“Not I,” she said.
“Look, I agree with you that it’s scummy. And not just because I am intimidated by your impeccable command of grammar. But, at the same time, she was only covering what people were doing. Nobody made Spitzer mount a call girl in over-the-calf socks. Or Russell Crowe toss a telephone at a hotel night manager. Or Soleil Gray blow a hole in a concierge’s pants with a handgun.”
“Right. But who says we have to know all that?”
“Then don’t read it. But it doesn’t make the secrets go away. You know, my mom’s been putting together a night of Chekhov readings at the Westport Playhouse. She was rehearsing one last weekend, ‘The Lady with the Little Dog.’ There’s a passage about this guy Gurov that I’m going to excerpt in my article about Cassidy. It goes something like ‘He had two lives: one, open, seen and known by all . . . full of relative truth . . . and another life running its course in secret.’ ”
“And your point?”
“My point, Detective, is that everybody’s got a secret, and if you’re in the public eye, you’re fair game.”
They stopped at the light and Nikki turned to him. He could see that for her this was more than just an abstract topic. “But what if you’re not used to being in the public eye, or didn’t choose to be there? I ended up with the world reading about my mother’s murder. That’s not a scandal, but it was private. You write stories about Bono, and Sarkozy, and Sir Richard Branson, right? They’re equipped for all this intrusion, but does it make it any better that they need to be? Shouldn’t some things be allowed to be kept private?”
He nodded. “I agree.” And then he couldn’t resist. “Which is why I will never again even write the word ‘pineapples.’ ”
“Going to give you plenty to reflect on here today, Detective Heat.” Lauren Parry’s formality with Nikki was only invoked when Heat’s BFF was pulling her leg or prepping her for news beyond her workaday coroner reports. Heat could tell from her friend’s face that there was no joke coming after that setup.
“What are we dealing with, ME Parry?” she said in matching attitude.
The medical examiner led Heat and Rook to Derek Snow’s body on the table and picked up his chart. “As usual, the tox disclaimer notwithstanding, we have a cause of death from a single thoracic knife wound in the intercostal tissue between ribs, causing perforation of the left ventricle.”
“Stabbed in the heart,” said Rook. When Lauren gave him an eye roll, he shrugged. “You want layman’s terms, or disclaimers about calling your physician after four hours, who’s your guy?”
Nikki asked, “Did he also have signs of torture?”
Nodding, Lauren beckoned her closer to indicate the victim’s left ear. “See the little blood flecks? Same as on Cassidy Towne. I took some ear canal shots for you.”
“Dental picks?” said Heat.
“Don’t need to explain it to you, do I?” The memory of being harassed herself by the Texan made Nikki wince involuntarily. Lauren said nothing, but put a hand on her shoulder in comfort. Then she took it off and said, “There’s more.” She flipped back the top page of the chart to indicate the matching adhesive remnants found on both Cassidy Towne and Derek Snow.
Rook said, “Little doubt we’re dealing with the same killer, is there?”
“It gets more interesting.”
“Wow.” Rook rubbed his palms together. “This is like the late-night infomercials. ‘But wait, there’s more.’ ”