Richard Castle: Heat Rises

She reached for the bell, but before she could press it, she saw a small head through the stained glass window in the door and it opened, revealing a minute woman in her late sixties.

Nikki referred to her notes from the RTCC message. “Good morning, are you Lydia Borelli?”

“Yes, and you’re with the police, I can tell.”

After they showed ID and introduced themselves, Nikki said, “And it was you who called about Father Graf?”

“Oh, I’ve been worried sick. Come in, please.” The housekeeper’s lips were quaking and her hands fluttered nervously. She missed the doorknob on her first attempt to pull the door closed. “Did you find him? Is he all right?”

“Mrs. Borelli, do you have a recent photo I could look at?”

“Of Father? Well, I’m sure somewhere… I know.”

She led them over thick rugs that muted their footfalls through the living room and into the pastor’s adjoining study. On the shelves of the built-in above the desk several photos in glass frames were perched between books and knickknacks. The housekeeper took one down, swiping her finger along the top of the frame to dust it before she handed it over. “This is from last summer.”

Heat and Detective Feller stood beside each other to examine it. The shot was taken at some sort of protest rally and showed a priest and three Hispanic protesters, with arms linked, leading a march behind a banner. Father Graf’s face, frozen in mid-recitation of a chant, was definitely the same as the one on the corpse at Pleasure Bound.

The housekeeper took the news stoically, blessing herself with the sign of the cross and then lowering her head in silent prayer. When she was done, blood vessels showed through her temples and tears streamed down her cheeks. There were tissues on the end table near the couch. Nikki offered her the box and she took some.

“How did it happen?” she asked, staring down at the tissues in her hands.

Fragile as the woman appeared, Heat thought better of giving her the details at that moment about the priest’s death in a BDSM torture and humiliation dungeon. “We’re still investigating that.”

Then she looked up. “Did he suffer?”

Detective Feller squinted at Nikki and turned away to hide his face, suddenly making himself busy replacing the photo on the shelf.

“We’ll have more details after the coroner’s report,” answered Nikki, hoping her dodge was artful enough to be bought. “We know this is a loss for you, but in a while, not just now, we’re going to need to ask you a few questions to help us.”

“Certainly, anything you need.”

“What would be helpful now, Mrs. Borelli, is if we could look through the rectory. You know, search through his papers, his bedroom.”

“His closet,” said Feller.

Nikki moved forward. “We want to look for anything that would help us find out who did this.”

The housekeeper gave her a puzzled look. “Again?”

“I said, we’d like to search the-”

“I heard what you said. I mean, you need to search again?”

Heat leaned closer to the woman. “Are you saying someone searched here already?”

“Yes. Last night, another policeman. He said he was following up on my missing person report.”

“Oh, of course, sometimes we cross signals,” said Nikki. That could well be the case, but her uneasiness was growing. She caught a look from Feller that said his antenna was up, too. “May I ask who this policeman was?”

“I forgot his name. He said it, but I was so upset. Senior moment.” She chuckled and then stifled a sob. “He did show me a badge like yours, so I let him roam free. I watched television while he looked around.”

“Well, I’m sure he filed a report.” Nikki flipped open her spiral reporter’s notebook. “Maybe I could cut through some red tape if you described him.”

“Sure. Tall. Black, or do I say Afro-American these days? Very pleasant, had a kind face. Bald. Oh, and a little birthmark or mole or something right here.” She tapped her cheek.

Heat stopped writing and capped her stick pen. She had all she needed. The housekeeper had just described Captain Montrose.

Detective Heat wasn’t sure which she would prefer, to come into the station house and find Captain Montrose in his office so she could ask him about his visit to the rectory the night before or to find his executive chair empty and be spared the meeting for a while. As it happened, that morning, like so many others, she was the one to flick the lights on in the Homicide bull pen. The skipper’s office was locked and dark behind the glass wall that gave him a view of the squad room. Her feelings upon seeing his office empty answered her question about preference; it disappointed her. Nikki wasn’t a procrastinator, and especially when a subject was uncomfortable, her instinct was to get the noise out early and then deal.

She told herself this was all about nothing, and all that was needed was to clear the air. On its face, the captain’s stop at Our Lady of the Innocents was not inappropriate. A missing persons report for a resident of the precinct gave legitimate cause to speak to the woman who filed it. That was standard police procedure.

What was not standard was for the commander of the precinct to handle a call that usually fell to a Detective-3, or even an experienced uniform. And to conduct a search-alone-was, again, not unheard of but still unusual.

An hour before, Heat and Detective Feller had gloved up and made their own walk through the premises and found no signs of struggle, breakage, bloodstains, threat mail, or anything out of the ordinary to their eyes. The Evidence Collection Unit would be more thorough, and, as they waited for ECU to arrive, Nikki was relieved that Feller had the discretion not to say anything, even though it was all over his face. She knew what he was thinking. Montrose, taking heavy fire from his bosses and under potential investigation by Internal Affairs for allegations unknown, had deviated from standard procedure and solo snooped the home of a torture vic the night he died. When she dropped Feller off at the 86th Street subway stop all he said to her was “Good luck… Lieutenant Heat.”

Especially since she was the first one in the bull pen that morning, Nikki would have preferred to have been able to catch Montrose early and get him alone. In the break room she speed-dialed him from her cell phone while she poured milk on her cereal. “Cap, it’s Heat. 7:29,” she said to his voice mail. “Give me a callback when you can.” Short and uncluttered. He’d know she would only call if it was important.

She carried her cardboard bowl of Mini-Wheats back to her desk, and while she ate in silence. Nikki felt the weight of the month of mornings she had faced without Rook. She looked at her watch again. The hands had advanced, but that damned calendar hadn’t budged.

She wondered what he was doing at that moment. Nikki envisioned Rook sitting on an ammo crate in the shade of a Quonset hut at a remote jungle airstrip. Colombia or Mexico, by the itinerary he had sketched out before he kissed her good-bye at her apartment door. After she locked up, she raced to her bay window and waited there, watching vapor trail from the tailpipe of his waiting town car, wanting one last glimpse of him before he dissolved. She felt a glow inside at the memory of him stopping just before he got in the backseat. Rook had turned and blown a kiss up her way. Now that picture had faded to a feeling. The vision was replaced by her imagined one of Rook in rough country, swatting mosquitoes, jotting names of shadowy gun runners in his Moleskine. He was no doubt unshowered, beardy with sweat moons. She wanted him.

Heat’s phone buzzed with a text from Captain Montrose. “@1PP. In touch when I get sprung.” True to form, he was stuck downtown at headquarters for his ritual precinct commander accountability meeting. It made Nikki reflect on the downside of her impending promotion. One rung too many and your head shows over the parapet and becomes a big, fat target.