Color Blind Read Online Free Page A

city,” to Manhattan.

    Of course being the detective who broke down the Gutter—the name given to the serial killer who literally scooped out his victim’s insides and took them as souvenirs—didn’t hurt. Floyd could actually smell the guilt on that guy. Nerdy, Buddy Holly–type glasses, wispy goatee, a real librarian type. No one, not the other cops, not the FBI robots, thought this was their guy. They’d brought him in because he lived next door to one of the victims. That was all.

    But when Elliot Marshall Rinkie walked into the interrogation room, took off his polyester jacket, Floyd smelled it: a mixture of sweat and something…feral.

    He’d broken the guy down in less than three hours, had him crying, snot dripping out of the little creep’s nose right into his stupid little goatee.

    After that Floyd not only got respect, but a nickname—the Nose—which, thank God, the guys tired of pretty quickly. But the other thing he got was a promotion and a chance to join an elite homicide squad in Manhattan. And that stuck.

    Floyd liked it, was good at it too—going on the hunt, sniffing the psychos out, bringing them in, getting them into stiff-backed chairs in airless little rooms where he could go at them. Unfortunately, the cooler ones did not give off any tattletale aroma, no eau de killer. But there were other ways of getting to them. Floyd had learned a lot in his fifteen years as a homicide detective in New York City, had seen things that most people couldn’t even imagine.

    He pushed through the heavy wooden precinct doors, memories coming at him faster than scenes in a Jackie Chan movie—dark street corners, lukewarm coffee in Styrofoam cups, hookers, pimps, con men, junkies.

    Floyd had been on the brink of retirement a year ago, would have done it too, if it hadn’t been for the case that was supposed to be his last big one and an ex-cop named Kate McKinnon, who became his de facto partner. Man, that first day he’d despised her—the way she had strutted into the police conference room looking like Park Avenue, having all the answers.

    But he’d been wrong.

    McKinnon was good police. Despite the fact that she’d been out of the scene for years, her instincts were intact and she never pulled rank or any other kind of shit. Truth: it had been Kate who brought down that fucking psycho, the Death Artist, though she’d given him the credit—which was the reason he became Chief of Special Homicide, replacing that pain-in-the-ass crew-cut Randy Mead, who was now sitting at some desk job in the police library probably sucking his teeth and growing an ulcer. Yeah, he owed McKinnon, though sometimes he wished he had just retired. Like tonight, when he should have been home hours ago with his feet up watching the game with a cold beer in his hand and his wife, Vonette, beside him.

    Instead he was consulting —a word he hated since it was just a euphemism for working overtime without overtime pay—on this case that was taking him to the Bronx, which hadn’t been his beat for well over a decade. But McNally had asked personally, and when your old chief requests a favor it isn’t easy to say no, at least not for Floyd Brown.

    The pea-soup-green walls were the same as Floyd remembered, only dingier, though the peeling paint had gotten a lot worse, as if the walls were exfoliating. Who could blame the paint for wanting out of this place?

    Timothy McNally met him halfway down the hall.

    Floyd thought his old boss looked like he could use a new paint job too, his pallor oddly close to the greenish color of the walls, bags above and below the man’s eyes like sacks of crumpled laundry.

    McNally whacked Floyd on the back. “Hey, stranger. I gotta have a twisted unsub to get you to visit, huh?”

    “Hey, Tim. How’s it going?” Floyd tried to smile but he wasn’t sure his face muscles were cooperating. He got right to the point. “So this unknown subject—why me?”

    The older cop nodded toward the