“To what, act like an ass? I’m looking for a killer.”
“And I guess I am, now, too.” He twisted to peer through the glass at the Murder Board. “Any developments?”
“Do not press it, Rook.”
“You’re freezing me out?”
As angry as she was, Heat knew that Rook, although a pain in the butt—frequently delivered solutions to cases. She would be spiting herself to close him off as a resource, even though he wasn’t playing fair. Her phone rang. It was Lauren Parry. Nikki asked her to hold. “This could be about Lon King’s autopsy,” she said to Rook. “I need the office to myself. But don’t leave the building.”
“I’m under arrest?”
“You’re underfoot, as usual.” As he rose, she added, “There’s a complication here. Our little drama aside, you could be material to this investigation.”
“How cool am I?”
“And since Roach is officially in the mix, they’re going to need to interview you.”
“Nothing to say. It’s all puddin ’n’ tame with me. Ask me again, I’ll tell ’em the same.”
“You have fun with that,” she said, and he left her to her call with the medical examiner.
The sunniest voice at the Office of Chief Medical Examiner greeted Nikki when she picked up. “Rockin’ that uniform look this morning, Ms. Heatness. It’s like you were all Beyoncé, but without the shoulder pads.”
“And the half billion net worth.”
“If that’s what you’re into.” After they shared a laugh, Nikki could hear crisp strokes on a keyboard and pictured the ME perched at the office window overlooking the basement autopsy room. “Headlines first, report to follow, cool?”
“Ready, Doctor.”
“Not going to be a surprise here. Pending toxicology, of course, I’m finding cause of death to be traumatic brain injury due to gunshot wound.”
Nikki flipped to a clean page and jotted “COD = GSW” in her reporter’s spiral notebook. “You retrieved the slug, I assume.”
“Correctly. Retrieved it first thing so I could expedite it to Jamaica Avenue. Ballistics is all over it, and you should have a prelim from them soon.”
“Give me a preview.” Heat couldn’t keep the urgency out of her voice. “Fragged or in one piece?”
“Intact .22 caliber.”
“Mushrooming?”
“Negative. Either a lucky—if you’ll pardon that term in a homicide—or precise shot that met minimal bone resistance. Entry point was on the nasion, just superior to the rhinion (the bridge of the nose, to you), and inferior to the glabella, which is the lower forehead.” The macabre image of the small hole between Lon King’s placid eyes resurfaced, and Nikki drew a simplistic Charlie Brown face. When she marked it with a dot, her own brow sympathy-tingled. “We’ve both seen bullets do significant damage or sectioning of the brain due to hydrostatic shock or internal bullet deflection. Not this time. This .22 created a narrow wound channel on a trajectory to what became a direct hit, severing the brain stem. The slug came to a stop at the back of the skull.”
In the silence that followed Nikki gathered herself and tried to remain clinical about this victim. “Would that trajectory fit a suicide?”
“Anything’s possible, Nikki, but I’d bet no. To hold a weapon in front of you at that height, exactly on the proper angle? I can’t see it. Plus there would have been significantly more flash burn and muzzle residue at that proximity. Also, no GSR on the hands. And with a quick rate of incapacitation and mortality like this, he could never have shot himself and then taken off gloves.”
Captain Heat’s first incoming call ever on her new department-issued BlackBerry startled her when it rang. She pulled it out of her pocket and read the caller ID. “Listen, Lauren, I’ve got a bureau chief calling.”
“Take it.”
“First, let me ask a quick one. Could King have been shot elsewhere and placed in the kayak, already dead?”