His eyes darted to the door where the uniform waited, then back to her. And then he studied his shoes, looking in them for the answer to give now that he had no script from The Firewall.
“Soleil and Reed, Toby. Let’s hear it.”
“What’s there to know? I heard about her today. Man . . .” And then he tried out, “I read in the paper you were harassing her. Were you chasing her today, too?”
Heat did not rise to his bait, let alone acknowledge it. “My question remains, how did you know Soleil and Reed?”
He shrugged like a child. “Around, you know? It’s New York. You go to parties, you run into people. ‘Hey, howarya,’ like that.”
“Is that all you knew of them, Toby? ‘Hey, howarya’? Really?”
He checked the door again and pursed his lips repeatedly the way she had seen him do on TV once when he had walked the ninth man to load the bases and the top of the order was coming up with no outs. He’d need different skills to get himself out of this jam, and Toby wasn’t sure he had them; she could smell it on him. So with his confidence flagging, she said, “Let’s take a ride. Want to put your hands behind your back for me?”
“Are you serious?” He met her gaze, but it was he who blinked. “I met them around. You know. Parties, like I said. Reed, I guess he played in my charity softball game for the Oklahoma tornado victims in summer ’09. Soleil, too, now that I think about it.”
“And that’s it?”
“Well, not totally. We hung out with each other from time to time. The reason I hesitated to talk about it is because it’s embarrassing. I’m past all of it now, but I kinda got a little ‘off the chain’ when I first hit New York. Hard not to. And maybe I did do some partying with them back then.”
Heat remembered Rook saying that Cassidy Towne had written up some of Mills’s wild nights in “Buzz Rush.” “So you’re saying that was a long time ago?”
“Ancient history, yes, ma’am.” He said it fast and smooth, as if he had passed the dangerous shoals and come out into calm waters.
“All before your charity game summer before last.”
“Right. Way back.”
“And you didn’t see them after that?”
He started shaking his head for show, even as he pretended to be thinking. “Nope, can’t say as I saw much of them later. They broke up, you know.”
Nikki seized the opening. “Actually, I heard they got back together. The night Reed died.”
Mills kept a game face but couldn’t keep the blood in it, and he went a little pale. “Oh, yeah?”
“I’m surprised you didn’t know that, Toby. Seeing how you were with them that night.”
“With them—I was not!” His shout made the officer at the door straighten up and stare at him. He lowered his voice. “I was never with them. Not that night. Trust me, Detective, I think I’d remember that.”
“I have an eyewitness who says otherwise.”
“Who?”
“Morris Granville.”
“Oh, come on, this is crazy. You’re going to take the word of that psycho over mine?”
“When we picked him up, he told me about Club Thermal and how he saw Soleil and Reed.” Heat leaned forward in her chair, toward him. “Of course, what I knew in the back of my mind was that the only reason I could think of for Morris Granville to be outside Club Thermal that night was because he was stalking you.”
“Sounds like a load of bull. The guy’s lying to get some kind of deal or something. He’s just lying. The creep can say anything, but without proof, forget it.” Toby sat back and crossed his arms, attempting to signal that he was all done.
Heat slid her chair over to the computer beside him and inserted a memory key. “What are you doing?” he asked.