Nicki.Heat.02.Naked.Heat.2010 by Castle Richard

Author:Castle, Richard [Castle, Richard]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Ten

Nikki was not about to let this wait for a meeting back in the bull pen. Momentum on this case was picking up, and even though she wasn't sure where her new clues would lead, she was going to ride it, and hard. The Office of the Chief Medical Examiner was only a few blocks north of the Derek Snow crime scene, so Heat got on her cell phone and called Ochoa to tell him she'd meet him and Raley in the East Village in five minutes for a briefing.

"You sound pumped. Did you get a confirm that Snow had the same killer as our gossip lady?" Ochoa asked.

She looked over at Rook, riding shotgun with her down Second Avenue and said, in her best infomercial announcer voice, "But wait, there's more."

The two detectives were out canvassing Derek Snow's neighborhood when she reached Ochoa, so instead of going to his apartment, they made a plan to meet up at Mud Coffee just off Second. Traffic flow on East 9th was one way the wrong way for her, so Heat bypassed it, pulled into a loading zone on St. Mark's Place, tossed her placard on the dash, and walked it. Rook was a marathon and 10-K runner, but he had to work to keep pace with Nikki.

Mud Coffee was a storefront on a block that had one foot in the old New York City of custom tailor shops, one-of-a-kind dress boutiques, and a Ukrainian soul food restaurant. The other foot was in the newer, more gentrified Manhattan of upscale skin spas, sake bars, and an Eileen Fisher. Raley and Ochoa were waiting at the outside bench with four coffees when they arrived.

"Usually, it's too crowded to score any outdoor seating here," said Raley. "Might have something to do with people's aversion to smelling Le Gar-bahge." Talks between the city and the union had broken off the night before, and a fresh layer of trash had been added to every sidewalk in the borough.

Rook side-glanced to the hedgerow of trash bags lining the curb six feet away. "Getting so I don't even smell it anymore."

"Maybe from spending too much time with your gossip queen," said Ochoa. Instead of a comeback, he got a maybe nod from Rook.

Detective Heat was unable to resist employing Lauren Parry's flair for the dramatic as she stepped out the information she had just gotten at OCME: the Derek Snow cause of death; the cast of the knife used on Cassidy Towne matching the one the Texan attacked her with; and then the kicker--Cassidy Towne's blade cast matching the one that gave Esteban Padilla his mortal wound.

Even cops who thought they had seen and heard it all could be surprised once in a while. This was the second time this case had managed to bring the vets up short. When Heat finished her story, the air was full of whispered holy craps and f-bombs.

"So," Nikki said when it seemed they had taken it in, "setting aside the

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