“Yet, this was one thing. And not another.”
As the silence crushed her, the therapist waited. And waited.
“What does it mean?” she asked.
“I can’t answer that. All I can do is ask, who were you truly angry with? And, who would be most hurt if you had slept with Don?” He smiled and then looked at the clock behind her. “We’re at the end of our time.”
“Already?” As he picked up her papers and slid them in a file, she said, “So?”
“All these years, all these sessions, it always ends with a cop asking, ‘So?’” He smiled again. “Nikki, you have a lot of loss you are coping with and more trauma than most carry in a lifetime.” Her mouth sprouted cotton. “But. Having said that, I see that you are remarkably resilient and, in my view, a strong, high-functioning, centered person with what Hemingway called grace under pressure. Far healthier than most I see in your profession.”
“Thank you.”
“That’s why I think you’ll be happy with my recommendation that you return to work—after one’s week’s rest.”
“But my work. My case …”
“Nikki. Look at what you’ve been through. You need some time to find your center. Grace under pressure comes with a price tag.” He got out a pen and wrote in the file. “So that’s why I’m ordering this seven-day forced leave of absence, with pay.” He twisted the pen closed. “For my final disposition, it might be viewed as a healthy sign if you demonstrated an attempt to mend connections you’ve severed related to the trauma.”
“You mean Rook?”
“That would be significant.” He closed the file and said, “Let’s meet a week from today to reevaluate.”
“You mean, this leave of absence might extend if I don’t?”
“Let’s meet a week from now. Then see where you are.”
The caller ID read “Twentieth Precinct.” Nikki stepped away from the cash register to let the customer behind her go ahead while she pressed answer. “Heat.”
“Roach,” came the voices of Raley and Ochoa together.
“Hey, in stereo.”
Raley said, “Uh, actually that technology is years away. Your earpiece is, sadly, monaural.”
“Buzz killer,” said Ochoa. “Detective Sean Raley, where joy goes to die.”
“Did you two call to try out your morning zoo routine? Because I have news for you. Howard Stern is safe.”
Ochoa led off. “Calling with an update on that taxi you shot up, figuring we’re still allowed to keep you in the loop. Catch you at an OK time?”
“Sure, I’m just buying a new rug. A runner for my entry hall.”
“Listen,” said Ochoa, “you need any help cleaning up over there? Because Raley’s got, like, no life.” The pair laughed, and he continued, “Seriously, we can swing over after shift.”
“Thanks, really. But I spent the rest of my afternoon sweeping and scrubbing. I’m good. Whatcha got?”
Forensics had just shipped the prelim, and Roach wanted to let her know they lifted lots of prints and were running them. To expedite things, Feller drove a mobile ID kit to the driver’s house so his could be eliminated. Roach didn’t sound hopeful about the rest of the fingerprints. Ochoa said, “I’m guessing the bulk are going to be from the parts scavengers. Man, they hit that cab like a school of piranha.”
“Even took the security dash cam and the hard drive, so no video of our shooter.”
Heat asked, hopefully, “How much blood on the seats?”
“What seats?” said Raley.
“He’s still out there, Detective. You watch your back.”
When she got off the phone, the clerk had already rung up her purchase, a three-by-seven Turkish wool with a color and pattern similar to the one she was replacing. Nikki paid, and he asked, “You want it delivered? We’re closing for the night, but we can have it there first thing tomorrow.”
Heat smiled and shouldered the roll. “It’s three blocks.”
Eight
P.M
., and traces of the departing day greened the sky to the west on 23rd Street. Window lights flicked on at a thrift store, and she stopped to admire a lamp, thinking she’d come back for closer inspection when they opened in the morning. Something reflected in the polished brass of the base moved behind her. Nikki spun.
Nobody there. When she turned back around, the roll of rug balanced on her shoulder almost whacked a passing leafleteer holding a stack of handout ads for men’s suits. Relieved to avoid a Three Stooges moment, Heat rounded the corner to take Lexington home. Whether it was Ochoa’s admonishment that the shooter was still out there or primal wariness as the street transitioned from shops to apartments and lost commercial light, she decided to hail a cab. Nikki raised her free hand as she walked along, but the only two cabs that passed were occupied, so she gave that up after she passed East 22nd with only two blocks to go.
Halfway to 21st, tires squealed followed by an angry horn behind her, and a woman’s voice, “Asshole, it says don’t walk!” Nikki turned around to check up the block, but all she saw were the car’s taillights lurching west and the Chrysler Building’s silvery glow a mile uptown. She continued on, but couldn’t pause the streaming video of the night before replaying in her head: the footsteps of the shooter in the hoodie stomping across her rooftop; his footsteps on the planks of the scaffold; his footsteps on the asphalt of Park Avenue South. Was she just jumpy from lack of sleep or could this really be happening again? It’s what fills your mind when you know somebody out there wants you dead and is looking for his next opportunity. What was she doing alone on the street at night? Heat missed the two pounds of reassurance gone from her hip after Captain Irons took possession of her service weapon. Her backup Beretta 950 sat in a desk drawer in her apartment, doing no good up there. Nikki sped up her pace.
Jaywalking across East 20th Street, she definitely heard footfalls matching hers, and when she stopped, they did, too. She pivoted, but the sidewalk was empty. It crossed her mind to lose the rug, but with her building coming in sight on the opposite side of the square, Nikki pushed it to a jog, double-timing west along the spiked wrought iron that fenced in Gramercy Park.
The notion of an ambush occurred to her. If this guy had an accomplice staking out her front stairs, she might be racing right into the jaws of a trap. She began to calculate one-on-one as better odds, especially if she surprised him with an impromptu reversal. At the corner of the park, the fence didn’t cut a sharp angle but curved. As soon as Heat rounded it, she stopped and dropped.
Squatting in a crouch, Nikki waited and listened. Sure enough, the jogging footsteps approached but halted fifteen yards off. Her view was blocked by the park shrubbery hiding both of them, but she heard panting. And a man softly clearing his throat. Resting a palm flat on the flagstone sidewalk, she leaned to her left and found his distorted reflection in the restaurant window across the street. He was only a dark shape in the soft lighting of the park, but she made out his hooded sweatshirt and ball cap. She lost him when he moved forward, resuming his pursuit. Heat got ready.
He came around the corner of the sidewalk at a trot. When he did, Nikki thrust herself upward, ready to bat his face with the three-foot roll of Turkish wool. Then she recognized her pursuer as Rook.
Heat just managed to pull her swing and missed hitting him, but he startled, shouting “Whoa, no, no!,” flailing his arms up defensively and losing his balance. He pitched forward, bent over in a stoop, desperately fighting gravity and losing. Rook crash landed with an “oof!” on the slate flagstones, managing, at least, to shield his face, putting his forearm between it and the sidewalk as he dropped.
“God, Rook, what do you think you’re doing?”
“Protecting you,” came his muffled voice spoken into the sleeve under him. He turned over and sat up. Blood streamed from both nostrils.
When they came into her apartment, she said, “Please don’t bleed on the floor, I just cleaned it.”
“Love the compassion. Don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine.”
She sat him down on a bar stool with a box of tissues and washed him up with the remaining towelettes Lauren Parry had given her the night before. While she dabbed the dried blood from his upper lip and nose, she said, “Rook, think back over the past year. Haven’t you learned yet not to shadow me?”
“Clearly, not. Ow.”
“Sorry.”
“And clearly, you haven’t learned that, if you’re being shadowed, it just might be the cavalry. Meaning me.”
“I.”
“No grammar police, OK?” He pulled a wad of tissue away from his nose to examine for fresh blood. Satisfied, he lobbed it into the trash can. “What’s wrong with us, Nikki? Why can’t we be like a Woody Allen movie? Two old lovers with unfinished business running into each other on a New York sidewalk?”
“You mean,” she said, “instead of running into a sidewalk?”
“Is my nose broken?”
“Let’s see.” She reached her fingers for it, but he pulled back.
“No. Enough pain.” He got up and checked his face in the teakettle. “Reflection’s too distorted to tell.” He shrugged. “Well, if it is broken, it’ll give me character. I’ll be even more rugged in my rugged handsomeness.”
“Until people find out how you did it.” That made him check himself out in the kettle again. While he turned away, bending to assess the damage, she said, “Thank you for trying to protect me.” Then she added, “Guess you can’t be that angry.”
He rose upright and faced her. “Wanna bet?” But his look told her he had, at least, downgraded to a simmer.
“And I don’t blame you. I know you felt blindsided.”
“Why? Because you ditched me, and a couple of hours later, I find a naked dead man in your apartment? And when I dare to ask, you think you can get away with saying it’s complicated and giving me the boot?”
“OK, so I guess you may still be angry.”
“What if roles were reversed? What if you had come into my place and found a naked Tam Svejda with her brains on the floor? All right, maybe not so much the brains, but you get the idea.”
A stillness charged by unseen toxic particles settled in the chasm between them. Nikki knew that it fell to her to break the silence, or not to. She recognized a tipping point when she saw one and waded in. “You may not agree,” she began, “because of the … indignity of your nose injury, but tonight’s unexpected encounter is sort of good timing. Today my shrink suggested I make contact with you.”
“This is sounding more like Woody Allen, after all. You saw a shrink?” And then for emphasis, he added, “You?”
“Mandated. Long story involving Captain Irons, but it did get me to a session with a department therapist.” Nikki drew a breath that hitched in her chest. Compartmentalization always got her through, so this was scary territory. Vulnerability meant exposure, but she opened herself to him, unarmed and unprotected. “I’m willing to explain, if you’re willing to listen.”
That’s when the part of him she considered his essence, the part she most connected to, the part that jumped in front of bullets to protect her, softened him another degree. Yielding to his innate compassion, he held out his hand to her and said, “We’d probably be more comfortable on the couch.”
As with most great fears, including imagined monsters behind a door, hers became merely life-sized once she confronted it and opened up. Rook’s willingness to listen instead of interrupting her to judge, get defensive—or even to wisecrack—helped her immensely in telling him the saga of Don. After she informed him of their sexual hiatus after she had met Rook the summer before, he nodded, accepting that as fact. He even had the elegance not to ask her if they had slept together the night before. When she finished, he said one thing, and it was the best thing he ever could have.
“This must be absolute hell for you to face alone.”
Nikki’s tears erupted, and she threw herself from where she sat into his arms, shaking with sobs, allowing herself the unguarded emotional display without restraint. Her weeping rose from a deep, seemingly bottomless source that dredged up not just the raw hurt of the past twenty-four hours, but a decade of suppressed feelings of loss, hurt, anger, frustration, loneliness, and fear, which—until that moment—had been neatly boxed and locked away. He embraced her, cradling her into his shoulder, seeming to know that his caring silence was their strength, and that his encirclement of her with his arms signaled hope and unwavering friendship amid her catharsis.
When, after a time, Nikki was cried out, she drew herself away and they stared at each other, their gaze speaking volumes about trust and the bond they shared. They kissed lightly and parted, smiling, holding each other’s gaze some more. Just as they had never declared their exclusivity, they also had never shared the love words. Right then, basking in the intimacy of some new sanctuary they had just forged, that would have been the time to say them. But neither would know if it had crossed the other’s mind then in that tender, vulnerable moment. The time for voicing that came and then passed, banked for another day, if ever.
She excused herself to splash some cool water on her swollen eyes. When she came back, he helped her unroll the new rug for the entryway. After they squared it with the line of the wall, Rook stood on the curled ends to press them down flat and then took in the area. “Looks like somebody’s been cleaning.”
“‘Out, damned spot,’” said Nikki. “The super hung a new door and plastered the holes. Tomorrow, he’s going to paint. Pretty soon it will all be back to normal.”