“Can I tell you you’re off to a good start?” Nikki called out while she gave his Murder Board a once-over. Rook emerged from the back hall of his loft carrying a plastic milk crate of office supplies and an aluminum tube easel to hold the giant presentation pad that was sitting in the guest chair, waiting to be invited to join the party. “Most of what we need to focus on is right here.”
“Good notes, the writer’s friend,” he said. “I’m sure it’s not as dense with possibility as a Nikki Heat Murder Board. It’s like the branch office version. I call it Murder Board South.”
“It’s more than exists uptown right now.” She told him about Captain Irons and how his ineptness had accomplished more than all the obstacles Montrose had thrown at her, effectively bringing the investigation into the priest’s homicide to a whimpering halt. “So, basically, we are the Graf case right now.”
“Let’s make it count,” said Rook.
They spent the next hour updating his old information with her new leads and persons of interest. He kept track of the board, partitioning sections for each major thread to investigate as well as restructuring the timeline to add recently discovered elements; she created index cards on the big four-by-sixes from Rook’s crate of supplies, expanding status details and listing unresolved questions, all corresponding to the categories he had drawn on the whiteboard. Whatever noise had rained chaos down on their relationship fell away in their focus on the task at hand. From the start, and without much ceremony, the two fell into an easy and efficient routine. At last, when the board was current and the cards were coded and filed, they stood back to admire their progress.
Heat said, “We’re not a bad team.”
“The best,” agreed Rook. “We finish each other’s references.”
“Don’t get cocky, writer boy, now comes the hard part. There’s no way with our limited resources and manpower to investigate every lead and every person we’re looking at up there.”
“No problem,” said Rook, “let’s just pick one and go arrest him. That narrows the field. Or, even better, use the Gadhafi method and arrest everyone.”
“You’re bringing up a point we—meaning you—need to remember. I can’t arrest anyone. Remember? No badge, no gun?”
He processed that and said, “We don’t need no stinking badges. And as for a gun, what’s a roving band of killers to you, as long as there’s an icicle handy?”
Nikki held a pencil out to him, point first. “You’d be wise to remember that.”
“Noted.”
“Given we’re only a two-horse carousel, we need to draw priorities.” She set the presentation pad on the easel and tore off the cover, exposing a fresh page. “Here are the prime targets as I see them.” Heat uncapped a marker and printed her A-list, giving Rook a rationale for each choice: “Sergio Torres . . . If he wasn’t Graf’s murderer, he’s linked to the killer in some way—and his skills are too good for his rap sheet; Lawrence Hays . . . not only has the means and motive, he threatened Father Graf. And what were you so excited to tell me about Lancer Standard right before I tore your head off last night?”