“I think you’re right, Rales, and I’ll take it a step further. I’m not closing any doors”—Heat used the marker to gesture to the list of interviewees on the board—“but this is starting to feel less like payback for what she wrote and more like stopping what she was writing. Any help there, Rook? You’re our inside man.”
“Absolutely. I know she had a big project going on the side. That’s why she told me she was burning the midnight oil so much; why she was in the same clothes some mornings when I showed up.”
“Did she tell you what it was?” asked Nikki.
“Couldn’t get it out of her. I assumed it was a magazine piece and maybe she saw me as a rival. The control thing again. Cassidy told me once—and I even wrote it down to quote in the article—‘If you have anything hot,’ ” Rook closed his eyes to summon the exact words, “ ‘you keep your mouth shut, your eyes open, and your secrets buried.’ Basically, she was saying if it’s that big you don’t talk it up or someone might beat you to it. Or sue you to stop it.”
“Or kill you?” said Nikki. She moved on to point out two days on the time line. “JJ, Cassidy’s building super and resident oral historian, said he changed her locks twice. First time was when she felt like someone had been in her place. Based on our interrogation of her estranged daughter, she’s the one who had been in there. It also accounts for her prints. She alibied with a john the night of the murder. We’re checking, good luck. As for the other lock change, we interviewed Toby Mills, who admits to the kick-down and says it was in response to Towne initiating a stalker episode. Sharon?”
“Copies of the incident report are on your desks along with a picture of this man.” Hinesburg held up a security cam still. “He’s Morris Ira Granville, still at large. I copied CPK and the One-Nine.”
Heat tossed her marker onto the aluminum tray that ran along the bottom of the whiteboard and crossed her arms. “I don’t need to tell you Montrose is getting heavy pressure about the missing body. Roach, I got the Cap’s OK to pull some manpower from Burglary to canvass those apartments and businesses around”—she paused to find the victim’s name on the other board—“Esteban Padilla’s crime scene. That way you can stay on this and the body jacking for now.”
“I have a thought,” said Rook. “That typewriter Cassidy Towne used. Those Selectrics had a ribbon cartridge that spooled through the type guide a letter at a time. If we had any of her old ribbons, we could look at them and at least see what she was working on.”
“Roach?” said Nikki.
“On it,” said Ochoa.
“Back to the apartment,” from Raley.
A few minutes after the meeting broke up, Rook sidled up to Heat, holding his cell phone. “I just got a call from another one of my sources.”
“Who is it?”
“A source.” He slipped his iPhone into his pocket and crossed his arms.
“You’re not going to tell me who, are you?”
“You up for a ride?”
“Is it worth one?”
“Do you have any better leads? Or maybe you’d like to hang around here so you can sit with Captain Montrose and watch the five o’clock news.” Nikki considered that a moment. She dropped a stack of files onto her desk and snatched up her keys.
Rook told her to pull up to the curb on 44th Street in front of Sardi’s. “Beats hanging out at a round-the-clock car wash, don’t it?”
“Rook, I swear, if this is your sneaky way of getting me out for a drink, it won’t work,” she said.
“And yet, here you are.” When she popped the transmission into Drive, Rook said, “Wait. I’m kidding. That’s not what I’m doing.” When she put it back in Park, he added, “But if you change you mind, you know I’m always game.”
Inside at the host podium, Nikki spotted Rook’s mother, waving from her table across the room. She answered with a wave and then put her back to the woman so she couldn’t see the anger on her face as she spun to Rook. “Your mother? This is your source? Your mother?”
“Hey, she called and said she had information on the murder. Would you turn that down?”