After she set the phone back on its cradle, Heat realized how wrong she had been. She had mistakenly thought it wasn’t possible to feel more shaken and alone. Stepping out into West 82nd Street, Nikki turned to face the icy wind rushing crosstown off the Hudson. But she knew that no matter how long she stood there, it could never dish out enough cold to numb her. She turned her back against the bluster and plodded toward the subway to go home.
“Lady-lady!” was the last thing Heat heard before the collision. She whirled in the direction of the shout a split second before the delivery guy and his bicycle smacked into her, knocking her down onto Columbus Avenue. They landed in a tangle-arms, legs, and a bike-surrounded by ruptured cardboard take-out cartons, broccoli in oyster sauce, smashed wontons, and a duck leg. “My order’s ruined,” he said.
Still down, with handlebars against her cheek, Nikki turned up from the gutter and said, “You were going the wrong way in that lane.”
His response was, “Hey, up yours, lady.” He jerked his bike off Nikki and raced away, leaving her and his lost order down in the crosswalk at the side of the avenue. For a split second as Heat watched the patch of filthy snow and sand under her face redden with her blood, she actually wondered if whoever killed Montrose had also sent the crazy delivery guy on the bike. Such was the rabbit hole of conspiracy thinking. When you actually stop and look around and wonder, who in the world can you trust?
When Rook opened the door, his expression was a mix of shock and vigilance. First he reacted to her face with its tributaries of dried blood fanning like tentacles from the spot in her scalp where Nikki held a wadded handkerchief. Then, out of experience, he checked the hall to make sure she wasn’t on the run and being followed. “Nikki, jeez, what happened?”
She strode past him through his foyer and into the kitchen. He locked the door and joined her. Nikki held up a hand. “Shut up and don’t say anything.”
His mouth opened and then closed.
“I’m a great cop. I was on track to blow past lieutenant and make captain. I was going to be running the precinct. And, as a cop, one thing I understand is motive. And when I look for your motive in leaking that article?… I get nothing. It makes no logical sense. Why would you give your notes on a story that’s your exclusive to somebody else? For sex? Please. I can tell, Tam’s way too needy to be good in bed.” He started to speak and she said, “Shut up. With no motive, I just don’t know why the hell you would have done that. So I’m making the choice to believe you.
“I not only want to, I have to. Because whatever’s happening on this case, it’s kicked up to a new level and there’s nobody I can trust except for you.
“Everything’s caving in. I’m locked out and the murder investigation I have been moving heaven and earth to conduct is now in the Dumpster because the bumbling pencil jockey they replaced Captain Montrose with is basically Inspector Clouseau. Say nothing.
“Now… as I lay there minutes ago in the southbound lane of Columbus, mowed down by a wrong-way and rather unapologetic delivery bicyclist, shivering, bleeding, and taking stock of the new low my life had achieved, I thought, Nikki Heat, are you just going to lie there? And, tempting as it may be to while away my forced hiatus at Starbucks playing Angry Birds, waiting for 1PP to call and say sorry, that is not an option. I am too stubborn and too personally invested to let this case die. But-minor technicality-I am no longer an active member of the NYPD. No gun, no badge, no access to records, no squad. Oh, and people are trying to kill me. So what do I need? I need help. To press this investigation forward I need a partner. I need someone with experience, with balls, someone with top investigative skills who knows how to stay out of my way and isn’t afraid to put in some sick hours. Which is why I am here in your kitchen bleeding on your custom slate flooring. OK, you can talk now. What do you say?”
Rook didn’t reply. Instead, he turned her gently to look over the kitchen counter into his great room. And she beheld the Murder Board Rook had reconstructed in his loft. Not everything was there-for instance, no photographs-but the main elements were in place: the timeline, the names of victims and suspects, leads to track down. It needed a big update, but the foundation was all right there.
Heat turned back to Rook and said, “Well? Are you interested or not?”
TWELVE
W hile she sat atop the closed toilet lid in Rook’s master bathroom, he bent over her, carefully drawing aside strands of hair to examine the cut. Nikki stared at her blood-caked face in the mirror and said, “This looks a lot worse than it is.”
“Oh, if I only had a nickel for every time I said that in my life.”
“To whom, Rook? Unsuspecting girlfriends catching you with someone in a bar?”
“You sully me with your tawdry assumptions.” Then he added, “Usually, it was the bedroom.” He turned to the mirror so Nikki could see his proud grin. “Once in an armoire. God, I miss high school.” He moved to the counter and picked up the dish of warm, soapy water he had prepared.
“What do you think, Doctor? Stitch, or no stitch?”
Rook dipped a cotton ball in the solution and gently dabbed her scalp. “Fortunately, this is in the abrasion rather than laceration category, so no stitch. Although, when was your last tetanus shot?”
“Recently,” she said. “Right after that serial killer worked on me with his dental picks out there in your dining room.”
“We do have the memories, don’t we, Nikki?”
Twenty minutes later, showered and dressed in a fresh blouse and pair of jeans that had been hanging in his closet, Heat appeared at the kitchen counter. “Transformation, complete,” she said.
He slid a double espresso over to her. “You weren’t kidding. When you get knocked down, you do get up again.”
“Just watch.”
“Can I tell you you’re off to a good start?” Nikki called out while she gave his Murder Board a once-over. Rook emerged from the back hall of his loft carrying a plastic milk crate of office supplies and an aluminum tube easel to hold the giant presentation pad that was sitting in the guest chair, waiting to be invited to join the party. “Most of what we need to focus on is right here.”
“Good notes, the writer’s friend,” he said. “I’m sure it’s not as dense with possibility as a Nikki Heat Murder Board. It’s like the branch office version. I call it Murder Board South.”
“It’s more than exists uptown right now.” She told him about Captain Irons and how his ineptness had accomplished more than all the obstacles Montrose had thrown at her, effectively bringing the investigation into the priest’s homicide to a whimpering halt. “So, basically, we are the Graf case right now.”
“Let’s make it count,” said Rook.
They spent the next hour updating his old information with her new leads and persons of interest. He kept track of the board, partitioning sections for each major thread to investigate as well as restructuring the timeline to add recently discovered elements; she created index cards on the big four-by-sixes from Rook’s crate of supplies, expanding status details and listing unresolved questions, all corresponding to the categories he had drawn on the whiteboard. Whatever noise had rained chaos down on their relationship fell away in their focus on the task at hand. From the start, and without much ceremony, the two fell into an easy and efficient routine. At last, when the board was current and the cards were coded and filed, they stood back to admire their progress.
Heat said, “We’re not a bad team.”
“The best,” agreed Rook. “We finish each other’s references.”
“Don’t get cocky, writer boy, now comes the hard part. There’s no way with our limited resources and manpower to investigate every lead and every person we’re looking at up there.”
“No problem,” said Rook, “let’s just pick one and go arrest him. That narrows the field. Or, even better, use the Gadhafi method and arrest everyone.”
“You’re bringing up a point we-meaning you-need to remember. I can’t arrest anyone. Remember? No badge, no gun?”
He processed that and said, “We don’t need no stinking badges. And as for a gun, what’s a roving band of killers to you, as long as there’s an icicle handy?”
