"Anyway she goes through this whole blah-blah about why she did it and then she says she had been thinking long and hard about it and feeling so bad-agony, I remember that was what she said she felt, like she was always in agony-and asked what I thought, if maybe we could talk about getting together."
"You mean, like…"
"Well, yuh. Like she thought she could just show up and change her mind about abandoning me and I would just get in the frickin' Acura with her and live happily ever after."
Rook let a healthy silence pass before he asked, "What did you say to her?"
"I threw my ice water in her face and walked out." Part of Holly Flanders showed proud defiance. Rook imagined she had told that story before to friends or barflies over the years and reveled in her heroic act of maternal repudiation, poetic in its balancing of scales. But he also saw in her the other part of Holly Flanders, the part that had brought her to his doorstep to wait in the dark, the woman who felt the weight of emotions that nest uncomfortably in any soul with a conscience that has to bear the unhealable wound of banishing another person. With ice water, no less.
"Holly, you were what, early teens, then?"
"I didn't come here to be let off the hook, OK? I came because once you found out she had put me out to foster care, I didn't want you to think that was all there was to her. I look back now, older and all, and realize she didn't just wash her hands and walk away, you know?" She finished her beer in a long gulp and set the glass down slowly. "Bad enough I have to deal with this the rest of my life. I didn't want to make it worse by letting you write her story without telling you there was more to her than giving me away."
At the door on her way out she got on her toes to give Rook a kiss. She went for his lips and he turned to present his cheek. "Is that because of what I do?" she asked. "Because I sell it sometimes?"
"That's because I'm sort of with someone else now." And then he smiled. "Well, I'm working on it."
She gave him her cell number, in case he wanted to talk about the article, and left. As Rook went back to the kitchen to clean up the dishes, he lifted her plate. Underneath he found a four-by-six color photo that looked like it had spent some time folded. It was Cassidy Towne and her teenage daughter in their booth at a Jackson Hole. Cassidy was smiling, Holly was enduring. All Rook could look at was the glass of ice water. The next morning, Heat and Rook sat down at her desk to compare notes on the Cassidy Towne manuscript. First, though, he asked her if she'd had any fallout from the item in "Buzz Rush," and she said, "Not yet but the day is young."
"You do know The Bulldog is all over that," he said.
"I doubt she's the author, whoever The Stinger is, but I'm sure Soleil's lawyer worked her contacts to send me a message."
He filled her in on his visit from Holly Flanders and Nikki said, "That's sweet, Rook. Sort of reinforces the faith I keep investing in humanity."
He said, "Good, then, because I almost didn't tell you."
"Why not tell me?"
"You know. I was afraid you might take it funny. A young woman coming to my place at night when I told you I'd be home alone, reading."
"That is so sweet that you'd think that I'd care." Nikki turned and left him there to sort that out while she got her manuscript.
Heat used paper clips and Rook used Post-it flags, but both had marked only a few passages in the book as pertinent to the case. And none pointed to direct suspicion of anyone as an agent of the gossip columnist's death. And, importantly, there was no concrete indication of anything untoward in Reed's passing. That was all deftly crafted as sly questions and hints of a bombshell payoff buildup by Cassidy Towne.
The passages they had marked were the same. Mostly they were name mentions of Soleil Gray and episodes in their drunken, druggy courtship. Tales from the movie set told of a sometimes morose Reed Wakefield who, after their romantic breakup, immersed himself deeper into the role of Ben Franklin's bastard child. His passion to escape his own life into the character's, many felt, would lead to an Oscar, even posthumously.
Much of the book was material the public had all known about Wakefield, but with insider detail that only Cassidy could have sourced. She didn't spare the actor any blemishes. One of the more damning, albeit minor, stories was attributed to a former costar of three of his films. The ex-costar and now ex-friend said that, after Reed became convinced he had lobbied the director of Sand Maidens, a sword-and-sandals CGI epic, to re-edit their battle scene for more close-ups of him than Reed, Wakefield not only wrote him off as a friend but took revenge. Photos captured on a cell phone arrived at the costar's wife's office. They were candids of the costar with his hand up the skirt of one of the hot extras at the wrap party. The message written on the back of one of the photos said, "Don't worry. It ain't love, it's location."
Both Heat and Rook had made a note to discuss that with each other, and both agreed that, even though the touchy-feely costar ended up divorced, it provided no motive for killing Cassidy Towne, since he had been the one to tell her the story.
The bulk was an anecdotal chronicle of a talented, sensitive actor's hard partying, boozing, snorting, popping, and shooting lifestyle. The conclusion Heat and Rook independently drew from reading the book was that if the final, missing chapter fulfilled the hype, the book would be a blockbuster, but from the material they had read, nothing in these pages seemed explosive enough to warrant the murder of the author to cover it up.
But then again, in the second to last chapter, where the manuscript left off, Reed Wakefield was still alive. Detective Raley, who often cursed his designation as the squad's go-to screener of surveillance video, sealed his fate that morning. While she and Rook followed Ochoa, who had summoned them to Raley's desk, Nikki Heat could see from Raley's expression across the bull pen that he had a righteous freeze on his screen. "What do you have, Rales?" she said as they formed a semicircle around his desk.
"My last video to screen and I hit it, Detective. Parking garage only gave me legs and feet on the perp. Assailant seemed to run east after the attack, and so I worked that block and the one after. Small electronics retailer on the corner of Ninety-sixth and Broadway had this from a sidewalk pass-by, time coded six minutes after the mugging. Matches the description plus our subject is carrying a thick stack of papers, like the manuscript."
"Are you going to let me take a look?" asked Heat.
"By all means." Raley got up from his chair, knocking over one of the three coffee empties on his desk. Nikki came around to look at the freeze frame on his monitor. Rook joined her.
The freeze caught the mugger on a full-face turn to the camera, probably reacting to showing up live on the LED TV screen in the electronics shop window. In spite of the dark hoodie and the aviator sunglasses, there was no mistaking who it was. And further, even in grainy, surveillance-grade black-and-white, the mugger was caught red-handed carrying a stolen half ream of double-spaced manuscript.
"That's bringing it home, Raley." The detective didn't say anything, just beamed through some bleary eyes. "I'll give you the pleasure of cutting the warrant. Ochoa?"
"Ready the Roach Coach?"
"Now would be good," she said. And then when the two left on their assignments, she turned to Rook, unable to suppress a smile. "Ready for my close-up, Mr. DeMille."
Chapter Fifteen
Detective Heat knew Soleil Gray had a music video shoot that day because her lawyer had mentioned it the afternoon before when she accused Heat of harassing her client at her places of business. Well, she thought, add one to the list. Nikki looked up the number in her interview notes for Allie over at Rad Dog Records and found out where the video was being shot. The record company assistant said it wasn't on a soundstage but on location and gave Heat all the particulars, including where to park.