"You sound pumped. Did you get a confirm that Snow had the same killer as our gossip lady?" Ochoa asked.
She looked over at Rook, riding shotgun with her down Second Avenue and said, in her best infomercial announcer voice, "But wait, there's more."
The two detectives were out canvassing Derek Snow's neighborhood when she reached Ochoa, so instead of going to his apartment, they made a plan to meet up at Mud Coffee just off Second. Traffic flow on East 9th was one way the wrong way for her, so Heat bypassed it, pulled into a loading zone on St. Mark's Place, tossed her placard on the dash, and walked it. Rook was a marathon and 10-K runner, but he had to work to keep pace with Nikki.
Mud Coffee was a storefront on a block that had one foot in the old New York City of custom tailor shops, one-of-a-kind dress boutiques, and a Ukrainian soul food restaurant. The other foot was in the newer, more gentrified Manhattan of upscale skin spas, sake bars, and an Eileen Fisher. Raley and Ochoa were waiting at the outside bench with four coffees when they arrived.
"Usually, it's too crowded to score any outdoor seating here," said Raley. "Might have something to do with people's aversion to smelling Le Gar-bahge." Talks between the city and the union had broken off the night before, and a fresh layer of trash had been added to every sidewalk in the borough.
Rook side-glanced to the hedgerow of trash bags lining the curb six feet away. "Getting so I don't even smell it anymore."
"Maybe from spending too much time with your gossip queen," said Ochoa. Instead of a comeback, he got a maybe nod from Rook.
Detective Heat was unable to resist employing Lauren Parry's flair for the dramatic as she stepped out the information she had just gotten at OCME: the Derek Snow cause of death; the cast of the knife used on Cassidy Towne matching the one the Texan attacked her with; and then the kicker-Cassidy Towne's blade cast matching the one that gave Esteban Padilla his mortal wound.
Even cops who thought they had seen and heard it all could be surprised once in a while. This was the second time this case had managed to bring the vets up short. When Heat finished her story, the air was full of whispered holy craps and f-bombs.
"So," Nikki said when it seemed they had taken it in, "setting aside the fireworks, the significance of this forensic news is that we still have a professional killer but we've added a third vic."
"Man, Coyote Man." Ochoa shook his head, still on it, still absorbing the scope of it all. "OK, so if that was Padilla's blood on her wallpaper, what was his deal? Was he with the killer, maybe one of the crew tearing the place up? Something went wrong with the posse?"
Raley picked it right up. "Or was Padilla a Good Samaritan, passing by, heard her scream, and got into something over his head?"
"Or," said Rook, "was he a part of this in a way we can't even see yet? He was a produce driver, right? Did he service Richmond Vergennes's restaurants, perhaps delivering fresh fruits and vegetables and some sweet lovin' on the side? Maybe this was some sort of romantic triangle revenge thing."
Detective Heat turned to Roach. "I need you all over this, guys. That's why I'm pulling you two off this detail and sending you to get aggressive on Esteban Padilla."
"Cool," said Ochoa.
Raley nodded. "On it, Detective."
"Obviously, push the usuals: friends, family, lovers, his job," she said, "but what we need is the connection. That's where daylight's going to come. Find out what the hell the connection was between Cassidy Towne and a produce truck driver."
"And The Texan, and Derek Snow," added Raley.
"And Soleil Gray. She's still in the thick of this somehow. Make sure you flash all four of the pictures I put in your files-you never know." Nikki kicked herself for waiting this long to let the Padilla investigation shift into this mode. Unfortunately, the reality of the job was such that as much as she tried to invest in each case to the eyeballs, at a certain point, it did become a matter of triage. It had to. Cassidy Towne was the high-profile victim, and meanwhile the Esteban Padillas of the world got nicknames like Coyote Man or, worse, slipped through the cracks anonymously. The saving grace, she thought, if there was one, was that Cassidy's murder might be a step to solving his. That kind of justice was better than none. At least that's how, if you were a detective with a conscience like Nikki Heat, you lived with it.
"Lauren give you a TOD for the concierge?" said Ochoa.
"Yes, one more wrinkle."
Raley clutched his heart melodramatically. "I don't know how many shocks I can take, Detective."
"Do your best. Derek Snow's murder was the same night as Cassidy Towne's. Lauren's best window is midnight to three A.M."
"In other words…," said Raley.
"Right," Heat answered. "Roughly an hour or two before Cassidy's."
"And just after his call to Soleil," said Rook.
She stood and swirled the last of her coffee in the cup. "Tell you what I'm going to do. While you get to work on Mr. Padilla, I'm going to go have another chat with Soleil Gray and challenge her on her lack of candor."
"Yes," said Rook, "she has given us quite a song and dance."
The others didn't even bother to groan. They just got up and left him sitting on the bench, alone. A Jack Russell tied to a bike rack, waiting for its owner, looked over at him. Rook said, "Cats, huh? Can't live with 'em, can't seem to catch 'em." Just minutes later, Heat and Rook approached Soleil Gray's apartment in a slightly more Village-y block of the East Village. To get there, they walked, passing head shops, tattoo parlors, and a vinyl music walk-down. It was that time of evening when there was just enough light left to see the pink jet contrails overhead in the teal of the gloaming. Dozens of small birds chirped as they found roosts for the night in the canopies of trees set in the sidewalk. In the morning the trees would make excellent platforms for garbage swoops. Threading through a crowd waiting on the sidewalk outside La Palapa, Rook spied some mighty inviting margaritas at the window tables and, for one, brief, impulsive flash, wished he could just lace his arm through Nikki's and steer her inside for some serious downtime.
He knew better. More to the point, he knew her better.
A housekeeper answered on the squawk box in the vestibule. "Miss Soleil no here. You come back." Her voice was old, and she sounded sweet and small. Rook imagined that she might even actually be inside the little aluminum panel.
Back down on the sidewalk, Nikki flipped through her notes, found a number, and called Allie, the assistant at Rad Dog Records. After a short conversation, she closed her phone and said as she started walking, "Soleil is at a TV studio rehearsing a set for a guest appearance tonight. Let's surprise her and see what shakes loose."
As they strode by, Rook looked longingly at a deuce that had just opened up in La Palapa. Downtime would have to wait. He hurried to catch up with Nikki, who was already at the corner getting out her car keys. His brake lights turned the weeds red as Raley backed the Roach Coach into the driveway that went nowhere but a small vacant lot between a taqueria and a three-story row house that was listed as Esteban Padilla's address. "Careful, man, don't hit that shopping cart," from Ochoa.
Raley gophered his neck for a better view in the mirror. "I see it."
When the bumper tapped the cart, his partner laughed. "See, this is why we can't have a nice car."
All the parking spaces on East 115th Street were taken, and there was a beer delivery truck double-parked across the loading zone. The truck couldn't unload in the space because it was occupied by a small beater with a fender made of Bond-O and a windshield full of tickets. So Raley improvised, parking nose out, bridging the sidewalk, front tires on the street, the back ones where the dirt and sparse clumps of grass met concrete.