Naked Heat

by Richard Castle

  "Good," said Rook. "Now, my offer still stands. How can I help here?"

  Ochoa beckoned him to scoot his chair closer. "What we're doing is going over Padilla's phone records looking for any calls that weren't to friends, family, his boss, whatever."

  "You're trying to spot anything out of pattern."

  "Yeah. Or a pattern that tells us something." Ochoa handed a phone record to Rook and placed a pink sheet listing the friend and family and work numbers on the table between them. "You see any numbers that don't appear on the pink sheet, hit 'em with the highlighter, got it?"

  "Got it." Just as Rook began to scan the first line of calls, he felt Raley's eyes on him and looked up.

  "I have to say this, Rook. There is one more thing bugging me, and if I don't get it off my chest, it's just going to keep eating and eating at me."

  Rook could see the gravity of this on his face and set down his sheet. "Sure, let me hear it, let's get it all out. What do you want to say to me?"

  Raley said, "Sweet Tea."

  Puzzled, Rook said, "Help me out here. You don't like the tea?"

  "No, not the damn tea. My nickname. Sweet Tea. You put it in the article, and now everybody's calling me that."

  Ochoa said, "I haven't noticed that."

  "Why would you? You aren't me."

  "Again, I apologize," said Rook. "Better?"

  Raley shrugged. "Yeah. Now that I unloaded, yeah."

  "Who calls you that?" pressed his partner.

  Raley fidgeted. "Lots of people. Desk sergeant, a uniform in booking. It doesn't matter how many, I don't like it."

  "Can I say something as your friend and your partner? In the scheme of getting over yourself? . . . Get over yourself." And one second after they resumed their work, Ochoa punctuated it with ". . . Sweat Tea."

  They studied the records in silence. A few minutes later, on his second printout, Rook asked Ochoa for the highlighter.

  "Got one?"

  "Yeah." As he took the marker from Ochoa, it registered exactly what he had. "Holy shit."

  "What?" said Roach.

  Rook highlighted the phone number and held it up. "This number? It's Cassidy Towne's."

  A half hour later, Detective Heat stood over the array of highlighted phone records Roach had laid out side by side, in chronological order, on her desktop out in the bull pen. "So what do we have?"

  "We have a couple things, actually," began Raley. "First, we have the connection we've been looking for between Esteban Padilla and Cassidy Towne. Not just a phone call, but a regular pattern of calls to her."

  Ochoa picked up the tour, pointing to a series of highlights on the first pages, the ones on the left side of her desk. "The first calls come here, once or twice a week last winter and into spring. These correspond to the dates he was working the limo. A sure sign Padilla was one of her informants."

  "Know what I think?" said Rook. "I'll bet you can look at the dates of those calls to her, check who Padilla had booked that night, and match them to items in her column the next day. Assuming any of the tips were newsworthy."

  "Newsworthy?" said Heat.

  "OK, gossipworthy."

  She nodded. "But I take your point. What else?"

  "Here it gets even more interesting," continued Raley. "The calls stop abruptly right here." He tapped the printout for May. "Guess when this was?"

  "The month Padilla got fired from the limo company," she said.

  "Right. A whole cluster of calls just after that--we'll have to guess what that was about for now--and then nothing for almost a month."

  "And then they pick up again here." Ochoa appeared on Nikki's right and used the yellow highlighter cap to show resumption of contacts. "Calls. Lots of calls all of a sudden in mid-June. Four months ago."

  Heat asked, "Do we know if he was working another limo company then?"

  "We checked that," said Raley. "He started driving the produce deliveries end of May, shortly after he got canned from driving the black cars. So I doubt if he was still giving gossip tips."

  "At least not new ones." Rook leaned in past Nikki and spread his fingers to span the gap in calls. "My guess is this hiatus in calls was when Mr. Padilla was not providing daily tips to Ms. Towne. And the resumption of calls in June was all about research for whatever the hell book she was writing. Depending on where she was with her manuscript, as a writer, I'd say that would be about the right timing."

  Nikki scanned the highlighted pattern, a time line in its own right, and then turned to face her detectives and Rook. "Great work. This is big. We not only have our connection between Padilla and Towne, but if Rook's right about what the pattern means, it suggests why he was killed. If she was murdered for what she was writing, he could have been murdered for being her snitch."

  "Same as Derek Snow?" asked Rook.

  "For once, not such a whacko theory, Mr. Rook. But still, only a theory until we can make a similar link. Roach, get on our concierge's phone records first thing in the morning."

  As Roach left the bull pen, she heard Raley say in a low voice, "I'm looking forward to some sleep, but whenever I close my eyes, all I see are printouts of phone records."

  And Ochoa replied, "Me, too, Sweet Tea."

  Nikki was putting on her brown leather jacket when Rook stepped up to the coatrack, closing his messenger bag. "You boys kiss and make up?" she asked.

  "How did you know that? Did we have that post-make-up-sex glow?"

  "I may be sick," she said. "Actually, I happened to catch you through the glass in Observation."

  "That was a private conversation."

  "Funny, that's what the bad guys think when they're in that room, too. Everybody forgets it's a two-way mirror." She flicked her eyebrows at him, a full Groucho. "But that was a good thing you did, reaching out to them like that."

  "Thanks. Listen, I was thinking . . . I'd love to cash in that rain check for last night."

  "Oo . . . sorry. Can't tonight, I've made plans. Petar called."

  His gut took the express elevator to the basement, but he maintained an unfazed smile and kept it casual. "Really? A drink after, then?"

  "Problem is, I don't know when after will be. We're going to get together on his dinner break. Who knows, I may end up back at the show. I've never seen them shoot one of those things." She checked her watch. "I've got to run or I'll be late. Catch you in the A.M." She made sure the squad room was empty, then kissed his cheek. He started to reach for her but thought better of it in the police station and all.

  But as he watched her go out the door, he wished he had put his arms around her. Irresistible as he was, she might have canceled her dinner.

  Roach came in early the next morning to find Jameson Rook camped out at his commandeered desk. "I was wondering who turned on the lights in here," said Raley. "Rook, did you even go home last night?"

  "Yeah, I did. Just thought I'd get here early for a jump on the day."

  Ochoa said, "You don't mind me saying so, you look kinda messed up. Like you've been skydiving without goggles."

  "Thanks." Rook didn't have a mirror to look at, but he could imagine. "Well, I'm burning that candle, you know? When I leave here, it's off to my night job at the keyboard."

  "Uh-huh, I'll bet it's tough." Ochoa gave him a pleasant nod, and the pair moved across the bull pen to log on to their computers.

  Ochoa's comment was sympathetic, but it only made Rook feel guilty. Guilty, first, that he'd had the audacity to tell an NYPD homicide detective how difficult life could be in his comfortable Tribeca loft, writing. And guilty, second, because he had not been writing at all. He tried, all right. He had two full days of notes to write up to stay current with his Cassidy Towne article. But he didn't write them up.

  It was Nikki. He couldn't let go of Nikki having dinner with her old college lover. He knew it was nuts for him to be so . . . freaked. What he admired in her was her self-sufficiency, her independence. He just didn't like it when she was so independent of him. And with
an old boyfriend. Around 11 P.M., unable to concentrate on his work or even watch the news, he had started to wonder if this was how it started with stalkers. And then he started to think maybe he'd do his next article as an investigation of stalkers. But then, he wondered . . . if you do a ride-along with a stalker, are you stalking the stalker?

  It all got very weird.

  That's when he made a phone call. There was a comedy writer he knew on a late-night talk show in LA who had been in the business forever, and sure enough, this guy had the story on Petar Matic. "Don't you love the name, Rook? Sounds like a product a mohel would sell on an infomercial." Call a comedy writer, get a one-liner. But it was the only laugh Rook got from the conversation.

  Comedy writing, especially in late night, was a small circle of frenemies, and Rook's LA guy knew one of the Later On comedy writers who had done community service a few years back. "Hold on," said Rook, "why would a comedy writer have to do community service?"

  "Beats me. Pitching a Monica Lewinsky joke after 2005? Who knows?"

  So while the Later On comedy writer was doing his community service at the Bronx Zoo--for DUI, Rook's friend eventually recalled--on the crew with him doing cage cleaning and litter detail was this bright guy from Croatia, a nature documentary shooter. Rook asked if Petar was there for DUI, too.

  "No, here's the poetry. Nature filmmaker. Busted for what?" Rook's friend paused for a drumroll. "Smuggling endangered species into the country from Thailand. He did six months of eighteen in jail, got early release for good behavior, and was assigned community service. To the zoo!"

  "More poetry," said Rook.

  The two hit it off, and at the end of their stint at the zoo, the comedy writer got Petar a gig at Later On as a production assistant. "Not quite a step up from shoveling the elephant yard," said the voice from LA, "but entry level, and he did OK. Worked his way up to segment producer pretty quick. My friend says once Petar sets his mind to something, there's no stopping him."

  That was the thought that left Rook sleepless, worried about that signature Petar Matic tenacity--plus conflicted over whether he should tell Nikki about her ex's smuggling bust. But suppose he did tell her? That could make it worse, exponentially worse. He made a list of potential fallout. It could damage a perfectly good relationship she enjoyed with an old friend, which Rook would then feel bad about. Sort of. He might inadvertently create greater interest in Petar. Nikki had a naughty side, and maybe the bad boy thing was something she would spark to all the more. And finally, how did it make him look, doing background checks on her old boyfriends? It made him look . . . well, insecure, needy, and threatened. Sure wouldn't want to give that impression. So when he saw her come through the door at the other end of the bull pen, smiling, he knew exactly what to do. Look busy and pretend he didn't know anything.

  "Look at you here, all bright-eyed and . . ."--she studied him--". . . bushy faced."

  "I skipped the shave this morning. A little time-saver after a long night. Researching." He waited while she hung up her jacket, and then he added, "And you?"

  "Feeling pretty good, actually, thanks." She turned across the room. "Roach? You get Derek Snow's phone records yet?"

  "Put in for them," answered Raley. "Should arrive anytime now."

  "Call them again. And keep me up on it." She put her bag in her desk file drawer. "Rook, you're hovering."

  "Huh? Oh, I'm just wondering . . ." His sentence hung there, suspended between them. What he wanted to ask was about her night. What she did. Where she went. What she did. When it ended. What she did. So many questions. But the one he asked was, "Is there something I can do to be useful this morning?"

  Before Nikki could answer, the phone rang on her desk. "Homicide, Detective Heat."

  Before Nikki heard the voice, she heard the unmistakable sound of subway wheels squealing to a halt. "Are you there?" She recognized the voice of Mitchell Perkins. But Cassidy Towne's editor didn't sound quietly superior as he had in his office the day before. He was agitated and tight. "Damn cell phone. Hello?"

  "I'm here, Mr. Perkins, is something wrong?"

  "My wife. I'm on my way to work and my wife just called. She caught someone trying to break in."

  "What's the address?" She snapped her fingers to get Roach's attention. Raley picked up the extension, copied the address Perkins gave, uptown on Riverside Drive, and called Dispatch while Heat stayed on with the editor. "We're sending a car now."

  She heard him panting, and the background acoustics changed, telling her he had come up from the subway to street level. "I'm almost there. Hurry, God, hurry . . ."

  Hurrying in Manhattan isn't so easy, even with police lights and a siren, but the traffic flow was downtown at that hour, so Detective Heat made good time up Broadway to West 96th Street. From her TAC frequency Nikki heard that three blue-and-whites were already at Perkins's apartment, so she killed her siren and eased it back slightly after she crossed West End. She looked up the street and chin-nodded to Rook beside her. "What's this?"

  Ahead of them, mid-block, two people were kneeling on the sidewalk in front of a car at a garage entrance. A third, a parking attendant to judge by his uniform, saw her flashing light and waved his arms to flag her down. Nikki was on the air calling for paramedics before she even saw the body stretched out on the pavement.

  "Perkins?" said Rook.

  "Think so." Heat parked to protect the scene from oncoming traffic and left her gumball flashing. When she got out, a blue-and-white was right behind her and she directed the officers to split up. One to direct traffic, the other to hold the witnesses on scene. The detective hurried over to the victim, who was facedown on the car park driveway in front of the TT that had struck him. It was indeed Mitchell Perkins.

  She did a check for vitals. He had a pulse and was breathing; both weak, though. "Mr. Perkins, can you hear me?" Nikki leaned an ear down near his face, which was sideways on the concrete, but got nothing back. Not even a moan. As the ambulance siren approached behind her, she said, "It's Detective Heat. The ambulance is here. We're going to take good care of you." And she added, just in case he was semiconscious, "And police are with your wife, so don't worry."

  While the EMTs went to work, Heat pieced together what had happened from the trio of citizens on the scene. One of them was a housekeeper who happened by after the incident and wasn't of much use for information. However, the driver of the Audi said he was pulling out of the garage for a trip to Boston when he struck Perkins. Nikki figured the editor was in such a rush from the subway, freaked about his wife, that he wasn't paying attention. But she adhered to her training not to box the story until all the details were in, and never to lead the eyewitnesses with her own guesses. Let them talk.

  That's what she did, and the story she got was big. The parking attendant said Perkins wasn't running up the sidewalk when he first saw him. He was in a struggle with somebody, a mugger, trying to get his briefcase. The attendant had gone into his kiosk to call 911, which was right when the TT came up from the underground ramp. The driver said he pulled out just as the mugger ripped away the briefcase. Perkins had been pulling so hard that when he lost his grip he flew back into the front of the car. The driver said he hit his brakes, but there was no way to stop the collision.

  Roach rolled up to the scene, and Heat assigned them to separate the witnesses and get more detailed statements and better descriptions of the mugger from them. As often happened in sudden violent crimes, the eyewitnesses had gotten distracted or shocked by the blur of action and missed basic descriptions of the perpetrators. "I already had one of the uniforms put out the APB for a Caucasian, medium build, in sunglasses and dark navy or black hoodie and jeans, but that's pretty vanilla. See what else you can get, and try to get them down to the precinct for a look at photo arrays. I want to make sure we include the Texan and some of our other players in the deck. And while we're at it, line up the sketch artist, too." She looked around for Rook and saw him squatting in the gutter over the s
pilled contents of the editor's briefcase.

  "No, I didn't touch anything," he said as she approached, snapping on gloves. "I'm incorrigible, but trainable. How's he going to be?"

  Nikki turned to watch them load Perkins into the back of the ambulance. "Still unconscious, which is not optimal. But he's breathing and they did get a better pulse, so we'll see." She crouched down beside him. "Anything useful here?"

  "One very trashed, rather empty briefcase." It was an old-fashioned hard case, a big clamshell gaping open, with business cards and stationery items like black binder clips and Post-its scattered about it. A handheld digital voice recorder lay scuffed a foot away, beside a granola bar. "Although, I do say I admire his taste in fountain pens," he said, indicating a brick-orange-and-black Montblanc Hemingway limited edition nestled in the L where the curb met the gutter. "Those things go for over three grand now. Kind of shoots down the mugger theory."

  Nikki wanted to go along with that, but she pushed away the temptation of coming to any conclusions for now. That's not how cases cleared. "Unless the mugger wasn't a writer-slash-fountain pen collector."

  Just then Rook startled her by taking her by the wrist. "Come with me, quick."

  She almost hesitated, but she went along with him as he drew her across the street with a gentle grip on her forearm. But that didn't stop her from asking, "Rook, what are you doing?"

  "Quick, before it flies away." He pointed to a single sheet of white paper fluttering down 96th toward the park on Riverside.

  Nikki reached for it, but the wind took it and she had to make another sprint to get ahead of it. When it landed on the pavement at her feet, she pounced and slapped her open palm down to trap it. "Gotcha."

  "Nice. Would have done that myself, but you've got the gloves," said Rook. "And the moves."

  With her free hand, Heat carefully pinched the corner of the sheet and turned the paper over to read it. Frustrated by her poker face, Rook grew impatient.

  "Well?" he said. "What is it?"

  Nikki didn't answer. Instead, she turned the page so he could read it himself.