“Might as well be. He comes over every day and makes me wish I had some sleeper cell to throw in just to make him stop.” That made Damon laugh again, until he caught Nikki staring at him and it withered.
“Two thousand three,” she said. “The last time you checked Property for those fenced items was 2003. Seven years ago.”
“How do you know that?”
“Four years before you retired.”
“If you say so.”
“February 13, 2003, was your last Property check.”
When the waiter returned and read the tension, the silence that hung there sent him away without a word.
At last, Carter Damon leaned forward with something resembling a plea deep inside the red rims of his eyes. “Nikki … Detective … Sometimes the trail runs cold, you know that. It’s nobody’s fault. You move on.” When she didn’t reply, he continued, lowering into a hoarse rasp. “I worked your case. I. Worked. It.”
“Until you stopped working it.”
“Do I need to tell you how many people get murdered in this city?”
“And just how many of my mothers have been murdered?”
He shook his head and retrenched. His moment of vulnerability hardened into defensiveness. “Nuh-uh, no you don’t. That’s too easy. See, to you it’s one case. To me, it ended up being one case on my list. I couldn’t help that. The job swamps you.”
“Mr. Damon,” she said, shunning the respect of using his former rank. “You’re talking as if you actually did the job. Seems to me you stopped working about four years before you retired.”
“That’s not fair.”
“Funny,” she said, “I’ve been thinking the same thing.”
“Hey, bitch, if you think you can solve this, then do better.”
Heat rose. “Watch me.”
Rook tossed some cash on the table and left with her.
They splurged on a cab for the twenty-block ride uptown to the precinct so Heat could work her cell phone on the way instead of losing signal underground. After Rook gave the driver the address, he said to her, “You know the doctor said I had to get some weight back on me, and may I point out you are not helping me meet my goal?”
She scrolled through her messages and said, “What are you babbling about, Rook?”
“This morning we skipped breakfast, but I suppose that’s OK because it was to have wild sex.” Rook caught a flash of eyebrows in the rearview mirror and leaned forward, framing his head in the plexi window for the cabbie. “It’s all right, she’s my cousin, but my second cousin.” Nikki slouched down in the seat, trying not to laugh, because that’s what Rook did—especially when the grim darkness reached for her—make her laugh and keep on. He turned back to her and continued, “And now what happens? We have lunch with Mr.—not Detective—Carter Damon … and don’t think I didn’t catch the nuance of the omission … and my total nutritional intake from that repast came from a diet soft drink.”
“Who says repast?” she said, finishing a voice mail and pressing call back.
“A wordsmith delirious from low blood sucre.”
Nikki held up her palm. “I’m calling Lauren Parry.”
“Perfect, the coroner. If I don’t eat, I’ll be seeing her soon enough.”