"So you did spend a fair amount of time with Cassidy Towne over the last few weeks."

"Yep."

"Then, if I need to ask you for cooperation, you may have some information about who she saw, what she did, and so forth."

"You don't need to ask, and yes, I know tons."

"Can you think of anyone who would want to kill her?

Rook scoffed. "Let's dig around this mess and find a New York phone book. We can start with the letter A."

"Don't be smart."

"Shark's gotta swim." He grinned, then continued. "Come on, she was a mud-slinging gossip columnist, of course she had lots of enemies. It was in the job description."

Nikki could hear footfalls and voices entering the front and put away her notes. "I'll have you give a statement later, but I don't have any more questions for you now."

"Good."

"Except one. You didn't kill her, did you?" Rook laughed, then saw her expression and stopped. "Well?"

He folded his arms across his chest. "I want a lawyer." She turned and left the room and he called after her, "Kidding. Mark me down as a 'no.' " Rook didn't leave. He told Heat he wanted to stick around in case he could be helpful with anything. She had the push-pull thing going: wanting him away from her in the worst way because he was such an emotional disruption; but then seeing the benefit of his potential insights as they went over the wreckage of Cassidy Towne's apartment. The writer had been to plenty of crime scenes with her during his ride-along last summer, so she knew he was scene-friendly, at least trained enough not to pick up a piece of evidence in his bare hands and say, "What's this?" He was also a first-person witness to the most profound element of his magazine story, the death of his subject. Mixed feelings or not, she wasn't going to begrudge Jameson Rook that professional courtesy.