Raging Heat

Since the morning rain had let up, Heat decided to convene her squad meeting outside and yield the interior to OCME and Forensics, who seemed less than thrilled by all those extra personnel contaminating their scene. She and Detectives Raley, Ochoa, Feller, and Rhymer formed a loose circle on the entrance plaza between the revolving doors and the circular driveway. Rook sat on a stone bench off to the side, making no attempt to stifle his jet-lag yawns. Up the grass slope, evacuated tourists milled on the sidewalk behind the wrought iron fence. Predictably the news vans had arrived. Their raised snorkels formed portable forests at both ends of Eighty-first.

“I don’t know why we got bounced out here,” said Feller. “Didn’t we find that finger for them?”

“We?” replied Roach, in near unison. And then Ochoa added, “Here, homes, I’ve got a finger for you, too.”

Feller came back with, “I’m touched, Miguel. You even took it out of your nose,” bringing a volley of chuckles that Heat clamped a lid on.

“Gentlemen, may I remind you we are in public at a death scene? Let’s not find ourselves laughing it up on the cover of this afternoon’s Ledger.” She surveyed the street, and, sure enough, her eye caught a man snapping shots of them with a long lens. But as Nikki turned back toward her group, it occurred to her that, even though the guy seemed familiar, she didn’t see a credential or recognize him as one of the usual press photogs. Where had she seen him before? Glancing again, she caught the back of his jacket getting swallowed by the crowd and shrugged it off. This was New York. The sidewalks were full of puzzler faces.

“Let’s all remember,” she began, “open minds. This could turn out to be an accidental, not a homicide. Either way, we are going to go about this case a little differently.”

“As in, we’re not looking for lurkers or suspicious persons fleeing the area,” said Detective Feller. Like his colleagues, he had jettisoned the grab ass and gone all business.

“Exactly. Let’s focus our efforts instead on establishing what happened. Starting with two priorities: victim ID and mode of death.”

Rook raised a hand. “I’m going with kersplat.” God, how Nikki hated and loved having him back. He read their reactions and, instead of backing off, joined the circle and doubled down. “Indelicate perhaps, but come on. The guy was basically a bug on a windshield. Except this bug actually went through the windshield, so he must have been going, what…five hundred miles an hour?”

“No way,” said Ochoa.

“For a lawman you seem quick to doubt the laws of gravity, Detective.” He appealed to Nikki, “What height did Dr. Parry say the injuries were consistent with?”

Heat felt wary of having her briefing hijacked but answered, “Over one hundred stories.”

“So we’re talking an altitude of at least one thousand feet. I’m surprised he didn’t achieve Mach-One.”

“Doubtful, Rook. An object falls at thirty-two feet per second per second until it reaches terminal velocity.” Ochoa turned a few heads with that one. “What? Back in the service, I was Airborne. Trust me, before you go jumping out a cargo door you buddy-up with ol’ Ike Newton.”

Rook couldn’t let it go. “I don’t doubt your courage, but aren’t we splitting hairs here?”

The detective smiled to himself, then recited, “Mach-One is the speed of sound, which is seven hundred sixteen miles per hour. Terminal velocity for the average human in free fall is one hundred twenty MPH and takes approximately twelve seconds to reach.”

After absorbing his calculus beatdown, Rook paused and said, “‘Approximately.’ I see.”

“The variable is the drag coefficient. Drag is created by things like clothing, body position…”

“…Facial hair, such as a G.I. Joe beard,” said Detective Rhymer.

Heat jumped in. “All right. I know how much you guys like to measure and what not, but can we just stipulate our victim fell from a height that suggests an aircraft and leave it there?” They all nodded. Then, when Rook opened his mouth, she said, “Moving on” and he closed it and gave her a smiling salute with his forefinger.

Nikki assigned Rhymer to scrub the Missing Persons database for an ID on the John Doe. “Obviously start with New York City and the tri-state,” she said, “but since this poor guy probably came from an aircraft, tap the FBI and Homeland, too. Also, do a run of prison escapees and active NYPD, county, state, and federal manhunts.”

She gave Randall Feller the neighborhood to canvass beginning with the tourists being held between the sawhorses on Eighty-first. “What am I looking for, though?” he asked. “I mean, since we’re not seeking a lead on a perp.”

“This is one of those times that we won’t know until we find it,” she replied. “It’s the lottery. All it takes to learn something is one person who saw the fall.”

“Or heard something,” added Raley.