Free Driving Heat by Richard Castle

Park.
    Heat and Raley made a sharp turn between the waist-high wrought iron fences that bordered the footpath and bounded up the double flight of concrete stairs. In the darkness, Raley jammed a toe
into one of the steps but grabbed the pipe railing before he went down. “I’m good,” he whispered without her asking. She didn’t turn. Her focus was straight ahead.
    At the landing, they paused to get their bearings and to listen. At that hour of the evening, right near the entrance the park, street noise dominated everything. If there were footfalls, they
were lost in the city wash of car horns, megabass, and a basketball slow-dribbling somewhere in the night. Detective Ochoa arrived, and Heat told him to radio the unis covering the rear of the
apartment.
    “Done and done,” he said as they moved forward. “They’re flanking in the cruiser to the entrance on a Hundred Thirty-Fifth and will work their way down to us on foot.
Hopefully, we’ll box him. They’re also calling in air support.”
    The box tactic was a sound one, thought Nikki, as the trio fanned out in a sweep line heading north, but ex-Detective Maloney had the same training that they did. At night, in a
twenty-three-acre wooded park with thick stands of shrubs, jagged schist outcroppings, and hilly meadows, it wouldn’t be hard for their quarry to vault iron to the street, or just go jungle
and hide in a laurel or rhody until they passed. He could also be armed, which must have crossed Raley’s mind as well, because he cautioned Heat to watch herself under the approaching
lamplight in her white uniform shirt.
    Just as Heat was about to ask Ochoa if Rook was coming, a flash of silver caught her attention. “There.” She pointed to the reflective safety strips from Maloney’s running
shoes that were disappearing fast around the bend a hundred yards ahead. Nikki sprinted after him with Roach only one yard behind.
    Alert for an ambush, they rounded a curve that offered too much cover from hulking sycamores. Nikki palmed the grip of her Sig Sauer but kept it holstered. They came to a basketball court where
a high school kid was practicing threes in the urban lightbleed and stopped. “NYPD,” said Heat. “You see a guy?”
    The kid hesitated, then straight-armed to their right, down a sloping grade, at a dense thicket, darker than the night surrounding it. The three cops took the incline slowly, then stopped at the
edge of the brush to listen. They got nothing, only the approaching footsteps of their uniformed comrades, completing their pincer move. The pair held up, waiting on the path above them. Heat
hand-signaled, using the spread of her arms to define the area of brush where Maloney had last been seen. One of the patrolmen whispered something in his walkie. Fifteen seconds later came the
whine of a jet engine and the swirl of rotor blades, and the area got doused in the blazing searchlight of an NYPD chopper.
    Heat, Roach, and a dozen supporting officers from the Two-Eight spent a half hour walking grids, systematically scouring the brush under the floodlight from the Aviation Unit’s Bell 429.
When they came up empty, Nikki shook the hands of the officers in thanks for the assist. The helicopter killed its Nightsun and returned to base. With a pair of cruisers assigned to patrol the park
the rest of the night, there was nothing for Heat and Roach to do but bag it. As they retraced their steps out of the park, they noted that Maloney had had both local knowledge and a head start to
help him evade and squirt out the east side of the park. “Or that Melo wannabe lied,” said Ochoa.
    “Saw you take your pratfall here, homes,” said Ochoa when they reached the stairs at 128th Street.
    “That? Yo, that was an evasive maneuver. Made me a moving target.”
    “More like a Rook maneuver, you ask me. Like that time he tripped on a rug when we raided that house in Bayview?”
    “And almost crashed through the hole in the floor, ass