Color Blind by Jonathan Santlofer Read Free Book Online Page B

waiting.

    “Yes,” she said.

    She would do this, then return to her normal life, call Richard, make him take her for that drink, and everything would be as it was. Naturally she would not be telling Richard what she’d done. He’d absolutely kill her. She flashed on the other night, the two of them in bed, Richard inside her. But instead of warming her it only heightened her anxiety.

    The alley was dark, no more than four feet wide, cold. A place the sun never reached. Brown was a few feet ahead of her but already breaking up, becoming a shadow.

    Something scampered beside her foot, right up against her fine leather loafers, probably a rat. She maintained her cool, distracted by something less tangible, a buzzing sensation, something she had not felt in over a year; the way she’d felt when the Death Artist was in her brain and she was closing in on him. But that made no sense. The Death Artist was dead.

    Brown switched on the flashlight. The brick walls lit up, scarred and decorated with graffiti, the pavement littered with so many beer cans and bottles it looked like a recycling plant gone awry. The air was heavy with garbage, alcohol, and urine.

    “Nice smell,” Brown said. “Just like Park Avenue, huh?”

    Kate ignored the crack. She was thinking about the last time she and Brown were cops together, and how they’d both come close to dying. She could feel her heart beating fast; Brown whistling a tune as though nothing were wrong, as though they would not eventually come to the end of this dark, dank passageway and find a body.

    A dead body. So why was it she felt afraid?

    She made an involuntary move, her hand inside her jacket, and realized she was reaching for a gun she did not have. She sighed. She was being ridiculous. Ridiculous for coming, and ridiculous for being afraid.

    Brown’s flashlight was doing the jitterbug as he walked, picking out a patch of wall here, a piece of floor there.

    What was that? Something gelatinous at Kate’s feet, maybe some rotting food or a dead animal. She didn’t know, didn’t want to know, but the soles of her shoes had picked up some of it, and were making sticky, smacking sounds with each step she took.

    They were halfway down the alleyway, there was light at the other end filtering in like a thick fog. She couldn’t really make anything out, or hear much—that buzzing was in her ears, her brain.

    “Thought you’d gotten it out of your system, didn’t you, McKinnon?”

    “What?” Kate could barely understand his words.

    “Once a cop, always a cop.”

    That she heard. And knew he was right, though she hated admitting it. Damn. Why hadn’t she just called Richard and gone to see him? What the hell was she doing in this dark alleyway in the middle of Manhattan following Brown to a crime scene that had nothing to do with her, when she had vowed never to do anything like this again?

    Too late to turn back now. The figures at the end of the tunnel were turning solid, three, no, four of them standing over what looked like a toppled scarecrow.

    Kate decided not to look, that when she got to the end of this dark tunnel she would simply step past the group. She didn’t need to see it anymore. She must have been testing herself, that’s all, needed to see if she could handle the fear after all she’d been through.

    Brown’s flashlight was picking out the details: three men, one woman, all standing over the scarecrow.

    Okay, she’d seen it. More than she needed to. Now she would walk past it, excuse herself to Floyd Brown, go into the light of day and call Richard. Suddenly she could not wait to be out of there.

    The woman called out—“Chief Brown”—and the flashlight illuminated her. Kate immediately recognized her—the ME who had examined Elena’s body. The image shot through Kate’s brain like lightning: the ME huddled over Elena’s broken body, gloved hands probing.

    Oh, Jesus.

    Kate stopped short, leaned against the alley wall, ignored