He closed his eyes again and opened them, making Nikki think of barn owls. 'However… I can only say that I do not know the subject of her expose.'
'You mean you know and won't say,' responded Heat.
'We are a major house. We trust our authors and give them great latitude. As such, Cassidy Towne and I operated on blind faith. She assured me she had a blockbuster book, I assured her I would get it to market. Now, sadly, we may never know what the subject was… Unless you can locate the manuscript.'
Detective Heat smiled. 'You know, and you're not telling. Cassidy Towne got a huge advance, and especially in this economy, that doesn't happen without a solid proposal and everybody signing off.'
'Forgive me, Detective, but how would you know whether she got any advance, let alone a sizable one?'
Rook weighed in on that issue. 'Because it was the only way she would be able to fund her network of tipsters. You know newspapers. She didn't have the budget from the Ledger to pay that tab. And she wasn't a wealthy woman.'
Nikki added, 'I can get into her bank records, and I bet I'll see a deposit from Epimetheus in a sum that says you knew exactly what you were buying.'
'If you do, and there is such an advance, the linkage you insinuate is only conjecture.' He said no more, and a beat of silence passed between them.
Nikki got out a business card. 'Whoever this book was about could be the killer or lead us to the killer. If you change your mind, here's how to reach me.'
He took her card and put it in his pocket without reading it. 'Thank you. And if I may say, as good as Jameson Rook here is, his article barely did you justice. In fact, I'm starting to think there may even be a book in Nikki Heat.'
For her, nothing could have more definitively ended the meeting. As soon as the elevator door closed, Nikki said, 'Shut up.'
'I didn't say anything.' And then he smiled and added, 'About a Nikki Heat book…'
The car stopped at the ninth floor and several people got on. Heat noticed that Rook had turned himself to the wall. 'You all right?' she asked. He didn't answer, just nodded and scratched something on his forehead, covering half his face for the rest of the ride down.
At the ground floor, he let the elevator clear before he slowly got off. Nikki was waiting for him. 'Did you get bitten on the face by something?'
'No, I'm fine.' He turned and speed-walked ahead of her, crossing the lobby at a fast pace. He had just put his hand on the door leading out to Fifth Avenue when Nikki heard a woman's voice echo across the marble.
'Jamie? Jamie Rook, is that you?' She was one of the women from the elevator, and something in the way Rook hesitated before he turned from the door to face her told Heat to hang back and watch this play out from the near distance.
'Terri, hello. Where's my head? I didn't see you.' Rook stepped to her and they hugged, and Nikki saw a blush come to his face and blend with the scratch marks he had just excavated on his forehead.
When they separated, the woman said, 'What are you doing coming here and not saying hello to your editor?'
'Actually, that's just what I was going to do, but then I got a call for an assignment I'm working on so I figured, next time.' He looked up and caught Nikki watching and stepped around, presenting their backs to her.
'You'd better,' said the editor. 'Listen, I have to run, too. But you saved me an e-mail. Your manuscript is due back from copyediting next week. I'll ship it as an attachment as soon as it comes in, OK?'
'Sure thing.' They embraced again, and the woman ran off to join her companions, who were holding a cab at the curb.
When Rook turned back toward Nikki, she was gone. He scanned the lobby, and his stomach tightened as he saw her over by Security, reading the building directory.
'You have an editor here?' she said as he approached. 'I see a lot of book publishers in the building, but I don't see a listing for First Press magazine.'
'Ah, no. They're in the Flatiron.'
'No Vanity Fair, either.'
'They're in the Conde Nast. Off Times Square.' He touched her elbow. 'We should get up to the precinct, huh?'
Heat ignored his prod. 'So why would you have an editor here if it's all book publishers? Do you write books?'
He rocked his head side to side. 'In a manner of speaking, yes.'
'Now, that woman, Terri-your editor-got on at the ninth floor, as I recall.'
'God, Nikki, do you always have to be such a cop?'
'And according to this'-she ran her finger along the glass covering the building directory-'the ninth floor is Ardor Books. What would Ardor Books be?'
The security guard at the counter beside them smiled and said, 'Ma'am? Ardor Books is a romance fiction publisher.'
Nikki turned back to Rook, but he wasn't there. He was speed-walking to the Fifth Avenue door again, thinking he had a chance in hell to escape.
Chapter Twelve
Coming into the bull pen with Rook twenty minutes later, Nikki thought there must be a SWAT operation or another suspicious vehicle discovery the way everyone was crowded around the TV. But that didn't seem likely, because she would have certainly picked up the chatter on the TAC frequencies during the drive up from the publishing house.
'What's the big news?' she asked anyone in the room. 'Somebody else get fed up with the strike and set their trash on fire?'
'Oh, major story,' said Detective Hinesburg. 'All the TV choppers are on it. ACC has a coyote cornered at the north end of Inwood Park.'
'That critter gets around,' said Raley.
Rook stepped to the back of the circle rimming the TV. 'Do they know if it's the same one that went after Coyote Man?'
Ochoa turned his way. 'Hey, man, don't call him that, OK?'
Through split screens showing simultaneous aerial and telephoto ground video, they watched live as an animal control officer prepared to fire a tranquilizer dart at the coyote. Nikki, never one to be glued to a TV except for the major shared moments of truly breaking news, experienced an odd moment of being transfixed by the trapped animal, hunkered, peering out of the thicket above Spuyten Duyvil Creek. The ground-level camera was shooting from a distance, so the picture was wavy from air distortion and magnification, but the angle wasn't so different from the one she had had looking at the coyote that one morning in front of Cafe Lalo. That moment, unsettling as it had been, was for Nikki Heat rare contact with something wild, an untamed animal finding its way in a city alone. And, mostly, unseen. Yet here it was now; its life and existence couldn't be more public. Nikki was the one staring at it now, and she understood too well what she saw in its eyes this time.
The coyote shivered when the dart struck its coat, but then it immediately ran off, disappearing in dense brush on the steep hill. The news reporter said the dart hit and either glanced off or didn't stick. The aerial camera panned fruitlessly.
Detective Heat killed the TV with the remote, eliciting mock moans and protests as the squad gathered for the morning update.
Nothing connecting the three victims had yet surfaced from the CSU sweep of Derek Snow's apartment. Forensics was still running prints and samples, just to be sure. Nikki reported on her encounter with Soleil Gray at Later On, as well as the confirmation from a segment producer on the show that Cassidy Towne was at work on a tell-all scandal book. Rook cleared his throat, and she gave him a look that said, Don't you dare. She turned back to the squad. 'That information was deemed credible based on a meeting Rook and I just had with the book editor.
