A man’s voice bellowed her name from down the hall. “Well, well, well. If it isn’t Detective Nikki Heat. What a surprise.”
Her insides coiled into a tight mass. She hadn’t heard that voice since she’d been in the police academy. And she hadn’t thought about the man it belonged to in years. She turned. “Ian Cooley,” she said, forcing a smile into her grimace. She was looking at the face of her first husband.
Nikki knew the past could come back to haunt a person. She’d seen it firsthand too many times to count. It was often the motivation for murder, after all. What she didn’t know—had never suspected—was that she’d be staring at the face of her own tempestuous past.
Ian looked the same as he had back at the police academy, but older. He was lanky and rail-thin, standing six foot six. His dark sideburns were peppered with gray. Silvery strands wove through the rest, which he combed to the side. Very mature. Very conservative. Very much the Ian she remembered.
Three things ran through her mind as she took stock of him: What were the odds of running into a man she hadn’t seen in more than a decade, and here in Cambria where a murder had happened in her current husband’s house to boot? Was he going to be a help or a hindrance to her off-book investigation? Was she going to tell Rook about her past with the man who could very well be investigating his involvement in a murder...and how would she explain why she hadn’t told him before now?
There was no provable response to question one, so she discarded it from her mind. Question three she’d have to deal with later. Which left question two. The answer was yet to be determined. “The surprise is mutual,” she said.
“I hear you’ve been in Manhattan,” he said, giving a low whistle. He ushered her down the hallway from the direction in which he’d come, leading her to what amounted to the local precinct’s bull pen. She automatically surveyed her surroundings. Smaller than the Two-Oh. The room was brighter. More windows, which translated to more light. The old building that housed her precinct had multiple stories. Her department, in particular, had fewer windows and a dark interior that seemed to capture the mood of a homicide division.
Ian moved around one of the several desks in the room, gesturing to a chair on the opposite side for her to sit. She did, noting how it felt strange to be on the opposite end of an investigator’s desk. Especially when that investigator was Ian Cooley.
He leaned back in his chair, folding his arms across his chest as he considered her. “I heard this Jameson Rook guy was married to an NYC detective. I sure never expected it to be you.”
She didn’t believe him for a second. Rook had to be a person of interest, which meant one of the first things a lead investigator would do was check out the background of said potential suspect. In this case, that simple background check would have revealed Rook’s marriage to her. There was also the added fact that their wedding had been well catalogued in the local papers and media, thanks to Margaret Rook and her flair for drama. With her and Rook’s blessing, Margaret had sent in announcements wherever she could. Nikki remembered every line.
JAMESON ALEXANDER ROOK, ONLY SON OF
TONY AWARD–WINNING BROADWAY ACTRESS, MARGARET ROOK,
IS TO MARRY NIKKI HEAT, DAUGHTER OF CYNTHIA AND JEFF HEAT.
THE WEDDING WILL TAKE PLACE AT UNION CHAPEL,
MARTHA’S VINEYARD, AT THREE IN THE AFTERNOON.
RECEPTION WILL FOLLOW.
THE COUPLE WILL HONEYMOON IN EUROPE.
“How long have you been with the Cambria PD?” she asked, skipping over Ian’s obvious lie.
He leaned back and intertwined his fingers. He let his eyes drift up to the ceiling as he silently counted.
She laughed. “As long as I’ve been with the Twentieth, sounds like.”
“I came here after the academy, then left to work in Hoboken for a bit. Couldn’t stay away. And since I’m chief of police, I’ll probably never leave. This place is off the beaten path, but I swear, it gets in your blood,” he said, giving her a look that said Cambria wasn’t the only thing that got in his blood. “You’ve been in Manhattan since graduation?”
“At the Twentieth the entire time.”
“And now you’re...”
He trailed off, letting her fill in the blank. “Captain.”
“Captain Heat,” Ian said, as if testing it out. He let out another low whistle. “That’s an accomplishment, Nik.”
She bristled at the familiar nickname. She could count on one hand the people she was close enough with to have them call her that. Ian Cooley was not one of them. She was done with the small talk. “Can you tell me what’s going on with your investigation on Chloe Masterson?”
It was clear that he sensed the shift in her. He kept his hands clasped, his two fingers steepled, but his body stiffened. He was keenly aware that their brief trip down memory lane was over, and he responded accordingly. “I’d like to, but you’re a bit out of your jurisdiction here, Captain. Not to mention the fact that your husband has been questioned about his involvement in this murder.”
She tensed, but she forced her voice to remain calm and light. “Right. My hus—Rook, he’s been pretty upset, obviously. I’d like to help. You know, alleviate his concern.”
“I interviewed Mr. Rook,” Ian said. “He has good reason to be concerned.”
Heat swallowed hard. “He’s innocent, so why would you say that?”
Cooley had kept a mild expression on his face, but at her question, he dropped his hands to his desk and rolled forward in his chair. “Surely you see what a precarious situation this is. A journalism student was found dead. Naked. In your husband’s bed. That doesn’t bode well for him.”
She bristled at his choice of words. “Very descriptive, thank you for that.”
“Can’t sugarcoat the facts,” he said. “And those are the facts. Your husband is in trouble, Nikki. If I were you, I’d be spending my time with him before it all goes south.”
She didn’t let him rattle her. “What do you have?”
He shook his head. “It’s an ongoing investigation. I can’t—”
“Sure you can. We’re both on the job. Professional courtesy. Come on.”
“Maybe under normal circumstances, but he’s your husband. That puts you a little too close to be objective.”
Still working to keep calm, all doubt she’d had about Rook completely obliterated, she leaned forward, matching Cooley’s body language. “Actually, it gives me all the reason in the world to get to the truth.”
“You’re biased,” he said.
“Ian, you don’t know me—”
“Of course I know you—”
She wagged her finger at him, her eyes narrowing. “Uh-uh. The Nikki Heat you knew was damaged and broken. That was a long time ago. I’m not that person anymore. I’m a detective first. I’ll follow my leads wherever they take me. But I also know, with absolute certainty, that Rook did not have anything to do with that girl’s death.”
Ian sat back in his chair again, crossing one leg across the other, ankle on knee. “See, that’s the problem. You know in your heart that he didn’t do it, but what if the clues tell you that he did? Two divergent paths. They aren’t going to cross in the woods.”
She rolled her eyes at the Robert Frost reference. “A play on words from one of my favorite poems. You have a memory like an elephant.”
“I do indeed.”
Once again, she matched his body language, leaning back in her chair and crossing her ankle to the opposite knee. “See, where you see divergent paths, I see a man who’s not guilty of anything at risk of losing everything.”
“That very sentence strikes me as a pretty big conflict of interest. I’ll say it again, Nik. You can’t be objective.”
She balked. “I am a trained detective. Objective is what I do.” This conversation was underscoring that fact, but it also reinforced her certainty in Rook’s innocence.
“You forget that I knew you pretty well once upon a time. And I know from experie
nce that you make things personal.”
Once again, the mystery of Cynthia Heat rose, circling around Nikki’s memory like hot steam rising from the ground. “My mother died in my arms. That was personal. This is different.”
“If your husband goes down for this, he won’t come back from the dead.”
“If you let me help you, it won’t get that far.”
He looked affronted. “Why, because our little precinct can’t handle a high-profile murder like Chloe Masterson’s?”
“That is not what I said. Don’t put words in my mouth, Ian.”
“You need to back down and let me do my job.”
She considered her next move. She could push Ian, or she could let him have this win. She really had no choice. Pushing him was only going to make it worse. She had to retreat, review, and come back in when she had something to offer him.
Nikki answered her ringing cell phone with a clipped “Heat.”
“Hey, Captain. How goes it in Timbuktu?” After the unsuccessful conversation with Ian, Nikki had wanted to bang her head against a wall. Miguel Ochoa’s voice was a welcome distraction.
“Not great,” she said. “Local law enforcement just shut me out.”
“Nah. They won’t pony up anything?”
She shook her head, still in disbelief herself. “Not even the tiniest scrap of hay,” she said, not able to mask her frustration.
Ochoa was silent for a beat before speaking again. “How’s my man Rook? Hanging in there?”
“I don’t think the gravity of the situation has hit him yet. I don’t know where the cops stand with him. Person of interest, definitely, but that’s it. There’s no motive.”
“Does he have an alibi?”
That had been one of the first things she’d asked him, but the answer was inconclusive. “Without the ME’s report, I don’t know TOD, which means we’re not sure. He was at a lecture on campus, but then he left, alone, and headed to his place. That’s when he found her. Before the lecture, he was at a coffee shop.”
“Did the police try to corroborate?”
She threaded her fingers through her hair in frustration. “I have no idea. I’m giving the detective here some space before I hit him again.”
“So what’s your plan?” Ochoa asked.
“Going to talk to the roommate next. What’s going on there? Anything new with the Chin case?”
“That’s why I called.”
God, she hoped it was good news. “Tell me.”
“Have you on speaker now, Captain,” Ochoa said. “Raley’s here.”
The other half of Roach greeted her, then launched into the update on the Lincoln Plaza case. “Our vic was squeaky-clean,” Raley said. “We’ve followed up every lead and they’ve all come up dry. Model student. No girlfriend. Roommate and he got along. No drugs. Parents he liked, and who liked him. He was on the reserved side. Not much of a partier, but also not a recluse.”
From Ochoa, “In other words, this kid should not have been murdered.”
“But he was, which means there’s something hidden. He had to have had some secret; we just don’t know what it is yet.”
“Parry has an update,” Ochoa said.
In addition to being Nikki’s best friend, Lauren Parry was the most competent ME Heat had ever worked with. Their friendship had begun slowly. Lauren spent most of her time with the dead, while Nikki spent most of her time thinking about the dead. These facts together made them both overly cautious about forming real connections with the living. Over time, their friendship did evolve, however, and eventually they both realized that they were each other’s “person.” Lauren had been Nikki’s maid of honor at her wedding to Rook. Now, hearing Ochoa mention her name make Nikki wish she could talk to her friend about Ian and the situation she was in. But that would have to come later.
“Nothing earth-shattering,” Ochoa continued. “He drowned, which we knew. No alcohol or drugs in his system, which goes along with what the people who knew him had to say.”
“Like we said, squeaky-clean,” Raley said.
“Anything on the three suspects seen by our witness?”
“Nothing,” Ochoa said. “It’s a needle in a haystack. We’ve got a few more avenues to pursue, though.”
She nodded with satisfaction. She had faith in Roach. If anyone could get to the bottom of a tough situation, it was them. “Keep me apprised,” she said, and she went back to her own needle and haystack.
Nikki had taken the long way back to the hotel. Part of that had been unintentional. The lack of a grid pattern in Cambria’s streets meant she’d missed turns or gotten off track more than once, even with her phone’s GPS. The other reason for the scenic route, however, was that it provided her time to think. Generally speaking, she spent as little time as possible ruminating about the past. The here and now, and the future—those were the only things that mattered.
But after seeing Ian Cooley, she needed to think—about the past and the present, and how to reconcile the two. The fact that her former husband, a man her current husband knew nothing about, was in charge of the investigation complicated personal matters. It also made the investigative matters more difficult. She couldn’t have an antagonistic relationship with the man. He’d had one opportunity to step up and be helpful. He’d opted not to be. If the occasion presented itself again, she had to get him to opt for helpfulness.
The fact was that without Ian’s help, Nikki and Rook were on their own without any resources, and that didn’t bode well for an investigation they needed to bring to a close.
She couldn’t succumb to fear. Even contemplating the possibility of Rook being charged with Chloe’s murder was unthinkable. If he were found guilty, she didn’t know what she would do. Rook incarcerated? She had no doubt he’d put himself in a penitentiary—maximum security, even—to do an exposé on the prison system. But to be put there after being declared a murderer? Could he survive that? The very idea sent her into a panic, but she couldn’t give in to it.
Years on the force had taught Nikki how to compartmentalize. She could flip a switch and turn off her emotions, which is what she did now. She couldn’t get sidelined worrying about what might happen if they didn’t prevail.
She made it back to the hotel suite and found Rook already there, reclining on the couch, laptop open, fingers tapping away. “Working on a story?” she asked.
“Writing a narrative of everything that’s happening as we investigate this story. I like to chronicle things, as you know.”
That she did. He had an entire cupboard in his office filled with his chronicles.
“Which got me thinking,” he said. “Did Chloe chronicle things, as well? Diaries, perhaps?”
It was quite possible. Heat herself had kept a journal for years. It was something one of the therapists she’d gone to after her mother’s death had suggested. Writing down her emotions made them tangible. Real. The process of putting words to paper turned out to be cathartic. It didn’t take her pain away, but it redirected it somehow.
Rook looked up at her suddenly. “Any luck at the station?”
“We’re not going to get any help there,” she said. “The police chief was not inclined to cough up any information.”
“What happened to ‘you scratch my back, I scratch yours’?”
“Guess the Cambria Police Department doesn’t work that way.”
“We don’t need them,” Rook said.
She knew he was trying to keep a stiff upper lip, for both their sakes. “Sure, but it would be helpful.”
“Guess you’ll just have to prove your salt sans databases and forensics.”
“Guess so.”
Rook set his computer off to the side. “Whatever story Chloe was working on has to be connected to her death.”
“Sometimes the obvious path isn’t actually the right path. Maybe she had a stalker. Or a disgruntled boyfriend. There are a lot of other scenarios that could materialize.”
But Rook was f
ar from convinced. He shook his head. “You don’t understand. She was a journalist.”
“You’re a journalist. You’re not always following a lead.”
“Oh, but that’s where you’re wrong, Heat. I am always thinking about my work. If I’m not actively working on a story, I’m formulating ideas, observing everything around me in case an idea sparks, or reading other journalists’ work to hone my skills or get new perspectives. I just don’t always talk about it.”
Nikki supposed he did always have a story in the back of his mind—in the same way she always had one case or another on her mind. “I believe that about you,” she said, “but Chloe was a college student—”
He stopped her with a wag of his finger. “Oh no, she was a newshound. She was out for the story. I’ve been thinking about the argument she had with Michael Warton. She was willing to go down for this story. To risk her job at the Journal, which is a really big deal. Whatever she was working on was huge in her mind. Which means it probably was huge. Which means someone very well might have wanted to keep her from writing it. Maybe she’d been too overt in her investigation.”
“She tipped off the murderer that she was digging around. But let’s hypothesize. If she was following some sort of lead, why not tell Michael Warton? He’s the editor in chief. If the story was that big, why wouldn’t he want to run it?”
Rook’s eyes gleamed, and he gave a satisfied smile. “Because I think she was a stringer.”
Nikki waited for more, but more wasn’t forthcoming. She sat back, shrugging. “I give. What’s a stringer?”
“Aha!” His face lit up as if he’d just made a terrific discovery of some sort. “I thought you might ask that. A stringer is someone selling their work to a variety of sources, but not on staff at those publications.”
She failed to see what his excitement was about. “Okay, but she was regular staff.”
“That’s true. But let’s play the ‘what if’ game. I’ll start.”
Crashing Heat Page 10