Driving Heat Read Free Page B

tried to get
me off a case by ordering an evaluation from a department psychologist?” She tilted her head toward the victim but didn’t look at him, responding to some irrational expectation that Lon
King might sit up and urge her not to withhold.
    That much seemed just enough for the detectives. Rook still came off a little pinched to her, but Heat judged it better to get off the thin ice so she wouldn’t fall through, and switched
gears to logistics. “All right, this is complicated. Let’s huddle up and see where to take this,” she began.
    But then Detective Raley chimed in ahead of everyone else. “First place we need to start is a time of death guesstimate,” he said, taking it on himself to address the group, but
speaking for the ears of Lauren Parry, too.
    And did she ever hear him. The ME stood up from her crouch and regarded him with the same cool stare the others were giving him.
    “Hoo-boy,” said Rook. “I’ve seen that look. I’ve gotten that look. It’s all yours, buddy.”
    “What? Well we do, don’t we?” Rather than cowering, Raley was doubling down on taking point on the investigation himself. “We need a window so we know where to start,
based on when.” He scanned the squad, but they offered no encouragement and mostly looked away.
    “Detective,” said Dr. Parry quietly, evenly. “Are you suggesting I take direction from you on this case?”
    Her measured response set Raley back on his heels. “No, I’m just…Taking some initiative, that’s all.”
    “Dynamic, homes,” said his partner, with some unmistakable stink on the remark.
    Raley pushed back against Ochoa with a fake smile. “’Tude’s not helping.”
    If there had been any doubt in Heat’s mind that the true jockeying for squad leader had begun, Roach’s trading elbows like that erased it. “Glad we’re all eager to jump
in,” she said. “So let’s.” She turned to Lauren Parry, very much wanting a TOD window, but loathe to ask after what had just occurred. “Doctor, do what you do, and
we’ll check in.” Parry gave her a you-got-it nod and crouched again beside the kayak to run her tests. Nikki continued, “Since what we have here is a scene of discovery more than
an actual crime scene, we need to gather information about where the murder could have taken place.”
    “And when,” said Rook. He turned to the ME. “Can’t help it, Doc. I see pigtails, I gotta pull ’em.”
    “Nikki?” said Parry.
    “Lauren?”
    “Prelim, twelve to fourteen hours based on temp and lividity. Rook?”
    “Lauren?”
    “Suck it.”
    Unfazed, he turned to the other detectives. “It’s a small price to pay to get you boys critical information on a timely basis. Your unspoken thanks is all I need.”
    Nikki ran the math and peered across the wide expanse of waterway at the New Jersey bluffs. The windows of the high-rise apartments over in West New York and Union City were just starting to
kick back glints of the sun’s first rays that in turn reflected off the water. There, where a cool-headed aviator had once miraculously set down an airliner, Nikki tried to envision the
situation just before sunset the night before and to trace the path of an adrift twelve-foot Perception Tribute.
    “Getting a fix on his point of origin’s going to be a bear,” said Rhymer. “I did a lot of kayaking in Roanoke, growing up. A boat like this with a shallow draft, in windy
conditions, nobody steering…Criminy, who knows?”
    Heat continued her survey anyway, following potential courses from upriver near Harlem and the Bronx. Rook moved close beside her and said, “Mahicantuck. That’s the name
Manhattan’s indigenous tribe gave the Hudson. Translated, it means ‘the river that flows two ways.’ Which is to say it’s an estuary. Which is to say he could have just as
easily come from the opposite direction, up from the Battery. To calculate the drift pattern, you’re going to have to check tide charts to find