Nikki smiled again and hated it that he could be so cute. “Anyway, accept my apology?”
“Only if you accept an invitation to buy you a drink tonight. Let’s be grown-ups and clear the air so I don’t have to feel all weird when I see you on the street.”
“Or at a murder scene,” she added.
“Odds are,” said Rook.
Nikki wouldn’t be seeing Don until later that night, so she agreed. Rook caught a cab back to his loft to get some writing done, while she took the elevator to the garage to drive back to the precinct and wrap her day.
At her garage level, the elevator doors opened and Raley and Ochoa were there, about to get on. “We miss the autopsy?” asked Ochoa.
Nikki stepped out with them and the doors closed behind her. She held up the file. “Report’s right here.”
“Oh,” said Ochoa. “Good, then.” Heat wouldn’t have been much of a detective if she couldn’t read the disappointment in him. He was, no doubt, hoping for an excuse to see Lauren Parry.
“Got something for you, though, Detective,” said Raley. He held up a heavy-duty manila envelope bulging with something square inside.
“You’re kidding,” she said, daring to feel some energy in the case again. “The typewriter ribbons?”
“Some typewriter ribbons,” cautioned Raley. “Her nosy neighbor recycled a bunch of them before the garbage strike, so they’re long gone. These are strays he had in his bin. Four of them.”
“Nothing in her typewriter,” added Ochoa. “We’ll run them up to the precinct so Forensics can get on them.”
Nikki looked at her watch and then to Ochoa, feeling bad for the guy that his plan to see Lauren Parry had been thwarted by minutes of bad timing. “Tell you what would be a better plan,” she said. “As long as you’re here, I don’t want to have the Padilla case fall through the cracks. Would you go up and see where they are on his autopsy? They’re beyond swamped, but if you ask nicely, I bet Lauren Parry will do it as a favor.”
“I guess we could ask her,” said Ochoa.
Raley knuckle-tapped the manila envelope. “We’re going to lose a day with Forensics, though.”
“I’m heading uptown, anyway,” said Nikki. “I’ll drop them at Forensics.”
Getting no argument, she signed the chain of evidence form and took the envelope from them. “Let’s hear it for nosy neighbors,” she said.
Uptown traffic was impossible. Ten-ten WINS said there was a major crash under the UN on the FDR and the work-around traffic was clogging everything northbound on the island. Nikki cut across town, hoping the West Side Highway would at least be crawling. Then she did some calculation and wondered if she should call Rook to rain check. But her gut told her that would just revive the friction she was trying to cool. Another plan.
She was only minutes from his loft. She could stop by, pick him up, and he could come with her to the precinct. They could have a drink around there. The weather was still nice enough for a patio table at Isabella’s. “Hey, it’s me, change of plan,” she said to his voice mail. “We’re still on, but call me when you get this.” Nikki hung up and smiled, thinking of him writing to his remastered Beatles.
Heat parked in the same loading zone she had parked in once before, the night of the pounding rainstorm when she and Rook had kissed in the downpour and then run through it to his front steps, soaked to the skin and not caring. She put her police sign on her dash, locked the manila envelope in the trunk, and, a minute later, stood at the foot of his steps, pausing, feeling a bit of a flutter remembering that night and how they couldn’t get enough of each other.