Richard Castle: Frozen Heat

“Any idea what was in it?” asked Rhymer.

“None. I never even touched it.”

Detective Feller joined them. “Any guess who Nicole left it for?”

Heat bobbed her head side to side. “I would only be guessing.” Although Nikki did have one idea she would keep to herself.

Detectives Malcolm and Reynolds came into the bull pen with fresh news from Forensics. The blood traces in the cargo hold of Carter Damon’s van matched Nicole Bernardin’s type. “They’re running it at the DNA lab for confirmation,” said Reynolds. “But I’d bet we hear a ding, for sure.”

Malcolm added, “Carpet fibers match positive for Damon’s work boots. And, even though there’s more fingerprints on that vehicle than an airport lap dancer, they also managed to isolate three big hits: Damon, Salena, and Petar.”

Behind them they heard raised voices and a door slam and all turned toward the glass office to see Captain Irons in a muffled shouting match with Detective Hinesburg, whose mascara had raccooned down the sides of her cheeks. “Trouble in the diorama,” said Feller.

“You guys didn’t see this morning’s Ledger?” asked Reynolds. “ Metro column was all about wondering how a prisoner could die in custody.”

Ochoa said, “All the papers are on that.”

“Yeah, but Tam Svejda has a source who says one of the detectives dropped the ball on identifying Salena Kaye from surveillance video.”

“And we know who that source is, don’t we?” said Feller. “The survivor.”

Ochoa agreed. “Hey, if Wally’d knock a kid over to get on camera, why wouldn’t he save his ass by throwing Sharon Hinesburg under the bus?”

“Or, in this case, under the pressurized gas truck,” added Rook.

Heat cleared her throat. “Much as you know I love forming a gossip circle, maybe we could keep our heads in the game and get back to work?” But as they all returned to their desks, her own gaze drifted to the glass office and she secretly hoped if Hinesburg didn’t get transferred, at least she’d get a nice, fat suspension.

Rook joined her. “I’m going to head out. I have some work of my own to do. Outside stuff. No big deal.”

“Liar. You’re going to work this up as your next article, aren’t you?”

“All right,” he said, “as long as you’re forcing my hand, my editor at First Press e-mailed me to say that they’re going to do a major launch for a new online version of the magazine and think an exclusive on this case would be a perfect cover story to premiere on the new website.”

“And you know how much I loved the last article.”

“I promise, nothing about your sexual prowess, strictly facts.”

“Pants on fire.”

“Let me put this another way,” he said. “Would you prefer I do the article of record, or Tam Svejda?”

She didn’t hesitate. “Get crackin’, writer boy.”

“You won’t be sorry.”

“I already am.”

“Can I buy you lunch later?”

She lowered her eyes from his. “You go on. I’ve got something to do around lunchtime.” When he studied her, deciding whether to ask what it might be, she said, “Go on. I’ll see you at my place after work tonight.”

When she got to the door, she put her ear to it and heard nothing inside. Nikki rapped lightly to make sure the place was empty, and when nobody answered, she quietly slipped in and twisted the lock on the knob.

Taking care not to disturb Detective Raley’s screening notes that were stacked in neat piles along the counter in front of the monitor, she sat behind the console in the little closet he had converted to his surveillance media kingdom. Heat smiled when she saw the cardboard Burger King crown she had awarded to him in a squad meeting after he had found the security cam footage of a gigolo’s street abduction last winter. Then she took a memory key out of her pocket, plugged it into the USB port, and put on the earphones.

Nikki didn’t know how many times over ten years she had listened to the audio of her mother’s murder. Perhaps twenty? First, she had made a crude dub of it by holding a dictation recorder beside the answering machine before Detective Damon could take the mini cassette from the apartment. The quality was poor so, when she became a detective, Heat wrote herself a pass into the Property Room and got the phone cassette copied as a digital file. That WAV sounded much cleaner, yet with all the times she had listened to it, straining to analyze the muffled voice of the killer in the background, she had never gotten closer to identifying it.

She always did it in secret because she knew it would seem ghoulish to anyone who didn’t know she was only doing a clinical playback. This was a search for clues, not an obsession with reliving the event. That’s what she told herself, anyway, and felt it to be true. Her focus was on background, not foreground. She especially hated hearing her own voice on it, and always-every single time-stopped the audio just before it picked up her coming into the apartment and screaming.

That was too much to bear.

Of all the times she had listened to it, though, this was the first time she had knowing that the muffled voice was Petar’s.

Homicide 101. In any murder case, the likely killer is close in. You clear husbands, wives, exes, common-laws, estrangeds, children, siblings, and relatives before you move on to the other likelies. Beyond her father, they looked for boyfriends in her mother’s life but not in Nikki’s. But then, who was the lead investigator but Carter Damon, Petar’s accomplice-after-the-fact and obstructionist-for-hire.

Nikki listened again and yet listened anew. She heard the familiar small talk with her mother about spices, the checking of the fridge, her screams, and the dropped phone. The mumbled voice of a man. She paused and played it back. And then she played that section back again and again.

At straight-up noon, Heat sat on the twelfth floor, in the tranquil room on York Avenue, at the session she’d booked that morning with Lon King, Ph. D. Nikki told the department psychologist about her history with the recording and that, for the first time ever that day, when she listened to it, she heard Petar.

“And why is this something you want to focus on, this recording?”

“I guess to ask if I could have been in denial.”

“That’s always possible, but I wonder if your curiosity goes deeper.”

“See, this is the part I hate.”

He smiled. “They all do, at first.” Then, he continued, “I don’t care how resilient you are, Nikki, you have a lot to deal with here.”

“That’s why I called you.”

“I’m certain you are not only reliving trauma and loss, but also experiencing a profound sense of anger and betrayal. Not to mention confusion about your own choices and instincts. As a detective, about crime. As a woman, about men.”

Nikki sat back and rested her neck against the cushion. As she stared at the unblemished whiteness of the ceiling, she tried to wish away the confusion, to grab the handle on the sense of order she’d held just a day before. “I feel like I had the rug pulled. Not just on the case, but on what I thought my own life was. What I thought love was. It makes me worry about what I can trust.”

“And for you, I know trust is paramount. Mistrust feels… well, it’s chaotic.”

“Yes,” she said, but it came out in breath without resonance. “Which is what I feel now. I always envisioned solving my mom’s murder would be clean and neat. Now all I feel is…” She swirled a finger like a cyclone.

“I’m sure. Especially with the betrayal of your intimacy. But could part of it also be because your life has been so defined by this case you don’t know who you are if it’s over?”