Raley pushed back against Ochoa with a fake smile. “’Tude’s not helping.”
If there had been any doubt in Heat’s mind that the true jockeying for squad leader had begun, Roach’s trading elbows like that erased it. “Glad we’re all eager to jump in,” she said. “So let’s.” She turned to Lauren Parry, very much wanting a TOD window, but loathe to ask after what had just occurred. “Doctor, do what you do, and we’ll check in.” Parry gave her a you-got-it nod and crouched again beside the kayak to run her tests. Nikki continued, “Since what we have here is a scene of discovery more than an actual crime scene, we need to gather information about where the murder could have taken place.”
“And when,” said Rook. He turned to the ME. “Can’t help it, Doc. I see pigtails, I gotta pull ’em.”
“Nikki?” said Parry.
“Lauren?”
“Prelim, twelve to fourteen hours based on temp and lividity. Rook?”
“Lauren?”
“Suck it.”
Unfazed, he turned to the other detectives. “It’s a small price to pay to get you boys critical information on a timely basis. Your unspoken thanks is all I need.”
Nikki ran the math and peered across the wide expanse of waterway at the New Jersey bluffs. The windows of the high-rise apartments over in West New York and Union City were just starting to kick back glints of the sun’s first rays that in turn reflected off the water. There, where a cool-headed aviator had once miraculously set down an airliner, Nikki tried to envision the situation just before sunset the night before and to trace the path of an adrift twelve-foot Perception Tribute.
“Getting a fix on his point of origin’s going to be a bear,” said Rhymer. “I did a lot of kayaking in Roanoke, growing up. A boat like this with a shallow draft, in windy conditions, nobody steering…Criminy, who knows?”
Heat continued her survey anyway, following potential courses from upriver near Harlem and the Bronx. Rook moved close beside her and said, “Mahicantuck. That’s the name Manhattan’s indigenous tribe gave the Hudson. Translated, it means ‘the river that flows two ways.’ Which is to say it’s an estuary. Which is to say he could have just as easily come from the opposite direction, up from the Battery. To calculate the drift pattern, you’re going to have to check tide charts to find out the ebb and flood over two cycles.” He saw the frustration this observation provoked and said, “Hey, facts are my business. You get in a relationship with a journalist, it’s not always going to be good news.”
With no other useful information likely to pop up at a secondary crime scene, Heat left Dr. Parry and her crew to finish the prelim on the body, assigned a foot patrol to keep an eye out for fishermen in case any of them had spotted unusual activity the night before, and set out for the Twentieth to convene the squad and get a Murder Board started.