Watanabe stared at me with a hard crease between his eyes. “I mean, Jordan once threw one of my projects out the window and a taxi ran over it,” I admitted. “We had…uh… artistic differences of opinion.” Maybe I shouldn’t be telling a cop that the dead man in my studio was someone I actually loathed. “I wouldn’t have dated Jordan Bradley if he were on fire and my affection would be all that put out the flames.” I considered the kneejerk reaction. The question startled me enough that I momentarily forgot I wanted to puke again. I wiped my forehead with the back of my shaking hand. I think he was a bit concerned I was on the verge of passing out- but he was also a cop, and the cop wanted the name more than he wanted to rub my back when the dry heaves started. I looked up, and by the expression on Watanabe’s face, I was assuming I was a fabulous shade of sickly green. I slowly got down on my knees and hugged the bin as if it were a life raft. I turned, shoved Watanabe out of the way, ran from the water closet, and vomited into a nearby trash bin, much to the annoyance of the surrounding cops and crime scene personnel. But I noticed that stupid van dyke facial hair… and then the huge gold ring on the hand hanging out of the tub…. It took a minute for me to process who I was seeing, because it was a bit difficult to look past the bloated mass and face practically drooling off the skull. Trying to recognize a dead body congealing in a tub of turpentine and what, at this point, had to be mostly his own fluids, was not what I had envisioned after a long day of painting.įrankly, I couldn’t imagine such a moment ever happening in my life.īut Detective Watanabe had asked me to look at the guy and I wanted to prove I was a big strong man, so I fucking looked. Readers chose for Dean to recognize the victim!