'Kidding. Mark me down as a 'no.' ' Rook didn't leave. He told Heat he wanted to stick around in case he could be helpful with anything. She had the push-pull thing going: wanting him away from her in the worst way because he was such an emotional disruption; but then seeing the benefit of his potential insights as they went over the wreckage of Cassidy Towne's apartment. The writer had been to plenty of crime scenes with her during his ride- along last summer, so she knew he was scene-friendly, at least trained enough not to pick up a piece of evidence in his bare hands and say, 'What's this?' He was also a first-person witness to the most profound element of his magazine story, the death of his subject. Mixed feelings or not, she wasn't going to begrudge Jameson Rook that professional courtesy.
When they went into Cassidy Towne's office, he returned her unspoken favor in kind, keeping out of her way by standing over near the French doors that led out to the courtyard garden. For Detective Heat it always began by slowing down and studying the body. The dead didn't talk, but if you paid attention, sometimes they did tell you things.
In getting a feel for Cassidy Towne, Nikki read the power Rook was talking about. Her suit, a tasteful, navy pinstripe over a French-blue blouse with starched white collar, would work for a talent agency meeting or premiere party. And it was expertly tailored to her, accenting a body that had seen regular gym time. Heat hoped that when she reached fiftysomething that she'd keep it that together. Nikki saw some tasteful David Yurman on Towne's ears and neck, potentially ruling out robbery. There was no wedding ring, so unless that had been stolen, Heat could also rule out marriage. Potentially. Towne's face was slack in death, but angular and attractive, what most would call handsome-not always the highest compliment to a woman, but according to George Orwell, she had had about ten years since forty to earn that face. Not making a judgment, but letting instinct talk to her, Nikki regarded her impression of Cassidy Towne, and the picture that emerged was of someone suited for battle. A hard body whose hardness seemed to run deeper than just muscle tone. A snapshot formed of a woman who was, at that moment, something she probably never was in life. A victim.
Soon CSU was there, dusting the usual touch points for prints, taking photos of the body and the roomscatter. Detective Heat and her team worked in tandem, but more big-picture than close-up. Wearing their blue latex gloves, they walked here and then there and then back again in appraisal of the office, the way golfers read a green before a long putt.
'All right, fellas, I've got my first odd sock.' The detective's approach to a crime scene, even one in this much disarray, was to simplify her field of view. She pared everything down to getting inside the logic of the life that was lived in that space and using that empathy to spot inconsistencies, the small thing that didn't fit the pattern. The odd sock.
Raley and Ochoa came across the room to join her. Rook adjusted his position at the perimeter to follow quietly from a distance. 'Whatcha got?' asked Ochoa.
'Work space. Busy work space, right? Big newspaper columnist. Pens everywhere, pencils, custom notepads and stationery. Box of Kleenex. Look at this beside her here.' She stepped carefully around the body, still cast backward in the office chair. 'A typewriter, for God's sake. Magazines and newspapers with clippings snipped out of them, right? All that stuff makes lots of what?'
'Work,' said Raley.
'Trash,' said Rook, and Heat's two detectives turned slightly his way and then back to Heat, unwilling to acknowledge him as part of this exchange. Like his season pass had expired.
'Correct,' she continued, more focused on where she was going than on Rook now. 'What's with the wastebasket?'
Raley shrugged. 'It's right there. Tipped, but there it is.'
'It's empty,' said Ochoa.
'Right. And with all the tossing this room took, you'd think, OK, maybe it spilled out.' She crouched near it and they went with her. 'No clips, snips, Kleenex, or crumpled paper anywhere around it.'
'Maybe she emptied it,' said Ochoa.
'Maybe she did. But look over there.' She side-nodded to the armoire that the columnist had used as a supply closet. It had been rifled, too. And among the contents scattered on the floor was, 'A box of waste-can liners. Simplehuman, sized for this can.'
'No liner in this can,' said Raley. 'And no liner on the floor. An odd sock.'
'An odd sock, indeed,' said Heat. 'On the way in, I saw a wooden bin for trash cans in the little patio.'
'On it,' said Raley. He and Ochoa headed toward the front hall. Lauren Parry from the medical examiner's was making her way in the door as they went out. In the tight space between the tipped furniture, she and Ochoa ended up doing an impromptu dance step getting around each other. In her quick glance over, Nikki caught Ochoa lingering to check Lauren out as he left. She made a mental note to warn her girlfriend later about rebounding men.
Detective Ochoa was still fresh from a marital separation. He had hidden the breakup from the squad for about a month, but those kinds of secrets don't keep in such a tight working family. The laundry sitch alone gave him away when he started showing up in dress shirts with telltale 'Boxed for Your Convenience' creases on their torsos. Over an after-work beer the week before, Nikki and Ochoa were the stragglers at the table, so she took the opportunity to ask him how it was going. A gloom settled over him and he said, 'You know. It's a process.' She was happy to leave it at that, but he finished his Dos Equis and half smiled. 'You know, it's kind of like those car ads. What happened to the relationship, I mean. I saw one on TV in my new apartment the other night and it said, 'Zero interest for two years.' And I went, yep, that was us, all right.' Then a sheepishness came over him about opening up like that. He left some money under his empty glass and called it a night. He didn't bring it up again, and neither did she.
'Sorry not to be here sooner, Nikki,' Lauren Parry said as she set her plastic examination cases on the floor. 'I've been working a double fatal on the FDR since four a…' The ME's voice trailed off when she spotted Rook leaning a shoulder against the connecting door leading to the kitchen. He pulled one of his hands out of his pocket and gave her a wave. She nodded and smiled at him, then turned to Heat and finished her sentence. '… four A.M.' With her back to Rook, she was able to sneak a what-the-hell? face to Nikki.
Nikki lowered her voice and muttered to her friend, 'Tell you later.' Then, at full volume, she moved on. 'Rook found the victim.'
'I see…'
While her BFF from the ME's office set up to perform her exam, Heat filled her in on the discovery details the writer had provided in their kitchen interview. 'Also, when you get a moment, I noticed a blood smear over there.' ME Parry followed Heat's gesture to the same doorway she had just entered. Beside the jamb, the floral Victorian wallpaper showed a dark discoloration. 'Looks like she might have tried to get out before she collapsed in the chair.'
'Could be. I'll swab it. Maybe Forensics can cut a patch so we can lab it; that would be better.'
Ochoa returned to report that both trash barrels in the patio hutch were empty. 'During a garbage strike?' said Nikki. 'Find the super. See if he disposed of it. Or if she had private pickup, which I doubt. But check anyway, and if she had it, find the truck before they barge it to Rhode Island or wherever it goes these days.'
'Oh, and get ready for your close-up,' said Ochoa at the door. 'The news vans and shooters are lining up in front. Raley's working with the uniforms to move them back. Word is out on the scanners. Ding-dong the witch is dead.'
Lauren Parry rose up from Cassidy Towne's body and made a note on her chart. 'Body temp indicates a prelim TOD window of midnight to 3 A.M. I can do better after I run the lividity and the rest of the course.'
'Thanks,' said Nikki. 'And cause?'
'Well, as always, it's preliminary, but, I think, obvious.' She gently moved the office chair so that the body leaned forward, revealing the wound. 'Your gossip columnist was stabbed in the back.'
'No symbolism there,' said Rook. When Cassidy Towne's assistant, Cecily, reported for work at eight she broke down in sobs. Forensics gave Nikki Heat the OK, and she righted two of the chairs in the living room and sat with her, resting a palm on the young woman's back as Cecily leaned forward with her face in her hands. CSU had closed off the kitchen, so Rook gave her the bottle of water he had in his messenger bag.
'Hope you don't mind room temperature,' he said, and then shot an oops look at Heat. But if Cecily made the connection to her boss's state in the next room, she didn't let on.
'Cecily,' Nikki said, when she finished a sip of water, 'I know this must be very traumatic for you.'
'You have no idea.' The assistant's lips began to tremble, but she kept it together. 'Do you realize this means
