Driving Heat by Richard Castle
Noise, furniture scraping, came over the speakerphone. Then Backhouse’s voice, weak and bewildered. “The drone. It was in my office window.”
The scanner behind Heat came alive: “Shot fired, Hudson University Annex, Thompson Street north of Bleecker.”
“Stay down. Get under your desk. Have you been hit?” said Heat. While she listened, she keyed her walkie-talkie. “One Lincoln Forty. Units responding to the ten-ten at Hudson University. Possible victim is on floor twenty-two, room three-A.”
Backhouse’s phone clanged around as he snatched up the receiver. The professor’s breathing came heavily, rasping across the mouthpiece. “Is this what you call keeping me safe? Telling me to sit under my desk? Seriously?”
“Help’s coming. Stay down.”
“I am not fucking sitting here like a dumb shit. And I’m done trusting incompetents.” He slammed down the receiver and the call went dead.
“He must have taken the stairs,” said Officer Tew when Heat arrived on the scene.
Her partner, Officer Townsend, made a hooking gesture around an imaginary corner. “Or the service elevator.” A few days before, these cops had given Nikki a supportive fist clench from the front seat of the radio car outside Hudson U. Now they were upstairs in Wilton Backhouse’s office feeling embarrassed that the man they had been tasked to protect had not only got shot at but had slipped his surveillance on their watch. “To be honest, we were all about getting up here to disarm a perp.”
“I understand,” said Heat. “And meanwhile, your perp could have been a mile away.”
“And who knew a drone could fly down that air shaft, right?” Townsend searched Heat’s expression, a patrolman wanting to be let off the hook by a captain.
“Right,” Heat said and watched both unis relax. “I never would have figured it.”
Over at the window, the Forensics technician peered around the bullet hole and said, “There’s more clearance than you think between these buildings. No crosswinds? A straight-down descent? Especially with video assist and if the operator has skills? Cake.”
Heat indicated toward the punctured glass. “Looks like small-caliber. You find the slug?”
“Just did.” He walked her over to the shelf above the professor’s desk. “It landed in this bookend.”
Rook groaned. “Ooh, shot in the TARDIS!” The tech gave him a blank stare. “Dr. Who? The seemingly innocent-looking police call box that disguises a vehicle that travels Time and Relative Dimensions in Space? That bullet could have ended up anywhere from the first settlement of New Amsterdam to the next millennium.” The Forensics man reached into the miniature phone booth, tweezed out a slug, and held it up to Rook. “Well. You got lucky today, my friend.”
While CSU did its job, Heat and the officers sought out witnesses. Two students and a custodian on the twenty-second floor said they had seen Backhouse on the move. “Like he was running for his life,” said the maintenance man. “His backpack flew right off his shoulder, he was hauling it so fast to the stairwell.” None of the eyewits had seen any sign of injury. That assuaged Nikki that he didn’t seem to have been hit. On the downside, it closed options for tracking him through ERs, which are legally required to report gunshot victims.
But Backhouse found her. No sooner had Heat and Rook stepped out onto Thompson than Nikki’s cell rang with no caller ID. “It’s me.”
“Wilton, where are you?” Out of habit, she three-sixtied the block, but without sighting him.
“On a pay phone, but not for long.”
“Where?”
“No chance. I’m thinking somebody did more than hack the NYPD. I think they’re listening in on your phone.”
Heat could hear the paranoia rising in his voice. She could also understand why. A second drone attack in the space of a week would do that to anyone. “Come to my precinct. I’ll arrange more protection for you.”
“I don’t think you can. I trust you—personally, I mean—but I have nil faith in police protection. So I’m going to get as far away from needing you guys as possible until you figure this whole thing out. Taking myself off the grid’s the only way I’m going to live.” Before she could protest, he hung up.
Weeks before, Rook had committed the two of them to dinner with his literary agent at La Esquina but, given the volatility of the case, he canceled. So instead of hip Mexican among the A-listers, they settled into his loft, where he cooked while she balanced CompStat reports with status checks on Wilton Backhouse. “Still not picking up his calls.” Nikki lobbed her iPhone onto the sofa cushion beside her and ran a yellow highlighter across a line of figures comparing weekly Drunk and Disorderly arrests during the past quarter.
“He’s not answering for me, either,” called Rook from the kitchen. “Although, truth be told, not the first college professor who stopped taking my calls.”
Nikki marked her place with a Post-it flag and crossed to the counter. “Did you have a particularly tough prof in school?”
“No, she was easy. It was when we stopped sleeping together that things got ugly.” He double-flicked his brows and picked up his whisk. “You ready for some of my famous Morning-After Hotcakes? Or is this the night before? That’s the beauty of life, you never know.”
Nikki went to town on those pancakes. He had added bananas and macadamia nuts in the shape of a smiley face to his recipe and swapped out maple in favor of coconut syrup. The effect was a comforting experience that tasted like vacation in Maui. For now, that was as close to a respite as she was going to get. She swallowed a bite and said, “So I got confirmation from Hudson University that Backhouse no-showed his scheduled lecture this afternoon. Feller says he also blew off a mandatory staff meeting tonight at Forenetics without any notice, something he has never done.” She pressed her Home button to check for text badges; there were none—same as her last check two minutes before. “Nobody answered at his apartment. Since we have probable cause for concern about his safety, the super let detectives Rhymer and Aguinaldo in, and he’s not there. Opie said that in the hall closet there’s a gap among his suitcases, and all his toiletries are cleared out of the bathroom.”
“What about checking with Backhouse’s friends, colleagues, associates?”
“One of whom ‘hit the wall’—literally—and the other two have bullets in their heads, which is what he is trying to avoid—in a very ill-advised manner.”
“By going off the grid? I don’t know…If I thought I was on somebody’s list of inconvenient truth tellers, I might pull a Dick Cheney myself and hunker down in an undisclosed location.” Something in what he said rekindled the latent thought she had been trying to access. It still teased her from afar. He studied her. “What?”
“Just thinking.”
“You’re beautiful when you do that. Even more so when you tell me what it is.” She picked up her phone again and touched Redial. “You’re not going to share, are you?”
“Soon as I have something to. Unlike others, I don’t hide information in this relationship.” She put the phone to her ear, heard Wilton’s outgoing message again, and ended the call. “This guy’d better hope we find him before they do.”
“‘They’ being who we think it is?”
And can’t prove, thought Nikki. At least not yet.
After too many hours of paperwork, they cleaned up the kitchen together to Nightline, which included a special report on the ongoing cyber attack on New York City. Rook, who said he was tired of living it and didn’t need to see it on TV, too, wanted to switch to some Bourdain. Any Bourdain. But Heat’s sense of needing to know all she could won out, and they left it on.
The piece did have a sense of churning instead of learning, as Rook liked to phrase it. “Speaking as someone who knows a bit about journalism, there comes a point in a news cycle where the public appetite for the topic is hotter than the information flow. So you get recap and talking heads and very little that’s new.”
To underscore that, the network rolled archiva
When the commercial came on, Nikki said, “You ready for bed?”
“Sure.” Rook furrowed his brow gravely. “But one can’t help but wonder. Is this the night before the morning after?”
Nikki swatted his ass with a dish towel and said, “One way to find out. I’ll be right in.”
“You’re only going to get his voicemail again. This is very OCD of you.”
“I’ll be right there. Don’t start without me.”
Rook made her laugh, performing an over-the-top sexy model’s runway walk up the hall, and calling over his shoulder, “Gait analyze this.”
Heat did redial Backhouse’s number, with the same result. Then she switched off the TV and stared at its blank screen a few seconds in contemplation. She picked up her cell again and scrolled to Sean Raley’s number. “Hi, did I wake you?”
“Mmm, no.”
“Of course I did. I have an assignment. As King of All Surveillance Media, it may be the greatest challenge of your reign. You ever try herding cats?”
An administrative aide took Heat’s CompStat homework first thing upon her arrival the next morning, bound the spreadsheets with thick rubber bands, set them inside a cardboard box, and gave them to an officer for hand delivery downtown at One Police Plaza. “As long as you’re keeping stats,” observed Rook, “the true crime is you having to do the bean counting by hand like that.”
“No intranet, no electronic data. We can’t risk emailing sensitive attachments like that on public domains.”
“Sure, but come on. What’s next, sleeve garters and a green eyeshade?”
Nikki gave him a side-glance. “Is that on your list of turn-ons now?”
“No.” He paused. “Yes.”
The homicide detectives started gathering in the bull pen. Heat quickly signed vacation authorizations for some patrol officers and staff, accepted an invitation to speak at a school assembly at P.S. 199, and then hurried into the squad room to join the briefing.
She hadn’t missed much. Raley and Ochoa, back from the previous day’s field trip to Peekskill, were getting filled in by Detective Rhymer on the Wilton Backhouse incident and his self-imposed exile. Rook added that both he and Heat had been dialing the professor’s cell phone compulsively, as well as emailing and texting. “No pickups, no call backs, no texts, and the emails are now bouncing back with an I’m-out-of-the-office message.”
“Dude’s not careful, it’s going to be an I’ve-been-offed message,” said Feller.
Inez Aguinaldo took her seat. “Cranky Randy this morning.”
“It’s my default setting. You’ll get used to it.”
“Let’s get into Fred Lobbrecht,” said Heat. “Inez, you covered the accident report, right?”
“Yes. I made friends with a clerk at the DMV in Albany who overnighted a photocopy of the MV-104 and Trooper Lobbrecht’s notes, diagrams, and photo documentation of the scene.” The detective moved to the side of the room and brought up front a bulletin board on which she had posted enlargements for the meeting. “I’ll walk you through a couple of items of note. First, this accident scene didn’t fall in Trooper Lobbrecht’s jurisdiction, which was Troop NYC, posted in Richmond County which, as you know, is Staten Island, a long way from Peekskill. When he called in the crash, he said he happened to be in transit on that road and observed the victim’s car smashed into the tree.”
“Already hinky,” said Rhymer.
“Agreed. It was the middle of the night, just after three A.M., and he told dispatch at Troop K that, as long as he was there, he’d run point on the investigation, and they agreed. Why not?” She moved from the Westchester County map to a one-sheet printout of a report. “I pulled this page from the Forensic Science Lab findings. Most cars these days have sophisticated computer systems.”
“No kidding,” said Heat, leading to a burst of laughter.
When it settled, Inez continued, “Among the things onboard this victim’s car was the black box, which records a loop of twenty-five seconds of data for steering, acceleration, and braking. It lets Forensics examine the pre-impact actions of the driver. Like, was the driver slamming on the brakes or swerving to avoid something?” She tapped the page. “Forensics found that the black box was clean.”
“Clean how?” asked Rook.
“Simple trick. Ask anyone in the motor pool or traffic detail,” said Detective Feller. “All somebody would have to do—and by somebody, I’m thinking Trooper Fred—all he had to do is go up to the victim’s car, reach in, turn the key off, then turn it back on, count to twenty-five, and you have now recorded over whatever was on the EPROM chip and replaced it with a bunch of nada. So the data weren’t erased, just replaced by nothing. It’s a crude but effective way to create erroneous data after an accident.”
“That’s why it’s procedure to pull all keys after a fatal, to prevent that from happening,” said Aguinaldo.
“It’s also procedure when there’s a decedent to canvass all body shops and tow services in the vicinity for the phantom vehicle.” Opie shook his head in scorn. “I guess our friendly trooper who was in charge of the investigation made sure that one got overlooked, too.”
Nikki, who had been making her own notes, set her pen down. “Let me get a picture of this. If the victim swerved or braked to, say, avoid Nathan Levy coming the other way in his Bimmer, that would leave skid marks.”
Ochoa raised a hand. “It did. Even now, Raley and I could see scuff patches on the road. We haven’t had much snow since then, so they didn’t get totally plowed off.”
“Not according to this.” Detective Aguinaldo indicated some photo blowups of the crash scene. Everyone rose and gathered around for a better look. The pictures showed the familiar Forensics spray-paint markings on the victim’s tires and on the ground beneath each one. But the official photo documentation of the roadway itself was devoid of any skid marks.
Raley took out his cell phone. “Compare that with the shots I took yesterday.” He had shot an angle of the road similar to one on Inez’s board and held it up side by side. Same road, two conflicting images: tire scuff marks on Raley’s; none on Trooper Lobbrecht’s.
Ochoa rapped a knuckle on the Forensics print. “This sucker’s been Photoshopped.”
“You mean Freddyshopped,” scoffed Detective Feller. His tone conveyed the disdain clean cops have for dirty cops, which was shared by everyone in that semicircle.
As they found their seats again, Heat addressed Roach. “Your eyes-on up there was worth the trip. Good work.” They nodded in unison and even half smiled. Progress, she thought. “What did you learn at the ER?”
“About Levy’s leg injury? Pretty much as described,” reported Raley.
“But,” said Ochoa, “talking one on one with the ER nurse and the doctor, this dude was out of it. Drunk, sloppy drunk. Belligerent…They had to put a pair of orderlies on him just to keep him in line.”
“From the twenty minutes I spent with him, I c
Ochoa looked to Raley. “Didn’t occur to us.”
“Find out. Never know, it could be something. And let’s run down all the auto-body parts from Levy’s M3 repair. Spoiler, rims, glove compartment cover…Whatever we can locate, rush it to Forensics for a go-over.”
One secondary consequence of the NYPD’s hamstrung tech infrastructure was that more transactions were getting done personally. For the commander of the Twentieth Precinct that meant increased phone calls, more face-time appointments and, worst of all, a spike in drop-in visitors. Maybe that human touch was all for the better. But it had scattered Heat’s focus, no matter how hard she tried to maintain it. Now, with a sense of critical elements being suddenly in play while new revelations were breaking at a fast clip, Nikki selfishly (or, maybe it was more out of enlightened self-interest) isolated herself from her workaday distractions as Captain Heat to do the one small thing she had been neglecting: quieting her detective’s mind to contemplate the fragmented pieces on the Murder Board.
The exercise of sitting alone in the silent Homicide Squad Room in front of the whiteboard had served Heat well in past investigations, especially when the volume of facts was creating chaos instead of narrative. All those names, dates, places, events, color-coded markings, photos, arrows, and encircled questions were hailstones in a rain barrel when what she needed was to see a stream.
That morning some new data had been squeezed into one of the few open spaces up there. Randall Feller’s inquiry with Human Resources at Forenetics, LLC, indicated that Fred Lobbrecht had been hired there as an automotive safety assessor merely one week after the phantom car accident he had investigated on the Cold Spring Turnpike. His new job came with a 46 percent bump over his former pay as a New York state trooper.