Chapter Two
As the detectives holstered up, Rook breathed a sigh. "Man, I think you took ten years off my life there."
Raley came back with, "You're lucky you still have a life. Why didn't you answer us?"
Ochoa piled on. "We called out to see if anyone was here."
Rook simply held up his iPhone. "Remastered Beatles. Had to get my mind off the b-o-d-y." He made a wince face and pointed into the next room. "But I found that 'A Day in the Life' wasn't the most uplifting diversion. You guys crashed in on me at the end, just on that big piano bong. For real." He turned to Nikki and smiled meaningfully. "Let's hear it for timing, huh?"
Heat tried to ignore the undercurrent, which to her ear wasn't very much under anything. Or maybe she was more sensitive to it. As she scanned Roach for reactions and didn't see any, she wondered if things were more raw for her than she'd thought, or if it was just the shock of seeing him there, of all places. Nikki had crossed paths with old lovers before, who didn't? But usually it was in a Starbucks, or a chance glimpse across the aisle at the movies-not at a murder scene. One thing she was sure of. This was an unwelcome distraction from her job, something to be pushed aside. "Roach," she said, all business, "you two clear the rest of the premises."
"Oh, there's nobody here, I checked." Rook raised both his palms up. "But I didn't touch anything, I swear."
"Check anyway" was Nikki's answer to that, and Roach left to sweep the remaining rooms.
When they were alone, he said, "Nice to see you again, Nikki." And then that damn smile again. "Oh, and thanks for not shooting me."
"What are you doing here, Rook?" She tried to remove any hint of the playfulness that she used to hang on his last name. This guy needed a message.
"Like I said, waiting for you. I was the one who called in the body."
"Not what I'm trying to get at. So let me ask the same question another way. Why are you at this crime scene to begin with?"
"I know the victim."
"Who is she?" All the years on the job, Nikki still found it hard to go to the past tense when referring to a victim. At least not at the hour of discovery.
"Cassidy Towne."
Heat couldn't help herself. She half turned to look into the study, but from where she was standing, she couldn't see the victim, only the post-tornado effect of office supplies scattered around the room. "The gossip columnist?"
He nodded, affirming. "The buzz saw herself."
She immediately started calculating how the apparent murder of the New York Ledger's powerful icon, whose "Buzz Rush" column was the ritual first read for most New Yorkers, was going to ratchet up the stakes on this case. As Raley and Ochoa returned and deemed the apartment clear, she said, "Ochoa, better reach out to the MEs. Give them a courtesy heads-up that we have a high-profiler waiting for them. Raley, you call Captain Montrose so he knows we're working Cassidy Towne from the Ledger and he doesn't get blindsided. And see if he can put a hustle on CSU and also get some extra uniforms here, like, now." The detective could already project that the quiet, golden block she had enjoyed a few minutes ago would soon be transformed into a media street fair.
As soon as Roach left the kitchen again, Rook stood and took a step toward Nikki. "Seriously. I've missed you."
If his step closer was meant as body English, she had some nonverbal cues of her own. Detective Heat turned her back to him, got out her reporter's-cut notebook and a pen, and put her face to a new page. But she knew herself well enough to know the chill message she wanted to send was as much to herself as to him. "What time did you discover the body?"
"About six-thirty. Listen, Nikki…"
"How close to six-thirty? Do you have a more accurate idea of the time?"
"I got here exactly at six-thirty. Did you get any of my e-mails?"
"Got here, as in 'in the room to discover her,' or got here, as in 'outside'?"
"Outside."
"And how did you get in?"
"The door was open. Just as you found it."
"So you walked right in?"
"No. I knocked. Then called out. I saw the mess up the hall and went in to see if she was all right. I thought maybe a burglar had been here."
"Did you ever think someone else could have been in here?"
"It was quiet. So I went in."
"That was brave."
"I have my moments, you may recall."
Nikki looked as if she was focused on a notation but really she was replaying the night in the hallway of the Guilford last summer when Noah Paxton used Rook as a human shield, and how, even though he had a gun in his back, he still put a body slam on Paxton that gave Heat a clean shot. She looked up and said, "Where was she when you found her?"
"Right where she is now."
"You didn't move her in any way?"
"No."
"Did you touch her?"
"No."
"How did you know she was dead?"
"I…" He hesitated and continued. "I knew."
"How did you know she was dead?"
"I… I clapped."
Nikki couldn't help herself. The laugh shot out of her with a mind all its own. She was angry at herself for it, but the thing about a laugh like that was you couldn't take it back. You could only work to suppress the next one. "You… you clapped?"
"Uh huh. Loud, you know… to see. Hey, don't laugh, maybe she was asleep, or drunk, I didn't know." He waited while Heat composed herself. And then a chuckle of his own fought its way out. "It wasn't like applause. Just…"
"A clap." She watched the way the corners of his eyes crinkled when he smiled, and she started to thaw in a way she didn't like, so she threw the switch. "How did you know the victim?" she said to her notepad.
"I've been working with her the past few weeks."
"You're becoming a gossip columnist now?"
"Oh, hell, no. I sold First Press on the idea of doing my next piece for them on Cassidy Towne. Not so much the titillating gossip thing but profiling a powerful woman in a historically male-dominated business, our love-hate relationship with secrets, you get the idea. Anyway, I've been shadowing Cassidy for the past few weeks."
"Shadowing. You mean like…" She let it fall off. This took Nikki down an all-too-uncomfortable road.
"Like the ride-along you and I had, yes. Exactly. Without the sex." He paused to read her reaction, and Nikki did her best not to let it show. "The editors got such a good response to my piece on you, they wanted to follow up with another like it, maybe turn it into an occasional series on kick-ass women." He studied her again, got nothing, then added, "It was a nice article, Nik, wasn't it?"
She tapped the tip of the ballpoint twice on the pad. "Were you here to do that today? Shadow her?"
"Yeah, she got an early start every day, or maybe just continued from the night before, I could never tell. Some mornings I'd show up and she'd be at her desk in the same clothes as the day before, like she'd been working there all night. She'd want to stretch her legs so we'd walk up to H amp;H for some bagels and then next door to Zabar's for the salmon and cream cheese, and then come back here."
"So you did spend a fair amount of time with Cassidy Towne over the last few weeks."
"Yep."
"Then, if I need to ask you for cooperation, you may have some information about who she saw, what she did, and so forth."
"You don't need to ask, and yes, I know tons."
"Can you think of anyone who would want to kill her?
Rook scoffed. "Let's dig around this mess and find a New York phone book. We can start with the letter A."
"Don't be smart."
"Shark's gotta swim." He grinned, then continued. "Come on, she was a mud-slinging gossip columnist, of course she had lots of enemies. It was in the job description."
Nikki could hear footfalls and voices entering the front and put away her notes. "I'll have you give a statement later, but I don't have any more questions for you now."