'Sure.' Nikki drew aside her blazer and flashed the tin on her belt. 'That help you any?'
The room number he gave them was down a dingy second-floor hall that smelled like disinfectant and puke. There was an outside chance Ichabod Crane was going to call the room and tip Flanders off, so Heat told Rook to stay down there to watch him. He didn't like the assignment, but agreed. Before she left, she reminded him what happened last time he didn't stay downstairs when she told him to.
'Oh, yeah. I have a vague recollection. Something about getting taken hostage at gunpoint, right?…'
Behind every door she passed, daytime television blared. It was as if people blasted TV noise to cover life noise and only succeeded in making more noise. Inside one room, a woman was crying and moaning, 'It's all I had left, it's all I had left.' It sounded like prison to Heat.
She stopped outside 217 and positioned herself off-line with the door. She didn't know how much to put into Ludlow's warning about the handgun purchase, but she checked her coat clearance anyway. Always good policy if you planned to go home that night.
She knocked and listened. A TV was on in there, too, although not as loud. Seinfeld, from the bass guitar riff after the laugh. She knocked once more and listened. Kramer was getting banned from the produce market.
'Shut up out there,' came a man's voice from somewhere across the hall.
Heat knocked louder and announced herself. 'Holly Flanders, NYPD, open this door.' As soon as she said the word, the door flew open and a chubby man with braided pigtails ran past her and up the hall. He was naked and carrying his clothes.
The door had a pneumatic closer, and before it shut, Nikki crouched low and clotheslined it open with her left arm as she put her hand on her gun butt. 'Holly Flanders, show yourself.' She heard Jerry himself getting thrown out of the produce market and then a window sash thrown in the room.
She rolled in low and came up with her Sig Sauer just in time to see a woman's leg disappear out the window. Heat ran to it, pressed her back against the wall, and made a quick look out and then back. A yelp came from below, and she looked down to see a young woman, early twenties, in jeans but topless, lying on her back on a pile of trash.
When Heat holstered her weapon and ran out into the hall, it was crowding with people, mostly women, coming out of their rooms to see what the excitement was. Nikki shouted, 'NYPD, back, back, clear the way,' which only brought more curiosity-seekers. Most of them were slow movers, too; drugged or dazed, what did it matter? After fighting her way through them, she bounded the stairs in twos and pushed through the glass doors to the outside. A large dent in a black trash bag marked Holly's landing spot.
Heat stepped to the sidewalk and looked right. Saw nothing. Then left, and could not believe what she saw. Holly Flanders being led back to her by the elbow, escorted by Rook. She was wearing his sport coat but was still topless underneath.
When they arrived, he said, 'Think we could get her into the Milmar like this?' An hour later, wearing the clean all-purpose white blouse Nikki kept in her bull-pen file drawer to change into after all-nighters, field scrapes, or coffee mishaps, Holly Flanders waited in Interrogation. Heat and Rook stepped in and sat side by side across from her. She didn't speak. Just looked up over their heads, staring at the slip of acoustical tile that ran above the observation mirror.
'You don't have much of a rap sheet, at least not as an adult,' Nikki began, opening Holly's file. But I have to warn you that, as of today, you've taken your game to the next level.'
'Why, because I ran?' She finally brought her eyes down to them. They were bloodshot and puffy, rimmed by too much mascara. Somewhere in there, given some good living, and losing the hardness, thought Nikki, was somebody pretty. Maybe even beautiful. 'I was afraid. How did I know who you were or what you were doing?'
'I announced myself as police twice. The first time you may have been too busy with your john.'
'I saw that guy racing through the lobby,' said Rook. 'May I say? No man over fifty should wear pigtails.' He caught Nikki's shut-up look. 'I'm done.'
'That's beside the point, Holly. Your main worry isn't the flight or the hooking. In your room, we found a Ruger nine-millimeter handgun, unlicensed and loaded.'
'I need that for protection.'
'We also found a laptop computer, stolen, by the way.'
'I found it.'
'Well, just like the other charges, that's not your worry. What's on the computer is your worry. We've been looking at the hard drive and we've found a number of letters. Threatening letters and extortion demands addressed to Cassidy Towne.'
This part was getting through to her. The hard pose was crumbling as the detective slowly, quietly, and deliberately tightened the screw with each revelation. 'Are those letters familiar to you, Holly?'
Holly didn't answer. She picked at the chips of nail polish on her fingers and kept clearing her throat.
'I have one more thing to ask you about. Something that wasn't in your room. Something we found somewhere else.'
The manicure destruction stopped and a puzzled look crossed Holly's face, as if the other things were something she expected and had to cope with. Whatever this lady cop was now referring to seemed a mystery to her. 'Like what?'
Nikki slid a photocopy out of the folder. 'This is your fingerprint array from your booking on a prostitution charge.' She pushed it across the table to let Holly examine it. Then Detective Heat took another photocopy from the folder. 'This is another set of prints, also yours. These were taken by our technicians this morning off several doorknobs at the home of Cassidy Towne.'
The young woman didn't respond. Her lower lip trembled and she slid the paper away. Then found her spot to stare at again above the Magic Mirror.
'We took these fingerprints because Cassidy Towne was murdered last night. In that apartment. The one with your fingerprints.' Nikki watched Holly's face grow pale and then still. And then Nikki continued. 'What would a prostitute be doing in Cassidy Towne's apartment? Were you there for sex?'
'No.'
Rook asked, 'Were you one of her sources, maybe? A tipster?'
The woman shook her head no.
'I want an answer, Holly.' Heat gave her the look that said this would go on until she got it. 'What relationship did you have to Cassidy Towne?'
Holly Flanders closed her eyes in a slow blink. And when she opened them, she looked at Nikki Heat and said, 'She was my mother.'
Chapter Five
Nikki searched Holly's face for a tell. The cop in her lived every waking hour on alert for one. Something to let her know more than what was being said. An indication that this was a lie. Or, if it wasn't, what the woman felt about the information she was giving. Detective Heat worked in a business where people constantly bullshitted her. Nine times out of ten, it was only a matter of how much. Looking for the tell and, especially, being able to read it, helped her figure out the degree of dishonesty.
Hers was a beautiful world.
The feedback on Holly Flanders came across the Interrogation Room table to Nikki from a face clouded by a storm of mixed emotions, but it felt like the truth. Or some version of it. When Holly broke eye contact to chip away at her nails some more, Heat turned beside her and gave Rook an arched brow. The writer should have no trouble reading her tell. It said, Well, Mr. Ride-along?
'I didn't know Cassidy Towne had any children.' He took a soft tone, sensitive to the girl. Or maybe because he was feeling defensive.
'Neither did she,' Holly spat back. 'She got knocked up and basically disowned me.'
'Let's slow this down here, Holly,' said the detective. 'Walk me through this because this is pretty new and pretty big to me.'
'What's hard to understand? What are you, stupid? You're a cop, figure it out. I was her 'love child.' ' She put
