“Jameson Rook, reporting as ordered, Captain.” He slid into one of the guest chairs angled in front of her desk and crossed a leg as he leaned back. “I have to tell you that this driving up and down town all day is cutting into my nuptials planning. Speaking of which: I told Jill Krementz that the only way she can come is if she’ll be our wedding photographer. I’m teasing, of course. Unless she says yes.” He let out a self-satisfied laugh and flicked his eyebrows. Then he saw Heat’s expression, and his smirk withered. “What?”
“Ever since you saw the body at the river this morning you’ve been…off. Now I know why.” Nikki woke up her iPhone, which sat poised in the center of her empty blotter, and swiveled it toward him. Rook leaned forward, elbows on the edge of her desk. He watched himself on the security video; Heat watched him grow a shade paler.
When the clip finished he sat back in his chair. A few seconds passed with the background chatter of the precinct as the only sound. At last he said, “You know, sometimes I hate technology.” Then, a little too quickly recovered from his video smack to suit Nikki, he gave a minor shrug, saying nothing.
“You’re not going to tell me what this was about?” she asked.
“I think it’s probably best we not get into it.”
“Are you fucking serious?” Nikki, who rarely swore and always discouraged swearing among the squad, lost her filter. “Rook, we already are into it.”
“All right, I can see that. But can we keep some sense of scale here?”
“Scale?” Heat spoke so loudly that heads turned in the homicide bull pen. She got up and closed the door, calming herself by the time she regained her seat behind the desk. “Let’s enumerate, shall we? One: You had knowledge of a homicide victim you didn’t disclose. Two: You—my fiancé—had a meeting with my shrink without telling me. Where do I put that on the goddamned scale?”
“If I’m hearing you, I’d guess way up there.”
“Stop. Stop being glib. This is not a glib moment for me.”
“I apologize. I’m sorry.” He nodded in a belated attempt at conciliation. “But I’m not trying to be glib, I’m trying to play this down.”
“You can’t.”
“Because,” he pressed on, “you don’t have anything to worry about. Yes, I had some meetings with Lon King. And that—”
“More than this one? Not feeling too assuaged here, Rook.” “If you let me finish, you will.” He paused and cocked his brow toward her. She made a steeple of her fingertips in front of her lips, a listening pose. He continued. “My conversations with King had nothing to do with you.” He sat back and crossed his leg again, as if what he had just said qualified him to drop the microphone.
“That’s it?”
“Yup. All there is to it.”
“Not to me.”
“But it’s the truth. You were never mentioned. The psychological community has strict protocols when it comes to being discreet. You saw that yourself today when Josie never acknowledged you as a client in front of me or Ochoa.” He couldn’t help himself and added, “Even though, much like me, you didn’t disclose your relationship with the victim to your own squad.”
“OK,” she said. “This is going nowhere good.”
“Which is why I said, maybe we shouldn’t walk this path.”
“And you won’t tell me why you were seeing him?” When he didn’t reply, she gave him a frown and said, “He counseled cops. You weren’t in therapy with him, were you?”
“That, I’ll answer. No. The reason I was seeing him has to remain confidential. It’s my right as a journalist not to disclose.”
“You saw him about a story you’re working on? What?”
“Nikki, I’d love to tell you, but there’s too much else going on with this. My ability to do my job depends on my sources’ knowing that I will honor confidentiality. I have to invoke my constitutional right.”