“Of the right tibia? Just below the patella?”
“OK, now that’s just weird. How’d you know that?”
“See, that’s how you create human interaction, Doctor. Take note.” After a chuckle Heat told her about the ER report she had just received, and the ME agreed that, although it was not impossible, such a fracture was unlikely to be the result of walking clumsily into a piece of furniture.
“Question,” said Nikki. “Oil residue. Any sign?”
“No, and I was looking for it, especially after we found traces on the other two.”
“I’m asking because I looked real closely at the door of his pickup, and I didn’t see any. I’ll check with Forensics.”
“I already have. No oil residue.” After a long pause, Parry asked, “You still there?”
“Yeah, I’m just thinking about that.”
“One of your Odd Sock moments?”
“When something breaks a pattern, that’s what we call it around here,” said Heat. “A pleasure interacting with you on a human level, Doc.”
After Nikki hung up, she started feeling unsettled. And she liked that. Things that didn’t feel right had a funny way of turning into clues.
About an hour later, as Heat was returning from briefing the new patrol squad she had formed to discourage smart-phone thefts on subway platforms, Raley waved her into the bull pen. “I made the rounds of NY State Police and county traffic enforcement in Westchester and Putnam, which would be nearest the ER in Cortlandt. It’s mostly a lot of the garden-variety rural stuff. Rear-end taps, flat tires, engine stalls, missing license plates, broken headlights, kids driving on lawns, failures to yield, and drunk drivers. But there was a fatality.”
Without realizing it, Nikki took a seat at her former desk. Rook came over and sat on it. Old habits. “Where and what?” she asked.
“A stretch of the Cold Spring Turnpike between the Taconic and Route 9.”
“I’ve been there,” said Rook. “They call it a turnpike, but that’s a backcountry road.”
“Quite isolated,” continued the detective. “And a lot of twisty-turnies. The fatality involved a single-car accident. The driver was alone. She somehow veered off the road and smacked head-on into a tree.”
“Impaired?” asked Heat.
“No. And the autopsy showed no physical issue like heart attack, aneurism, or anything like that.”
Heat’s mind raced to a hundred places all at once. “And it was a solo event.”
“That’s the conclusion. Staties are sending me the MV-104, but that’s their finding. They said things like, it could be a deer reaction or a coyote swerve. Or a distraction. Except the driver had her cell phone inside her purse, and there were no messages or calls preceding the crash. Also no suicidal indicators.”
Rook swiveled on the desktop to face Nikki. “Do you think this could have anything to do with Nathan Levy? Let me rephrase that. What do you think Nathan Levy had to do with this? Like, instead of a deer or a…I dunno…a rabid woodchuck, or Toonces the Driving Cat…was he the one who made the driver lose control?”
Raley chimed in. “My contact at the state troopers said their investigation had ruled out a phantom vehicle.”
“But still,” said Nikki. “A little coincidental, wouldn’t you say?”
Bobbing his head, Rook added, “And I know what you say about coincidences. They’re like seagulls. You’ve never seen one that didn’t lead someplace fishy.”
Nikki winced. “I never said anything like that.”
“I’m a writer. Take the sound bite, OK? All yours.”
Heat instructed Raley to put in a call to Inez Aguinaldo, who was up in Throggs Neck scrubbing through Nathan Levy’s house with the Crime Scene Unit. He briefed the detective on the ER report and the fatal solo crash that had happened the same night. “Which we aren’t buying it as solo,” Heat said.