Color Blind by Jonathan Santlofer

the stench of garbage and alcohol and urine now amplified by death, and took a deep breath. For a moment she thought she might be sick, but no, she was okay. As long as she got out of here she’d be fine.

    Brown had met up with the group. They were talking to him, their voices commingling: “…white male, totally mutilated.” Kate could only see half of what they were checking out, the painting that was on the ground beside the dead man, then one of them handing something to Brown, saying—“His wallet”—and Brown opening it, his flashlight still in his hands, rocking, telegraphing indiscriminate indecent split-second pictures of the scene as he bent over to get a look at the body.

    She had to get out of there. Now. But the cops and the ME and Brown were blocking her way.

    Oh, God, why did I come here?

    She had been stupid, arrogant and stupid. Whatever she had been trying to prove to herself no longer mattered.

    She took a few steps, mumbling “Excuse me,” pushing past the group, past Brown, who tried to stop her. He touched her arm so gently it couldn’t possibly have stopped her, and she knew then—was absolutely certain that something was terribly wrong.

    But she didn’t stop.

    Cool, fresh air was on her face. Thank God. She was almost out of there.

    “McKinnon. Kate.” Brown’s voice had gone hoarse.

    Her feet were making contact with the normal sidewalk. She was free.

    “McKinnon.” Brown got a hand around her arm, but Kate pulled out of his grip, would not stop.

    What was it she’d seen in that moment that she had dared to look, when the flashlight had arced around that last bit of dark alleyway and the face of the victim had been so clearly illuminated?

    “No,” she said, not sure what she was saying no to. She had to keep walking, that was all, then she’d be free.

    “No,” she said again, striding past cops in uniforms and men and women and children who had gathered, and the cars that were honking their horns as she started to sprint down the middle of the traffic-crowded street, running from what she’d seen so that it would not—could not—possibly be true.

    But then Brown was beside her and he’d grabbed both her arms and spun her around and looked at her, his brown eyes large and filled with compassion and pity, and she fell against him, and the man’s face—the victim’s face—the dead man at the end of the alley, the beautiful dead man’s face flashed and froze in her mind.

    “Oh, God, no,” she sobbed into Floyd Brown’s clean blue shirt. “Oh, God, please. It can’t be. It can’t be Richard.”

FOUR
    H ow many days has it been?
    Kate wasn’t sure. Her body felt heavy, leaden, way too much effort to pull herself upright in her bed, where she had been spending most of her time, crying, sobbing, all she seemed capable of doing. Sleep was out of the question; every time she closed her eyes, horror movie scenes of Richard’s body in that alleyway started to play.

    And then the morgue.

    How had she done it, stood there in that frigid room of death with her husband’s body on a cold porcelain table, a sheet pulled up to his chin to hide his ruined body, his beautiful body.

    Floyd Brown had been beside her the whole time, hand on her arm, just enough human contact to make it possible for her not to turn and run screaming from this living nightmare.

    But how had she felt?

    Stunned? Yes. Numb? Certainly.

    She had tried to look anywhere but at the body: at the walls, the sinks, the black hoses dangling from faucets, the hanging scales—the kind one sees in grocery stores, only these were used to weigh human organs, not tomatoes—the surgical tools, knives, scalpels, scissors, forceps, a Stryker saw to cut through bone, pruning shears.

    Kate knew these places, had sat and stood through more autopsies and ID’d more bodies than she had ever wanted to. But that was over; that was history. She was finished with that. She’d paid her dues, hadn’t she?

    A