Decision time.
“Miguel!” Detective Ochoa turned to her from up the street, where he had corralled
some pedestrians. “Man down. I’m going in.” Then she turned back and caught Rook
reaching for the door handle. “Whoa, whoa, whoa!” He froze. “If that door has an
electric chime or alarm contact, you could blow us to Newark.”
Rook withdrew his hand. “What say we avoid that?”
A rapid sidewalk check. Nikki jogged to the corner and grabbed a city trash can. The
steel barrel was heavy, and Ochoa met her to lift the other side. “Careful not to
scrape the concrete,” she said on their way up the sidewalk. “Don’t want any
sparks.”
“On your three,” said Ochoa. Litter spilled onto the ground as the two detectives
lifted the garbage can sideways with the metal bottom aimed at the glass. Nikki gave
a count and they rammed the window. Instead of breaking, though, it spider veined.
Heat made another three count, and they hit it again, much harder. This time they
not only punched a hole, the entire window shattered, cascading jagged-edged chunks
down from above, nearly guillotine-slicing them before crashing to bits on the
sidewalk and the floor of the shop. Nikki kicked out the shards on the spiky ledge
of the sill, swung one leg inside, then the other.
She ran to the end of the front counter and knelt beside the man, pressing her
fingers to his neck. The carotid bumped against her touch. Ochoa joined her. Holding
her breath in the toxic air, she nodded to Miguel to indicate the locksmith was
still alive. Getting him out would be a challenge. He was short and slender, but
unconsciousness had made him dead weight. Heat’s aching lungs burned for air, and
in the strain of lifting him, she gasped in a breath she instantly regretted. The
rotten eggs smell from the mercaptan in the gas made her throat clutch and her head
go light. Nikki lost her grip and the man fell against her. She quickly jammed her
thigh under him and stopped the fall. Fighting nausea, she got a better hold and
clawed his work shirt. Together she and Ochoa managed to lug him to the window,
where the new, sure hands of the arriving FDNY crew took him from them, lifting the
victim over the ledge and onto to a gurney, where paramedics took over.
Heat and Ochoa stood bent over on the sidewalk, coughing and gasping. Both took hits
off the oxygen they were offered. In the short minutes it took them to recover, New
York’s Bravest had already killed electrical power to the building, shut off the
gas main, and cranked up portable fans to vent the fumes.
Rook gave Heat and Ochoa each a bottle of water, and both chugged. “While you were
in there, I went in the pet shop and got everyone out. Ever see Pee-wee’s Big
Adventure? I was this close to running out with two handfuls of snakes.”
The paramedics said they had rescued the locksmith just in time. Glen Windsor had
stabilized on oxygen, and they were about to transport him to Roosevelt for
observation. Heat said she wanted to ask him a few questions first. The paramedic
didn’t like that, but Nikki promised to keep it brief.
“Thank you,” said Windsor looking up from the gurney at Heat and Ochoa. “They
said I almost didn’t make it.” An EMT asked him to keep his oxygen mask on, but he
said he was fine, took a hit, and held it resting on his chest.