Her source? Nikki wished she had worn more makeup to hide the blush that began
filling her cheeks. “Again, I can’t comment on that.”
“Red, yellow, purple, and green. Sounds like the colors of a rainbow. Let me ask.
Have you given this killer a nickname?” Before Heat could respond, she rolled over
her. “Know what I would call this killer? The Rainbow Killer.” She turned to the
camera and repeated for effect, “The Rainbow Killer.” Satisfied she may have
coined a nickname, Baxter said, “Detective Heat, you’re a woman of few words. If
you can actually share something with our viewers, I hope you’ll come back.”
“Most definitely,” said Nikki, but thinking, Only in a straitjacket and wheeled in
on a dolly.
“This is a first. We have thirty seconds left. Seen any good movies, or can’t you
talk about that, either?”
“Actually, I haven’t,” said Nikki. And then she decided to take a leap. “I could
talk about another case we are working. We apprehended the killer but are still
looking for his accomplices.” The stage manager began a ten-second countdown. Heat
reached in her blazer pocket and took out a page with double head shots of Tyler
Wynn and Salena Kaye and held it to the camera with the red light. “I’d like to
invite the public’s help, asking if they have seen either of these two. The female
was last observed around Coney Island.”
“And we’re out of time, Detective,” said Greer Baxter. “Good luck with that, and
good luck apprehending… the Rainbow Killer.”
In the taxi downtown, Rook said, “Pretty lucky you just happened to have those head
shots in your pocket like that.”
“Yeah, said Nikki. “Imagine having them ready to show the very night I was on live
television. Couldn’t have planned it any better.”
He gave her hand a squeeze. “Didn’t have to.”
The next morning at the Twentieth, Wally Irons came to Heat’s desk before he even
unlocked his office. His doughy complexion was mottled with salmon blotches of
agitation. “Happened to catch you with Greer Baxter last night on the ten o’clock
news. As your precinct commander, isn’t it proper you clear all media contact
through me?”
Heat wanted to laugh in his face. She wanted so badly to be insubordinate and say,
You mean, clear it with you, or clear a path to the camera? Or, You mean, clear it
with you like Sharon Hinesburg does—on her knees? Instead, Detective Heat
maintained her professionalism and told him the truth. “I didn’t want to do the
interview. I was directed to by the office of a commissioner at One PP. Would you
like to speak to him?”
Irons stood there, vapor-locked, gloriously impotent, and said, “Next time tell me.
” And he was gone.
Like clockwork, Detective Hinesburg sauntered in five minutes behind Irons, the
interval designed to maintain the fiction that she wasn’t sleeping with the boss.
She grumbled about the assignment Heat had given her to canvass Coney Island for
Salena Kaye sightings. Nikki named some of the hotels and extended stays she knew
of, and Hinesburg reported that she’d come up empty at every one of them. All but
certain Sharon was deep-throating insider tips about the serial killer to Greer
Baxter, the Ledger, and others, Heat isolated her with the task of following up on
the calls that were coming in about Tyler Wynn and Salena Kaye after their pictures
had been shown on TV. “Fine. Long as I don’t have to drive back out to Coney,”
she said.
A uniform held up a cautionary hand to Nikki on her way back from the precinct
kitchen. “Might want to keep some distance. Got a badass here.” She relaxed
against the wall and turned a spoonful of yogurt upside down on her tongue while a
pair of officers wrestled a shackled biker into Interrogation One. Following close
behind strode the biker’s attorney, Helen Miksit. The sight of the lawyer made Heat
wonder which badass the uni had warned her about.