behavior, and was assigned community service. To the zoo!'
'More poetry,' said Rook.
The two hit it off, and at the end of their stint at the zoo, the comedy writer got Petar a gig at Later On as a production assistant. 'Not quite a step up from shoveling the elephant yard,' said the voice from LA, 'but entry level, and he did OK. Worked his way up to segment producer pretty quick. My friend says once Petar sets his mind to something, there's no stopping him.'
That was the thought that left Rook sleepless, worried about that signature Petar Matic tenacity-plus conflicted over whether he should tell Nikki about her ex's smuggling bust. But suppose he did tell her? That could make it worse, exponentially worse. He made a list of potential fallout. It could damage a perfectly good relationship she enjoyed with an old friend, which Rook would then feel bad about. Sort of. He might inadvertently create greater interest in Petar. Nikki had a naughty side, and maybe the bad boy thing was something she would spark to all the more. And finally, how did it make him look, doing background checks on her old boyfriends? It made him look… well, insecure, needy, and threatened. Sure wouldn't want to give that impression. So when he saw her come through the door at the other end of the bull pen, smiling, he knew exactly what to do. Look busy and pretend he didn't know anything.
'Look at you here, all bright-eyed and…'-she studied him-'… bushy faced.'
'I skipped the shave this morning. A little time-saver after a long night. Researching.' He waited while she hung up her jacket, and then he added, 'And you?'
'Feeling pretty good, actually, thanks.' She turned across the room. 'Roach? You get Derek Snow's phone records yet?'
'Put in for them,' answered Raley. 'Should arrive anytime now.'
'Call them again. And keep me up on it.' She put her bag in her desk file drawer. 'Rook, you're hovering.'
'Huh? Oh, I'm just wondering…' His sentence hung there, suspended between them. What he wanted to ask was about her night. What she did. Where she went. What she did. When it ended. What she did. So many questions. But the one he asked was, 'Is there something I can do to be useful this morning?'
Before Nikki could answer, the phone rang on her desk. 'Homicide, Detective Heat.'
Before Nikki heard the voice, she heard the unmistakable sound of subway wheels squealing to a halt. 'Are you there?' She recognized the voice of Mitchell Perkins. But Cassidy Towne's editor didn't sound quietly superior as he had in his office the day before. He was agitated and tight. 'Damn cell phone. Hello?'
'I'm here, Mr. Perkins, is something wrong?'
'My wife. I'm on my way to work and my wife just called. She caught someone trying to break in.'
'What's the address?' She snapped her fingers to get Roach's attention. Raley picked up the extension, copied the address Perkins gave, uptown on Riverside Drive, and called Dispatch while Heat stayed on with the editor. 'We're sending a car now.'
She heard him panting, and the background acoustics changed, telling her he had come up from the subway to street level. 'I'm almost there. Hurry, God, hurry…' Hurrying in Manhattan isn't so easy, even with police lights and a siren, but the traffic flow was downtown at that hour, so Detective Heat made good time up Broadway to West 96th Street. From her TAC frequency Nikki heard that three blue-and-whites were already at Perkins's apartment, so she killed her siren and eased it back slightly after she crossed West End. She looked up the street and chin-nodded to Rook beside her. 'What's this?'
Ahead of them, mid-block, two people were kneeling on the sidewalk in front of a car at a garage entrance. A third, a parking attendant to judge by his uniform, saw her flashing light and waved his arms to flag her down. Nikki was on the air calling for paramedics before she even saw the body stretched out on the pavement.
'Perkins?' said Rook.
'Think so.' Heat parked to protect the scene from oncoming traffic and left her gumball flashing. When she got out, a blue-and-white was right behind her and she directed the officers to split up. One to direct traffic, the other to hold the witnesses on scene. The detective hurried over to the victim, who was facedown on the car park driveway in front of the TT that had struck him. It was indeed Mitchell Perkins.
She did a check for vitals. He had a pulse and was breathing; both weak, though. 'Mr. Perkins, can you hear me?' Nikki leaned an ear down near his face, which was sideways on the concrete, but got nothing back. Not even a moan. As the ambulance siren approached behind her, she said, 'It's Detective Heat. The ambulance is here. We're going to take good care of you.' And she added, just in case he was semiconscious, 'And police are with your wife, so don't worry.'
While the EMTs went to work, Heat pieced together what had happened from the trio of citizens on the scene. One of them was a housekeeper who happened by after the incident and wasn't of much use for information. However, the driver of the Audi said he was pulling out of the garage for a trip to Boston when he struck Perkins. Nikki figured the editor was in such a rush from the subway, freaked about his wife, that he wasn't paying attention. But she adhered to her training not to box the story until all the details were in, and never to lead the eyewitnesses with her own guesses. Let them talk.
That's what she did, and the story she got was big. The parking attendant said Perkins wasn't running up the sidewalk when he first saw him. He was in a struggle with somebody, a mugger, trying to get his briefcase. The attendant had gone into his kiosk to call 911, which was right when the TT came up from the underground ramp. The driver said he pulled out just as the mugger ripped away the briefcase. Perkins had been pulling so hard that when he lost his grip he flew back into the front of the car. The driver said he hit his brakes, but there was no way to stop the collision.
Roach rolled up to the scene, and Heat assigned them to separate the witnesses and get more detailed statements and better descriptions of the mugger from them. As often happened in sudden violent crimes, the eyewitnesses had gotten distracted or shocked by the blur of action and missed basic descriptions of the perpetrators. 'I already had one of the uniforms put out the APB for a Caucasian, medium build, in sunglasses and dark navy or black hoodie and jeans, but that's pretty vanilla. See what else you can get, and try to get them down to the precinct for a look at photo arrays. I want to make sure we include the Texan and some of our other players in the deck. And while we're at it, line up the sketch artist, too.' She looked around for Rook and saw him squatting in the gutter over the spilled contents of the editor's briefcase.
'No, I didn't touch anything,' he said as she approached, snapping on gloves. 'I'm incorrigible, but trainable. How's he going to be?'
Nikki turned to watch them load Perkins into the back of the ambulance. 'Still unconscious, which is not optimal. But he's breathing and they did get a better pulse, so we'll see.' She crouched down beside him. 'Anything useful here?'
'One very trashed, rather empty briefcase.' It was an old-fashioned hard case, a big clamshell gaping open, with business cards and stationery items like black binder clips and Post-its scattered about it. A handheld digital voice recorder lay scuffed a foot away, beside a granola bar. 'Although, I do say I admire his taste in fountain pens,' he said, indicating a brick-orange-and-black Montblanc Hemingway limited edition nestled in the L where the curb met the gutter. 'Those things go for over three grand now. Kind of shoots down the mugger theory.'
Nikki wanted to go along with that, but she pushed away the temptation of coming to any conclusions for now. That's not how cases cleared. 'Unless the mugger wasn't a writer-slash-fountain pen collector.'
Just then Rook startled her by taking her by the wrist. 'Come with me, quick.'
She almost hesitated, but she went along with him as he drew her across the street with a gentle grip on her forearm. But that didn't stop her from asking, 'Rook, what are you doing?'
'Quick, before it flies away.' He pointed to a single sheet of white paper fluttering down 96th toward the park on Riverside.
Nikki reached for it, but the wind took it and she had to make another sprint to get ahead of it. When it landed on the pavement at her feet, she pounced and slapped her open palm down to trap it. 'Gotcha.'
'Nice. Would have done that myself, but you've got the gloves,' said Rook. 'And the moves.'
With her free hand, Heat carefully pinched the corner of the sheet and turned the paper over to read it. Frustrated by her poker face, Rook grew impatient.
'Well?' he said. 'What is it?'
Nikki didn't answer. Instead, she turned the page so he could read it himself. Wasted, Dead or Alive The Real Story Behind the Death of Reed Wakefield By Cassidy Towne
