“No, you don’t.”
“I’m afraid I do.” She waited for the meaning of that to sink in on Kimberly, then continued. “Murders are not numbers to me. A person died. A loved one. Someone you thought you were eating dinner with tonight is gone. A little boy has lost his father. Someone is responsible. And you have my promise I will see your case through.”
Mollified or maybe just shock-?worn, Kimberly nodded and asked if they could finish this later. “Right now I just want to go to my boy.”
She left them in the apartment to continue their investigation. After she left, Rook said, “I always wondered where all those Martha Stewarts came from. They must breed them on a secret farm in Connecticut.”
“Thank you for not interrupting while she was spewing.”
Rook shrugged. “I’d like to say that was sensitivity, but it was really because of the chair. It’s hard for a man to sound authoritative surrounded by toile. OK, now that she’s gone, can I tell you I get a vibe off her I don’t like?”
“Uh-?huh, I’m not surprised. That was a hell of a shot she took at your ‘profession.’ Accurate though it was.” Heat turned, in case her inner smile leaked onto her face, and started back to the balcony.
He fell in with her. “Oh, please, I have two Pulitzers, I don’t need her respect.” She gave him a side glance. “Although, I did kind of want to tell her that the series of articles I wrote about my month underground with the Chechen rebels are being optioned for a movie.”
“Why didn’t you? Your self-?aggrandizement might have been a welcome distraction from the fact that her husband just died a violent death.”
They stepped out into the afternoon scorch, where Raley and Ochoa’s shirts had soaked clean through. “What have you got, Roach?”
“Definitely not liking suicide,” said Raley. “A, check out the fresh paint chips and stone dust. Somebody banged open those French doors pretty hard, like during a struggle.”
“And B,” Ochoa picked up, “you’ve got your trail of scuff marks leading from the doors across the…what is this?”
“Terra-?cotta tile,” said Rook.
“Right. Shows the marks pretty good, huh? And they go all the way to here.” He stopped at the balustrade. “This is where our man went over.”
All four of them leaned to look below. “Wow,” said Rook. “Six floors down. It is six, isn’t it, fellas?”
“Let it go, Rook,” said Heat.
“But here’s our telltale.” Ochoa got on his knees to indicate something on the railing with his pen. “You’ll have to get close.” He backed up to make room for Heat, who knelt to see where he was pointing. “It’s torn fabric. Forensics geek says it’ll test out as blue denim after he runs it. Our vic wasn’t wearing jeans, so this came from someone else.”
Rook knelt down beside her to look. “As in someone who shoved him over.” Heat nodded, as did Rook. They turned to face each other, and she was a little startled by his proximity but didn’t pull back. Nose-?to-?nose with him in the heat, she held his gaze and watched the dance of reflected sunlight playing off his eyes. And then she blinked. Oh shit, she thought, what was that? I can’t be attracted to this guy. No way.
Detective Heat quickly rose to her feet, crisp and all business. “Roach? I want you to run a background on Kimberly Starr. And check out her alibi at that ice cream place on Amsterdam.”
“So,” said Rook, rising beside her, “you got a vibe off her, too, huh?”
“I don’t do vibes. I do police work.” Then she hurried away to the apartment.
Later, on the elevator ride down, she asked her detectives, “OK, what was so funny that I could have killed you both with my bare hands? And so you know, I am trained to do that.”
“Aw, nothing, just letting the giddy out, you know how it gets,” said Ochoa.
“Yeah, nothing at all,” said Raley.