At that point, Rook had paused his Olympus recorder to change batteries, but
really to allow Nikki to gather herself emotionally. When they resumed, she admitted
that, in her heart, she’d always assumed once she captured her mom’s murderer, the
wound could finally scar over. Instead, everything tore open and bled. The pain didn
’t lessen, it seared. Yes, she managed to arrest Petar, but the mastermind who
called the shots had escaped and gone off the grid. And Petar would be no help
tracking him. Not after one of Wynn’s other accomplices brazenly poisoned his jail
cell dinner.
Heat opened up to Rook with an intimacy she couldn’t have imagined a year ago when
she got saddled with the celebrity journalist for a research ride-along. Pre-Rook,
Nikki had always believed that there were two pairs of natural enemies in this world
—cops and robbers, and cops and writers. That belief softened in last summer’s
heat wave, when they ended up falling in love working their first case. Softened,
maybe, but even as lovers, cops and writers would never have it easy. And this
relationship constantly tested them.
The first test had come last autumn when the product of Rook’s homicide squad
ride-along got published as a national magazine cover story, and Nikki’s face
stared out at her from newsstands for a month. That attention made her
uncomfortable. And seeing her personal experiences turned into prose gave Nikki an
unsettling feeling about her role as Rook’s muse. Was this life they were living
theirs, or just source material?
And now with his new article about to hit the Internet with a splash, what were once
mere misgivings about going public had erupted into full-blown anxiety. This time it
wasn’t about fearing the glare of personal publicity, but her worry that it would
harm her active investigation. Because for Detective Heat, this case didn’t have
loose ends; they were live wires, and Nikki saw publicity as the enemy of justice.
And at that moment, a mile away in Times Square, the genie was about to come out of
the bottle.
Nikki was glad she’d at least held one big secret back. Something so explosive, she
hadn’t even told Rook.
“Coming in?” Detective Ochoa jarred her back to the present. He stood holding the
glass door of Domingo’s Famous open for her. Heat hesitated, then let go of her
preoccupation and crossed the threshold.
“Got one for the books here,” said Ochoa’s partner, Sean Raley. The pair of
detectives, nicknamed Roach, a mash-up of their names, led Heat past the empty
Formica tables that would have been filled for lunch in a few hours if it hadn’t
been for the murder. When they got to the kitchen, Raley said, “You ready for a
first?” He put his gloved hand on the topmost door of the pizza oven and drew it
down to reveal the victim. Or what remained of him.
He—it looked like a he—had been shoved in there on his side, bent to fit, and
baked. Nikki looked at Raley then Ochoa then back to the corpse. The oven still gave
off a hint of warmth, and the body in it resembled a mummy. He had been clothed when
he went in. Remnants of scorched fabric dangled off his arms and legs, and shrouded
patches of the torso like a disintegrated quilt.
Raley’s look of dark amusement faded and he stepped to her. Ochoa joined him,
studying her. “You gonna be sick?”
“No, I’m fine.” She busied herself gloving up with a pair of blue disposables,
then added, “I just forgot something.” Nikki said it dismissively, like it was no
big deal. But to her, it was. What she had forgotten was her ritual. The small
personal ceremony she went through on arrival at every homicide scene. To pause
silently a few seconds before going in, to honor the life of the victim she was
about to meet. It was a ritual born of empathy. A rite as common as grace before a
meal. And today, for the first time ever—Nikki Heat had forgotten to do it.
The slip bothered her, yet maybe it was inevitable. Lately, working routine
homicides had become a distraction that kept her from focusing fully on her bigger
case. Of course she couldn’t share that with anyone on her squad, but she did
complain to Rook how hard it was to try to close a chapter when people kept opening
others. He reminded her of the words of John Lennon: “Life is what happens to you
while you are busy making other plans.”
“My problem,” she’d said, “is that death happens.”