Heat let Ochoa drive, which bought her valuable time to pound out administrative emails and work her phone during the otherwise dead hour getting from Manhattan to Staten. “Two-minute warning,” said the detective as he steered off the SIE into the bleak terrain surrounding the Goethals Bridge. Nikki set aside her multitasking, surveyed the patchwork of scrubby marshland and the hard-core industrial zone lining the banks of the Elizabeth River, and wondered what the hell Rook had been doing out there.
If Staten Island was a bedroom community, this was its mud porch. On her right sprawled a massive containerized cargo depot. To her left, the corroded cylinders of a gas tank farm rose at the edge of tidal wetlands marked by acres of cord grass and cattails, hardy survivors of the chemical age. Across the river, a refinery plus even more and even bigger tank farms girdled the New Jersey Turnpike. “If you lived here, you’d be home now,” Heat said.
True to Ochoa’s estimate, about two minutes later the Roach Coach drew up to the gate of an isolated, cyclone-fenced industrial site between the swamp and a graveyard for old school buses. Back in the 1920s this property had been an airstrip. Flat, and with plenty of land remote from residences, Edda Field became a favorite of private pilots and hobbyists until it closed in World War Two, when civilian flying over the East Coast was forbidden. By the time the ban was lifted, newer airfields, closer to town, with blacktop runways instead of gravel and turf, had opened. Within a few years, the strip was defunct. It was eventually sold to a movie company that used its giant hangar to shoot noir detective films, until the studio head pulled his own caper and left for Rio de Janeiro with the company profits and a stuntman. Then the real estate sat idle, a magnet for weeds, illegal dumping, and taxes until the mid-nineties, when the vast acreage and the enormous hangar caught the notice of a forensic consulting company that purchased the land and developed the site as its vehicle safety proving ground.
Once they had passed the guard shack, Ochoa was able to cut across painted rows of empty parking spaces, making a beeline for the half-dozen NYPD blue-and-whites and plain wraps rimming the hangar. Detective Feller stood inside the semicircle of police cars, clowning with a homicide team from the 121st Precinct. He glimpsed Nikki when she got out of the Roach Coach, quickly broke away from the group, and crossed to meet her, adopting a more sober tone with every stride closer to his captain.
“Help me, Detective,” she said when the gap between them closed enough so that only he could hear. “I want to learn what’s funny about a dead body. Day I’m having, I could use a laugh.”
Sheepish, Feller tried to minimize his lack of decorum at a murder scene, something Heat had cautioned him about so many times in the past. “This? This was nothing. Just fostering relations with the homeys, you know, since we’re visiting their turf.”
“I see. Professional interaction,” she said. But he heard her don’t-bullshit-me subtext loud and clear. Point made, she let the matter drop, especially since Ochoa was joining them. “What are we looking at?”
“Body’s in the hangar.” He indicated the triple-wide garage door cut into the side of the hulking gray warehouse. The van from Staten Island’s Medical Examiner’s office sat to the side right underneath the Forenetics, LLC company logo.
“Now there’s a picture,” said Ochoa. “Definitely not one you want on your corporate homepage.”
“What about Rook? Where’s he?” Nikki asked, feeling one part concern, one part annoyance, not necessarily in that order.