Naked Heat

She laughed. "Sorta, yeah."

  "Because it felt sort of like one of those Dr. Phil things."

  They smiled and looked into each other a long time. Nikki was starting to wonder, What now? This connection they had just made was unexpected, and she wasn't prepared for what it might mean. So she did what she always did. Decided to not decide. Just to be in the moment.

  He may have been in the same place, because in some unspoken ballet of synchronization, the two leaned forward at the same instant, drawn to each other for a tender kiss. When they parted, they smiled again and then just held each other, jaws resting on opposing shoulders, their chests slowly rising and falling as one.

  "And so you know, Rook, I'm sorry, too. About this afternoon in the car, being so rough on you."

  A full minute passed and he said, "And so you know? I'm good with rough."

  Nikki drew back from him and gave him a sly look. "Oh, are you?" She reached down and took him in her hand. "How rough?"

  He cupped a palm behind her head, lacing his long fingers through her hair. "Wanna find out?"

  She gave him a squeeze that made him gasp and said, "You're on."

  And then she gasped as he gathered her up in his arms and carried her to the bedroom. Halfway down the hall, she bit his ear and whispered, "My safe word is 'pineapples.' "

  Nikki wanted them to arrive at the Two-Oh separately the next morning. She got up early and, as she left, asked Rook to cab home to change and to take his sweet time before he came to the precinct. She had enough gossip swirling around her without the two of them showing up for work together looking like the poster for Date Night.

  Heat rolled into the bull pen at five of six and was surprised to find Detectives Raley and Ochoa already there. Raley was on his phone listening to someone and gave her a howdy nod, then resumed his note taking. "Hey, Detective," said Ochoa.

  "Gents." She usually got a smile whenever she spoke to one member of the pair as the rep for both. This time, nothing. Ochoa's phone rang, and as he reached for it, she said, "You boys got something against sleep?" Neither one answered her. Ochoa took his call. Raley finished his and passed by on the way to the whiteboard. Nikki had a feeling she knew what these two were up to, and sure enough, when she tailed Raley to the board, she discovered that he and Ochoa had started a new section labeled "The Lone Stranger" in red marking pen.

  Rales referred to his notes to update the status report they had begun under the taped-up police sketch of the Texan. As his dry-erase marker squeaked out block capitals on the bright white surface, Heat read over his shoulder: No overnight ER visits with gunshots or broken collarbones from anyone matching his description in Manhattan or the boroughs. Calls pending in Jersey. Checks of all CVSs and Duane Reades south of Canal Street and west of St. James Place came up neg for first-aid shoppers matching Tex. Digital copies of his sketch were blasted out in e-mails to private urgent-care storefronts in case he sought treatment at one of the local doc-in-the-boxes.

  Under a section headed "Patrols/Quality of Life" she saw that these two had already contacted all relevant precincts with no hits on any complaints, arrests, or homeless pickups matching her man.

  Nikki Heat was standing witness to how cops had one another's back. A sister detective got assaulted, and Roach's stoic response was to come in to the precinct under a setting moon to start turning over all the stones. It wasn't just a code. It was life itself. Because in their city, you just didn't pull that shit and walk.

  In any other sort of profession this would be a warm moment leading to a group hug. But these were New York cops, so when Ochoa got off the phone and stood beside her, she said, "This the best you two could come up with?"

  Raley, who was bent over writing, capped his marker and turned to face her, keeping an excellent straight face when he said, "Well, seeing how you let the suspect evade capture, there's not much to work with."

  "But we all do our best," added Ochoa. Then, for good measure, he threw in, "At least you got a piece of him before you let the yokel slip away, right?"

  And that was that. Without a high five or even a fist bump, the three of them had had their say. For one it was, Thanks, guys, I owe you; for the other two it was an emphatic, Got your wing, anytime, anywhere. And then they got back to work before one of them got all misty.

  Ochoa said, "That call I just got was Forensics. I've been all over them about the typewriter ribbon you found on the subway platform. Tests are done, they're e-mailing the digital images right now."

  "Way to gochoa." A poke of excitement pressed her gut at the prospect of actual evidence to examine as she moved to her computer to log on.

  Rook entered with a cheery "Morning" and handed Raley a paper bag blotched with grease stains. "Sorry, all they had left was plain."

  Raley squinted at the corner of Rook's mouth. "You got a little something. There."

  Rook touched a finger to his face and came away with a blue sprinkle embedded in some icing. "Huh. Well, I didn't say when they ran out. Just that they had." He ate the sprinkle and turned to Nikki, selling a bit too hard. "How are you this morning?"

  She flicked only the slightest of glances up from her screen. "Busy."

  While Heat waited for the server to log her on, Ochoa said, "Remember yesterday at the ME's, you asked me to talk to Lauren Parry about the status of Coyote Man?" She gave him one of her nickname looks and he bobbed his head side to side. "I mean, Mr. Coyote Man? . . . You were right, Padilla's autopsy was stacked. She's going to get on it herself first thing this morning."

  "Not so good news on the other Padilla front," said Raley. "Our canvass of residents and businesses where his body was found turned up NG. Same for security cams."

  Rook said, "Which reminds me, have you seen today's Ledger?"

  "Ledger's crap," from Ochoa.

  "We'll leave that to the Pulitzer committee," said Rook, "but check this out. About sunset last night they spotted a coyote hiding in Central Park." He held up the front page. Nikki turned from her monitor and recognized the brazen eyes in the grainy picture of the animal peeking out of the shrubs near Belvedere Castle.

  "Gotta love the headline," said Raley, who then read it aloud, as if they all couldn't make it out. It was only in the size font they use on the top line of an eye chart. " 'Coy-ote.' " He took the paper from Rook to examine it. "They're always doing that, putting some kind of groaner pun with the story."

  "Hate that," said Ochoa. "Can I have it?" Rook nodded and Raley passed him the newspaper, which he set aside for later. "Like I said, Ledger's crap. But the price is right."

  "Here we go, boys and girls." Detective Heat opened the attachment from Forensics. It was a huge file containing enhanced screen captures of every inch of the typewriter ribbon. Nikki read the accompanying e-mail from the lab technician aloud for the others. " 'In case you are not familiar with the low-tech phenomenon known as the typewriter,' great--geek humor," she said, and continued, " 'each time a key is touched, the corresponding raised metal letter on the type bar strikes the ribbon, which not only prints the letter on the page but also embosses itself on the ribbon. Each letter strike causes the ribbon to advance one space, allowing us to scan the ribbon like a reverse tickertape, reading the sequence of letters that were printed on the writer's page.' "

  "This dude's seen Avatar six times," said Raley.

  Nikki read on. " 'Unfortunately, the owner of this ribbon had rewound and reused the ribbon at the end of each spool, causing overstrikes which have obliterated most of the retrievable text.' "

  "Cassidy was cheap," offered Rook. "That's already in my article."

  "Is any of this ribbon readable?" asked Ochoa.

  "Hang on." Nikki scan-read the rest of the e-mail and summarized. "He says he flagged those images that at least had some promise for us to examine. He's sending the ribbon to get X-rayed to see if more can be read on it. That takes time, but he'll let us know. . . . He's happy to . . ."

  "Happy to what?" said Ochoa.

  "Liv
e in his parents' basement," suggested Rook.

  But Raley read the last line over Nikki's shoulder. " 'I am happy to have the privilege of doing any favor I can for the famous Detective Nikki Heat.' "

  Nikki caught Rook's grimace but moved on. "Let's split these up and start screening them."

  Raley and Ochoa each took a block of screen captures, about fifteen apiece, and brought them up on their desk monitors. This was one area where Jameson Rook's knowledge of the victim would clearly be useful, so Nikki entrusted him with a series of files to examine, too, at the desk he had claimed. The remaining prospects she kept for her own perusal.

  The work was tedious and time-consuming. Each image had to be opened separately and looked over carefully for any words or, hopefully, sentences to make sense out of the blur. Raley commented that it was like staring at one of those matrix posters they used to have in malls, where, if you squinted the right way, you might see a seagull or a puppy. Ochoa said it was more like looking for the weeping Virgin on the trunk of a tree or Joaquin Phoenix on a piece of burned toast.

  Nikki didn't mind their banter. It made the arduous task merely grueling. As her eyes strained and squinted at her own screen, she reminded them of her tenets of good investigation. Rule #1: The time line is your friend. Rule #2: Some of the best detective work is desk work.

  "Right about now, I've got a third rule," called Ochoa from his desk. "Take the early retirement."

  "Got something," said Rook. All three detectives gathered behind his chair, glad for the excuse to get away from their own desks and monitors, even if it was for nothing. "It's some decipherable words, anyway. Five words."

  Nikki leaned around Rook to bring herself closer to his screen. Her breast grazed his shoulder, an accident. She felt her face flush but soon got pulled from that distraction by the image on his computer.

  stab me n th back

  "OK, this is frame 0430. 'Stab me in the back.' " Nikki could feel a small release of adrenaline. "Bring up 0429 and 0431."

  Raley said, "I think I've got 0429," and hurried back to his desk while Rook brought up 0431, which was garbled and unreadable. They had all gathered behind Raley already by the time he said, "Come look."

  His screen, displaying the frame before "stab me in the back," had a name typed on it. And every one of them knew it.

  Heat and Rook stood against the back wall of the Chelsea rehearsal hall watching Soleil Gray with six male dancers run through choreography for her new music video. "Not that I don't enjoy my backstage access," said Rook, "but if we know Tex is the killer, why are we bothering with her?"

  "We know Cassidy was writing about Soleil because of the typewriter ribbons. And the Texan stole them, right?"

  "So you think Soleil and Tex are connected?"

  The detective flexed her lips into an inverted U. "I don't know that they aren't. Now I have a question for you. Did Cassidy have any tension with our rock star?"

  "No more than any other. Which is to say plenty. She tended to open her columns with Soleil's rehab lapses. Most of it is past history, though. Things I found in archives when I was doing research. Back in the day, Soleil had a wilder side and that always made good copy for 'Buzz Rush.' "

  Six years ago, when she was twenty-two, Soleil Gray had been a brooding Emo icon, when Emo was the thing. Although, when the rock band you front has a couple of gold records and you can fill a summer's worth of venues in North America, Europe, and Australia--and you're traveling to them on Citation jets--there's not too much to brood about. The early songs she wrote and sang lead vocals on, like "Barbed Wire Heart," "Mixed Massages," and notably, from the band's second CD, "Virus in Your Soul," made millions and earned reviewer raves. Rolling Stone called her the distaff, pre-hype John Mayer, basically looking right past the rest of the band to the pale lead singer who was perennially staring through a curtain of black sloping bangs with despondent green eyes framed by mascara.

  Rumors of drug use gained traction when Soleil started arriving hours late for concerts and, eventually, missing some altogether. A YouTube cell phone video capturing her on stage at Toad's Place in New Haven went viral, showing her wasted and hoarse, forgetting her own lyrics even with the audience trying to prompt her. Soleil busted up Shades of Gray in 2008. She said it was to go solo. It was more like to go party. The singer-songwriter went a year and a half without writing or recording anything.

  Even though clubs and drugs replaced studios and concerts, Soleil stayed in the spotlight after she hooked up with Reed Wakefield, the hot young film actor whose own taste for New York nightlife and ingested substances matched her own. The difference was that Reed Wakefield was able to maintain his career. The couple moved into her East Village apartment after he started shooting Magnitude Once Removed, a costume drama in which he played the illegitimate son of Benjamin Franklin. The filming outlasted their affair, which was volatile and punctuated by late-night police visits. Having already broken up her band, Soleil broke up her relationship with Reed and buried her pain in the recording studio with long sessions, creative disputes, and not much output.

  The previous May, just days after he had returned to New York from Cannes, where he received a special jury prize for his role as the bastard son of France's first American ambassador, Reed Wakefield pulled a Heath Ledger and died of an accidental drug overdose.

  The impact on Soleil was profound. Once again, she stopped working, but this time to go into rehab. She emerged from the Connecticut facility clean and focused. The very day after her release, she was back in the recording studio to lay down tracks for the ballad she had written on her bunk bed in the Fairfield County manor as her farewell to the actor she had loved. "Reed and Weep" got split reviews. Some thought it was a sensitive anthem to the fragility of life and enduring loss. Others called it a shameless derivative of "Fire and Rain" by James Taylor and REM's "Everybody Hurts." But it debuted on the charts in the Top 10. Soleil Gray had officially begun her elusive solo career.

  She had also changed how she presented herself to the world. And, as Heat and Rook watched her run through a track from her new CD, Reboot My Life, they saw a woman whose career and new hard body had undergone a radical makeover.

  The blaring music ended and the choreographer called a five. Soleil protested. "No, let's go again; these guys move like they've got snowshoes on." She went to her first position, her muscles gleaming in the harsh light of the rehearsal room. The male dancers, panting, formed up behind her, but the choreographer shook his head to the playback engineer. "Fine. Remember this, dickweed, when we're shooting and you wonder why it sucks," Soleil said to him and stormed toward the door.

  As she drew near, Nikki Heat stepped to intercept her. "Miss Gray?"

  Soleil slowed her stride, but only to size up Nikki, as if for a fight. She gave Rook a fleeting appraisal, but concentrated on the detective. "Who the hell are you? This is a closed rehearsal."

  Heat showed her badge and introduced herself. "I'd like to ask you a few questions about Cassidy Towne."

  "Now?" When Nikki just stared, Soleil dropped an F-bomb. "Whatever your questions are about her, the answer's going to be the same. 'Bitch.' " She went to the small craft services table in the corner and got a bottle of Fiji out of a cooler. She didn't offer one to either of them.

  "Your dancing's awesome," said Rook.

  "It's crap. Are you a cop? 'Cause you don't look like a cop."

  Nikki jumped in to take that one. "He's working with us on this case." No need to freak her out that the press was there.

  "You look familiar." Soleil Gray canted her head to one side, appraising Nikki. "You're on that magazine, aren't you?"

  Heat ignored that path and said, "I assume you're aware that Cassidy Towne was killed?"

  "Yes. A tragic loss for all of us." She cracked the seal on the blue cap and chugged some water. "Why are you talking to me about that dead bee-otch, other than to cheer me up?"

  Rook joined in. "Cassidy Towne wrote a lot about you in her
column."

  "The scumbag printed a ton of lies and gossip about me, if that's what you call writing. She had these anonymous sources and unnamed spies claiming I did everything from snorting lines off a Hammond B3 to groping Clive Davis at the Grammys."

  "She also wrote that you fired a .38 at your producer during one of the sessions with your old band," said Rook.

  "Not true." Soleil grabbed a towel from a wicker basket near the window. "It was a .44." She wiped the sweat from her face and added, "Good times."

  Nikki opened her notebook and a pen, always a means to help folks get serious about conversations. "Did you have any personal contact with Cassidy Towne?"

  "What is this? You don't think I had anything to do with her murder, do you? Seriously?"

  Nikki stayed on her own track, getting her facts in morsels, accumulating small answers, and, in them, looking for inconsistencies. "Did you have any conversations with her?"

  "Not really."

  There was a deflection, for sure. "So you never talked to her?"

  "Yeah. We went to tea every afternoon and swapped recipes."

  Nikki's newfound sensitivity about gossip helped her empathize with the singer's attitude about Cassidy Towne, but her cop sense was telling her this sarcasm was a bluff. Time to move the fences in. "Are you saying you never talked to her?"

  Soleil held the cool flat side of the bottle against her neck. "No, I'm not saying never."

  "Did you ever see her?"

  "Well, sure, I guess so. It's a small town if you're famous, you know?"

  Did Nikki ever know. "When was the last time you saw Cassidy Towne, Miss Gray?"

  Soleil puffed her cheeks and made a show of looking thoughtful. Nikki felt her acting was on a par with the dog walker from Juilliard--in other words, unconvincing. "I can't remember. Probably a long time ago. Obviously not important to me." She looked over at the dancers coming back from their five. "Look, I have a music video to shoot, and it ain't happening."

  "Sure, I understand. Just one more question," said Nikki, with her pen poised. "Can you tell me your whereabouts from one to four A.M. the night Cassidy Towne was killed?" With the Texan as the probable killer, Soleil's alibi--in fact everyone else's alibi on this case--became less significant. Still, Nikki clung to the procedures that always worked for her. The time line was hungry. Feed the time line.