“There.” The M.E. indicated the café busing station a few feet away. It had caved in from the top so hard it was split in half. The violent splash of ice and blood had already baked into the sidewalk in the minutes since the fall. As Heat stepped over there, she noted that the café umbrellas and the stone walls of the building also wore dried blood, ice spatter, and bits of tissue. She got as close to the wreckage as she dared without contaminating the scene and looked straight up.
“It’s raining men.”
Nikki Heat didn’t even turn. She just sighed his name. “Rook.”
“Hallelujah.” He held onto his smile until she finally looked at him, shaking her head. “What? It’s OK, I don’t think he can hear me.”
She wondered what sort of karma payback it was for her to be saddled with this guy. It wasn’t the first time that month she had wondered it, either. The job was hard enough if you were doing it right. Add a reporter with a mouth playing make-?believe cop and your day just got a little longer. She backed up to the long flower boxes that defined the perimeter of the outdoor café and looked up again. Rook moved with her. “I would have been here sooner except somebody didn’t call me. If I hadn’t phoned Ochoa, I would have missed this.”
“It’s just tragedy upon tragedy, isn’t it?”
“You wound me with your sarcasm. Look, I can’t research my article on New York’s finest without access, and my deal with the commissioner specifically states—”
“Trust me, I know your deal. I’ve been living day and night. You get to observe on all my homicides just like real-?life detectives who work for a living.”
“So you forgot. I accept your apology.”
“I didn’t forget, and I didn’t hear any apology. At least not from me.”
“I kind of inferred it. You radiate subtext.”
“Someday you’re going to tell me what favor you did for the mayor to get this ride-?along pushed through.”
“Sorry, Detective Heat, I’m a reporter and that’s strictly off the record.”
“Did you kill a story that made him look bad?”
“Yes. God, you make me feel cheap. But you’ll get nothing more.”
Detective Ochoa wrapped his busboy interview and Heat beckoned him over. “I passed a doorman for this building who looked like he was having a very bad day. Go check him out, see if he knows our Doe.”
When she turned back, Rook had curled his hands to form skin binoculars and was sighting up the building overlooking the café. “I call the balcony on six.”
“When you write your magazine article, you can make it any floor you like, Mr. Rook. Isn’t that what you reporters do, speculate?” Before he could reply, she held her forefinger to his lips. “But we’re not celebrity journalists here. We’re just the police, and darn it, we have these pesky things called facts to dig up and events to verify. And while I try to do my job, would it be too much to ask that you maintain a little decorum?”
“Sure. No problem.”
“Thank you.”
“Jameson? Jameson Rook?!” Rook and Heat turned to see a young woman behind the police line waving and jumping up and down for his attention. “Oh my God, it’s him, it’s Jameson Rook!” Rook gave her a smile and a wave, which only made his fan more excited. Then she ducked under the yellow tape.
“Hey, no, get back!” Detective Heat signaled to a pair of uniforms, but the woman in the halter and cutoffs was already inside the line and approaching Rook. “This is a crime scene, you have to go.”
“Can I at least get an autograph?”
Heat weighed expediency. The last time she tried to chase off one of his fans, it had involved ten minutes of arguing and an hour writing up an answer to the woman’s official complaint. Literate fans are the worst. She nodded to the uniforms and they waited.
“I saw you on The View yesterday morning. Oh my God, you’re even cuter in person.” She clawed through her straw bag but kept her eyes on him. “After the show I ran out and bought the magazine so I could read your story, see?” She pulled out the latest issue of First Press. The cover shot was Rook and Bono at a relief center in Africa. “Oh! I have a Sharpie.”
“Perfect.” He took the marker and reached for her magazine.
“No, sign this!” She took a step closer and tugged aside the cup of her halter.