“The building management handles that. I’ve never really needed to know where.”
The building’s super met them in the lobby, holding open an elevator at the south end of the banks. They got on without much conversation other than to hear his grim, “I hope you fry that bastard who killed the doc,” on the one-floor descent to the basement. He led them through a labyrinth of stored office furniture and medical equipment, some of it swaddled in plastic, to a large shed that had been constructed in the corner. “We use this for storage,” he explained as he ran through a chunky ring of keys at the end of a belt chain.
The super flipped on the lights once he had got the shed door open, revealing a space about as large as a two-car garage. He led them toward a closet door at the far end of the room, past aluminum racks whose shelves were filled with desk lamps, out-of-date telephone equipment, bulky old-tech TVs, stacks of medical-office-appropriate framed art, empty aquariums, and potted artificial plants.
“Hannibal Lecter hasn’t sent anyone here looking for severed heads, has he?” said Rook.
The super laughed but stopped abruptly. “What the hell is this?”
The hasp on the closet door hung open. The padlock sat on the bench beside it.
Heat and Ochoa put their hands on their sidearms. Rook took a step back and brought the super with him out of the way. The two cops took positions near the closet. Nikki nodded to the detective and began her silent three-count. Then the lights went out and the door slammed behind them.
“The door, the door,” called Ochoa. In the absolute blackness of the shed, they scrambled hopelessly, bumping into each other and the racks until the super lit the flashlight on his belt and they oriented themselves to the exit.
By the time they raced out into the basement, the elevator was purring toward the first floor. Rook asked where the stairs were, but by the time he got an answer, Nikki and Miguel were already taking them two at a time.
The passenger door was slamming on a waiting MKZ when the two cops pushed through the lobby congestion and bolted down the six granite steps to the sidewalk. They both yelled, “NYPD, freeze!” but the Lincoln burned rubber—in reverse—on York Avenue, backing up through its own tire smoke at high speed against traffic, barely missing a northbound ambulette.
Heat and Ochoa gave chase, and a block away, the car lurched to a stop, but only long enough for a gear shift followed by another piercing squeal as it right-turned onto the ramp to the FDR south and was long gone.
Since it fell within their precinct, detectives from the Nineteenth tagged in to continue the B&E investigation at Lon King’s office. Heat, however, carved out one piece of turf for her team. They had lucked out and got to the digital recording closet just before the intruder could gain access, so the security video from the York Avenue medical tower would travel crosstown to the West Side with her.
With Roach taking co-lead, and Nikki feeling pressure to dive into the administrative tasks that were piling up in her absence, she rode back to the Two-Oh without Rook, who said he had plenty to keep him occupied anyway. As he waved from the back window of his cab, she hoped at least some of his attention would shift to wedding logistics.
Captain Heat went about her new duties with a spirit of enthusiasm, even though answering compliance emails from One PP, booking meetings with community leaders, and ignoring station-house nicotine enthusiasts pestering for an e-cig policy felt very little like policing. Nikki was glad that two of the four walls of her new office were all glass so she could at least peer out into her old familiar space, the homicide bull pen, and keep tabs on the case. From inside her goldfish bowl, she liked what she saw. Rook might have been right, that punting a key leadership appointment amounted to a stagger out of the starting gate, but watching Raley and Ochoa in action gave her confidence that her stumble might pay off.