* * *
When she got back uptown, Nikki made a quick stop to do an appear ance check outside the door to the bull pen, where the fluorescent overheads created a poor man’s mirror in the window of Montrose’s dark office. It wasn’t about vanity; it was about dried blood. At the shooting scene in Brooklyn Heights, EMTs had given her wipes to clean her face and neck, but her clothes were another story. The emergency shirt and slacks she usually kept folded in her desk file drawer were still at the cleaners following a latte mishap, so the rust-colored spray on the collar of her blouse and in the V pattern down the front where her coat had been open would have to do. While Nikki made her appraisal, she heard Detective Rhymer’s soft drawl coming around the corner from the squad room.
Heat couldn’t hear all he was saying, just snippets because he was speaking in hushed tones. She picked up phrases like “. . . wheel spinning and make-work . . .” and “He said, ‘Screw it, life’s too short . . .’ ” and then “. . . Heat’s more worried about her freaking promotion . . .”
Listening in was tantalizing but made Nikki feel skeevy, like she was in a soap. What had Phyllis Yarborough said a few hours before? Something like “transparency means no shame”? So Heat turned the corner to face whatever she would face.
What she found was Detective Rhymer leaning in gossip mode with Sharon Hinesburg at her desk. Both sat upright in their rolling chairs when they saw her walk in. “Damn, look at you,” said Hinesburg, hopping to her feet. “Who took the bullet, you or the dancer?” She was extra loud, the way people get when they’re diverting attention. Or hoping to.
Nikki ignored her and gave a puzzled look to Rhymer. “Are you and Gallagher done working your list of dommes already?”
He rose, too, albeit more tentatively. “Not quite. We came back so I could drop Gallagher off.”
Nikki scanned the room and didn’t see his partner. “What, is he sick?”
“Gallagher, he, ah . . . He requested a reassign back to Burglary.” The detective turned to Hinesburg as if he’d find some help, but Sharon was letting him deal his own hand. The whispers Nikki had just overheard sufficed for her to do the math. Another day talking to dominatrixes felt like a waste to Gallagher and so he booked out. Apparently with some opinions expressed about Detective Heat on his exit. “You know,” continued Rhymer, “we had some cases hanging that needed some attention, and he must have just felt, you know, obliged to mind them.”
Heat knew it was bull but didn’t expect Opie to throw in his partner. This latest piece of unrest created by her coming promotion tasted bitter, but she set it aside. Her immediate concern was that she was suddenly down one investigator. “In that case, I’m glad you hung in, Ope.”
“I’m here, Detective.” But then he couched it. “Long as I can be, that is.”
* * *
At the Murder Board a few minutes later Heat selected a new marker color and printed the dancer’s name in the upper left corner where there was plenty of white space. “Probably doesn’t feel like it to him, but it’s Horst Meuller’s lucky day,” she told the squad. “The slug they pulled from that door was a .338 Magnum.”
Raley said, “Any brass?”
She shook no. “My guess is he either never threw the bolt since it was one shot, or if he did, the casing ejected into the vehicle and left with him.”
Ochoa let out a low whistle. “.338 Mag. Man . . . Hunters use those loads to drop grizzlies.”
“And, apparently, pole dancers,” said Heat. “I want to find out why. Detective Rhymer, dig deeper on Horst Meuller.”