Heat felt more than saw all the heads of the homicide squad slowly rotate to face her. But with the vortex of disbelief swirling within Nikki all she could manage was to keep her eyes fixed on the body beneath her as she groped for an emotional handle. Still more disquieting, the psychologist’s face looked not much different in death than it had in their sessions: neutral, dispassionate, amenable. How many times had she stared at the blank canvas he so studiously presented and seen him with his eyes relaxed and his mouth slightly open just as they were now, betraying no judgment or pleasure—or, in this case, no life itself.
Lauren Parry whispered a soft, “Nikki?” and slipped a gloved hand into hers. “Do you need to sit down?” Heat gave her a no-look head wag and made an instinctive, albeit pointless, visual survey of the area for the killer. An al-Qaeda sniper on the fishing pier to the left? It was unoccupied. A drug cartel’s menacing cigarette boat speeding away? There was none. A PTSD cop scrambling upslope into the thicket above the Greenway? Nothing but robins on worm patrol in the grass.
At last her gaze came back to the squad, every one of them still attending her, patiently waiting for Heat to speak. Then she sought Rook, who stood with the others but was staring down at the shrink’s body with an expression of distress that appeared out of scale for someone who didn’t know the victim. Could it be, she thought, that their relationship had reached some point of emotional fusion and that Rook had taken on her upset as his own? Under other circumstances that would have made Nikki feel very happy. But not these.
“Guess you’ve all figured out that I knew the victim,” she said, trying to dig herself out of the moment she had created. Rook’s eyes came up to meet hers, and she took a pause, rummaging in the uncomfortable instant for the version she dared to tell about the extent of her counseling with the shrink. Nikki, usually one for transparency, opted for the smallest truth she could tell, instinctively protecting herself from personal disclosure—to the detectives, to her fiancé. “You remember back a couple of years when Captain Irons tried to get me off a case by ordering an evaluation from a department psychologist?” She tilted her head toward the victim but didn’t look at him, responding to some irrational expectation that Lon King might sit up and urge her not to withhold.
That much seemed just enough for the detectives. Rook still came off a little pinched to her, but Heat judged it better to get off the thin ice so she wouldn’t fall through, and switched gears to logistics. “All right, this is complicated. Let’s huddle up and see where to take this,” she began.
But then Detective Raley chimed in ahead of everyone else. “First place we need to start is a time of death guesstimate,” he said, taking it on himself to address the group, but speaking for the ears of Lauren Parry, too.
And did she ever hear him. The ME stood up from her crouch and regarded him with the same cool stare the others were giving him.
“Hoo-boy,” said Rook. “I’ve seen that look. I’ve gotten that look. It’s all yours, buddy.”
“What? Well we do, don’t we?” Rather than cowering, Raley was doubling down on taking point on the investigation himself. “We need a window so we know where to start, based on when.” He scanned the squad, but they offered no encouragement and mostly looked away.
“Detective,” said Dr. Parry quietly, evenly. “Are you suggesting I take direction from you on this case?”
Her measured response set Raley back on his heels. “No, I’m just…Taking some initiative, that’s all.”
“Dynamic, homes,” said his partner, with some unmistakable stink on the remark.