Excerpt: A Little Bit Me

Detective Frank Winters looked at himself in the mirror. His thick, nearly white hair swirled around the top of his head like spindrift on a stormy sea. When he was under stress he had the unconscious habit of tugging at his hair, pulling it into odd patterns. He sometimes thought that his wild hair reflected the chaos inside his head.

His dark eyes were almost hidden in the shadows cast by his heavy eyebrows. Dark rings underscored the eyes and red veins tore their way through the white albumin surrounding the brown pupils. He looked like a tired man.

Bending his head toward the sink beneath the mirror he cupped his hands under the faucet collecting some tepid water. He splashed his face and felt a little better. Raising his head he appraised his face once again. Not bad looking, he had to admit, but starting to get old.

He felt older than he looked sometimes. He felt old when he was faced with another pointless death at three in the morning. Being a homicide detective, he was often faced with pointless death. In fact it had been a nightly occurrence for nearly fifteen years. Ever since he had joined the squad.

He splashed another handful of water in his face, but it didn’t do nearly as much as the first one had to revive him. The business shirt he wore was light blue and wrinkled. He had a conservative striped tie carelessly knotted around the collar and pulled slightly askew.

His skin had the grey pallor of someone who spent too much time indoors and was too often awake at three in the morning. His face was long, his chin ending in a narrow point. The bones of his face could be easily seen through the grayish skin.

He pulled a paper towel from the machine and used the rough brown paper to scour the water off of his skin. The harsh paper made his skin tingle a bit. It rasped against his unshaven jaw and chin. He had last shaved twenty hours before. On a night like this one work day faded into another.

He crumpled the towel ruthlessly in his hand and hit the wastebasket with it as he walked out the door. The police station was still pretty quiet at this time of the morning. He walked down the hall to the homicide room. Chuck Waller was back at his desk.

Waller was shorter, rounder and more than ten years younger than his partner. He wore a pale green shirt that was as wrinkled as Detective Winters’, but also bore the stains of a hastily eaten meal from many hours before.

Waller, too, wore a conservative striped tie that matched his shirt. Waller’s tie was more carefully tied than his partners’, but it too had been pulled down from the collar and the top two buttons of his shirt had been unfastened.

Winters wrinkled his nose at the pungent cigarette smell that permeated the air around his partner. Waller’s scalp shone through his thinning dark hair.

“We’re gonna have to let the boyfriend go,” Waller said. He was peering at an email from the medical examiner as he spoke and he didn’t look at his partner.

“You know he killed her,” said Winters.

“You don’t have to tell me,” Waller said looking up at his partner with his deep blue eyes. Waller was round, where Winters was angular. “Medical examiner says the vic has skin under her nails.”

“The boyfriend doesn’t have a scratch on him,” Winters sounded morose.

“So, we’re gonna have to let him go,” Waller said turning back to his computer monitor.

“Do you think someone else killed her?” Winters asked.

“Nah,” said Waller, “It’s always the boyfriend.”

“You got that right,” said Winters. At times like this he wished he smoked cigarettes or had some other nervous habit he could indulge in. Not having anything to do he just stood there.

“Maybe he’s scratched somewhere else,” Waller said, “Not on his face and hands.”

“Let’s go see,” Winters said.

Peter Carpenter sat in the interrogation room. He had been there for hours. His body hurt from sitting on the folding chair in the middle of this drab room. His eyes felt heavy, but his mind could not stop running through the previous night. He couldn’t get the sight of Gloria’s dead hazel eyes out of his mind.

His eyes were blurry and the lids scratched as they tried to close. He felt his head start to fall toward the table in front of him. Gloria’s hazel eyes made him jerk upward. He knew he would never see her smile again. He would never feel her touch or hear her laugh.

Just as Peter jerked awake the door to the interrogation room opened. Detective Winters entered. He was followed by a shorter, younger man with thinning black hair. Winters face was cadaverous, where the other man’s was rounder and fuller.

“This is my partner, Detective Waller,” Winters said, “Get up and take off your clothes.”

Peter looked at the two detectives uncomprehendingly.

“What?” he stammered.

“We want to see where she scratched your,” Waller said.

“Who?” Peter asked, thoroughly confused.

“Gloria Reynolds,” Winters said.

“Your victim,” Waller clarified.

“Victim,” Peter stuttered hard on the word. He almost couldn’t get it out.

“Yeah, the murder victim, dipshit,” Waller barked, “Get your shirt off.”

“Now,” said Winters.

Peter stood up from the chair he had been slouching in and began unbuttoning his shirt. His hands shook so badly he could hardly unfasten the buttons.

Waller sat in the chair on the opposite side of the table eyeing Peter with barely concealed hostility. Winters leaned against the bare concrete wall near the door and eyed Peter as if he were some kind of insect.

It seemed to take an eternity, but Peter finally managed to get his dark green shirt unbuttoned and off. Underneath he wore a plain white tee shirt.

“Get the tee shirt off,” Waller said.

Peter pulled the white tee shirt over his head. His ribs were clearly defined through his pale skin. His shoulders were freckled and dark hair grew in a vee pattern over his chest. Waller and Winters examined his torso with cold eyes.

After looking him over thoroughly, the two detectives exchanged a glance and Winters walked out of the room.

“Okay, put your shirt back on,” Waller said. He got up from his chair and walked out of the room.

The door slammed behind the detective. Peter Carpenter looked apprehensively at it and pulled his tee shirt back over his head.