?” wrote Nikki in her notebook. The clothes were similarly tasteful. Petite size. Off the rack, but clearly the rack lived on one of the upscale floors of the department store. The blouse was from the current season and the gray suit was a lightweight wool with some function to it. The feeling Heat got wasn’t so much expensive as good quality. Not the uniform of the lady who lunches, but the woman who power lunches. Nikki crouched to look at the one hand that was visible. It was partially closed and tucked up under her chin, so she couldn’t see all of it, but what she could see told a story. These were busy hands, toned without being muscular or abused by hard labor. The slender fingers had the kind of strength you see on tennis players and fitness enthusiasts. She noted a small scar on the side of the wrist, which looked years, maybe decades, old. Nikki stood again and looked straight down at her. The body fit the profile of a runner or cyclist. She made another note to have the vic’s picture shown at fitness clubs, the New York Road Runners, and cycle shops. Heat squatted again to examine a grimy, dark brown dirt scuff on the knee of the woman’s pants, which could say something about her last moments. She made a note of it and scooted around to look more closely at the knife wound. Furthering Heat’s notion that the victim had been killed before being put in the truck, the frozen bloodstain formed a wide pond, as if she had bled out facedown. The width of the stain indicated great volume, yet there was not much blood in the satin of the suitcase interior other than from abrasion smears on the lid. Nikki shined her flashlight where the victim’s back met the inside hinge of the suitcase and saw only similar bloodstain rub-off, with no evidence of pooling. Again, when they removed her later, better measurements could be taken, but Heat was getting a picture of a murder not only outside the truck, but outside the luggage.

One more indicator would be to look at the exterior of the suitcase for any major blood collection along the hinges or seams. Taking care not to disturb it, she knelt on both knees, palmed one hand on the cargo deck for balance, and dropped her head, leaning over far enough for her eyebrow to nearly touch the floor. Slowly, methodically, she ran the beam of her flashlight from right to left along the bottom edge of the case.

When her light reached the left corner of the suitcase, Nikki gasped. Her vision fluttered and a vertigo sensation swept over her. The light slipped from her hand and she toppled over onto her side.

Lauren said, “Nikki, you all right?”

She couldn’t really see anything in that moment. Hands came on her. Lauren Parry cradled her head off the floor. A pair of EMTs started for the ramp, but by then Nikki had recovered enough to sit herself up and wave them off. “No, no, I’m fine. It’s OK.” Lauren crouched beside her at eye level to check her out. “Really, I’m OK,” said Nikki.

But to her friend, her face said anything but. “You scared me there, Nik. I thought you went over in an aftershock or something.”

Heat swung her legs over the back of the truck and let them dangle. Raley and Ochoa approached, followed by Feller. Ochoa said, “What’s up, Detective? You look like you saw a ghost.”

Nikki shivered. This time, not from the refrigeration. She twisted to look behind her at the suitcase and then slowly turned back to the others.

“Nikki,” said Lauren, “what is it?”

“The suitcase.” She swallowed hard. “My initials are on it.”

The detectives and the ME all looked at one another, puzzled. Finally, Raley said, “I don’t get it. Why would your initials be on that suitcase?”

“Because I carved them there when I was a kid.” She could see them processing that, but it was taking them too long, so she said, “That suitcase belonged to my mother.” And then she added, “Her killer stole it the night she was murdered.”

Nikki Heat marched toward the homicide bull pen of the Twentieth Precinct at a determined clip that left little doubt in the minds of the detectives trying to keep up with her that she had recovered from the shock of her discovery, and then some. “Briefing in ten,” she called out to her squad as she strode through the door. On her way to her desk, she said, “Detective Ochoa, fire off the Jane Doe head shot to Missing Persons. Include Westchester, Long Island, New Jersey, and Fairfield County cops while you’re at it. Detective Raley, erase that whiteboard and roll the second one over beside it so we can work both Murder Boards at once.” Heat broomed aside the morning’s pile of message slips and dusted away grains of acoustical ceiling tile that the 5.8 shaker had snowflaked onto her desktop. Then she hit her keyboard, e-mailing Lauren Parry at the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner the same message she had given her verbally fifteen minutes before at the crime scene: to interrupt her the moment she had any information, no matter how minor.

She hit send and a cardboard coffee cup materialized on her blotter. Nikki swiveled in her chair to find Detective Feller lurking there. “In lieu of flowers, consider this the apology coffee for my big mouth this morning. Tall, three pump, hazelnut mocha, if I remember. Right?”

Actually, her drink of choice was a grande skim latte with two pumps of sugar-free vanilla, but “Close enough” was all she said. He was trying to make amends, but she was focused places other than coffee

flavorings at the moment. “Thanks. And let’s put it behind us, OK?”

“Won’t happen again.”

As soon as Feller stepped away, she set the tepid cup at the back of the desk, beside her unread messages, and started a to-do list on a letter pad. One third down the page, she bulleted “additional manpower” and stopped. That would require clearance from the precinct commander, a hurdle the detective didn’t relish. Heat scanned across the bull pen into the PC’s glass office that looked out onto her squad. The glass also let the squad look in and had the effect of a creating a life-sized diorama out of that movie Night at the Museum. Captain Irons was inside the exhibit, hanging his jacket on a wooden hanger. Heat knew he was next going to go through his ritual of tugging the fabric of his white uniform shirt, and he did-all in his constant quest to eliminate button pucker on the gut that lipped over his low-slung belt.

“Excuse me, Captain,” said Heat at his door. “A word?” True to form, Wallace “Wally” Irons paused before he invited her in, as if he were searching for a reason not to but had come up empty. He didn’t ask her to sit, which was fine with Nikki. Every time she sat across the desk from him, all she could do was envision the wonderful man who had occupied that chair until he got killed and Irons, a career administrator, got tapped to replace him. Captain Irons was no Captain Montrose, and Heat bet both cops in that room knew it.

Adding further awkwardness to the dynamic, the top brass at One Police Plaza had offered her Wally Irons’s job after she passed her exams for lieutenant with record scores. But Heat got soured by the ugly departmental politics surrounding the whole process. It made her realize how much she would miss the street, so Nikki not only declined taking Irons’s command from him but passed on the gold bar, too. Yet the fact that she had come a hairsbreadth from being the one on the other side of that desk made the unspoken friction between the detective and her commander loud and clear. From her perspective, he was an organizational survivor concerned more with career than justice, someone she constantly had to out-think or out-maneuver to get the job done right. For Irons, Nikki Heat was his Faustian bargain. She was a detective of incredible value whose case clearances made his CompStat numbers look hot ‘n’ juicy downtown, but that same damned competency also diminished him. In short, Nikki Heat represented a daily reminder of everything he was not. Ochoa had told her he recently overheard Irons whisper to Detective Hinesburg in the kitchen, “Know what it’s like having Heat around? It’s like a football team with two head coaches.” Nikki shrugged it off and reminded Ochoa she wasn’t one for the gossip mill. Besides, she’d kind of known that without him telling her. To smell the paranoia you didn’t have to be much of a detective. Kind of like Irons.