When they went into Cassidy Towne’s office, he returned her unspoken favor in kind, keeping out of her way by standing over near the French doors that led out to the courtyard garden. For Detective Heat it always began by slowing down and studying the body. The dead didn’t talk, but if you paid attention, sometimes they did tell you things.
In getting a feel for Cassidy Towne, Nikki read the power Rook was talking about. Her suit, a tasteful, navy pinstripe over a French-blue blouse with starched white collar, would work for a talent agency meeting or premiere party. And it was expertly tailored to her, accenting a body that had seen regular gym time. Heat hoped that when she reached fiftysomething that she’d keep it that together. Nikki saw some tasteful David Yurman on Towne’s ears and neck, potentially ruling out robbery. There was no wedding ring, so unless that had been stolen, Heat could also rule out marriage. Potentially. Towne’s face was slack in death, but angular and attractive, what most would call handsome—not always the highest compliment to a woman, but according to George Orwell, she had had about ten years since forty to earn that face. Not making a judgment, but letting instinct talk to her, Nikki regarded her impression of Cassidy Towne, and the picture that emerged was of someone suited for battle. A hard body whose hardness seemed to run deeper than just muscle tone. A snapshot formed of a woman who was, at that moment, something she probably never was in life. A victim.
Soon CSU was there, dusting the usual touch points for prints, taking photos of the body and the roomscatter. Detective Heat and her team worked in tandem, but more big-picture than close-up. Wearing their blue latex gloves, they walked here and then there and then back again in appraisal of the office, the way golfers read a green before a long putt.
“All right, fellas, I’ve got my first odd sock.” The detective’s approach to a crime scene, even one in this much disarray, was to simplify her field of view. She pared everything down to getting inside the logic of the life that was lived in that space and using that empathy to spot inconsistencies, the small thing that didn’t fit the pattern. The odd sock.
Raley and Ochoa came across the room to join her. Rook adjusted his position at the perimeter to follow quietly from a distance. “Whatcha got?” asked Ochoa.
“Work space. Busy work space, right? Big newspaper columnist. Pens everywhere, pencils, custom notepads and stationery. Box of Kleenex. Look at this beside her here.” She stepped carefully around the body, still cast backward in the office chair. “A typewriter, for God’s sake. Magazines and newspapers with clippings snipped out of them, right? All that stuff makes lots of what?”
“Work,” said Raley.
“Trash,” said Rook, and Heat’s two detectives turned slightly his way and then back to Heat, unwilling to acknowledge him as part of this exchange. Like his season pass had expired.
“Correct,” she continued, more focused on where she was going than on Rook now. “What’s with the wastebasket?”
Raley shrugged. “It’s right there. Tipped, but there it is.”
“It’s empty,” said Ochoa.
“Right. And with all the tossing this room took, you’d think, OK, maybe it spilled out.” She crouched near it and they went with her. “No clips, snips, Kleenex, or crumpled paper anywhere around it.”
“Maybe she emptied it,” said Ochoa.
“Maybe she did. But look over there.” She side-nodded to the armoire that the columnist had used as a supply closet. It had been rifled, too. And among the contents scattered on the floor was, “A box of waste-can liners. Simplehuman, sized for this can.”
“No liner in this can,” said Raley. “And no liner on the floor. An odd sock.”