Naked Heat (13 page)

The result was a portrait of a lean, groomed man with short gingery-red hair, parted on the left; narrow, alert eyes; a sharp nose; and a look made earnest by thin lips and hollow cheeks.

Heat’s sketch result was added to the sheet, with her description of the suspect: early forties, six-one, 165 to 170 . . . (muscular but lean, she thought; more Billy Bob than Billy Ray). Last seen wearing a tan sport coat with bloodstain, dress white Western shirt with pearl buttons, brown dress slacks, and brown pointed cowboy boots. Known to be carrying an eight-inch knife. From the computer database of blades, Heat was able to find a picture of his weapon, a Robbins & Dudley 3-Finger Knuckle Knife with a cast aluminum molded grip.

With that done, Rook waited in the lobby while Heat met with the shooting team from Police Plaza. The meeting didn’t take long, and she left it still carrying her gun on her hip.

Detective Nguyen had offered them each a ride home in a blue-and-white, and Rook said, “Look, I know we had plans for a drink, but I’d understand if you wanted to bag it for the night.”

“Actually . . .” She looked up at the wall clock in the lobby. It was almost nine-thirty. And then she looked at Rook. “I’m really not up for a bar tonight.”

“So, rain check? . . . Or has the fact that we cheated death made us fated to kick it out privately?”

Nikki saw she had a half-hour-old text from Don, her trainer with benefits. “Still good for tonight? Y/N?” She held the phone in her hand and then glanced up at Rook, who looked just as frayed as she must have from an evening with a killer. But the post-trauma fragility she felt wasn’t just from her throw-down with the Texan. She was still recovering from the fear throb she’d felt when she walked down the hall to Rook’s office afterward, not knowing what she would find in there.

“We could compare notes on the case so far,” he said.

She looked thoughtful. “I suppose we could do that. Take a fresh look at the evidence.”

“Do you have wine?”

“You know it.” Heat put her thumb on her keypad, pressed the N, and said to Rook, “Not your place, though. I’m not much for yellow tape and graphite dust, either.” When they reached the blue-and-white, she gave the uniform the address of her apartment, and they both got in.

Heat handed Rook a glass of Sancerre while he stood in her living room, in front of the John Singer Sargent poster he’d given her last summer. “You can’t hate me too much, you’ve still got my Sargent prominently displayed.”

“Don’t flatter yourself, Rook. It’s all about the art. Cheers.” They clinked and sipped. Then she said, “Let’s keep this informal. You relax, enjoy some TV, whatever. I’m going to get a bath and soak some street chase off me.”

“Sure, no problem,” he said, picking up the TV remote. “Take your time. I think
Antiques Roadshow
is in Tulsa tonight.”

Nikki gave him the finger and disappeared down the hall. She went into the bathroom, set her wineglass on the vanity, and opened the taps over her bathtub. She was just reaching for her bubble bath when he knocked on the doorjamb.

“Hey, what if I had been ‘entertaining’ somebody?” she said.

“With what,” he said with a sly grin, “a little pony play?”

“You wish,” she said.

“Just wondering if you were hungry.”

“Now that you mention it, yes.” Funny, she thought, how adrenaline shuts that part down. “Want to order in?”

“Or, if you don’t mind, I could scrounge your kitchen. No booby traps, I trust.”

“None,” she said. “Knock yourself out, I’ll just enjoy the fact that I’m soaking while you work.”

“Love this thing,” he said and stepped to her claw-foot bathtub. He rapped his knuckles on it and the cast-iron bonged like a church bell. “If the asteroid ever hits, this is where you should duck and cover.”

A half hour later, Nikki emerged in her robe, brushing her hair. “Something smells good out here,” she said, but he was not in the kitchen. He wasn’t in the living room, either. “Rook?”

Then she looked down on the rug and saw a trail of cocktail napkins leading to the open window and the fire escape. She went back to her bedroom for her slippers, stepped through the window onto the metal stairs, and climbed them to the roof.

“What are you doing?” said Nikki as she approached. Rook had set up a card table and two folding chairs and lit votive candles to light the meal he had prepared.

“It’s a little eclectic, but if we call it tapas we’ll never know it’s just stuff I scrounged.” He pulled a chair out for her. She put her wineglass on the table and sat.

“This looks great, actually.”

“It is, if you’re not too hungry and can’t see the burn marks in the dark,” he said. “It’s basic quesadillas cut into quarters and then there is smoked salmon with some capers I found in the back of your pantry. Out of sight, out of mind, you know.” He must have been nervous because he kept on. “Is it too chilly up here? I brought the blanket off the couch if you need it.”

“No, it’s nice tonight.” Nikki looked up. There was too much ambient light to see any stars, but the view of the New York Life Tower a few blocks away and the Empire State Building beyond it were a splendid enough view. “This is brilliant, Rook. A nice touch after the day we’ve had.”

“I have my moments,” he said. As they ate, she watched him in the candlelight, thinking, Now what was my issue here? On the street somewhere beneath them a car rolled by blasting classic rock with mega bass. It was before her time, but she knew the Bob Seger song from the clubs. Rook caught her staring at him as the chorus blared out that what they had in common was the fire down below.

“What’s wrong, did I overdo the candles?” he asked. “Sometimes I can come off kind of Mephistophelian when lit by flame.”

“No, the candle’s working.” Nikki took a bite of quesadilla and said, “But I do have something serious I need to ask you.”

“Sure, but we don’t have to do any heavy lifting tonight. I know that was the plan but that can wait. I’ve almost forgotten how you crushed my spirit this afternoon.”

“But I need to know this and I need to know right now.”

“OK . . .”

She wiped her hands on her napkin and looked him in the eyes. “Who has black pillowcases?” Before he could answer, she continued, “It’s been bugging me since your office. Were those your black pillowcases?”

“First of all, they aren’t black.”

“So they are yours. I ask again, who has black pillowcases? Besides Hugh Hefner or, I don’t know, international arms dealers?”

“They are not black. They are the darkest of dark blue, called Midnight. You’d know that if you had hung around long enough to see my autumn bachelor linens.”

She laughed. “Autumn linens?”

“Yes, seasons change. And by the bye, those sheets are eight hundred and twenty thread count.”

“I can see what I’ve been missing.”

“I’ll bet,” he said, dropping the wiseass from his tone. He paused and added, “You know exactly what you’ve been missing, and so do I.”

Nikki studied him. Rook was not looking at her but into her, the candle flame dancing in his eyes.

He pulled the bottle from a bowl of ice and came around beside her to pour. When her glass was full, she rested one hand on his wrist and put the other around the bottle to take it from him and place it on the table. Looking up at him standing over her, Nikki held his gaze as she took his wrist and drew his hand inside her robe. She tensed with a shiver as his cool palm rested on her breast. And held her, warming.

Rook slowly lowered, bending himself to kiss her, but it wasn’t fast enough for what was building inside Nikki. She clawed the front of his shirt roughly and pulled him to her. Her excitement made him come alive, and he fell onto her, kissing her deeply and drawing her close.

Nikki moaned, feeling a spreading warmth, and arched backward as she rose up to him. Then, sliding herself off the chair, she laid herself down on her back on the flat of the rooftop. Their tongues reached for each other, searching in some wild, aching desperation. He untied the sash of her robe. She unbuckled his belt. And Nikki Heat softly groaned again and whispered, “Now.
Now
. . . ,” and moved herself to the long-past beat of the “Fire Down Below.”

Chapter Eight

S
omething stirred Rook awake. A siren, likely an ambulance, judging by its chirps and guttural honks, announcing itself at an intersection over on Park Avenue South before fading into the night. It was one part of New York living he never got used to, the noise. For some it became background they could tune out. Not for him. It challenged him in the day when he wrote, and he never got an unbroken night’s sleep because this was the city that never did. Somebody should write a song about that, he thought.

With the eye that wasn’t buried in the pillow, he read the luminous dial of his watch on the nightstand: 2:34. Three hours more sleep before the alarm. He smiled. Hm. Or maybe two hours. He slid backward across the bed to dock himself skin-to-skin with Nikki. When he reached the middle of the bed, he felt the sheet and her pillow. Both were cool.

Rook found her in the living room, perched on the window seat in a sweatshirt and a pair of Gap drawstring bottoms. He stopped in the hallway entrance and watched her, a catlike silhouette in the bay window with her knees pulled up to her chin and her arms wrapped around her shins, contemplating the street below. “You can come in,” she said without turning from her view of the block. “I know you’re there.”

“Aren’t you the trained observer, Detective,” he said. He moved behind her and folded his forearms loosely around her neck.

“I heard you the second your feet hit the floor in there. You move about as subtly as a draft horse.” Nikki settled back and lounged against him.

“You’ll never hear me complain when the comparison involves a horse.”

“No?” She turned her face up to his and smiled. “No complaints here, either.”

“That’s good. And saves me the trouble of leaving a survey card.”

Nikki sniffed a little chuckle and turned back to the window, this time resting the back of her head on his abdomen, feeling the warmth of him on her neck.

“You thinking that he’s out there somewhere?” asked Rook.

“The Texan? Oh, he is for now. Just for now.”

“You worried he’ll come here?”

“I hope he does. I’m armed, and if that’s not enough, if he’ll hold still long enough, you can subdue him with one of your famous nosebleeds.” She leaned forward and head-nodded over the sill. “Besides, Captain put a patrol car out front.” As Rook leaned over her to see the roof of the blue-and-white, pressing his weight on her shoulders, Nikki added, “Doesn’t he know the city’s in a budget crisis?”

“Small price to protect his star detective.”

A change came over her. She uncoiled her legs and moved from him, sliding herself around to put her back to the window. Rook sat beside her on the cushion. “What?” he said. When she didn’t answer, he leaned a shoulder against hers. “What’s got you up and sitting here at this hour?”

Nikki reflected a moment and said, “Gossip.” She turned her head halfway to him. “I’ve been thinking about how ugly gossip is. How it victimizes people, but how as much as we say we hate it, we still feed on it like it was crack.”

“I hear you. It ate at me every day with Cassidy Towne. They call what she did journalism—hell, I even said it was the other day when I argued with Toby Mills’s spin doctor—but, when you get down to it, Cassidy Towne was as much about journalism as the Spanish Inquisition was about justice. Although, Tomás de Torquemada had more friends.”

“I’m not talking about Cassidy Towne,” said Nikki. “I’m talking about me. And the rumors and gossip I’ve had to deal with since you put me on the cover of a national magazine. That’s what got me all shitty with you in the car today. Someone made a snide comment insinuating that I slept with you for the publicity.”

“It was that lawyer, wasn’t it?”

“Rook, it doesn’t matter who. It’s not the first of those I’ve had to deal with. At least that was an overt remark. Most of what I get are looks or I catch people whispering. Since your article came out I feel like I’m walking around naked. I’ve spent years building my rep as a professional. It’s never been called into question until now.”

“I knew that shyster said something to you.”

“Did you even hear what I just said?”

“Yes, and my advice is to consider the source, Nik. He’s just working on your head to get some sort of psychological leverage in the case. His client’s going down. Richmond Vergennes will be an Iron Chef, all right. Ironing in the Sing Sing laundry.”

She tucked a knee up and scooted to face him, resting a palm on each of his shoulders. “I want you to listen carefully because this is important. Do I have you?” He nodded. “Good. Because I’m telling you about something that’s going on with me that’s a big deal, and you’re spinning off on your own side road. You think you’re with me but you’re running parallel. Understand what I mean?”

He nodded again and she said, “You don’t.”

“I do. You’re upset because that lawyer made an unfair crack.”

She took her hands off his shoulders and folded them in her lap. “You’re not hearing me.”

“Hey?” He waited for her to face him. “I am hearing you, and here’s what you’re feeling. You’re feeling like your life was rolling along fine until my article came out, right? And what did I do? I put you where you aren’t comfortable—thrust into the spotlight with everybody looking at you and gossiping about you, and not always to your face. And you’re frustrated because you tried to tell me it wasn’t what you wanted but I had it so in my head it was good for you that I did everything but consider your feelings.” He paused and took both her hands in his. “I’m considering them now, Nik. I’m sorry for how I made you feel. I thought I was doing a good job and apologize that I let it get complicated.”

She hardly knew what to say, so she just stared at him a moment. At last she said, “So. I guess you were listening.”

He nodded to himself and said, “We just had a Dr. Phil thing there, didn’t we?”

She laughed. “Sorta, yeah.”

“Because it felt sort of like one of those Dr. Phil things.”

They smiled and looked into each other a long time. Nikki was starting to wonder, What now? This connection they had just made was unexpected, and she wasn’t prepared for what it might mean. So she did what she always did. Decided to not decide. Just to be in the moment.

He may have been in the same place, because in some unspoken ballet of synchronization, the two leaned forward at the same instant, drawn to each other for a tender kiss. When they parted, they smiled again and then just held each other, jaws resting on opposing shoulders, their chests slowly rising and falling as one.

“And so you know, Rook, I’m sorry, too. About this afternoon in the car, being so rough on you.”

A full minute passed and he said, “And so you know? I’m good with rough.”

Nikki drew back from him and gave him a sly look. “Oh, are you?” She reached down and took him in her hand. “How rough?”

He cupped a palm behind her head, lacing his long fingers through her hair. “Wanna find out?”

She gave him a squeeze that made him gasp and said, “You’re on.”

And then she gasped as he gathered her up in his arms and carried her to the bedroom. Halfway down the hall, she bit his ear and whispered, “My safe word is ‘pineapples.’ ”

Nikki wanted them to arrive at the Two-Oh separately the next morning. She got up early and, as she left, asked Rook to cab home to change and to take his sweet time before he came to the precinct. She had enough gossip swirling around her without the two of them showing up for work together looking like the poster for
Date Night
.

Heat rolled into the bull pen at five of six and was surprised to find Detectives Raley and Ochoa already there. Raley was on his phone listening to someone and gave her a howdy nod, then resumed his note taking. “Hey, Detective,” said Ochoa.

“Gents.” She usually got a smile whenever she spoke to one member of the pair as the rep for both. This time, nothing. Ochoa’s phone rang, and as he reached for it, she said, “You boys got something against sleep?” Neither one answered her. Ochoa took his call. Raley finished his and passed by on the way to the whiteboard. Nikki had a feeling she knew what these two were up to, and sure enough, when she tailed Raley to the board, she discovered that he and Ochoa had started a new section labeled “The Lone Stranger” in red marking pen.

Rales referred to his notes to update the status report they had begun under the taped-up police sketch of the Texan. As his dry-erase marker squeaked out block capitals on the bright white surface, Heat read over his shoulder: No overnight ER visits with gunshots or broken collarbones from anyone matching his description in Manhattan or the boroughs. Calls pending in Jersey. Checks of all CVSs and Duane Reades south of Canal Street and west of St. James Place came up neg for first-aid shoppers matching Tex. Digital copies of his sketch were blasted out in e-mails to private urgent-care storefronts in case he sought treatment at one of the local doc-in-the-boxes.

Under a section headed “Patrols/Quality of Life” she saw that these two had already contacted all relevant precincts with no hits on any complaints, arrests, or homeless pickups matching her man.

Nikki Heat was standing witness to how cops had one another’s back. A sister detective got assaulted, and Roach’s stoic response was to come in to the precinct under a setting moon to start turning over all the stones. It wasn’t just a code. It was life itself. Because in their city, you just didn’t pull that shit and walk.

In any other sort of profession this would be a warm moment leading to a group hug. But these were New York cops, so when Ochoa got off the phone and stood beside her, she said, “This the best you two could come up with?”

Raley, who was bent over writing, capped his marker and turned to face her, keeping an excellent straight face when he said, “Well, seeing how you let the suspect evade capture, there’s not much to work with.”

“But we all do our best,” added Ochoa. Then, for good measure, he threw in, “At least you got a piece of him before you let the yokel slip away, right?”

And that was that. Without a high five or even a fist bump, the three of them had had their say. For one it was, Thanks, guys, I owe you; for the other two it was an emphatic, Got your wing, anytime, anywhere. And then they got back to work before one of them got all misty.

Ochoa said, “That call I just got was Forensics. I’ve been all over them about the typewriter ribbon you found on the subway platform. Tests are done, they’re e-mailing the digital images right now.”

“Way to gochoa.” A poke of excitement pressed her gut at the prospect of actual evidence to examine as she moved to her computer to log on.

Rook entered with a cheery “Morning” and handed Raley a paper bag blotched with grease stains. “Sorry, all they had left was plain.”

Raley squinted at the corner of Rook’s mouth. “You got a little something. There.”

Rook touched a finger to his face and came away with a blue sprinkle embedded in some icing. “Huh. Well, I didn’t say
when
they ran out. Just that they had.” He ate the sprinkle and turned to Nikki, selling a bit too hard. “How are you this morning?”

She flicked only the slightest of glances up from her screen. “Busy.”

While Heat waited for the server to log her on, Ochoa said, “Remember yesterday at the ME’s, you asked me to talk to Lauren Parry about the status of Coyote Man?” She gave him one of her nickname looks and he bobbed his head side to side. “I mean, Mr. Coyote Man? . . . You were right, Padilla’s autopsy was stacked. She’s going to get on it herself first thing this morning.”

“Not so good news on the other Padilla front,” said Raley. “Our canvass of residents and businesses where his body was found turned up NG. Same for security cams.”

Rook said, “Which reminds me, have you seen today’s
Ledger
?”

“
Ledger
’s crap,” from Ochoa.

“We’ll leave that to the Pulitzer committee,” said Rook, “but check this out. About sunset last night they spotted a coyote hiding in Central Park.” He held up the front page. Nikki turned from her monitor and recognized the brazen eyes in the grainy picture of the animal peeking out of the shrubs near Belvedere Castle.

“Gotta love the headline,” said Raley, who then read it aloud, as if they all couldn’t make it out. It was only in the size font they use on the top line of an eye chart. “ ‘
Coy
-ote.’ ” He took the paper from Rook to examine it. “They’re always doing that, putting some kind of groaner pun with the story.”

“Hate that,” said Ochoa. “Can I have it?” Rook nodded and Raley passed him the newspaper, which he set aside for later. “Like I said,
Ledger
’s crap. But the price is right.”

“Here we go, boys and girls.” Detective Heat opened the attachment from Forensics. It was a huge file containing enhanced screen captures of every inch of the typewriter ribbon. Nikki read the accompanying e-mail from the lab technician aloud for the others. “ ‘In case you are not familiar with the low-tech phenomenon known as the typewriter,’ great—geek humor,” she said, and continued, “ ‘each time a key is touched, the corresponding raised metal letter on the type bar strikes the ribbon, which not only prints the letter on the page but also embosses itself on the ribbon. Each letter strike causes the ribbon to advance one space, allowing us to scan the ribbon like a reverse tickertape, reading the sequence of letters that were printed on the writer’s page.’ ”

“This dude’s seen
Avatar
six times,” said Raley.

Nikki read on. “ ‘Unfortunately, the owner of this ribbon had rewound and reused the ribbon at the end of each spool, causing overstrikes which have obliterated most of the retrievable text.’ ”

“Cassidy was cheap,” offered Rook. “That’s already in my article.”

“Is any of this ribbon readable?” asked Ochoa.

“Hang on.” Nikki scan-read the rest of the e-mail and summarized. “He says he flagged those images that at least had some promise for us to examine. He’s sending the ribbon to get
X
-rayed to see if more can be read on it. That takes time, but he’ll let us know. . . . He’s happy to . . .”