Rook smiled. “I think I’m going to need more ink.”
The woman exploded with laughter and clutched Nikki Heat’s arm. “See? This is why he’s my favorite writer.”
But Heat was focused on the front steps of the Guilford, where Detective Ochoa clapped a sympathetic hand on the shoulder of the doorman. He left the shade of the canopy, did a limbo under the tape, and crossed to her. “Doorman says our vic lived in this building. Sixth floor.”
Nikki heard Rook clear his throat behind her but didn’t turn. He was either gloating or signing a groupie’s breast. She wasn’t in the mood to see either one.
An hour later in the solemn hush of the victim’s apartment, Detective Heat, the embodiment of sympathetic patience, sat in an antique tapestry chair across from his wife and their seven-?year-?old son. A blue reporter’s-?cut spiral notebook rested closed on her lap. Her naturally erect dancer’s posture and the drape of her hand on the carved wooden armrest gave her a look of regal ease. When she caught Rook staring at her from across the room, he turned away and studied the Jackson Pollock on the wall in front of him. She reflected on how much the paint splatters echoed the busboy’s apron downstairs, and though she tried to stop it, her cop’s brain began streaming its capture video of the mangled busing station, the slack faces of traumatized waitstaff, and the coroner’s van departing with the body of real estate mogul Matthew Starr.
Heat wondered if Starr was a jumper. The economy, or, more accurately, the lack of it, had triggered scores of collateral tragedies. On any given day, the country seemed one turn of a hotel maid’s key away from discovering the next suicide or murder-?suicide of a CEO or tycoon. Was ego an antidote? As New York real estate developers went, Matthew Starr didn’t write the book on ego, but he sure did the term paper. A perennial also-?ran in the race to slap his name on the outside of everything with a roof, you had to credit Starr with at least staying in the chase.
And by the looks of his digs, he had been weathering the storm lavishly on two luxury floors of a landmark building just off Central Park West. Every furnishing was either antique or designer; the living room was a grand salon two stories high, and its walls were covered up to the cathedral ceiling by collectible art. Safe bet nobody left take-?out menus or locksmith brochures at this front door.
A trace of muffled laughter turned Nikki Heat’s attention to the balcony where Detectives Raley and Ochoa, a duo affectionately condensed to “Roach,” were working. Kimberly Starr rocked her son in a long hug and didn’t seem to hear it. Heat excused herself and crossed the room, gliding in and out of ponds of light beaming down from the upper windows, casting an aura on her. She sidestepped the forensics tech dusting the French doors and went out onto the balcony, flipping her notebook to a blank page.
“Pretend we’re going over notes.” Raley and Ochoa exchanged confused looks then drew closer to her. “I could hear you two laughing in there.”
“Oh, jeez…,” said Ochoa. He winced and the sweat bead clinging to the tip of his nose fell onto her page.
“Listen to me. I know to you this is just another crime scene, right? But for that family in there, it’s the only one they’ve ever experienced. Are you hearing me? Good.” She half turned to the door and turned back. “Oh. And when we get out of here? I want to hear that joke. I could use it.”