Richard Castle - Frozen Heat

“I’m sorry for your loss” had been his first words. Nikki, nineteen years old then, looked up at the floating head from where she sat in the living room chair beside the piano. She hadn’t even noticed him approach. Lost in a fog, she had been transfixed by her mother’s blood, still damp but cooled on the thighs of her jeans from when Nikki had cradled her body on the kitchen floor until the paramedics and the policewoman finally coaxed her away. As Detective Damon had introduced himself, camera flashes from the kitchen strobed behind him, each one making her flinch. When he had told her he would be the detective investigating this crime, the defining word-”crime”-came punctuated, like chain lightning, by a double strobe that jolted her, ripping away her haze, and hurtled her into an alertness, a hyper-clarity, that had made every minute detail store itself like digital video. She had noticed his gold shield clipped to the breast pocket of his sport coat, but instead of a dress shirt underneath, he had worn an old, stained Jets tee with a threadbare collar, as if he had rushed there from home, his Thanksgiving eve turned upside-down by a phone call from Dispatch at the Thirteenth Precinct. Nine-one-one from a Gramercy Park apartment. Units responding. Report probable homicide. Suspect or suspects fled before discovery.

Nikki had been two blocks away, in the spice aisle of the Morton Williams supermarket, when it happened. In hindsight, it always seemed so trivial, so banal, to be running her fingertip along the alphabetical row of jars, her biggest problem in the world trying to find cinnamon sticks-sticks, not ground-while her mother was drawing her last breaths. Elated to find them, she had cell-phoned to do a victory dance and to ask if she needed anything else. After six rings the answering machine grabbed the call. “Hello, this is Cynthia Heat. I’m unable to come to-” and then a squeal of feedback as her mother picked up. She’d been kneading crust for the pies they were baking and had to wipe the butter off her hands before she could get to the phone. And, as usual, she didn’t know how to turn off the answering machine without disconnecting, so she let it roll, recording everything while Nikki listened.

“I may need evaporated milk. I have an open can in the fridge, let me see how much is left.” Then a crash of glass followed by her mother’s scream. Nikki had called out to her loud enough to turn heads in the market. Her mother hadn’t answered her, only screamed again, and the phone dropped, smacking onto the floor. By then Nikki had bolted from the market, forcing open the in door with all her strength, dodging cars across Park Avenue South, calling to her mother, begging her to speak to her. In the background, she had heard the muffled voice of a man and a brief scuffle. Then her mother had whimpered, and her body dropped hard beside the phone, followed by the clang of a knife also hitting the floor. Then Nikki heard suction, as the refrigerator door opened. The wine bottles, chilling on the door for their Thanksgiving feast, had tinkled. Then she heard the snap and hiss of a soda can popping open. A pause, then footsteps walking away, followed by silence. She still had a block to go when she heard her mother’s weak moan, and her last word. “Nikki…”

“Thank you for coming on short notice,” said Rook.

“You kidding? Whatever I can do.” He glanced at Nikki again. “I will admit, though, this is tough for me.” He drank down another swallow of his cocktail, observing her over the rim. Nikki wondered if Carter Damon was tasting failure.

“Me, too,” she said.

Damon set down his glass. “Sure, I bet it’s ten times worse for you. But as a cop yourself now, you’ve got to know how it gnaws at you. The ones you never solved. They keep you awake.”

Nikki gave him the best smile she could muster and said, “They do,” letting her neutral reply politely acknowledge a fellow detective’s pain over justice left unserved, without letting him off too easy for not getting the job done.

Her response had an effect. His face ashed and his attention went to Rook. “Is this meeting about an article? You going to write a story about this case? Because I think you pretty much covered it in the one you did a couple months ago.” There it was again. How Nikki hated that article. Favorably as it portrayed her, as one of the city’s top homicide investigators, CRIME WAVE MEETS HEAT WAVE, Jameson Rook’s cover profile for a major national magazine, gave Heat fifteen minutes she wanted back. Damon must have clocked the disdain in Nikki’s expression, and he lobbied her, saying, “It’s not like there’s anything new to bring to the party.”

“Actually, there is,” said Rook.

The ex-cop’s shoulders drew back, and he raised his head a little taller as he took the writer’s measure, too experienced, too wary to buy some journalist at face value. But when he saw Detective Heat’s nod of affirmation, he said, “Well, hot damn. Seriously?” He smiled to himself. “You know, they say don’t cash out, never give up hope…”

Carter Damon’s words rang hollow to Nikki because he had done exactly both. But she hadn’t come there to cast blame. Rook’s strategy to revisit history with fresh eyes held enough merit for her to play it out. So she briefed the ex-lead on the developments of the morning: the Jane Doe knife vic in her mom’s suitcase. He perked up with every detail, nodding with his full body. When she finished, he said, “You know, I remember logging that stolen luggage.” He paused while the waiter took drink orders. Nikki asked for a Pellegrino and Rook a Diet Coke. Damon pushed his unfinished Bloody Mary across the red-and-white checked tablecloth and said, “Coffee, black,” and the instant the waiter cleared earshot, he inclined his head back to stare at the ceiling and recite from memory. “Large American Tourister, late seventies vintage. Blue-gray hardside with a chrome T-bar pull handle and two wheels.” He tilted back to Rook, since he knew Nikki knew the rest. “We figured it for carrying the haul from the burglary.”

Rook asked, “Is that where you left it, as a homicide to cover an apartment burglary?”

Damon shrugged. “Only thing that made sense.” But then, when Rook peeled the elastic band from around his black Moleskine to take notes, the ex-detective bristled and said, “This isn’t for an article.” When they both shook no, he cleared his throat, no doubt relieved he wouldn’t appear in print as the cop who couldn’t bring it home. “There had been a burglary along with it.”

“When?” asked Rook. “Nikki got back to the apartment within minutes of the murder.”

“Whoever did the burglary did it before. The theft came from the back of the apartment, the master bedroom and the second bedroom-slash-home office. Could have even been done while the two ladies were in the kitchen. They had the mixer going, the TV on, busy talking and whatnot. But my money is it came down during the substantial time gap after she left for the market.”

Rook turned to Nikki, having heard this for the first time. “I took a walk.” The muscles tightened in her neck. “That’s all. It was a nice night. The weather was mild for then, and so I just walked for about a half hour.” She crossed her arms and turned profile to him, clearly shutting down that subject.

“What got stolen?”

“It’s all in the report,” said Damon. “She has a copy.”

“Broad strokes,” said Rook.

“Some jewelry and small decorative pieces, you know, antique silver and gold. Cash. And the desk and files got a good cleaning out.”

Rook asked, “How common is that? Jewelry, gold, and papers from a desk?”

“It’s different. But not unheard of. Could have been an identity thief going for socials, passports, and like that. Or just an amateur doing a quick grab to sort later.” He picked up on the skeptical glance Rook gave Nikki and said, “Hey, we’d ruled out everything else.”