Richard Castle - Naked heat

Ochoa beamed. "For real? Nah, you're just being polite to me because I'm a live person in your day."

"True…" And they both laughed. His eyes fell away from hers for a second or two, and when he looked up she was smiling at him.

He gathered his courage and said, "Listen, Lauren, I'm playing goalie this Saturday, and if you're-"

The tires squealed, glass shattered, and metal crunched. The van crashed so hard to a sudden stop that its rear tires lifted and slammed down, tossing Ochoa and Lauren. The back of her head smacked the side wall of the cargo bay as the van came to rest.

"What the hell…?" she said.

"You all right?" Ochoa unbuckled his belt to cross to her, but before he could get out of it, the rear doors flew open and three men in ski masks and gloves were filling it, holding guns on them. Two were Glocks, the third guy had a nasty-looking assault rifle.

"Hands!" shouted the one with the AR-15. Ochoa hesitated, and the shooter put a round in the rear tire underneath him. Lauren screamed, and even with all his range experience, the muzzle blast made Ochoa jump. "Hands, now!" Ochoa raised his high. Lauren's were already up. The other two masks belted their Glocks and went to work unlatching the hardware securing the gurney holding Cassidy Towne's body to the floor of the van. They made quick work of it, and as the rifleman adjusted his position to keep his aim on Ochoa, his crew rolled the gurney out of the cargo bay and wheeled it somewhere to the side of the vehicle where Ochoa had no view.

Behind them southbound traffic on Second was bunching up. The lane immediately behind the shooter was at a stop; the other lanes were crawling around the blockage. Ochoa tried to memorize all the details for later, if there was going to be a later. Not much to go on. He saw one passing driver on his cell phone and was hoping it was a call to Emergency when the crew returned to slam the cargo doors.

"Come out, and you're dead," called the AR-15 through the metal.

"Stay in here," said Lauren, but the detective had his weapon in his hand.

"Don't move," he told her and kicked the door open. He jumped out on the opposite side of where they had taken the gurney and did a cover roll behind the rear wheel. Underneath the van he could see broken glass, fluid streaming from the engine, and the wheels of the dump truck they had T-boned.

Tires burned rubber, and Ochoa booked it around the van in shooting position, but the big SUV-black, no plates-sped off. Its driver cut a sharp, evasive turn to put the dump truck between himself and Ochoa. In the seconds it took the detective to run up to the truck and brace, the SUV had turned off onto 38th Street for the FDR, the East River, or who knew where?

Behind Ochoa a driver called out, "Hey, buddy, can you move this?"

The detective turned. Sitting out there in the traffic lane was Cassidy Towne's gurney. It was empty. Detective Heat returned to the bull pen from dropping off Cassidy Towne's phone message cassettes and datebook for analysis by Forensics. Raley strode to her as soon as she walked in. "Got an update on Coyote Man."

"Do you have to do that?" Heat objected to giving victims nicknames. She understood the economy of it, the shorthand it created for a busy squad to quickly communicate, sort of like naming a Word file something that everyone could easily reference. But there was also a dark humor component to it she didn't like. Heat also understood that-the coping mechanism on a grim job was to depersonalize it by making light of the dark. But Nikki was a product of her own experience. Recalling her mother's murder, she didn't want to think the homicide crew on that case had had slang for her mom, and the best way to respect that was not to do it herself… And to discourage it in her squad, which she had always done, albeit with spotty success.

"Sorry, sorry," said Raley. "Re-set. I have some information on our deceased male Hispanic from this morning. The gentleman who you speculated may have been attacked by the coyote?"

"Better."

"Thank you. Traffic found an illegally parked produce truck a block from the body. Registered to…" Raley consulted his notes, "Esteban Padilla of East One Hundred and Fifteenth."

"Spanish Harlem. You sure it's his truck?"

Raley nodded. "Positive match to the vic in a family photo taped to his dashboard." Just the sort of detail that always made Nikki's stomach take an elevator plunge. "I'll do a follow-up."

"Good, keep me up on it." She gave him a nod and started to her desk.

"So you really think that was a coyote, huh?"

"Looked it to me," she said. "They do get into the city every now and again. But I have to go with the ME on this one. If it was a coyote, it came after the fact. I can't think of any coyote that would steal a man's wallet."

"Wile E. Coyote would have." Rook. Smart-assing from the old desk he used to sit at. "Of course, he would have gotten some ACME dynamite first and blown his nose and hair off. And then stood there blinking." He demonstrated. "I watched a lot of cartoons as a youngster. Part of my unsupervised upbringing."

Raley looped back to his desk and Heat stepped over to Rook. "I thought you were going to write a statement and go."

"I wrote it," he said. "Then I tried to make an espresso out of this machine I gave you guys and it's NG."

"We, um, haven't made a lot of espresso drinks since you left."

"Clearly." Rook stood and dragged the machine from the back of the desk toward him. "God, these things are always heavier than they look. See? It's not plugged in, the water reservoir is down… Let me set it up for you."

"We're good."

"OK, fine, but if you decide to use it, don't just put water in. It's a pump, Nikki. And like any pump it has to be primed."

"Fine."

"Do you want some help with that? There's a right way and a wrong way."

"I know how to-" She ended that thread of conversation right there. "Listen, let's forget all about…"

"Steamy deliciousness?"

"… coffee, and look at your statement. Deal?"

"Done." He handed her a single sheet of paper and sat on the edge of the desk, waiting.

She looked up from the page. "This is it?"

"I tried to be concise."

"This is one paragraph."

"You're a busy woman, Nikki Heat."

"All right, look." She paused to collect her thoughts before she continued. "I was left with the distinct impression that your weeks-weeks-in the company of our murdered gossip columnist would mean you had more knowledge than this." She dangled the page at its corner between her thumb and forefinger so that it sold flimsy. The air-conditioning kicked on and it even waved in the breeze, a nice touch.

"I do have more knowledge."

"But?"

"I'm bound by my journalistic ethics not to compromise my sources."

"Rook, your source is dead."

"And that would release me," he said.

"Then pony up."

"But there are others I talked to who might not want to be compromised. Or things I saw, or confidences I was given access to that I wouldn't want to write down and have taken out of context at someone's expense."

"Maybe some time to think about this is what you need."

"Hey, you could put me in the Zoo Lockup." He chuckled. "That was one of the great take-aways from my ride-along, seeing you break down the newbies in Interrogation with that hollow threat. Beautiful. And effective."

She assessed him a beat and said, "You're right. I'm a busy woman." She took a half step and he blocked her.

"Wait, I have a solution to this little dilemma." He paused long enough to let her complete a rather unsubtle watch check. "What would you say if I told you we could work this case together?"

"You don't want to hear what I'd say, Rook."

"Hear me out. I want to see through this critical new angle of my Cassidy Towne piece. And if we were a team, I could share my leads and insights about the victim with you. I want access, you want sources, it's win-win. No, it's better than win-win. It's me-you. Just like old times."