Heat Wave

The two squeezed around each other as they always had in the New York apartment-sized kitchen that night, making pies for the next day. Over tandem rolling pins and chilled dough, Nikki defended her desire to change majors from English to Theater. Where were the ci

Nikki felt like a Lotto wi

And then Nikki heard glass crash. And her mother’s scream. Her limbs went weak and she called for her mom. Heads turned from the check stands. Another scream. As she heard the phone on the other end drop, Nikki dropped the jar of ci

FOUR

Nikki didn’t go home following the movie after all. She stood on the sidewalk in the warm, spongy air of the summer night looking up at her apartment, the one where she had lived as a girl and that she had left to go to college in Boston, and then left again on an errand to buy ci

She weighed texting Don, to see if her combat trainer was up for a beer and some close-quarter bedroom grapples, against the alternative of letting some late night comic in a suit help her escape without the crowded bathroom in the morning. There was another alternative.

Twenty minutes later, in her empty precinct squad room, the detective swiveled in her chair to contemplate the whiteboard. She already had it burnished in her head, all the elements-to-date pasted and scrawled inside that frame which did not yet reveal a picture: the list of fingerprint matches; the green five-by-seven index card with its bullet points of Kimberly Starr’s alibis and prior lives; photos of Matthew Starr’s body where he hit the sidewalk; photos from the M.E. of the punch bruising on Starr’s torso with the distinctive hexagonal mark left by a ring.

She rose and walked up to the ring mark photo. More than studying its size and shape, the detective listened to it, knowing that at any time any piece of evidence could gain a voice. This photo, above all other puzzle pieces on the board, was whispering to her. It had been in her ear all day, and its whisper was the song that had drawn her to the squad room in the stillness of night so she could hear it clearly. What it whispered was a question: “Why would a killer who tossed a man over a balcony also beat him with nonlethal blows?” These bruises weren’t random contusions from any scuffle. They were precise and patterned, some even overlapping. Don, her combat boxing instructor, called it “painting” your opponent.

One of the first things Nikki Heat had implemented when she took command of her homicide unit was a system to facilitate information sharing. She logged on the server and opened the read-only file OCHOA. Scrolling through pages, she came to his witness interview with the doorman at the Guilford. Love that Ochoa, she thought. His keyboard skills are crap, but he took great notes and asked the right questions.

Q: Had vic lef bdg anytm drng curse of morng?

A: N.

Nikki closed Ochoa’s file and looked at the clock. She could text her boss, but he might not see it. Like if he was sleeping. Drumming her fingers on the phone was only making it later, so she punched his number. On the fourth ring Heat cleared her throat, preparing to leave a voice mail, but Montrose picked up. His hello was not sleepy and she could hear the TV blasting the weather forecast. “Hope it’s not too late to call, Captain.”

“If it is too late, it’s too late to hope. What’s up?”

“I came in to screen that surveillance cam video from the Guilford and it’s not here yet. Do you know where it is?”

Her boss covered the phone and said something muffled to his wife. When he came back to Nikki, the TV sound was off. He said, “I got a call tonight during di

“Do they have issues with their fellow tenants hurtling past their windows?”

“You trying to convince me? For them to give it up it will take a court order. I’m looking at the clock and thinking we’ll wait to find a judge to issue one in the morning.” He heard her sigh because she made sure he did. Heat couldn’t stand effectively losing another day waiting for a court order. “Nikki, get some sleep,” he said with his usual gentle touch. “We’ll get it for you sometime tomorrow.”

Of course the skipper was right. Waking a judge to cut a warrant was capital you spent on high-priority matters against a ticking clock. To most judges this was just another homicide, and she knew better than to push Captain Montrose to squander a chip like that. So she switched her desk lamp off.

Then she switched it back on. Rook was pals with a judge. Horace Simpson was a poker pal at the weekly game she always ducked when Rook invited her. Simpson was not as sexy a name drop as Jagger, but last she heard, none of the Stones was issuing warrants.

But hang on, she thought. Eager was one thing, owing a favor to Jameson Rook was another. And besides, she had overheard him boasting to Roach he had a di

So she picked up the phone and dialed Rook’s cell.

“Heat,” he said with no surprise. It was more a shout-out, like on Cheers when they’d holler, “Norm!” She listened for background noise, but why? Did she expect Ke

“Is this a bad time?”

“The caller ID says you’re at the precinct.” Evasion. Writer Monkey wasn’t answering her question. Maybe if she threatened the Zoo Lockup.

“A cop’s work is never done, and all that. Are you writing?”

“I’m in a town car. Just had an awesome meal at Balthazar.” Then silence. She had called to screw with him, how did her head end up being the one messed with?