With her neat, block capitals, Detective Heat entered on the whiteboard the date and time of Holly Flanders’s breakin at Cassidy’s apartment. As she capped the dry-erase, she heard her cell phone vibrate on her desktop.
It was a text message from Don, her combat trainer. “Tomorrow a.m. Y/N?” She rested a thumb on the Y on her keyboard but hesitated. And then wondered what that pause was about. Her gaze lifted to Rook across the bull pen, sitting with his back to her, talking to someone on his phone. Nikki circled the key with the pad of her thumb and then pressed Y. Y not? she thought.
As soon as Roach came back to the bull pen, Heat gathered her squad around the board for a late-day progress report. Ochoa looked up from a file he was carrying in. “This just arrived from the One-Seven on the body jacking.” The room fell quiet. Everyone gave him their attention, feeling the significance of a lead or even, hopefully, recovering the missing body. “They located the getaway SUV, abandoned. It was a stolen just like the dump truck. Says it was taken from a mall parking lot in East Meadow, Long Island, last night. CSU has it for prints and whatever else they can turn.” He read a little more to himself, but then simply closed the file and handed it to Heat.
She looked it over and said, “You left something out. It says that it was your observation of the honor student bumper sticker that gave them the critical lead. Way to go, Oach.”
“So I guess you weren’t too distracted,” said Hinesburg.
“What would I be distracted by?”
She shrugged. “There was a lot happening. The accident, the crew, the traffic, whatever . . . you had lots to think about.” Apparently, gossip was getting around about the newly separated Ochoa and his request to ride with Lauren Parry. And it figured Hinesburg would be the one to flog it.
Heat did not like where this was going, someone getting convicted through gossip, and moved to cut it off. “I think we’re good for now.”
Ochoa wasn’t through. “Hey, if you’re saying I was distracted from my job by something, say so.”
Hinesburg smiled. “Did I say that?”
Nikki interrupted more concretely. “Let’s move on here. I want to talk about Cassidy Towne’s trash,” she said.
Raley was about to speak, but Rook interrupted. “You know, that would have been a much better name for her column. Too late now.” He felt their cool stares. “Or maybe too soon.” Rook backpedaled his rolling chair to his desk.
“Anyway,” said Raley, putting some hair on it, “CSU is working the scene now. Doesn’t look like they’ll get much. As for the trash itself, it’s weird. Only household waste. Coffee grounds, food scraps, cereal boxes, what have you.”
“No office materials,” continued his partner. “We were especially looking for anything like notes, papers, clippings—nada.”
“Maybe she did everything on computer,” said Detective Hinesburg.
Heat shook her head. “Rook said she didn’t use one. And besides, everybody who uses a computer still prints something. Especially a writer, am I right?”
Since she was addressing him, Rook rolled over to rejoin the circle. “I always print safety copies as I go along just in case my laptop crashes. And also to proof. But like Detective Heat said, Cassidy Towne didn’t use a computer. Part of her control thing. Too paranoid about having digital pages scanned, stolen, or forwarded. So she typed everything on that dinosaur IBM Selectric and had her assistant run the copy to the Ledger for filing.”
“So we still have the mystery of the missing office papers. Her hard copies.” She opened a marker and circled that posting on the board.
Raley said, “It sure looks to me like somebody wanted to get their hands on whatever she was working on.”