Driving Heat Read Free

medical examiner’s head was inside the back of the OCME van, prepping her kit for the job ahead. Detectives Raley and
Ochoa, partners so inseparable that they had earned the single mash-up nickname Roach, made note of her, rose from where they were crouching at the riverbank, and approached in tandem.
“How’d you manage a full-squad turnout here?” asked Rook while the pair came trudging up the grass slope of the Hudson. The other detectives, Rhymer and Feller, also spotted her
and started to approach. “Is it a celebrity victim?” Rook continued. “I won’t name names, but there’s a handful whose passing wouldn’t sadden me. Does that make
me bad?”
    “Very,” replied Nikki. “But I don’t know who we’re working. The turnout is about something else.”
    “Do I get a hint?”
    The four detectives were nearly within earshot, so Heat kept her reply to one word. “Ambition.”
    Rook’s expression lit up as soon as she said it. “Ri-i-i-ight,” he muttered as the synapses fired. Heat’s promotion had created a void in her old position, homicide squad
leader. Now four candidates, presenting faces ranging from eagerness to practiced aloofness, drew around the newly minted precinct commander.
    “Congratulations, Captain Heat,” said Randall Feller. “Hip-hip!”
    Heat held up two palms toward him. “Do. Not.”
    The detective’s brow knotted. “What? It’s a big deal.”
    “It’s a crime scene.”
    Feller was a born cop, but he frequently brought too much street to the job. Correctness was not Randy’s forte, and he provided an example by pointing toward the river and saying,
“It’s not like he can hear me.”
    “I can,” was all Heat needed to say, and he lowered his gaze to the ground. He would apologize back at the precinct, and she would let it go. The dance was the dance.
    “Here’s what we’ve got,” said Ochoa. “The cyclist—”
    “Who I interviewed,” Detective Rhymer injected for no reason other than to be heard—a move quite out of character for the soft-spoken Virginia transplant. Feeling their eyes on
him and losing his nerve, he pinked up and mumbled, “More later.”
    Miguel Ochoa continued, with an undisguised eye roll toward his partner. “The cyclist was riding north on the path at approx five-oh-five A.M. , when he saw a kayak
bobbing against a busted piling from the old pier that used to live out there.”
    “The near one,” added Raley, indicating the closest of the three rotting posts jutting up out of the Hudson like the remnants of a giant prehistoric beast’s ribcage.
    “He saw it in the dark?” asked Rook.
    “He caught the kayak in silhouette,” said Rhymer, who now had cause to jump in and spoke with his usual relaxed authority. “The river picks up a lot of light from those
buildings and the terminal at Jacob’s Ferry. Plus you got the reflection from the George.” They all pivoted north, where the sparkle from the George Washington Bridge’s lights
cast a silver sheen on the Hudson even in the early moments after sunrise.
    Raley got back to the timeline. “He sees a guy who’s immobile inside, and no paddle, so he makes his 911 call at five-oh-seven. He stops on the bank, calling out to the guy in the
kayak—no answer—and keeps tabs on the boat until the EMT and radio cars get here.”
    “While he’s waiting,” added Detective Feller, “the wind and the current push the kayak off the piling. It starts drifting to shore. Bicycle boy hears my eyewit pinging
softballs and calls her over to help him grab hold as it comes ashore. They’re afraid to touch him, he’s a goner. GSW to the head, unresponsive, and as pale as—” Lesson
learned, Feller checked himself. “Pale.”
    Heat took two pairs of nitrile gloves from her pocket, handing one pair to Rook as the group deployed past the coroner’s van and down the grassy incline toward the water. “Watch your
step,” said Ochoa. “Lance Armstrong lost his breakfast