Naked Heat

by Richard Castle

  Soleil Gray took a moment to count nights and said, "Yes, I can. I was with Allie, an A & R assistant from my record label."

  And you were with her all that time? All night?"

  "Um, let me see . . ." Soleil's manner lit up Heat's radar. The searching she was doing carried a whiff of stall. "Yuh, pretty much all night, till about two-thirty."

  "May I have the name and a contact number for the assistant, Allie?"

  After she gave Heat the information, Soleil quickly added, "Oh, wait. Just remembered. After I was with Allie, I hooked up with Zane, my old keyboard guy from Shades of Gray."

  "And what time was that?"

  ". . . Three, I guess. We had a late bite and I went home to bed about four, four-thirty. Are we done?"

  "I have one more question," said Rook. "How do you build upper arms like that? You going to be opening for Madonna?"

  "Hey, way things are going? Madge is gonna be opening for me."

  The soft elevator chime echoed across the desert-rose marble lobby of Rad Dog Records until the sound was lost in the high, vaulted ceiling. A blonde woman in her early twenties was the only one to step off. She looked up from her BlackBerry, spotted Heat and Rook at the security desk, and walked over to them.

  "Hi, I'm Allie," she said while she was still twenty feet away.

  After they shook hands and made introductions, Nikki asked her if it was a good time to talk. She said it was, but she could only be away from her desk for five minutes. "Did you see The Devil Wears Prada?" asked Allie. "Mine wears Ed Hardy, and he's a guy, but the rest is pretty dead-on." She escorted them across the reception area to a sofa grouping. It was made of hard molded plastic and didn't do much to absorb the sound that bounced around the room. Nikki was struck by how comfortable the sofa was.

  Rook settled in opposite them on a large white molded plastic chair. "Looks like we're waiting for the next shuttle to the space station." Then he looked down at the coffee table and saw Nikki's cover on top of a stack of magazines. He picked up a day-old Variety, pretended to scan the headline, and tossed it over the First Press.

  "Is this about the murder, the gossip columnist?" Allie swept her hair behind her ear and then twirled the ends with her fingers.

  Nikki had figured word would reach her from Soleil before they got there, and it had. That might account for the assistant's nervous tics. Time to find out. "It is. How did you know?"

  Her eyes grew wide and she blurted, "OK, Soleil called me and said you might come." Allie licked her lips, and her tongue looked like it was wearing a pink sock. "I've never dealt with the police like this. At concerts, I have, but they're mostly retired."

  "Soleil Gray said you were with her the night Cassidy Towne was killed." Heat got out her reporter's spiral notebook to signal this would be on the record. And waited.

  "I . . . was."

  Hesitation. Just enough to make Nikki press. "From when to when?" She uncapped her stick pen. "As exact as you can be."

  "Um, we got together at eight. Went over to the Music Hall at ten."

  "In Brooklyn?" said Rook.

  "Yeah, in Williamsburg. Jason Mraz had a secret show. He's not on our label, but we got passes."

  Nikki asked, "How long were you there?"

  "Jason went on at ten, we left at about eleven-thirty. Is that good?"

  "Allie, I need to know what time she left you."

  "Is this between us?"

  Nikki shrugged. "For now."

  She hesitated and said, "That is when she left me. Eleven-thirty." Heat didn't need to look at her notes to know that the times Soleil had given her were bogus. Allie flipped her hair around her ear again. "You won't tell Soleil?"

  "That she asked you to lie in a murder investigation?" Allie's lower lip started to tremble and Nikki put a hand on her knee. "Relax, you did the right thing." Allie flashed a quick smile that the detective returned before she continued. "Soleil and Cassidy Towne had some bad blood between them, didn't they?"

  "Yeah, that bitch--sorry, but she kept printing all sorts of ugly crap about her. Like if she had one beer. Made Soleil nuts."

  "So we understand," said Nikki. "Did you ever hear Soleil say anything threatening about Cassidy Towne?"

  "Well, you know, who doesn't say stuff when they're mad? It doesn't mean they did it." Allie could see that she had gotten their interest and looked down, rolling her thumb on the trackball on her BlackBerry just to have something else to do. When her eyes came up and found Nikki scrutinizing her, she set the PDA on the coffee table and waited, knowing what was coming.

  "Tell me what you heard her say."

  "It was just talk." Allie shrugged it off. Heat simply watched her, waiting.

  Rook leaned forward onto his thighs and smiled. "She always wins the staring contests, trust me, I know. You might as well, you know . . ."

  Allie made her decision to come clean. "One night last week she took me to dinner. The cool artists do that. They know my salary. Anyway, Soleil wanted Italian so she took me to Babbo." She misread the look that passed between the other two and explained, "You know, Mario Batali's place in Washington Square?"

  "Yeah, it's great," said Rook.

  "We were eating upstairs, and Soleil has to use the loo, so she excuses herself and goes downstairs. A minute later, I hear all this shouting and a crash. I recognized Soleil's voice so I ran down the steps and there's Cassidy Towne on the floor with her chair tipped over. Just when I got there, Soleil grabs a knife off her table and says . . ." Allie dry-swallowed again. "She says, you like stabbing people in the back? How would you like me to stab you in yours, you frickin' pig."

  Nikki walked out of the parking garage off Times Square and found Rook buying two hot dogs from a sidewalk vendor across from the GMA studios. "This is why you hopped out of a moving car?" she asked.

  "I call that more rolling than moving," he said. "I saw the stand and sprung into my signature hero deployment. Keeps my reflexes sharp. Dog?" He held one out to her.

  "No, thanks, job's dangerous enough." As they crossed Broadway Detective Heat made her habitual check for suspicious parked cars, ever mindful of the Crossroads of the World, the New Normal, and life on orange alert. By the time they reached the other side of the street, Rook had finished his first dog.

  "Man, I don't know if I can eat two. What the hell, yes, I can." He started in on the other, filling his cheeks like a squirrel, making her laugh as they walked north, weaving between the tourists. Except for the gun on her hip, thought Nikki, they could be a suburban couple themselves.

  Between swallows, Rook asked, "Why are we checking Soleil's other alibi? Let's suppose maybe she hired the Texan to stab Cassidy Towne. What's her whereabouts going to tell us?"

  "It gives us a chance to talk to people in her life. We follow the leads we have, not the ones we wish we had. Besides, look what the last alibi check gave us."

  "We learned Soleil lied to us?"

  "Exactly. So let's talk to some more people who might tell us the truth."

  Waiting for the cross signal on 45th, Rook followed her gaze to the newsstand where a dozen Nikki Heats hung from clothespins along the roof of the kiosk.

  "How many weeks till November?" she said. And then the light changed and they crossed the street to enter the lobby of the Marriott Marquis.

  They found Soleil's old keyboardist Zane Taft exactly where his agent had told Nikki he would be, in the Marquis Ballroom on the ninth floor. Nikki had also gotten the musician's cell phone number, but she didn't call ahead. Soleil could have already texted him, as she did Allie, but if she hadn't yet, no reason to give him a heads-up and a chance to call his former lead singer to line up their alibi stories.

  He was alone in the ballroom, on a riser overlooking the empty dance floor, doing a sound check on his keyboard. The first thing Nikki noticed about him was his smile, big and open and crammed with perfect teeth. He fished out Diet Cokes from the ice bucket the hotel had left for him, a man glad for the company.

/>   "Got a gig here tonight, a Sweet Sixty."

  "Birthday party?" asked Rook.

  Zane shrugged. "Life, huh? Four years ago today I'm at the Hollywood Bowl in Shades, playing our second encore, looking out at Sir Paul in the front row and making eye contact with Jessica Alba. And now?" He popped the tab on his aluminum can and Coke fizzed over. "I should have had a business manager. Anyway, tonight I'm getting duked an extra three hundred because birthday boy likes Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons and I know all the songs from Jersey Boys." He slurped the overflow from around the rim of the can. "Fact is, Soleil was the band. She gets the fat contract, I get to play 'Do You Like Pina Coladas?' for boomers who are recession-proof enough to afford parties for themselves."

  Nikki said, "You don't sound bitter."

  "What's that going to get you? And, hey, Soleil's still a pal. She checks on me from time to time, or when she hears about a studio gig, she'll make a call for me. It's cool." He smiled and all those teeth reminded Heat of the keyboard on his Yamaha.

  "Have you been in touch with her recently?" Nikki phrased it openly, seeing how he played it.

  "Yeah, she called about half an hour ago, telling me to expect a visit from the famous detective, what's-her-name. That's her saying that, not me."

  "No problem," she said. "Did Soleil tell you why we're here?"

  He nodded and took another hit off his soda. "Here's the truth. Yes, she was with me the other night. You know, when the lady got killed. But not for long. She met up with me at the Brooklyn Diner on Fifty-seventh about midnight. I was only on the first bite of my Fifteen Bite Hot Dog when she got a call and freaked and said she had to go. That's Soleil, though."

  "I can never finish those," said Rook. "And I'm a dog eater."

  Nikki ignored Rook. "So she was only with you for how long?"

  "Ten minutes, if."

  "Did she say who the call was from?"

  "No, but I heard her say his first name when she answered. Derek. I remember it because I started thinking . . . and the Dominos. You know as in," and then he started riffing the iconic piano solo from "Layla," the coda sounding as authentic as if the band were in the room. Later that night, he'd be playing "Big Girls Don't Cry" for a landscape contractor from Massapequa, Long Island.

  As soon as the doors closed to the ballroom, Rook said to Heat, "Know how you've been kidding me, always saying my insider knowledge ain't crap?"

  "Who says I was kidding?"

  "Well, stop. Because I know who Derek is."

  Nikki U-turned herself in the hallway and stepped in front of him. "Seriously? You know who Derek is?"

  "I do."

  "Who?"

  "I don't know." When she moaned and strode to the elevator, he caught up with her. "Hang on, I mean I've never met him. But hear me out--I was with Cassidy Towne when she got a call from a Derek, and I heard his last name when her assistant said he was on the line."

  Multiple synapses started firing in Heat's brain at once. "Rook . . . If there's a connection between Soleil and this Derek and Cassidy Towne . . . I don't want to say what it means yet, but I have an idea."

  "Me, too," he said. "You first."

  "Well, for one, what if he is the Texan?"

  "Sure," said Rook. "Timing of the call to Soleil, her reaction . . . Derek could be our killer. Maybe he and Soleil were both involved in that big story Cassidy wouldn't tell me about. And they wanted it and her killed."

  "Fine, fine, fine. What's the last name?"

  "I forget." She shoved him and he stumbled back into a potted plant. "Hang on, hang on now." He took out his black Moleskine notebook and flipped to some early pages. "Here. It's Snow. Derek Snow."

  The address trace didn't take long. A half hour later, Heat was parking the Crown Victoria in front of Derek Snow's fifth-floor walk-up on 8th Street a few blocks east of Astor Place.

  She and Rook made the climb of five flights with a squad of heavily armed uniformed cops borrowed from the Ninth Precinct. There was another contingent on the fire escape, both high and low. Their reward for the hike was to knock and get no answer. "It is just past one," said Rook. "He could be at work."

  "I suppose I could maybe knock on a few doors to see if anybody knows where he works."

  "I don't think that's going to help you."

  Nikki gave him a puzzled look. "Why not?"

  Rook leaned toward the door and touched his nose. She leaned in and sniffed.

  They had a battering ram, but the super was there to unlock the door to the apartment. Nikki entered with one hand over her nose and the other resting on the grip of her service weapon. The uniforms rolled in behind her, then Rook.

  The first thing she recognized when she saw Derek Snow's body was that it wasn't the Texan. The young African-American sat slumped forward at the kitchen table with his face down on a place mat. The dried pool of blood on the linoleum underneath him came from a puncture in his white shirt, just below his heart. Heat turned to get the OK signal from the cops who had cleared the other rooms of the apartment, and then she turned back to find Rook on one knee doing what she was about to do, checking out his forearms.

  Rook turned to her and said the word just as she was thinking it. "Adhesive."

  Chapter Nine

  Jameson Rook sat off to the side of the bull pen with his back against his squatter's desk while the rest of the detectives from Homicide plus a few familiar faces from Robbery-Burglary and a pair from Vice drew up chairs around the whiteboard. Behind them, through the glass wall, he could see Nikki rising from her meeting with Captain Montrose.

  Just as cop humor is laced with dark understatement, cop tension is also between the lines. The veteran reporter in him could hear it in the silence--the way the room fell quiet when Detective Heat came into the pen and stepped up to address them. He saw it in the faces turned to her, all experienced, many showing the world-weariness years on the job had etched into them, but all full of attentiveness.

  He had been discreet about his note-taking since his return to the Two-Oh. Rook had an unexpected exclusive that was all going into his Cassidy Towne article, but in deference to Nikki's sensitivity and the fish eyes he had been getting from some of the squad, his MO had been to memorize key words or to scrawl them on scraps of paper or, if something required more jotting than he felt he could sneak, to make an unnecessary trip or two to the men's room. But that day, Rook surrendered to the volume of detail coming at him and began to take written notes in the open. If anybody noticed, he or she didn't seem to care. They were all taking notes, too.

  The spine of his black Moleskine answered with a comforting crack as he bent it back so the fresh page would lie flat on his thigh. He heard the throaty tone in Nikki's voice when she said a simple good afternoon to the packed room, and the journalist wrote on the top line in block letters, "Game Changer."

  Detective Heat confirmed it with her opening remarks. "I just briefed Captain Montrose to let him know what we all suspect from today's developments. Although the autopsy is pending and CSU is still on the scene of this afternoon's homicide, I have reason to believe we are now dealing with a professional killer." Somebody cleared a throat, but that was the only sound in the room. "What began as a search for a revenge killer, perhaps someone who hired our John Doe Texan to murder Cassidy Towne, it's clear this has ratcheted up to where we have someone who is trying to cover something up and has a pro contractor on the job as a sort of silencer.

  "We already had allocated extra resources on this case because of the high-profile nature of the first victim, but due to this change in scope, the Cap has requested, and has received from 1PP, the clearance to bring in extra manpower and lab resources to find our killer." Nikki called on one of the Burglary plainclothes, who had a finger raised. "Rhymer?"

  "What do we have on the new vic?"

  "Still developing, but here's the rundown I do have." Nikki didn't need notes; she had it all in her head and wrote each item on the new, smaller whiteboard that had bee
n brought in and set up beside Cassidy Towne's. "Prelim TOD is same night as our gossip girl. OCME will give us a time window soon and I'll forward to you. Derek Snow was an African-American male, twenty-seven, according to DMV. No arrests, except for a couple of speeding tickets. Lived alone in a one-bedroom, Lower East, steady tenant, paid his rent, no problems, neighbors loved him. Stable employment, worked since '07 as a concierge at the Dragonfly House in SoHo. If you aren't familiar, it's a five-star boutique hotel, quiet and discreet, attracts lots of creatives, mostly Euros but Hollywood-friendly, also."

  She waited for them to make their notes before she continued. "Rhymer, I'd like you and Roach to head down to his apartment to dig a little deeper with the neighbors, see if one didn't love him. Or if anybody has new thoughts on something they saw or heard.

  "I don't know if he liked boys or girls, but see if he had any relationships worth looking at. Check the neighborhood, too. It's one of those blocks where everybody knows your name, so hit the diners and the bodegas."

  Ochoa, who was sitting beside Rhymer, a clean-cut Carolina transplant, said, "In that neighborhood you can get yourself a nice tat while you're down there, too, Opie. 'Love' and 'Hate' on your knuckles, maybe?"

  Nikki seemed glad for Ochoa's tension breaker, and when the laughter settled, she said, "CSU is sweeping his place with a special eye toward any hard connection to Towne or Miss Gray. I'll let you know. And let's not forget our common COD by stabbing and the apparently identical restraints with the duct tape. I'm heading over to OCME now to see the results of Snow's autopsy, but aside from the new arrival of other possible suspects, we are still liking our John Doe Texan, so show his sketch and the picture of Soleil Gray in your files when you make your rounds.

  "I also want a team to work the Dragonfly. Malcolm, you and . . . how about Reynolds from Vice? Cover the usual coworker angles, beefs with guests or vendors, the union. But it is a hotel, so look into the vice aspects, too. He was a concierge, and rumor has it some of them actually have been known to procure." She paused again for the chuckles to subside. "But our best connection is through a new person of interest, the rock singer, Soleil Gray, who connects--loosely, so far--to Cassidy Towne and to Derek Snow. Rook, any thoughts on Snow's connection?"