“Yes, I do,” she said with a laugh. “He’s a very thorough investigator.” Lauren was still laughing when she hung up.
Rook ordered in some chicken scarpariello and a salad from Gigino’s for them to share, and still hanging out in their robes, they ate a late supper at his counter while Nikki filled him in on the newest information from Lauren Parry.
“It all lays out, doesn’t it?” He ticked each off on a finger. “Steljess caught on surveillance in the bondage dungeon, Steljess was a fired ex-cop, Steljess would have handcuffs and a cuff case, he sure had a gun, Steljess is our killer.”
Nikki poked a grape tomato from their salad with her fork. “That’s pretty definitive. Then tell me why he did it. And why did all the shooters come after me in Central Park? And what is this all about?”
“I got nuthin’.”
She popped the tomato in her mouth and gave him a sly smile. “I’m not saying you’re wrong...”
“When you say things like that to me, I call it a Kardashian. Know why? Because I’m looking for the but.”
“However... ,” she said, “it’s still circumstantial. If Roach comes up with a matching fingernail gouge on the matching cuff case, that’s at least a solid connection. Even that’s still not proof. I need facts.”
Rook served another piece of chicken onto her plate. “Whoever said facts are funny things? Dead wrong. Can’t recall the last time I was ever amused by a fact. Now, intuition and conjecture... that’s like filling the bouncy castle with laughing gas.”
“Just so you know, I thoroughly agree that Steljess is our prime suspect.” Her face clouded. “It’s too bad he had to be taken out. I was hoping to sweat him. In my heart, I believe he killed Montrose.”
Now it was Rook’s turn to look doubtful. “It’s not that I’m saying you’re wrong... but why?”
Heat smiled. “Now you’re thinking like a cop.”
Heat woke up to an empty bed. Detective that she was, she felt Rook’s side and the sheets were cold. She found him on the computer in his office. “You’re shaming me, Rook. This is the third morning this week you’ve gotten up before I did.”
“As I lay there watching the digits change on the clock on my nightstand, stumped and more than just a bit frustrated by this case, I got up and took a page from your book, Nikki Heat. I went out to stare at the Murder Board.”
“And what did you learn?”
“That Manhattan is very noisy, even at four A.M. I’m serious. What’s with all the sirens and horns?” She sat in the easy chair across from him, waiting, knowing he was ramping up to something. He had the look of the guy holding cards. That’s why she always beat him at poker. “So I waited for one of the items on the board to jump out at me or connect to another. Didn’t happen. So I went the other way. I asked myself, ‘What don’t we have?’ I mean besides closure.
“And then it came to me. It was probably why I couldn’t sleep in the first place — because it was a touchy area last night.”
“Captain Montrose,” she said.
“Exactly. You said he was always telling you to look for the odd sock. Nikki, he was the odd sock. Think about it. Nothing he did was like the man you knew.... Like the man anybody knew.” She shifted in her seat, but it wasn’t from upset at the subject, it was because energy was moving through her. She didn’t know where Rook was going, but her experienced sense told her he was asking the right questions. “So with that in mind, I tried to figure out what he was up to. Hard to know. And why?”
“Because he had gotten so closed, so secretive.”
“Precisely. Odd sock behavior. He’d lost his wife, so he wasn’t talking with her, either. But guys, no matter how stoic we appear — unless we’re moody loners, or those Queen’s Guards at Buckingham Palace — have to talk with someone.”
“Father Graf?” she asked.
“Mm-maybe. Hadn’t thought of him. I was thinking more like some existing personal bond. A lifetime confidant. The mortgage buddy.”
“Explain?”
“The one pal you can call, no matter what time of night it is and no matter what you’ve gotten yourself into, who would mortgage his house to save your rear, no questions asked.” He saw her glint of understanding. “Tell me, who is a cop closest to?”
She didn’t hesitate. “His partner.” Nikki was just about to say the name, but he beat her to it.
“Eddie Hawthorne.”
“How could you know about Eddie?”
“Writer’s friend. A little thing called an Internet search engine. Got multiple hits on citations of valor for those two, both as uniforms and detectives. I figured if they found a way to stick together when they got their gold shields, they’d be tight.”
“Eddie retired and moved away, though.” A distant memory brought a smile to her. “I was at his retirement party.”
“July 16, 2008.” He indicated his laptop. “I loves me my Google.” Then Rook pressed a few keys and his printer came alive.
“What’s that, Eddie Hawthorne’s cholesterol level?”
He took two pages from the tray and walked over to Nikki, handing her one of them. “It’s our boarding passes. The car service picks us up for LaGuardia in a half hour. We’re having lunch with Eddie in Florida.”
Eddie Hawthorne pulled up in his Mercury Marquis as soon as they stepped from the terminal in Fort Myers. He got out and gave Nikki a big hug, and as they parted and looked at each other, Nikki’s eyes gleamed as they hadn’t in a long, long time.
He took them to a fish taco place two exits west of Interstate 75 off the Daniels Parkway. “It’s local, it’s good, and it’s close enough to the airport so you don’t have to sweat making your return flight this afternoon,” he said.
They ate at a patio table shaded from the sun blare by a Dos Equis umbrella. The first part of the lunch conversation was reminiscence about their lost friend. “Charles and I were partners so long people didn’t see us as two people after a while. I walked by our sarge once — all by myself, you see — and he looks right at me and says, ‘Hi, fellas.’ ” The old cop laughed. “That’s the way it was. Hawthorne and Montrose, the thorn and the rose, that was us, man. Damn, that was us.” Eddie Hawthorne seemed more interested in talking than the food, which was excellent, and so Heat and Rook just listened, enjoying fresh grilled fish and shirtsleeve weather while he reminisced. When the subject turned to Montrose’s wife, the laughter over glory days faded. “So sad. Never saw two people so close as he and Pauletta. It’s a stunner for anyone, but man... It hollowed Charles out, I know it did.”
“I kind of wanted to ask you a little about that, I mean the past year,” said Nikki.
The ex-detective nodded. “Didn’t think you flew all the way down here for the horchata.”
“No,” she said, “I’m trying to make sense of what went on with the Cap.”
“You won’t be able to. Doesn’t make any sense.” Eddie’s lip quaked briefly, but then he sat up, willing some steel into his body, as if that would help.
Rook asked, “Did you have much contact with him since his wife was killed?”
“Well, you could say I made a lot of attempts. I flew up for her funeral, of course, and we sat up talking most of the night after the service. In truth, maybe more sitting than talking; like I say, I made attempts, but he went to stone in there.” Eddie poked his heart with two fingers. “Who couldn’t understand that?”
Nikki said, “It’s not uncommon to sort of slide a rock over you for a time after you suffer a trauma like that. But after a period of intense grieving most people come out of the funk. And when they do, it’s sort of startling, the new energy.”
Eddie nodded to himself. “Yeah, how’d you know that?” Nikki felt Rook’s hand touch hers under the table briefly. Hawthorne continued, “It was out of the blue, like three months ago. He calls and talks awhile. Old times small talk, that kind of stuff. More conversation than I’d heard from him in ages. Then he says to me that he’s been sleeping poorly, tossing thoughts all night. I told him to join a bowling league, and he just says, ‘Yeah right,’ and keeps on about his insomnia.