direction. Heat saw the change in Soleil and called out to Rook, 'Tell them to stay back!'
Rook stepped to the driver's window and spoke to the Parks officer, who Nikki watched grab his microphone. Seconds later, the NYPD motorcycles must have gotten his call, because they braked and waited in the near distance, idling, the purr of their engines mixing with the squeaking and moaning of the lumbering train.
'I can't deal with it all, I can't,' moaned Soleil. 'It's all too much.'
Nikki could finally see the end of the train about a hundred yards away and began calculating her rush.
'I just feel… hollow. I can't turn off the pain.'
Fifty yards to go. 'I'll get you through this, Soleil.' Now only three more cars. 'Will you let me help you?' Nikki extend her arms, hoping her gesture would be felt over the yards that separated them, across the crushed stone of the railroad siding. Soleil straightened her posture, looking like a dancer again. She raised her face to the sun with her eyes closed for a moment, then lowered it to look right at Nikki, smiling at her for the first time ever. And then she threw herself under the last car.
Chapter Sixteen
NYPD cordoned off a wide area around the scene of Soleil Gray's suicide to keep media and fans at a distance so the medical examiner, Forensics, and the chief's squad from One Police Plaza that routinely investigated any officer-involved death could do their jobs with privacy and focus. Other investigative personnel, including Parks and Rec and representatives from the train company and its insurance carrier were present but would have to wait their turns. To maintain the dignity of the deceased and to give the technicians privacy, a line of portable vinyl screens had been erected on both sides of the train tracks where most of the singer's remains were strewn. Twelfth Avenue had been closed off between West 138th and 135th Streets, but news photographers, paparazzi, and mobile TV newsrooms had staked out elevated vantage points both in Riverbank State Park and on the opposite side of the tracks, on Riverside Drive. OCME deployed a tent fly to mask the scene from the half dozen news choppers that had positioned themselves overhead.
Captain Montrose visited Detective Heat where she waited alone in one of the police personnel vans, still shaken, holding a cup of coffee that had grown cold resting in both her hands. He had just come from a huddle with the chief's unit and told her that their initial interviews of Rook, the two paparazzi, the Parks officer, and the motorcycle cops all corroborated her story that the woman jumped of her own volition and that Heat had done everything she could to diffuse the situation and prevent the suicide.
The skipper offered to let her take a few days off to recover, even though she was not going to get put on leave or desked. Nikki gave it to him straight. She felt deeply upset but knew that this case wasn't closed yet. The cop part of her-the part that could compartmentalize the human tragedy and stuff down the trauma she felt from what she had witnessed two hours before-that part viewed Soleil's death objectively as a loose end. Vital information died with her. Heat knew she had cleared the mugging of the book editor, but many questions remained that she could no longer get answers for out of Soleil Gray. And the Texan, Rance Wolf, who was potentially her accomplice and the lead-pipe cinch to have been the killer of three people, was still at large. And as long as the last chapter of Cassidy Towne's book was unaccounted for, there was every reason to believe he would kill again to get it. Unless the need to do so had also died with Soleil Gray.
'I'm feeling it, Captain, but that part will have to wait.' Detective Heat poured her cold coffee out the open door and onto the gravel. 'So if that's all, I need to get back to work.' Back at the precinct, Heat and Rook had a moment alone for the first time since it had happened. Even though a police cruiser had brought them back to the Two-Oh together, she'd ridden up front in the partner seat in silence; he had the back to himself and spent most of the ride trying to shake the image of what he had seen. Not just the grisly death of Soleil Gray, but the anguish he'd observed in Nikki. Both of them had seen their share of human tragedy in their careers. But whether it was Chechnya or Chelsea, nothing prepared you for witnessing the instant life leaves a body. When he took her elbow and stopped her in the hall on the way to the bull pen, he said to her, 'I see the brave front, and we both know why. But just know I'm here, OK?'
Nikki wanted right then to indulge herself in a brief squeeze of his hand, but not at work. And Heat also knew it wouldn't be wise to open the door to her vulnerability just yet. So that was it for sentiment. She nodded and said, 'Let's bring this home,' and pushed on into her squad room. Detective Heat kept herself in motion, not giving anyone an opening to ask her about how she was doing. She became instead all about doing. Nikki knew she would have to deal with what she had experienced at some point, but not yet. And she reminded herself that, by the way, it was not she but Soleil Gray who had experienced the worst of it.
Detective Hinesburg, ever sensitive and empathic, turned from her computer monitor to ask Heat if she wanted to see the online pics of Soleil's death scene from the Web edition of the Ledger. She didn't. Fortunately, the pictures taken by the two paparazzi at the scene hadn't surfaced yet. They were still being reviewed by investigators as corroborative evidence of the sequence of events. No doubt the moment-of-death shot would go up for bidding and be purchased by some British or German webloid for six figures. People would shake their heads in disgust and then surf to see if they had to register to see it.
Heat looked at the board, staring at Soleil's name, hearing the plaintive echo of her voice before her death, lamenting 'that night.' She called Ochoa's cell phone and caught him en route back to the precinct. 'I'm revisiting every loose connection I have here,' she told him, 'and I can't get past the missing limo manifest for the night of Wakefield's death.'
'I'm with you,' said Ochoa, 'but it's sort of like that last chapter. As long as it's missing, we can only guess.'
'Tell Raley to turn that Roach Coach around. I want you guys to go back to Spanish Harlem. Talk to the family again, the coworkers again. Maybe if you ask more specifically about Reed Wakefield something will kick loose. See if Padilla was in service that night and if he confided anything about what he saw or heard, even from the other drivers.'
Ochoa paused, and Nikki was afraid he was about to offer her some sort of condolence for her ordeal by the tracks. But he sighed and said, 'We'll do it, but I have to tell you, me and my partner have had a bitch of a day today. But you wouldn't know anything about that, would you?'
Yep. A gal could get misty. It was not quite six, and Rook was sliding the strap of his messenger bag over his shoulder. 'Knocking off early?' said Nikki.
'Got a text from my editor at First Press. Now that this Soleil business has kicked the story up to an international scale, they want me to file by tomorrow so they can get a rush edition into production.'
'So you're going to go finish up the article?'
He laughed. 'Hell no. I'm going to go start the article.'
'I thought that's what you had been doing.'
'Shh.' He looked around conspiratorially and lowered his voice to a whisper. 'So does my editor.' Then he added, 'Call me later. If you want, you can come over for a beer or something.'
'You have a full night ahead of you, mister. You'll be busy… with your toy helicopter and all. Besides, the sooner the new edition is on the newsstands, the sooner mine is off, so don't let me slow you down.' He started to go, and as he went she said, 'Hey, Rook?' He stopped. 'I need to tell you how foolish you were following me like that today. First on the carrier and then with that paparazzo on the motorcycle. So first of all, never pull a stunt like that again. And second? Thanks for having my back.'
'Sorry and you're welcome,' he said as he turned and left. Roach waited before they got out of the car. They had cruised the block for a space, and when they passed Esteban Padilla's old address, his cousin was just stepping out the front door. 'Shall we reach out?' said Raley.
'Know what?' said his partner. 'That dude's just a buzz killer. Let's hang back until he's gone and see if the kid's home. We'll start with him.'
Twenty minutes later, Esteban Padilla's buzz-killing cousin unlocked his front door and, as he stepped in, called out in Spanish, 'Yo, Pablo, I'm back. You ready to roll?' Then he stopped short when he saw that the detectives were once again in his living room with Esteban's teenage nephew.
'You taking some kind of trip, Victor?' asked Ochoa.
Victor gave Pablo a WTF look and the boy looked away.
