Nikki Heat: Deadly Heat Part 24

Heat's temper sat one inch from breaking the surface, and she struggled not to lose it with this guy. But her objective-even more immediate than building a case against a serial killer-was only one thing: Nikki needed to learn whatever information he had tortured out of Salena Kaye so she could stop the bioterror plot. "Tell me about the conversation you had with the dead lady in the helicopter."

"Now? I really wanted to see Ferguson's monologue tonight."

Letting her rage explode wouldn't get her anywhere. She decided the time had come to get under his skin for a change. And Heat believed she knew the soft spot where the knife would go in.

As soon as Glen Windsor came on the radar as a suspect, she had unleashed Malcolm and Reynolds to do a biographical search on him. Heat held the results in her lap. She picked up the single page she hoped would tip the balance her way. "You like being a locksmith, Glen?"

"What's that supposed to mean? It's a job. It pays my way."

"Yeah, but you? A... locksmith?" Nikki had respect for every trade, but for this purpose, she put a s.h.i.+t stank on the job t.i.tle. He s.h.i.+fted slightly on the hospital bed and examined his fat bandage. "Not what you had in mind, was it?" His eyes flicked over when she played with the page in her hand. Nikki waited to milk the moment and said, "We did some research-yeah, we do computer searches, too-and know what popped up? You were dismissed from the NYPD Police Academy."

"That's ancient history," he blurted, not sounding like it was archive material, at all.

"Maybe so, but it's kind of interesting. According to records, you got bounced because you failed the psychological evaluation."

"That's a f.u.c.king rigged test." His breathing became more rapid. Wilding flashed in his eyes. "You ever seen that test?"

"I have," she answered quietly. "I took it myself. Pa.s.sed." She delivered that with a smile and let it sit there. "The thing about the psych eval? The deficient ones never think it's valid."

His manacles clanged against the stainless bar as he tried to sit up. "Hey, f.u.c.k you. Deficient, my a.s.s. I was too smart for those losers at the Academy. They were threatened by my special gifts and set me up to get bounced. Jealous s.h.i.+ts."

"Bet you would have made a great detective, otherwise."

"f.u.c.kin'-A right."

"Except I see the NYPD wasn't the only place you failed. I don't have all of them here, Glen, but there's a short list of you was.h.i.+ng out as an investigator at several top security firms and then a sort of descending curve of gigs until you landed at... locksmith." Then she added, "Oh, and security systems. So you did have that going to keep the dream alive."

"This is bulls.h.i.+t. I know what I can do. I know who I am. I know my destiny. I am smarter than all those a.s.sholes, and I've proved it."

Rook chimed in. "By ambus.h.i.+ng Bedbug Doug?"

"Hey, f.u.c.k you, too."

Heat didn't mind the gang pile this time. "Rook's got a point."

"The f.u.c.k he does."

"Is that what your destiny's all about?" she continued. "Sneaking up on innocent people pretending you're better than they are?"

"And smarter. Don't tell me you don't know that. I had to practically draw you a picture to keep you in the game."

"Oh, so you think I'm a loser, too."

His demeanor snap-s.h.i.+fted from defensive to pure manic. "No, no, no, Detective. You made it all... come to, I dunno... life. You brought my game to the next level."

"Well, game over, Glen," said Heat.

"Like h.e.l.l it is."

Nikki reached out and clattered his chains with her thumb and forefinger. Then she closed the file, slid her chair away, and started for the door. When she got there, Windsor shouted, "You want to talk about Salena Kaye?" Nikki stopped, and he said, "I know stuff. I learned s.h.i.+t about this bioterror plot."

Heat turned to Rook. "And Detective Windsor cracks his case."

When she turned away, Windsor called, "I got it all out of that b.i.t.c.h when I worked on her. And trust me, Heat, you'll want all of it."

She stayed by the door but said, "I'm listening."

"No. I want a deal first."

"Don't make me laugh, you're a serial killer."

"It's not supposed to end like this." He yelled and jerked at the wrist chains hard enough for the uniform to come in and make a check. After the uni left, Rainbow said, "You should have killed me, Heat. I deserve to go down in a blaze." Destiny again, she thought. He became contemplative. Then he said, "You know where the deals are. Come up with something. Like doing life in a s.h.i.+tty prison versus a nice one out of state, maybe in warm weather, for starters. California. Arizona."

"Clock's running, Windsor. You want to talk deal, you'd better give up something you learned about this terror plot."

He thought a short while, then calmly beckoned her over. When she stood beside him, he smiled and said, "When I'm ready. Come back tomorrow, I've had a hard day." Then he closed his eyes and rolled his face away as if going to sleep.

On the way downstairs, Heat turned to Rook. "Don't say it."

"You mean, 'Game not over'? 'Do not proceed to the exit'?"

"I hate you."

When Rook postponed their meeting with Puzzle Man, he had instructed him to hang loose. Now, as he and Nikki crossed the Bellevue lobby, he got out his cell to call him. Heat looked at her watch and said, "Now? These are drug dealer hours, he's not going to-"

Rook held up a palm to her. "Keith. Rook. Hey, puzzle me this. You still good to go?" He grinned and gave her a thumbs-up.

Heat's eyes burned from fatigue, and she felt so hungry that she was no longer hungry. But sleep would have to wait. "Can he meet us someplace they serve food?" she asked.

Tavern 29, walking distance for them, served all night, and Nikki craved one of their bacon burgers, which she ordered before she even sat down. A beer would have been perfect to go with it, but she didn't want to lose her edge, and so went for a seltzer. They were both finis.h.i.+ng their meals by the time Keith Tahoma strolled in, gray ponytail swaying, yakking from the door to their table about the awesome energy of New York freakin' City at night. Heat was more interested in what he held in his hands than his speed-talk. He carried a tan cardboard tube from an empty roll of paper towels.

He ordered a coffee, and when it came, he repeated his ritual of six sugars and an OCD paddle stir. Heat asked him if that was going to keep him awake, and he laughed, saying, "So far, so good."

Rook said, "Keith, I hate to put the squeeze on, but it's been a long one, and we're kind of eager to hear whatcha got."

"Oh, yeah. For sure." Nikki's energy level perked up as Puzzle Man brought the cardboard tube up from his lap and set it on the table. "Apologies for the delay, this was one tough nut."

"But you cracked it," said Heat, not really asking so much as hoping. Or willing.

His answer was to pat the tube gently and wink. "Now, just so you don't feel bad about not solving it yourselves, those little lines and squiggles were totally meaningless. I ran every cipher I could without success. And I know 'em all. Even invented a couple over the years. Then this morning, I'm sitting in the park, working my chess games, waiting for the other dopes to realize they're six moves from losing. I look up and see this bird flapping along. And I saw a jet, probably coming around to land at JFK, five thousand feet higher than the bird. But to me, it looked just like the two were going to collide. You see?"

They both shook their heads.

"You will. It was a visual trick. The optical overlay created a message in my brain." He stacked his hands flat before his eyes like pancakes.

Heat started to get there. "So you thought maybe all the pages could be overlaid, and this would be revealed."

"No," he said, then slapped the table and smiled. "Not all, but a few of the pages could be. After a fair amount of trial and error, I managed to find four pages of your mother's sheet music that, if I stacked them and held them up to a lightbulb like a shadow box, I got a message. It wasn't even in a cipher, it was right there in front of my eyes in the King's English. Hot d.a.m.n, I felt smart."

"Do you, um..." Nikki gestured to the cardboard tube.

" 'Deed I do." He presented it to her with a flourish.

Nikki took it from him, made a privacy survey of the tavern, and pulled the furled sheets of paper out of the tube. She unrolled them, squared the edges on her place mat, and then, with her heart pounding, held the four stacked sheets to the candle. In her mother's clean handwriting it read: Unlock the Dragon.

Her eyes went to the code breaker and then back to the message. Heat moved the pages, scanning them in front of the candle, hoping for more. "This is all it says?"

"That's all she wrote, pardon my French."

"May I?" asked Rook. She gave the sheets over to him, and he did the same thing, trying to scan for more text. While he held the pages to the light, Nikki thought about the Dragon. The word-obviously a code name-had first come into this case only days ago when the skyjacked helicopter pa.s.senger heard Salena Kaye call someone by that name on her cell phone. What had she said? "Dragon, it's me." So Dragon was Salena Kaye's controller. Also Tyler Wynn's, by his dying declaration. But now, in this code from the past, her mother mentioned him, too. All of which told Heat that the Dragon was as alive today as he had been eleven years ago.

Her mother had no way of knowing it would take so long for her daughter to get this message. But the code still left Nikki confused. And she sure didn't have another eleven years to figure it out.

She didn't even have eleven days.

Puzzle Man said, "You two seem a little less excited than I'd hoped you'd be."

"No, no," said Heat. "You did great, it's just..."

Rook finished the thought. "We don't know what it means."

"Well, that's an entirely different task," said Puzzle Man. "Times like these, I go back to the wisdom shared by my s.h.i.+'nali, the Windtalker. My grandfather used to tell me there's one code you can never break."

"What's that?" asked Nikki, holding the words to the light again.

"The one that's only known by two people. The sender and the receiver."

Cynthia Heat spoke to her daughter in the nonsensical way apparitions do in sleep. Nikki saw her as she had countless times over the last eleven years, mostly in the middle of the night, although sometimes at unbidden daytime moments as mundane as when she reached for her MetroCard on her way down to the subway or smiled at a New Yorker cartoon. Her mother usually spoke to her from her own pool of blood on the kitchen floor. Over the years she'd said many things to her, mostly as much non sequiturs as the appearances themselves. This time, from the leaden depths only Nikki's mattress seemed to possess, her mom sat playing her piano-the one in the room right up the hall-and spoke the same two words again and again like a video loop on an online avatar. Cindy Heat kept telling her daughter, "You know. You know. You know..."

A hand on Heat's shoulder nudged her awake. She blinked. Still dark. Rook sat beside her, holding out her ringing cell phone. Heat cleared her throat and said her name into it. Listened, then moaned.

"What?" asked Rook.

"He's out. Rainbow escaped."

Heat got to Bellevue in record time because she didn't have to get dressed. In her exhaustion at 2 A.M., Nikki had collapsed onto her bed still dressed. Four short hours later, she and Rook strode into Glen Windsor's room on the second floor of the hospital, both wearing the same clothes as the night before. She looked at the empty bed and said, "Somebody explain this to me." An NYPD uniformed officer standing with a pair of unis from Hospital Police lowered his eyes to the floor. She went to him. "What's your name?"

"Slaughter."

"Your first name."

"Nate."

She canted her head to put herself in his field of view. "Listen to me, Nate. I know this feels awful. But you've got to put it in your back pocket. This guy's very resourceful, so hold off on the blame. Just tell me how it came down."

Officer Slaughter said, "About one-thirty, the night nurse came in to take his temp. She didn't realize it till later, but she had a pair of reading gla.s.ses in her front pocket he must have boosted when she leaned over to check his dressing." The uniform indicated the eyegla.s.ses on the counter.

Rook bent over them. "Temple's been snapped off the frame."

"Yeah, we figure he used the metal end to pick his cuffs."

Rook said, "He didn't tear off somebody's face to use as a mask to get out, I hope." The three cops stared at him. "Spoiler alert: Silence of the Lambs?" Then he said, "Continue, Officer Slaughter."

"He overpowered an orderly when he came in, put on his scrubs, and waited for s.h.i.+ft change so he could walk out past me." The cop appealed to her, "I never saw him come in, so how could I know what he looked like?"

Alone in the elevator, Rook said to Nikki, "I'm sorry, but if your name's Slaughter, you ought to have a little more swing in your d.i.c.k. Just sayin'."

"Glad you're having such a good time," she said. "I've got twenty-four hours to stop a bioterror plot, we still have nothing to go on, and my best hope to get a lead is my d.a.m.ned locksmith serial killer who just escaped. And you want to joke?"

He paused and said, "I mean, if your name was Slaughter, wouldn't you at least hit the gym?"

Bellevue Hospital turfed to the Seventeenth Precinct, so on the cab ride uptown, Heat called Feller and a.s.signed him to become best friends with the One-Seven detectives and to make sure Glen Windsor's renewed APB extended to Amtrak, the airports, and the cut-rate buses in Chinatown. When she hung up, Rook said, "I've been doing some thinking."

"More gags for your stand-up?"

"No, about the case. Jeez, what do I have to do to get you to focus?" Then he became sober and continued, "I don't think you need this APB."

"Why not?"

"Because Rainbow is going to come to you."

"Right."

"Nikki, look at his pattern-and the evidence. Think of what you saw in your interrogation last night. Windsor is not just obsessed with you, he's a full-goose borderline personality. Narcissistic, for sure, and I'll bet grandiose. Clinically, that's an ego that feeds on being the center of everything."

"So you're saying I should just call off the search?"

"No, I'm saying he's going to reach out again like he did before. He has to. This is his moment, and he needs to engage you to claim it."

"Engage me, like when he said I brought his game to the next level?"

"Exactly. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe he won't make contact. But, in case he does, I'd be thinking how to play him."

Heat said, "This is the thing I hate most. Playing games."

"You not only have to play this one, Nikki, somehow you have to figure out how to beat him at his own game."

This was the essence of Rook, she thought. Sometimes he wore the clown paint. Sometimes he brought the goods. "If you're so smart," she said, "why don't you tell me how to do that?"

He stared out his window a moment and then said words that echoed from a dream. He said, "You know."

Heat and Rook walked into a bull pen blanketed by a quiet as toxic as doomsday ashfall. The palpable tautness radiated from a single empty desk-the one with the "Detective S. Hinesburg" nameplate. Everyone continued his or her work, but with a hollow look, not so much from mourning as from disillusionment. Somehow one of their own had gone bad. It felt different than corruption; cops on the take were still as much a reality in New York as anywhere. This was different. This was treason inside the Blue Line.

The lights were off inside the precinct commander's gla.s.s office. Rhymer reported that Captain Irons had e-mailed saying he would be at One Police Plaza for an indefinite period that morning. The squad speculated whether he would ever be back, following his nightmare double-whammy. "Not a good day to be the Man of Iron," said Detective Malcolm, with typically mordant understatement. "Bad enough he holds a press conference embracing a dude who turns out to be a serial killer. Now his office punch gets outed as a bioterror spy."

"Fail," said Reynolds.

"Epic fail," added Feller.