Nikki Heat: Deadly Heat Part 23

"I... Wha... Seriously?"

"I knew you would listen to the recording of Salena's phone call. It's how you knew to come here. But just in case, I left the pad on my desk with the time and place of our meeting."

"You baited me?"

"It's only bait if you take it. Right, Glen?"

"f.u.c.k yourself."

Hinesburg said, "This is nuts. I came here to back you up."

"Sure, you did. Very proactive of you for a change, Sharon."

"OK, know what I think? You need to stop. It's one thing not to like me, but-"

"This isn't because I don't like you."

"Then why?"

"It's because you're the mole." Hinesburg's mouth opened to protest some more, but nothing came out. Nikki leveled her gaze at her and said, "I saw you on video at the Coney Crest, Sharon. Salena's hideout."

"Yuh. Because you told me to go there." Hinesburg sounded worse than unconvincing. She sounded chin-deep in quicksand.

"I watched the security video from that place. Know what got my antenna up first? When you talked to the manager, you never flashed tin and you never showed him the picture of Salena Kaye." Hinesburg started to talk, but Nikki pressed forward, cutting her off. "That got my attention, but I could even dismiss that as part of your sloppy work habits. Trust me, the least of your worries. But I let the video roll and I saw you on the other cam. Sharon, you went up to the second floor."

"That does not mean anything."

"No, but then I kept watching. And when you came down you were putting something in your bag. It looked just like a garage door opener. But it wasn't, was it, Sharon? It was the remote control for the bomb that killed Tyler Wynn, wasn't it? That's why you showed up uninvited for that raid, to get close enough to trigger it."

Hinesburg didn't reply. Her eyes began to fill. She stared into nothingness. Heat waved her gun toward the blacktop. "a.s.sume the position. Don't make this worse for yourself than it is."

Not so much defiant as immobile, Hinesburg stayed put. Her lip began to quiver. "They came to me one day and asked me to stay close to you."

"And do what? Screw up my investigation?"

"No, just to keep track. Let them know what you were doing. And when. That was all." Even in the dim light Nikki could see Hinesburg's features draw slack under shame's gravity. Heat wondered, was Sharon's incompetence real or, as the playwright said, was she just being wise enough to play the fool? "I never knew it would go this far. When people started dying, I freaked. Nikki, do you have any idea how much pressure I've been under?"

At that point Heat went with fool.

"Then they started asking me to do more than just inform. When I saw what happened to other people, I didn't dare say no. They had me slow down the investigation wherever I could. And then warn them when you were coming on a raid. And what did I get for all my stress? A few thousand extra and the joy of f.u.c.king Wally Irons to keep my job." She wiped away a clear string of snot. "They'll try to kill me, too, you know." Wheels started turning. "I want protection."

Heat had heard those very words a few hours before. From the corpse staring out at them from the rear seat of the chopper.

"Sharon, the bomb you triggered killed a man."

"I'll deal. I know stuff."

"Start now. When and where's the bioterror event?"

"That, I don't know. Honest."

"Who's running it? Who's running you?" Sirens grew in the near distance. "Now would look better for you, Sharon."

Glen Windsor's play came so suddenly she found herself halfway to the ground before she realized he'd made his move. She didn't see it, but figured later that it must have been some kind of break-dancer's body pop. He bounced his chest off the tarmac and flung his calves at the back of Heat's knees, taking her down. She dropped the flashlight, but held on to her gun. When she came up, he was running toward the river full speed with his hands cuffed behind him.

Nikki made a fast check of Hinesburg. She stood nearby but had the rabbit look in her eyes. Torn, Heat turned back to Windsor, approaching the tail of the Sikorsky, steps from diving into the water. She braced, called, "Stop, or I'll shoot," then fired low, planting one in his calf. He crumpled, moaning on the tarmac against the red and white safety curb at the river's edge.

A voice behind her shouted, "Heat, gun!" Nikki hit the deck at the same time she heard the distinctive crack of a .40-caliber. She rolled, presenting the smallest target to the shot direction, and braced to fire. But she held.

In the shadows, she recognized Special Agent Callan standing over Sharon Hinesburg, who was sprawled on the blacktop under the nose of the copter. "Clear," he called. Strobing lights from police cruisers and plain wraps flashed outside the gate and reflected off the badges of unis rushing toward them. Heat got up, dragged Glen Windsor away from the river's edge, and dropped him hard. Then she ran to Callan, getting there just as he kicked a pistol away from Hinesburg's hand. In his own he held his P226 Elite. Nikki could still smell gunpowder.

"She was going to back-shoot you," he said. "You're f.u.c.king lucky I made it."

Heat told the uniforms, "Get paramedics, two down. Hurry." She knelt beside Hinesburg. She had a fat hole in her temple.

Her eyes looked just like Salena Kaye's.

Dry lightning sparked to the north when Heat finished her debrief with the shooting team. Lauren Parry had wrapped up her exams of Salena Kaye and Sharon Hinesburg, preliminarily finding both causes of death obvious, but worthy of follow-up. The ME told Nikki she'd pull an all-nighter and perform the postmortems so she could have the findings first thing in the morning.

She found Bart Callan sitting with his elbows on his knees on the short wooden ramp that led from the tarmac to the boarding area of the modular. He stared blankly at the sheet over Hinesburg's body and the numbered yellow marker the shooting team had placed beside his ejected casing. He didn't acknowledge Heat. She stood beside him and followed his gaze, then said, "Tough to take someone out. Especially a cop."

He held up the evidence bag with the pistol inside it. "Hinesburg's backup piece. Mini Glock Twenty-six. Nine millimeters to spoil your day." He set the bag down on the ramp between his shoes. "I can live with the kill. Lose a cop, save a cop."

She put a hand on his shoulder. "Thank you."

He gave the shortest nod and said, "Guess you had your hands too full to pat her down."

"You could say my attention became somewhat divided by his escape attempt." She realized her palm still rested on him and drew it away. "You got here fast, thank G.o.d. I'd barely put out the ten-thirteen."

"I was already en route." When he saw her reaction, he said, "Soon as I heard about your meet, I thought I'd better get over here and cover your idiotic b.u.t.t. Any complaints?"

"None." Then she asked, "Heard about it how?"

"Yardley Bell told me."

"Agent Bell? How did she know?"

He picked up the evidence bag and stood. "Didn't ask. I just a.s.sumed she heard it from your boyfriend."

Rook spun through the revolving door at the entrance to Bellevue Hospital and shouted her name as the door spit him out into the lobby. "Nikki!" echoed in the cavernous atrium renovators had built five years before, encasing the old stone hospital in gla.s.s like a living museum display. When he reached her, Rook grabbed Heat in his arms, clinging tight, whispering in her ear, "Holy s.h.i.t, Nik, sometimes you scare the h.e.l.l out of me." When they kissed, he sensed her reserve and studied her. "You OK?"

She considered a moment and let it go at "Been a h.e.l.l of a night. Glen Windsor is upstairs getting his calf sewn up. Soon as he's out, he's mine to interrogate."

They found a couch to wait on in the Hospital PD Squad Room near the ER, and she bulleted the sequence of events, first going back to how she knew from the sound of Salena Kaye's phone call something was up; how she sounded either drugged or under duress, and how she'd even slipped Heat a hidden message.

"But what gave you the idea to connect her to Rainbow?"

"That by itself would have been a Jameson-esque leap, but it's been bugging me how quickly Kaye just vanished off the street when I chased her out of that deli."

"After my Jameson-esque takedown?"

"What have I started?" She pressed her forefinger on his lips and continued, explaining the DMV trace on the silver minivan that made Glen Windsor a probable. "I couldn't be certain, but I figured, if he was setting me up, I could get there early enough and get in position to take him."

"And if it hadn't been a setup by Rainbow?"

"Then, worst-case scenario, I could still apprehend Salena Kaye."

He processed it and said, "Well done. Very Nikki-esque."

"Don't even."

"Hinesburg, though... Man."

"I have to admit, I feel sort of blindsided, too. I guess I started to have inklings that I must have denied-I mean she was a flake-but that security video from Coney Crest was the big domino, knocking down all the others. Every one of her cute little screwups and oversights started looking more like sabotage: telling me Wynn's bomb was a timer when it was a remote..."

"Because she triggered it..."

"s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g up the tipster call from the rent-a-car guy who spotted Salena Kaye..."

"So she could warn her..."

"And on and on."

"It's ingenious. Incompetence masking subterfuge. And there she was, hiding in plain sight in the middle of your bull pen." He reflected and said, "One good thing. You flushed out the mole. No more looking over your shoulder before you say something."

"I sure hope not." She shaded that thought and got his attention.

"What?"

"Know how Callan got to the heliport so fast? Yardley Bell told him about my meet."

He thought about that. "How would Yardley know?"

Nikki gave him an appraising look. "You tell me."

"Wait, you don't think I-Nikki, seriously?" She said nothing, one part interrogation technique, the other not wanting to think it was so. "Hey, I will admit to a lot of things. Yes, I went to Nice with her. Yes, I told her when I was trying to track down Tyler Wynn through his... through his wine and custom shoe purchases."

"And about the jerk chicken pop-up stores."

"Yes. But when you tell me something is between us, it stays between us."

"Then how did Yardley know?"

"No clue. But I can look you square in the eye and tell you it wasn't me?"

They held each other's stare. After a few seconds her phone buzzed with a text.

"Is that my lie detector result?" he asked.

"Don't need one. Lucky for you, pal, I trust you." She held up the phone. "Glen Windsor's out of surgery. Want to come?"

"You bet." Rook stood up and got out his cell. He gave Heat a sly grin and said, "Let me call Yardley first."

The uniform stationed outside Glen Windsor's private room on the second floor gave Rook an appraising once-over as they arrived just before midnight. "It's all right, she's with me, Officer," Rook said. The cop actually laughed and, following Heat's nod, gestured them both to pa.s.s.

They found the prisoner with his bandaged leg up on a pillow, watching NY1 news on the overhead. He didn't seem surprised by Heat's visit but said, "Wow, Jameson Rook, too. Am I going to be featured in your next article?"

"Absolutely. I'm doing one on excrement."

"You'll pardon me if I don't get up." He tugged at the manacle that cuffed him to the bed rail. "But I can still wave h.e.l.lo." He gave Rook the finger and laughed. Nikki switched off the TV. "Hey, come on, I'm the lead story. I want to see it again."

"You'll be hearing about it for some time, Windsor," she said.

Rook added, "Like the rest of your life."

"Hey, why the disrespect, Rook? It's not like you're the one I was trying to kill." He grinned. "Allegedly."

As Heat drew over a chair she eye-signaled Rook to ease up, and he took a spot leaning his shoulder against the doorjamb. "How's the leg?" she asked Windsor.

"You need some time on the range to requalify, Detective."

"I put it right where I wanted it, believe me. If I'd killed you, we never could have had this chance to chat." She took a seat and gave him some silence in an attempt to claim the meeting. Detective Rhymer had e-mailed Windsor's file to her and Nikki opened the printout she'd made downstairs at Hospital PD. "Our detectives turned up some interesting things at your apartment."

"Yeah?"

"Let's start with the electronic box that alters voice pitch over the phone."

Windsor scoffed. "I only use that to order pizzas. You'd be surprised how fast they deliver when Darth Vader places the call."

Nikki decided to ignore the glib distractions and continued. "In your desk they found numerous files of clippings about me. Not just that cover story from last fall's magazine-heavily underlined and highlighted. Also articles about cases I've worked over the past few years and photos of me-and not clipped. We checked your camera. They were taken by you without my knowledge. Pictures of me in the supermarket, pictures of me jogging, pictures of me taken through windows into my apartment."

"What can I say? I'm a fan."

"Your computer history shows a ton of searches for me, for Rook, and others in my life, including my parents, coworkers, even criminals I have arrested."

"Detective, everybody clips articles and searches s.h.i.t that interests them on their computers. It's not like I have this secret closet with your pictures plastered all over it."

"No, that would be nutty," said Rook. Nikki flattened him with a glower, and he stared at the floor.

When Heat turned back to Windsor, he said, "He doesn't get it. Calling it nutty."

"What do you call it?" she asked.

"Preparation." He held her gaze a moment, letting that settle before he continued. "I learned about you in his first article. You know, Crime Wave Meets Heat Wave? I read it over and over and thought, This one... this detective... is different. A challenge." The words twisted Heat's solar plexus as she recalled the other detectives Windsor had engaged over the years. And killed. Now she was designated as "this one." He watched her from his pillow and must have known exactly what she was processing because he said, "I decided last fall I would test myself with you, but it wasn't until I saw the online teases for Rook's new article about you that I said I'd better get moving."

He stopped there, leaving Nikki time to reflect on a psychopath's cla.s.sic need to share-or even claim-the limelight of his fixation. "Tell me what you mean by that, to get moving."

"I wanted to test you when the article came out. When you had everyone's attention. When there'd be heat around Nikki." He grinned. "Tell me I don't have a poet's touch."