Winter didn’t respond as he put his notepad back into his pocket and adjusted his suit coat.
“I can’t drive, and Neil had the car anyway. You know I walked to all of these places and that there’s no way I’d have had enough time. It went down like I said,” I insisted.
“Pick all this up from Millett?”
“No, I base this all off the infallible facts ofCSIandLaw & Order,” I retorted.
To my surprise, Detective Winter did not throttle me then and there.
“I don’t have any reason to want to hurt Mike,” I tried next. “Ever. What’s the point? Where’s the motive?”
“Motive isn’t the most important factor.”
“Of course it is,” I said defensively.
“You’re not a suspect,” Winter said quietly, changing the subject.
The relief that went through me nearly knocked me to the floor. “Really?”Don’t act so surprised.
“Really,” he said gruffly. “But I don’t want you leaving the city, understand?”
“What am I going to do, walk to Jersey?”
“I ought to arrest you on grounds of being a smartass.”
“Probably,” I agreed. I raised my hands. “Can I please wash this off?”
“Go out to the ambulance.” Winter nodded at the uniformed officer. “See that Mr. Snow, here, is cleaned up and then drive him home.”
The officer nodded and asked for me to follow him.
It was around lunchtime when I got home.
Chapter Four
I WASundressed and turning on the shower within minutes of walking through the door. I threw the clothes Neil had brought me into a pile on the bathroom floor before stepping into the tub. I lathered my body with soap, grabbed the washcloth, and scrubbed every inch of myself. It didn’t matter that the paramedics had helped clean my hands. Touching a dead body—no,fallinginto the congealed blood of a dead body—will make anyone want to shower.
I put my hands against the tiles afterward, leaning forward to let the spray hit the back of my head. I was exhausted. Murder was tiring. How did people like Detective Winter deal with it day in and day out?
Fiery orange, you know?
Color, I have learned, was a very complicated concept. There wasn’t just orange; there were different shades, all subtle and unique, each capable of producing a different emotion or reaction. So what was fiery orange like?
Calvin Winter, with hair like an orange fruit? A pumpkin? I thought some construction signs were orange…. Even fiery as a description was difficult for me. Some people told me fire was yellowish, while others said more red. Or it could be like burning gas in a stove, which I’ve learned is actually blue.
But these color names meant nothing to me.
To me, Calvin was gray. His eyes were gray, and his freckles were gray. I’d never experience that exact shade of red hair he had. So why did a man—who was the same color to me as a sunset or dog shit—seem to stand out from the muted world around him in a way no one ever had? I couldn’t explain.
Not entirely.
Calvin—and when had he gone from Winter to Calvin?—was hot and I won’t deny that. He was so different from Neil, and not just in build and hairstyle. He was a little rough and a little hard, but he had an intriguing energy and a sort of guarded personality. And when he’d been on the phone with me, he sounded genuinely concerned, nothing like theheartlesscomment Ms. Martha Stewart had made.
Neil hadn’t been concerned. At least not about me personally. I had been stuck in the middle of a murder scene, and Neil didn’t even stay to make sure I was okay.
I raised my head and wiped my eyes. The hot water was cleansing, and both my body and mind were feeling better. Then I remembered I had gotten hard looking at Calvin earlier.Unbelievable.It’s not like he had touched me or told me he wanted to do wicked things with me.Hell, he hadn’t even been looking at me.
He’d actually been paying more attention to a dead man than me.
