The Mystery of Nevermore (6 page)

“What’s going on?”

“I’ll explain when you get here, but please hurry.”

Hurry he did. Neil was there in just under twenty minutes, which couldn’t have been safe in this storm, but I was thankful since the blood was fairly dry and crusty and making me extremely uncomfortable at this point. I watched Neil flash his badge and gain immediate entrance into the shop. He was carrying a backpack and looking around warily.

“Detective Millet?” Winter asked, intercepting Neil before I had a chance to shock him with my appearance.

Neil turned at the call of his name. “Oh, Winter. Hello.”

“You part of my evidence team? You’re late.”

Neil shook his head. “No… I’m not….” He paused, sort of at a loss with the situation.

“Neil,” I called.

He looked over his shoulder, and I was able to discern his startled expression from the distance between us and with the lights on, which meant he was probably going to freak the fuck out in three, two, one….

“Seb? What the hell?” he asked, approaching me. “Jesus! This isn’t yours, right?”

“No. Neil, I’m sorry I had to call. But they need to take my clothes into evidence, and I didn’t want to sport a onesie, courtesy of the NYPD.”

“Evidence for what?” Neil demanded.

“Mike’s dead.” I motioned to myself. “I mean, no, no! I found him. I tripped over him. His head was—can I just have the clothes?” I asked tiredly and grabbed for the backpack.

“No, tell me what happened.”

“So you and Mr. Snow are close?” Winter asked, having come up behind Neil silently.

“Friends,” Neil replied sternly.

I was too stressed to give a shit about this lie and let it slide without remark.

“Friends with keys to each other’s apartments?” Winter continued.

“I’m just here to drop off clothes,” Neil warned in a tone with the underlying threat of
back off, man
. He looked at me and thrust the pack forward. “I’ll talk to you later.” He was walking out the door before I could think of something to say.

Winter turned his gaze on me, and I stared back up at him. Of all the serious issues I could have been focusing on, I was instead obsessing over his curious-looking eyes again. And those freckles. God, he even had them down his neck, disappearing under the collar of his shirt. I started to consider just how extensive that freckle trail was—

“Get those clothes off.” He pointed expectantly at the woman who appeared at my side again to collect the damning evidence.

“Winter,” Lancaster called as she stepped into the store again with a man who had to be the city medical examiner.

Winter gave me one last glare before leaving.

I learned the evidence woman’s name was Martha Stewart—no relation, she added—and she had no sense of privacy.

“Honey, if you think I’m trying to sneak a peek, you’ve got nothing to worry about,” she said, carefully putting my jacket into a collection bag and labeling the front.

“No? Why’s that?” I asked, trying my best to ignore the fact I was now naked from the waist up in a cold room, with half a dozen cops nearby and a coroner shoving a liver thermometer into the body of my former boss.

“You aren’t my type,” she indicated while putting away my T-shirt next.

“I bet you say that to keep all the boys from blushing.”

“I got a wife, sweetie,” Martha said casually. “Pants. Come on. I’ve got a lot to do here.”

I had never unbuttoned so quickly for anyone, but she was about to start tapping her foot. “You’re not my type either, Martha.”

“Oh, I can tell,” she said, chuckling to herself.

“What does that mean?”

“It means you sure aren’t checking out my goods when you’ve got a ginger to ogle.”

Instead of vehemently denying the fact that I found Detective Winter even remotely attractive, I asked, “So his hair’s red?”

She stared curiously.

“I can’t see color,” I clarified.

“Oh. Yeah, it’s red. Well, more orange, like that fiery color. You know.”

“I don’t know, but I’ll take your word for it,” I replied. I glanced back toward Mike. The coroner was crouched beside him, talking to Winter, who did a real good job at looking like a sexy, imposing badass you’d see in a TV drama. And I had to pause while undressing because I was now painfully aware that I had an erection.

Of all places, times, and people to be aroused by.

“Hey,” Martha said, snapping her gloved fingers.

“Can I put my new shirt on?” I asked, stalling.

She sighed heavily and picked up her camera. “Hold on. I need to photograph.”

“Whoa, what, all of me?”

“I’ve never met such a prude,” she mumbled. “Hold your hands out, palms down.” Martha took several photos of my hands at different angles, as well as my chest, where a small smudge of blood had ended up. Upon finishing, I was allowed to put on my new shirt, which had given my body enough time to stand down from saluting.

I quickly finished stripping, having to pause for another photo before Martha deemed me finished, and she waited expectantly as I made myself proper. “Pleasure to meet you, Martha,” I said, unsure what else I was supposed to tell a woman after I stripped and posed for her. Would “thank you” have been better?

She hummed absently in response while putting her camera aside and gathering up the bags. “Want a word of advice?”

I paused, one arm through the sleeve of a jacket that was more suited to cool autumn weather than the shitstorm outside. “Sure?”

“Don’t go giving Winter a hard time, or he’ll book your ass faster than you can say
heartless
.”

What did that mean? “Uh….”

“He’s seen it all,” she said in a tone of warning. “And has patience for none of it.” Martha left me alone after that.

I pushed my sunglasses back up and crossed my arms over my chest. I was suddenly freezing, but it wasn’t a chill that shook me to the bone. Fear, that’s what it was.

Let’s take a step back, look at this objectively.
Neil had taught me a lot about crimes and evidence, and I needed to use that to my advantage. I had zero interest in becoming a suspect—or worse, being arrested by Detective Winter.

Rigor mortis starts to set in around two hours after death, and the human body can decrease in temperature at an average rate of one point five degrees per hour. I needed to factor in, however, that the shop door had been open for who knows how long, which could affect the temperature reading on the body. If rigor was setting in, I could suspect poor Mike had been dead since….

I turned to squint at the wall clock behind me.

The officer who had been watching me the entire time asked, “Got somewhere to be?”

“I can’t read the time.”

He glanced at the wall. “Just after twelve.”

All right. I had been there close to an hour, which means it had been around eleven when I found Mike. So at a minimum, he was killed around eight that morning. I had alibis. Pop, the one employee at Little Earth—hell, I’d even drag Neil into this if it meant my head.

When I looked up from counting points off my fingers, Winter was standing in front of me, a strange expression on his face. Amused? Indulgent? Curious? It was hard to tell.

“Hi,” I said.

“I’ve got some more questions.”

Lancaster was giving orders in the background to have space made as a gurney was brought in and Mike’s body was placed on it. So long, Mike….

“Where were you at seven this morning?” Winter asked.

Ah-ha!
“Mike has only been dead a few hours?”

“Answer the question.”

I knew it. Rigor mortis started with the face—the eyes, jaw, down the neck. His entire body wasn’t affected yet, which meant he had to have been attacked when I was around other people. Given, also, how much snow had piled up in the doorway, it roughly corresponded with what the news had been saying about the city’s expected precipitation per hour.

“Seven? I was home.”

“Doing what?”

“Thinking about getting out of bed.”

“Do you live alone, Mr. Snow?”

I felt the muscle in my throat jump. If I said yes, I would be lying to a cop, which was never good. If I said no, Winter would want the contact information of the second individual.

Would Neil mind?

Of course
, but given the circumstances, would he be willing to out himself to a fellow detective, who he believed was a homophobe, if it meant the safety of his boyfriend?

It concerned me greatly that I didn’t have an answer to that question.

“No, not exactly,” I heard myself answer.

Winter looked expectant.

“I live with my boyfriend. He was home. He’d vouch for me.”

“I’m sure he would,” Winter said in a tone I couldn’t quite place. “I’ll need his contact information.” He took out a pad and pen from inside his coat.

I quietly repeated Neil’s cell number, watching as Winter wrote it down. There was no going back now. “Neil Millett.”

He paused and looked up. “CSU?”

“Yeah.”

Winter made a sound that was sort of a snort and a laugh. He wrote down Neil’s name.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“Nothing, other than I’m not surprised.”

“What, that I’m gay?”

“That was easy to see,” he replied, not looking up.

I had no idea. I never thought I came off particularly
gay
. “I didn’t realize I left my neon sign on.”

“I’ll be in touch with Mr. Millett,” Winter said.

“Oh joy.”

“Walk me through your morning.”

“Since seven?” When he nodded, I took a breath and said calmly, “Laid in bed for a while. Neil got up to shower. I went into the kitchen and made coffee and had breakfast. I watched the news. Neil went to work a little before eight. My father called as he left, and then I got dressed to go see him. I stopped at Little Earth—bought donuts and dog biscuits. I left Pop’s around quarter to eleven.” I proceeded to give him Pop’s contact information and address, and the same for the café. “I couldn’t have hurt Mike, and you know it,” I said. “Right? He was killed around seven. That’s what the examiner thinks.”

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 of
CSI
and
Law & 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.

I WAS
undressed 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,
falling
into 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 the
heartless
comment 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.