Naked heat

Chapter Six

Detective Heat stood on the sidewalk getting her squad ready for their second raid of the day, hoping upon hope that her streak would extend and that, in the next few minutes, she'd claim possession of Cassidy Towne's stolen corpse.

According to Rook, it didn't seem like their suspect had much of a motive. Cassidy Towne had dragged him to Richmond Vergennes's new restaurant the week before for its soft opening. Rook said it felt at the time like it was a payback stroke, like she was getting a freebie meal from a TV celebrity chef in exchange for some mentions in her column. Rook said that while he was there he heard the two of them in a shouting match in Vergennes's office. She came out a few minutes later and told Rook to catch up with her the next day. "It didn't stick with me," he told Nikki, "because she argued with everybody, so it didn't seem like a major deal."

Now, just feet from the front door of that very Upper East Side restaurant, a small army of NYPD was deployed. Translation: It did seem like a major deal.

Heat brought up her two-way. "Roach, you in position yet?"

"Good to go," came back Raley's voice over the radio.

Nikki did her customary last-minute detail check. The small detachment of uniforms was doing its job holding pedestrian traffic back on both ends of the sidewalk on Lex. Detective Hinesburg stood behind her and gave her the nod as she adjusted her shield on the lanyard around her neck. Rook took two steps back to position himself, as agreed, behind the two plainclothes from Burglary who were joining the party.

The squad followed Detective Heat, streaming through the front doors of the empty restaurant in a brisk walk. Nikki had waited, timing this to come down right after the lunch service so there wouldn't be customers to deal with. Rook had sketched her the layout of the restaurant, fresh in his mind from his visit the previous week, and Nikki found Richmond Vergennes exactly where Rook said he would be at that time, presiding over the staff meeting at the big table near the showcase kitchen.

One of the busboys, an illegal, saw her first and made a fast exit to the men's room, and his flight made everyone else turn from their staff meal. Heat flashed tin as she strode toward the head of the table and said, "NYPD. Everyone remain seated. Richmond Vergennes, I have a warrant for-"

The celebrity chef's chair tipped back onto the hardwood floor when he bolted. Nikki peripherally registered a few gasps and clangs of dropped silverware from the staff as she took off into the kitchen after him.

Vergennes tried to slow the cops down by sweeping a stack of oval plates onto the floor behind him as he rounded the break in the counter leading to the kitchen, but Nikki didn't even go that way. The stainless serving station was waist-high, designed to allow diners a view of the superstar chef and his crew at work. Heat slapped a palm on it, kicked her legs to the side, and vaulted into the kitchen, dropping just three steps behind Vergennes.

He heard Nikki stick her landing and knocked a tub of ice chips onto the drainage mats. She slipped but didn't fall, yet it gave him some steps on her. But even though the chef was a weekend triathlete, nobody moves fast in Bistro Crocs. Speed wasn't his issue at that point, however. Raley and Ochoa came through the back delivery entrance from the alley and blocked his exit.

Chef Vergennes stopped and made a desperate claw at the set of Wusthofs nested in their rack. He came up brandishing an eight-inch cook's knife and the guns came out. In the chorus of "drop its," he let go of the knife as if the handle were on fire. As soon as it left his hand, Heat came from his blind side and scissor-kicked his legs from under him-the same takedown she had practiced just that morning.

Nikki pulled herself up off the deck and read Vergennes his rights as Ochoa cuffed him. They put him in a chair in the middle of his prep area, and she said, "I'm Detective Heat, Mr. Vergennes. Let's make this easy and you just tell us. Where's the body?"

The ruggedly handsome face seen by millions on TV over the years bled a trickle from a small scrape on his eyebrow from the takedown. Behind Nikki, Chef Vergennes saw his entire staff at the counter, staring in at him. He said, "I have no idea what you're talking about."

Nikki Heat turned to the squad. "Toss it." An hour later, after searching his restaurant and finding nothing, Heat, Rook, and Roach brought Richmond Vergennes in handcuffs to his SoHo loft off Prince Street. In police custody, he did not look anything at all like a perennial Zagat favorite and Iron Chef candidate. His starched white tunic was soiled, embossed with the grid pattern of the grimy floor mats from his Upper East Side restaurant. A bloodstain the size and shape of a monarch butterfly had dried on the knee of his black-and-white checked chef's pants, another battle prize from Heat's takedown, to complement the cut on his eyebrow, which paramedics had cleaned and Band-Aided.

"You want to save us some trouble here, Chef Richmond?" asked Heat. It was like he didn't hear her. He lowered his gaze and just studied his blue Crocs. "Suit yourself." She turned to her detectives. "Have at it, guys." As they moved off, opening closets, cabinets, anywhere large enough to hide a body, she warned him, "And when we finish searching your loft, we're going to your other restaurant in Washington Square. How much will you lose if we close down The Verge for all your seatings tonight?" He kept his silence, giving nothing.

After they had searched the armoires and closets and a steamer-trunk coffee table in the living room, they put him in a chair in his custom kitchen, a kitchen so large and well appointed, one of the lifestyle cable networks had used it to shoot his series, Cook Like a Vergennes. "You're wasting your time." The chef was trying to sound affronted and wasn't pulling it off. A ball of perspiration hung on the tip of his nose, and when he rocked his head to shake it off, his dark hair, long and parted in the middle, fanned in the air. "There's nothing here you'd be interested in."

"I don't know about that," said Rook. "I wouldn't mind finding the recipe for these jalapeno corn sticks." He was helping himself to a sample from the cast-iron corncob forms on the counter.

"Rook?" said Heat.

"What? They're crunchy outside, moist on the inside, and the kick from the pepper… Mm, the way it melds with the butter… Man."

Ochoa returned from the pantry. "Nothing," he said to Heat.

"Same in the office, and bedrooms," reported Raley as he came in the other doorway. "What's he doing?"

Nikki turned to see Rook's face, contorted into a wince. "Being a nuisance. You know, Rook, this is why we don't let you come along."

"Sorry. I got a little spice issue here. Know what I wish I had? Some sweet tea."

Raley gave Rook a foul look and joined his partner, who was trying to open a locked door at the back of the kitchen. "What's in here?" said Ochoa.

"My wine closet," said the chef. "I have some rare bottles in there worth thousands. And it's temp controlled."

That got Heat very interested. "Where's the key?"

"There is no key, it takes a code."

"OK," she said, "I'll ask nicely. Once. What is the code?" When he said nothing, she added, "I have a warrant."

He seemed amused. "Why don't you use it to jimmy the door?"

"Ochoa, call Demolitions and tell them we need a team with a blast matrix. And evacuate the building."

"Hold on, hold on. Blast matrix? I have a 1945 Chateau Haut-Brion in there." Nikki cupped a hand behind her ear. He sighed and said, "It's 41319."

Ochoa entered the code on the keypad, and a servo motor whirred inside the lock. He flipped on the light switch and stepped into the large closet. After a short moment, he stepped out and shook his head to Heat.

"Why are you hassling me, anyway?" said the chef. The attempt at peeved bravado had returned.

Nikki stood over him, close enough to make him have to strain his neck to look up at her. "I told you. I want you to give up the body of Cassidy Towne."

"What would I know about Cassidy Towne? I didn't even know the bitch."

"Yes, you did, I heard you fighting," said Rook. "Whoo," he blew air out of his mouth in a huff, "must have gotten a seed."

Vergennes acted as if a distant memory had been jogged free. "Oh, that. We argued, OK? What the hell, you think I killed her because she was pissed I wouldn't comp her a party of twelve at my opening?"

"We have a witness that says you hired them to steal her body."

He scoffed. "I'm done. This is getting crazy. I want my lawyer."

"All right. You can call him after we take you to the precinct," said Heat.

Taking opposite sides of the kitchen, Raley and Ochoa moved in a line, systematically opening and closing custom cabinets, all full of either cookbooks, imported dinnerware, or a Williams-Sonoma's worth of kitchen gadgets.

"For real, my mouth is seriously on fire." Rook stepped to the big Sub-Zero. "Wow, this is some fridge. Gorgeous."

Vergennes called out, "No, don't, that's broken."

But Rook had already pulled the handle. And then he got knocked backward when the body of Cassidy Towne bumped open the refrigerator door as it toppled out and landed on the Spanish tiles at his feet.

The uniformed officer posted at the front door ran in when he heard Rook scream. Richmond Vergennes was a different man when confronted by the harsh reality of the Interrogation Room. The cockiness was gone. Nikki watched his hands, callused and scarred by years on the cook line. They were quaking. From the chair beside him, Vergennes's lawyer gave him the nod to begin. "First of all, I didn't kill her, I swear."

"Mr. Vergennes, think of how many times in your career you've heard a waiter bring a dish back to the kitchen and tell you the customer says it's cold. That's about half as many times as I've sat here and heard the guy in cuffs on your side of the table say, 'I didn't do it, I swear.' "

The lawyer chimed in. "Detective, we are hoping to be cooperative here. I don't think there's any call to make this difficult." The suit was Wynn Zanderhoof, a partner in one of the big Park Avenue firms that specialized in entertainment law. He was their criminal face, and Heat had seen plenty of him over the years.

"Sure, Counselor. Especially after your client made our lives such a breeze. Resisting arrest, brandishing a weapon at a police officer, obstructing an investigation. And all that comes after the murder of Cassidy Towne. Plus the conspiracy to hijack her body. Plus the numerous charges related to that. I think difficulty is the word of the day for Mr. Vergennes."

"Granted," said the attorney. "Which is why we were hoping to strike some sort of arrangement to mitigate the unnecessary tensions surrounding all this."

"You want a deal?" asked the detective. "Your client is facing a murder charge, and we have a confession from a man in the crew he paid to steal the damn body. What are you going to bargain with, a complimentary dessert?"

"I didn't kill her. I was home with my wife that night. She'll vouch."

"We'll check." There was something that crossed his face when she said that. His dark Cajun looks lost their cockiness. Like the alibi wouldn't hold or maybe something else. What was it? She decided to pick at that and see where it led. "When you say you were with your wife, when was that?"

"All night. We watched some TV, went to bed, woke up. Like that."

She made a show of opening her notebook and poising her pen. "Tell me the exact time you and your wife went to bed."

"I dunno. We watched some Nightline, then hit the hay."

"So," said Nikki as she wrote, "you're saying it was twelve o'clock? Midnight?"

"Yeah, or a few minutes after. Those late-night shows are all like five minutes late getting started."

"And what time did you get home?"

"Mm, about eleven-fifteen, I guess."

Something seemed off to Heat, so she pressed. "Chef, I hear all the stories about the restaurant business. Especially for a new restaurant, isn't quarter after eleven kind of early for you to be home?"

She could see she was getting at something. Vergennes was showing nerves, working his mouth like he was looking for a strand of hair with his tongue. "Business was light, so I, ah, knocked off early."

"Oh, I see. What time did you knock off?"

His eyes roamed the ceiling. "Don't remember, exactly."

"No problem," she said. "I'll be checking with your staff, anyway. They'll tell me what time you left."

"Nine o'clock," he blurted.

Nikki wrote it down. "Does it typically take you two and a quarter hours to get to SoHo at that hour from Sixty-third and Lex?" When she looked up from her pad, he was coming unglued. His lawyer leaned over to show him a note he'd scrawled, but Vergennes pushed it away.

"All right, I didn't go straight home." The attorney tried again by putting a hand on his shoulder, but he shrugged it off and said, "I'll tell you exactly where I was. I… was at Cassidy Towne's."

Heat wished Lauren Parry had had that body sooner so she could have a more accurate time of death. It was entirely possible that the TOD was before midnight. She followed her instinct to seize Vergennes's moment of weakness and take the leap. "Are you saying you went to Cassidy Towne's and stabbed her?"

"No. I'm saying I went to Cassidy Towne's and…" He trailed off, lowering both his head and his voice, mumbling something she couldn't make out.

"Excuse me, I don't hear that. You went to Cassidy Towne's and what?"

Vergennes's face was sallow when he looked up, his eyes unable to hide the misery of his shame. "I went there… and… I fucked her."

Nikki watched him bend down to dry wash his face with the palms of his hands. When he rose up from his manacles, some of his color had returned. She tried to look at this heartthrob master chef who had conquered Manhattan and put him together with Cassidy Towne, the unofficial arbiter of public scandal. Something in her didn't see them as a couple, although, after years on the job, Nikki could believe just about anything. "So you and Cassidy Towne were having an affair?"

Nikki tried not to paint the picture before she got his answer. The one she saw was a married man trying to break it off, an argument got too heated, and so on. Once again, she went to training and listened instead of projecting.

"We weren't having an affair." His voice was weak and hollow. Nikki had to strain to hear him even in the quiet room.

"So that was your first… liaison?"

The chef seemed amused by a private thought. He said, "Sadly, no. It was not our first 'liaison.' "

"You're going to have to explain to me why you don't call this an affair."

The dead quiet that followed was broken by his lawyer. "Rich, I have to advise you not to-"

"No, I'm going to get this out now so they'll see I didn't kill her." He settled down and then came out with it. "I was doing Cassidy Towne for one reason. I had to. I bought this new place right before the economy cratered. I had zero budget for advertising, suddenly people weren't dining out, and if they were, they were skittish about new restaurants. I was desperate. So Cassidy… made a deal with me." He paused again and muttered his pitiful, defining words. "Sex for ink."

Heat reflected back on her Sardi's experience with Rook's mother. Apparently, Cassidy didn't restrict herself to actors.

"You have to understand, I love my wife." Nikki just listened. No sense telling him the hundreds of times she's heard that, too, from husbands in that chair. "This wasn't something I came up with. She caught me at a vulnerable time. I said no at first, and she just made it harder to refuse. Said if I loved my wife, I'd… sleep with her so we didn't lose our investment. It was stupid. But I did it. I hated myself for it, and you know what's crazy? She didn't even seem into me. It was like she just wanted to prove she could make me do it."

He paused and his face drained again, turning the color of an oyster. "Can't you see? That's why I had those guys steal the body. I woke up yesterday morning and my wife has the TV on and says, 'Hey, somebody killed that gossip bitch.' I thought, Holy Mother… I screwed her the night before, now she's dead, and whose DNA are they going to find in her? Mine. So my wife will know I've been banging her? I panic, I'm trying to think, what can I do?

"This food supplier I work with has some connections to some wiseguys for hire, so I call him up and tell him he's got to get me out of a jam. It cost me large, but I got the goddam body."

"Wait, you did this because you were afraid your wife would find out about your relationship?" asked Nikki.

"People knew I was hanging around Cassidy. Your writer pal, for one. Only a matter of time till it came back and bit me, I thought. And Monique's got all the money. I signed a prenup. I'm losing my ass in this economy, the new place is going down; if she cuts me off, next week I'm slinging sauce on ribs at Applebee's."

"So why have the body delivered to where you and your wife live?"

"My wife left yesterday for Philly to work publicity for the Food and Wine Festival. It was all I could think of until I could think of something better." He grew somber after his outburst, the way people did when they'd unloaded their guilt. "Those dudes came by and shook me down for another fifty grand to dispose of her. I don't have that, so they left her with me and told me to think fast."

Nikki flipped to a fresh page of her notebook. "And what time do you claim you last saw Cassidy Towne alive?"

"I did see her alive. It was about ten-thirty. That's when I left her apartment." Raley and Ochoa were off hunting for Cassidy Towne's typewriter ribbons so when Heat wrapped Vergennes's interrogation and he was led off to be processed for Riker's, she assigned Detective Hinesburg to check out his alibi. The chef said he had paid for the cab home with a credit card around ten-thirty, so there would be a record with the card company and the taxi.

"Blast matrix?" said Rook from his old desk, which he had reclaimed across the bull pen.

Heat welcomed the half smile he was putting on her face, especially in the wake of her disappointment about Vergennes apparently alibi-ing out. She had the body but probably not the killer. "What, you've never heard of a blast matrix?"

"No," he said, "but it didn't take me long to figure out that was just a Heatism. Sort of like the Zoo Lockup, am I right? Some BS term you make up and sling out there to scare the ignorant into thinking there's big trouble coming if they don't comply."

"It worked, didn't it?" Her desk phone rang and she picked it up.

He laughed. "The Heatisms always do."

Nikki finished her call and asked Rook if he felt like a ride. Lauren Parry was ready with Cassidy Towne's autopsy.

As they came into the precinct lobby on their way to the car, Richmond Vergennes's lawyer was signing out. "Detective Heat?" Wynn Zanderhoof hurried to intercept her, toting his Zero Haliburton attache, one of those aluminum cases you saw slick hit men and power-suited drug dealers using to carry bundles of cash in every eighties cop movie. "A word, please?"

They stopped at the glass door, and when the attorney just stood there, Nikki got the hint and asked Rook to wait for her at the car. When they were alone, the lawyer said, "You know a murder charge is going to get laughed out of the DA's office."

Heat didn't believe Richmond Vergennes killed Cassidy Towne, but she couldn't entirely rule it out yet and so was not about to let the pressure off. "Even if his alibi checks, that doesn't mean he didn't hire somebody to do it, just like he outsourced stealing the body."

"True. And that's good diligence on your part, Detective." Zanderhoof smiled the kind of empty smile that made her want to check to make sure she still had her watch and her wallet. "But I'm sure your tenacity will also lead you, at some point, to ask yourself why, if my client had someone else kill her, he didn't have them dispose of her remains then and there rather than suffer all the risk and attention caused by the incident on Second Avenue yesterday."

He said "incident" in a downplaying way, already jockeying to have charges reduced. Fine, that was his job. Hers was to catch a killer. And as much as she didn't like being jawboned, she had to concede his point. She had as much as arrived at that conclusion herself staring at the time line on the whiteboard not three minutes before. "We'll follow this investigation wherever it leads, Mr. Zanderhoof," she said, giving no ground. No reason to until the chef was entirely ruled out. "The fact remains, your client is up to his neck in this, starting with his affair with my murder victim."

The lawyer chuckled. "Affair? This was no affair."

"Then what was it?"

"A business arrangement, simple as that." He looked through the glass at Rook, leaning on the fender of the Crown Vic, and when he was sure Nikki registered that, his eyes narrowed into a smile she didn't like and he said, "Cassidy Towne was trading sex for print. She certainly wouldn't be the first woman to do that, now, would she, Nikki Heat?" "You're being awfully quiet." Rook twisted himself sideways in his seat to face her as best he could, given the seat belt and the radio gear between their knees. It was never an easy trip from the Upper West Side to the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner down near Bellevue, and since they had hit the meat of rush hour, it was taking forever. It probably seemed longer than forever to Rook because Heat seemed far away in her thoughts. No, more than that, her vibe was brittle.

"Sometimes I like the quiet, OK?"

"Sure, no problem." He let exactly three seconds pass before he broke the silence. "If you're bumming about Chef Vergennes not being the killer, look at the glass-half-full part, Nikki. We got the body back. Did Montrose say anything?"

"Oh, yeah, Cap's plenty happy. At least the tabloids won't be putting pictures of magicians and disappearing bodies on their covers tomorrow."

"Guess we can thank Fat Tommy for that, can't we?" He searched her for a reaction, but she steadied her focus on traffic, seeming especially interested in anything that was going on out the opposite window from him. "And I'm not trying to claim credit because he was my source. I'm just saying."

Nikki nodded imperceptibly and went back to studying her side mirror like she was somewhere else. Somewhere that didn't feel so comfortable if you were Jameson Rook.

He tried another approach to connect with her. "Hey, I liked that line you hit them with back there in Interrogation. You know, the one about what did they have to offer except a complimentary dessert?" Rook chuckled. "Pure Heat. That's going in the article, for sure. That and blast matrix."

Nikki did engage, but not how he'd expected. "No," she added sharply, "no." Then she checked the side mirror and jerked the wheel, bringing the car to a lurching stop that made everything on the backseat slide off onto the floor. She didn't care. "What the hell do I have to do to get through to you?" She poked her finger in the air, punctuating her words with a stab. "I do not, do not, want to be in your article. I do not want to be named, quoted, pictured, or so much as alluded to in your next or any other article. And further, since we seem to have hit a dead end in terms of your so-called secret journalistic sources and insights, I'm thinking this is our last ride. Call the Captain, call the mayor if you want to, I have had it. No mas. Now do you understand?"

He studied her a beat and grew quiet.

Before he could say anything more, Heat pulled back onto the road and punched Lauren Parry on her speed dial. "Hi, we're two blocks away… Good, see you then."

Between the stoplight and the OCME garage Nikki had second thoughts. Not about her feelings regarding the article and the myriad ways it was screwing with her life. But she worried she'd blistered Rook too much. She could rationalize it, just chalk it up to being pissed after the cheap shot from the slimebag Wynn Zanderhoof, but still, she could have handled Rook a little more deftly and at the same time made her point. She snuck a look at him as he watched the road in wounded silence. A picture memory came to her of Rook sitting right there in that very seat on so many rides, making her laugh the way he did-and then another glimpse of him, sitting there that night in the rainstorm when they couldn't get enough of each other so they spent the night trying. Heat grappled with an overwhelming twinge of regret for losing it with him.

Nikki had no problem being tough. She couldn't abide being mean.

They had the elevator to themselves on the ride up from the second basement parking level, and it was there that she tried to soften her message to him. "This isn't anything about you, Rook, just so you know. It's the whole publicity thing, of having my name and face out there. I kind of have had it with that."

"I think I got your message loud and clear in the car."

Before she could respond, the doors parted and the elevator filled with lab coats and the moment was lost. "Hey, there, I'm all set for you," said Lauren Parry as they entered the Autopsy Room. As usual, even behind a surgical mask, you could see her smile. "We did some shuffling to get this workup for you STAT, knowing it's a priority and all."

Heat and Rook finished gloving up and came around to the stainless-steel table that held Cassidy Towne's remains. "I appreciate that, Lauren," said Nikki. "I know how every detective wants it like yesterday, so thanks."

"No problem. I have a bit of a personal interest in this one, too, you know."

"Oh, right," said Heat. "How's the noggin?"

"Hey, I'm hardheaded, everybody knows that. How else does a girl get from the St. Louis projects to all this?" She said it without irony. Lauren Parry lived for her job and it showed. "Nikki, you e-mailed that you wanted a best-earliest TOD, right?"

"Yeah, we have a potential suspect. We just confirmed his taxi ride, so he alibis out at ten-forty-five."

"No way," said the ME. She picked up a chart. "Now, you have to understand this was made a more challenging task because the body had been through a lot. Movement, handling…" She looked at Rook and added, "refrigeration. All that made it harder to establish our TOD, but I did it. This was more like the three A.M. range, so cross your ten-forty-five off. Is this the chef who had us jacked?" When her friend nodded, Lauren said, "Well, too bad, but cross him off anyway."

Nikki turned to share a we-figured shrug with Rook, but he wasn't paying attention. She studied him for a few gloomy seconds in the chilly room, felt the after-pain of her outburst, and had to be drawn back by Lauren. "Hello?"

"Oh, sorry. So, three A.M., right."

"Or later, could be a two-hour window after then. Now I'll give you the usual disclaimer that we're still running toxicology, and blah, blah." She paused and turned to Rook. "Isn't this where you usually say if erections last over four hours, call your doctor?"

"Right," he said flatly.

For a medical examiner, Lauren Parry was a people person. She turned from Rook to give Nikki a what's-up? look. She gave nothing back to Lauren, so the ME continued on. "Tox report notwithstanding, I'm still going with the stab wound as COD. But check it out, I have a few things to show you." Lauren beckoned, and Heat followed her around to the other side of the body. "Our deceased was tortured before she died."

Rook came out of his haze and strode to join the other two for a look. "See here on the forearm?" Lauren drew aside the sheet to expose one of Cassidy Towne's arms. "Discoloration from contusion and uniform loss of hair along two matching strips at the forearm and wrist."

"Duct tape," guessed Rook.

"That's right. I didn't catch it at the scene because of the long sleeves she was wearing. The killer not only removed the tape when he was done, but pulled the cuffs down. Thorough job, detail-oriented. As for the tape itself, adhesive residue is at the lab now. Over the counter everywhere, so good luck matching it, but you never know." The ME used a stick pen to indicate points along the body template on her chart. "Taping was on both arms and both ankles. I already called Forensics. Sure enough, the chair tested positive for residue as well."

Nikki made a note. "And what about the torture itself?"

"See the dried blood in the ear canal? There were numerous probes from sharp objects prior to expiration."

Heat suppressed an involuntary shiver at the thought. "What kind of sharp objects?"

"Various needle-like probes. Like, maybe, dental picks. Nothing larger than that. Small wounds but painful as hell. I took some digitals for you with the cam on my otoscope. I'll e-mail them to the precinct. But somebody definitely wanted this woman to be in pain before she died."

"Or talk about something," said Nikki. "Two distinct motives, depending on which." Nikki quickly processed the significance of this torture along with the missing office papers and came down on the side of someone getting Cassidy Towne to talk. This felt more and more about whatever it was she had been working on.

"Other points of interest." Lauren handed a lab report to Nikki. "That blood smear you spotted on the wallpaper? Negative match for the victim."

Nikki showed surprise. "So maybe she injured her attacker before she was subdued?"

"Maybe. There are some defense wounds on her hands. Which brings me to the final piece of info I have for you. This woman's hands were filthy. I don't mean just a little. She's got residual dirt in the creases of her palms, and look at the fingernails." She gently lifted one of Cassidy Towne's hands. "It was hidden by her nail polish, but here's what I found under her fingernails." Each finger had a crescent moon of dirt under the nail.

"I know what that's from," said Rook. "That's from her gardening. She said it was her one escape from her work."

"Some escape for a gossip columnist," said Lauren. "Digging more dirt." Rook was a few strides ahead of Heat getting to the elevator. "Hang on," Nikki said, but he had already pressed the button. The doors opened when she arrived at his side, and she rested a hand on his arm and said to the passengers inside, "We'll get the next one." As the doors curtained closed on their annoyed faces, she added, "Sorry."

"Accepted," said Rook. And they both laughed a little.

Damn, she thought, what was this knack he had to disarm her all the time? She drew him away from the elevators to the southwest windows, where the October sun cut blinding light across them as it got ready to set. "I was a little rough on you. I do apologize for that."

"I'll put some ice on it, I'll be all right," he said.

"Like I said, it's not personal to you. It's the article, which is only you sort of."

"Nikki, you disappeared off the grid. That felt personal. I'm funny that way. If I hadn't had the good fortune to be doing a profile of a murder victim, we might not be lucky enough to be arguing now." She laughed, and he said, "That's right, I killed Cassidy Towne just to get close to Nikki Heat. Hey, there's my title!"

Nikki smiled again and hated it that he could be so cute. "Anyway, accept my apology?"

"Only if you accept an invitation to buy you a drink tonight. Let's be grown-ups and clear the air so I don't have to feel all weird when I see you on the street."

"Or at a murder scene," she added.

"Odds are," said Rook.

Nikki wouldn't be seeing Don until later that night, so she agreed. Rook caught a cab back to his loft to get some writing done, while she took the elevator to the garage to drive back to the precinct and wrap her day.

At her garage level, the elevator doors opened and Raley and Ochoa were there, about to get on. "We miss the autopsy?" asked Ochoa.

Nikki stepped out with them and the doors closed behind her. She held up the file. "Report's right here."

"Oh," said Ochoa. "Good, then." Heat wouldn't have been much of a detective if she couldn't read the disappointment in him. He was, no doubt, hoping for an excuse to see Lauren Parry.

"Got something for you, though, Detective," said Raley. He held up a heavy-duty manila envelope bulging with something square inside.

"You're kidding," she said, daring to feel some energy in the case again. "The typewriter ribbons?"

"Some typewriter ribbons," cautioned Raley. "Her nosy neighbor recycled a bunch of them before the garbage strike, so they're long gone. These are strays he had in his bin. Four of them."

"Nothing in her typewriter," added Ochoa. "We'll run them up to the precinct so Forensics can get on them."

Nikki looked at her watch and then to Ochoa, feeling bad for the guy that his plan to see Lauren Parry had been thwarted by minutes of bad timing. "Tell you what would be a better plan," she said. "As long as you're here, I don't want to have the Padilla case fall through the cracks. Would you go up and see where they are on his autopsy? They're beyond swamped, but if you ask nicely, I bet Lauren Parry will do it as a favor."

"I guess we could ask her," said Ochoa.

Raley knuckle-tapped the manila envelope. "We're going to lose a day with Forensics, though."

"I'm heading uptown, anyway," said Nikki. "I'll drop them at Forensics."

Getting no argument, she signed the chain of evidence form and took the envelope from them. "Let's hear it for nosy neighbors," she said.

Uptown traffic was impossible. Ten-ten WINS said there was a major crash under the UN on the FDR and the work-around traffic was clogging everything northbound on the island. Nikki cut across town, hoping the West Side Highway would at least be crawling. Then she did some calculation and wondered if she should call Rook to rain check. But her gut told her that would just revive the friction she was trying to cool. Another plan.

She was only minutes from his loft. She could stop by, pick him up, and he could come with her to the precinct. They could have a drink around there. The weather was still nice enough for a patio table at Isabella's. "Hey, it's me, change of plan," she said to his voice mail. "We're still on, but call me when you get this." Nikki hung up and smiled, thinking of him writing to his remastered Beatles.

Heat parked in the same loading zone she had parked in once before, the night of the pounding rainstorm when she and Rook had kissed in the downpour and then run through it to his front steps, soaked to the skin and not caring. She put her police sign on her dash, locked the manila envelope in the trunk, and, a minute later, stood at the foot of his steps, pausing, feeling a bit of a flutter remembering that night and how they couldn't get enough of each other.

A man with a chocolate Lab on a leash passed her and climbed the steps. She followed behind and petted the dog while the man got out his keys. "Name's Buster," he said. "The dog, not me."

"Hello, Buster." The Lab eyeballed his man for permission and got up to offer Nikki his chin for a scratch, which she was glad to oblige. If dogs could smile, this one was doing it. Buster looked at her in his bliss and Nikki flashed back on her encounter with the coyote and its defiant stare-down in the middle of West 83rd. She felt a sudden chill. When the man opened the front door, the dog moved by reflex to go with him. She was just reaching for Rook's door buzzer when the man said, "You look trustworthy, come on."

And she followed him in.

Rook had the penthouse loft. The man and his dog rode as far as three and got off. Nikki didn't like the idea of surprising men in their apartments or hotel rooms, having had one poor experience resulting in a tearful flight home from Puerto Vallarta one spring break. Tearful for him, that is.

She reached for her phone to call Rook again, but by then the car was at the top of the shaft. She put her phone away, pulled the metal accordion doors open, and stepped into his vestibule.

Heat approached his door quietly and listened. Nothing to hear. She pressed the button and heard it buzz inside. She heard a footstep, but realized it wasn't coming from inside the loft but from behind her. Someone had been waiting in the vestibule. Before she could turn, her head slammed into Rook's door and she blacked out. When Nikki came to, it was in the same blackness she had just left. Was she blind? Was she still unconscious?

Then she felt the fabric on her cheek. She was wearing some kind of sack or hood. Her arms and legs wouldn't move. They were duct-taped to the chair she was sitting in. She attempted to speak, but her mouth was duct-taped, too.

She tried to calm herself, but her heart was pounding. Her head ached above her hairline where it had banged into the door.

Calm yourself, Nikki, she said to herself. Slow breaths. Assess the situation. Start by listening.

And when she listened, what she heard only made her heart pound louder.

She heard what sounded like dental instruments being set out on a tray.