“…Raley. Just shipped it over, you mean, like it was just lying around?”
“No, of course not. He had some free time, and I asked him to scrub some security video.” He tilted his head toward her. “Is this an issue?”
“Only that Detective Raley doesn’t have any free time because he works for me doing the assignments I give him.”
“OK, so it’s an issue.”
“Irons banished you from the precinct.”
“Which is why I called Raley instead of going in myself. There’s no quit in me, Nikki Heat.”
“And did it occur to you that I might need to sign off on you poaching my detectives for your personal use?”
“Agreed. But last night when I got the tip from Beauvais’s friend Hattie about this…” he gestured to his screen “…you were busy playing Bob the Builder with your attackers, and I couldn’t reach you. So I called Rales and asked a fave. Is that really so wrong?”
An ache cinched her back muscles like barbed wire drawing tight. It didn’t come from her street skirmish. Just days ago Heat thought Rook was going to give her an engagement ring. Now he was giving her fits. Knowing a crossroad when she’d reached one, Nikki decided she had plenty of battle in front of her without opening a flank with Rook. For the greater good Nikki knew she had to eat it—to do what she did so well—which was to compartmentalize her feelings for the sake of the job. So she shrugged it off.
But there was one conversation she needed to have.
Since the radio car had been assigned to her anyway, Heat hitched a ride in the blue-and-white from Tribeca up to Chelsea. The officers thanked her for the French roast, joking that she had spoiled them for mystery muck they get from the street cart. When they dropped her at the same corner where she had been attacked barely ten hours before, Nikki declined their escort offer. But, as she walked past the driveway of the housing project, which was still wet from the blood hosing it got from CSU, she glanced back and got a wave from both unis as they kept watch from their patrol unit.
Raley and Ochoa looked a little bewildered when they pulled up in front of the brownstone on West Sixteenth to find Heat standing there waiting for them. The ambush had kept her from checking out the address Jeanne Capois had written on the grocery receipt, so Roach had offered to take the assignment that morning. But Nikki decided to show up, too. She had a reason to pull her surprise visit.
She crouched on the sidewalk beside the Roach Coach. Raley rolled down his passenger window and said, “Heard you had a night.”
“Let me think…Oh, right.”
From behind the wheel, Ochoa joined in the Downplay Game. “Listen, I need some carpentry done. You work on wood or just human flesh?”
The ball having sufficiently been tossed around the infield, they popped the latches on their doors. “Sit tight,” she said, causing her detectives to exchange more puzzled glances. “Change of plan. I’m taking this interview. I want you guys to run checks on these two.” She gave them the printout she’d made at Rook’s of the ATM screen grab. “Of course, that’s Fabian Beauvais in the background, but I want to know everything about the pair up front.” She paused and leveled a meaningful stare at Raley. “Sean, I understand you are already familiar with this photo after having done some freelance work for Rook without authorization.”
He blushed. “Hey, I was at the station late, anyway. It was Rook, so I thought…” he read her unhappiness and let it trail off. His partner wasn’t so cowed.
“What’s the problem here? Guy’s doing his job, helping out.”