Accident my slightly purple ass.
Moyer cocked his head. He was a one hundred percent cardboard cutout of every other detective my San Francisco roommate DVR’d each week, right down to his bulbous red nose and the aforementioned “isn’t it true.”
There was an uncomfortable beat of silence as though Moyer expected me to say more.
“And, that’s it,” I said.
Moyer cocked a single caterpillar eyebrow and shot me one of those “prove it to me” expressions. The kind of expression that is so disconcerting it encourages perfectly innocent and well-read people to start babbling like psychopathic idiots. I was a solid four minutes into my soliloquy that contained a good selection of incriminating myself and backpedaling when my voice was drowned out by the ridiculously loud squawking of a black bird pacing the ledge of the open window.
My God, New York was infested.
Though I pathologically hate birds—not fear, hate—as I mentioned before, I could have run up and kissed this one on its filth-infested birdie beak for creating just the distraction that allowed me a millisecond to give myself a mental head-slap and take the vampire equivalent of a deep, calming breath.
My mouth fell open again at the precise time the bird’s beak cracked wide, as though the foul thing was watching me.
“Someone shoo that bird away,” Detective Moyer said, clearly annoyed.
One of the pup cops used his hat to bat at the screen and the black bird did a patronizing flap of its enormous wings, circling about six inches from the ledge, still squawking like a maniac.
Moyer blew out a disgusted sigh and raked a fat hand over his round face. “We’ll need to have you come down to the station to answer some questions,” he said finally. “Now.”
I swallowed and glanced out the window, the sun catching the heavy leaded glass. Just the glare stung my bare shoulders and I inched away. “Can we finish the interview downstairs? Or in a non–bird-infested room? I just would like to not be here.”
Moyer looked around, his eyes landing on the pattern spread on my table, edged by a heap of fabric scraps.
“What’s all this about? You one of the, er, sewing students?”
I felt myself stiffen even though I knew it was not the time to throw my weight(lessness) around. “I’m a designer, actually. This”—I gestured to the tables, the dresses, the patterns—“is a contest. A competition.” I swallowed, thinking of the swish-swish sound Reginald’s shoes made as they scraped across the dining table, thinking of Emerson’s sightless eyes, the slack in her jaw as it stayed open, forever frozen in surprise.
Moyer eyed the fabric swatches and then eyed me, skepticism written all over his face. “Like a TV thing?”
I was about to correct him, but instead bet on the draw-to-Hollywood that most breathers in this anyone-can-be-a-star decade seemed to have. “Yeah.”
I pumped my head, growing more excited and happy that the majority of my never-lie-to-a-cop morals disappeared when my soul did. “Reality TV.”
Detective Moyer’s spider-veined cheeks reddened and pushed up into a smile. “Is that model going to be here?” He looked around as though we were storing her in a closet or a drawer. “The blonde one? The host? She’s from Sweden or Switzerland. Saskatchewan or something.”
“Uh, yeah, absolutely,” I said.
If necessary, I’m sure I could scare up a Saskatchewan model somewhere, right?
Moyer straightened his tie and yanked his pants up over his enormous keg of a belly, his eyes scanning the studio as if he had simply overlooked an enormous camera crew.
“Are you miked?” he asked in a gruff, low murmur.
“Miked?”
He raised his bushy eyebrows and I was amused and horrified that this man of the law would be so into grabbing his fifteen minutes that he would use a homicide to get there. And to get a piece of prime Saskatchewan model ass, apparently.
“No,” I said, leaning in. “This isn’t part of the show.”
I watched Moyer’s Adam’s apple bob as he considered. “I’ll meet you down in the lobby.”
My feet hadn’t so much as touched the lobby’s deco marbled floor when Pike met me at the elevator.
“What are you doing back here?” I wanted to know. “Coming back to make sure the job is done?”
Pike’s eyebrows went up and I tried my best to gauge everything about him—his body heat, the thunder of his heart—but he stayed completely still and relaxed.
It’s too bad the good-looking ones are always sociopaths.
“What are you—?”
I poked his chest with my index finger. “I know what you did.”
“You know that I got shit-faced drunk and slept in the stairwell because I lost my keys?”
“Lost your keys?”
Pike looked sheepish. “They were in my pants.”
I glanced down and realized that Pike was wearing a pair of ill-fitting pants instead of the slim pair that went with his suit. Perhaps earlier, I was too busy looking for bulges instead of the poorly stiched seams and unnatural fabrics to notice the change. But I still wasn’t convinced.
“So you lost your pants and your keys.”
Pike nodded then held my gaze, his eyes meltingly delicious and for the briefest of moments I considered what life with a serial killer might be like.
I shook myself from my revelry. “That’s a convenient story.”
The other elevator plinged! and Detective Moyer stepped out with another officer who was carrying two steaming cups of coffee. Moyer nodded to Pike, who raised his own paper coffee cup to the man.
I narrowed my eyes. “You know Detective Moyer?”
Pike’s eyes cut to me as the steam wisped from around his deep brown eyes. “Didn’t I tell you I work for a lot of people? Sometimes even the NYPD.”
“Right.” I felt myself grimace. “Crime scene photographer.”
I glanced back at where Moyer and the pup cop were setting themselves up, then back at Pike.
“Well you’d better stay around. They want to know who saw Emerson last.”
“And why do you think that was me?”
I narrowed my eyes and Pike narrowed his right back at me and stepped a little closer, his nose—his lips—barely inches from mine.
“Are you accusing me of something, Ms. LaShay?”
“Ms. LaShay?” It was Moyer’s deep voice and he was looking over his shoulder at me now, those heavy brows raised expectantly.
I poked Pike in the chest. “We’re not done.”
And though there is no reason in this realm or the other that it should have, the second we touched, a spark shot through me like delicious wildfire. I pulled my finger back as though it burned but it was too late; Pike’s eyes were low and hooded, and the half-inch of smile on his pursed lips let me know that he felt it, too.
Moyer asked me a rather routine, CSI-type series of questions that I answered with the practiced unease of someone who had seen her first dead body. No one needed to know that back home in San Francisco, my every day was spent with the dead. New York may be the city that never sleeps, but San Francisco was the city that never dies.
“Well,” Moyer said, his pale eyes scanning his notebook as his meat hook of a hand started to close it. “I think that’s pretty much all we need.”
I stood up, but Moyer stopped me. “Oh, Ms. LaShay, just one more thing. Did you recognize the scissors that were used to kill Ms. Hawk?”
My whole body stiffened and if my heart still beat, I knew it would be up in my throat, clanging like a fire bell. I swallowed slowly. “They were mine.”