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A wave of dizziness washes over me. I have to hold on to the wall to keep from collapsing onto the floor. The four or five bottles of beer I drank are churning in my stomach.

“You been drinking, Mr. Porter?” Detective Garrison asks me.

I don’t like the way he asks me that question. It’s the middle of the evening, and I’m in my own home. It’s my right to have a few beers. Twenty-First Amendment and all that. “A little. I’m just… I’m surprised. Are you sure about this?”

“Very sure,” Garrison says. “We also found traces of his blood on an antique clock on his mantel.”

The clock .

I saw it when I was looking at Zimmerly’s mantel. I remember thinking how much it looked like the one in our kitchen—almost identical. Then it occurs to me…

When is the last time I saw that clock in our kitchen?

“So I’ve been talking to his neighbors,” Garrison is saying, “trying to figure out if anyone saw anything.”

“I didn’t see anything,” I say quickly. “I was at work the whole day.”

“Right,” he says, “but the medical examiner said that he died the night before. So did you see anyone entering or leaving his house the night before?”

“No,” I murmur. “I… I didn’t see anything.”

The night before? That means the sandwich on the kitchen counter wasn’t his lunch but was actually a sad little dinner. He was about to eat when somebody came into his house and hit him on the head with that antique clock, killing him.

I’m suddenly desperate to check the kitchen to make sure our own clock is still in its place. It’s got to be a coincidence. It’s got to be.

“…didn’t get along with?” the detective is saying.

Somehow, I had tuned him out. My head feels so cloudy. Christ, I need a cup of coffee or something. “What?” I finally say.

Garrison does not look amused. “Do you know anyone that Mr. Zimmerly didn’t get along with?”

“Not really,” I say. “He mostly kept to himself.”

“Uh-huh.” He nods slowly. “And how about you? Did you get along with Mr. Zimmerly?”

I don’t like where this is going, but I play along. “We weren’t best friends or anything. But we got along okay.”

“So what were the two of you fighting about last week?”

I suddenly regret so many of my recent life decisions. “It was stupid. Just about the garbage pickup. Dumb neighbor stuff.”

“Dumb neighbor stuff,” he repeats.

“Right.”

He cocks his head at me. “And did you throw a trash can at him?”

Shit.

“I wasn’t trying to hit him.” I drop my head. “Look, that wasn’t about him. My girlfriend had just left me and…”

“Your girlfriend left you?”

Why does he keep repeating everything I say? I run a shaky hand through my hair, which feels extremely greasy. When is the last time I showered? “We’re going through some stuff, that’s all. Taking some time apart.”

“Uh-huh.”

The room is spinning. I need to sit down before I collapse. Does this detective actually think that I killed my neighbor? Is that possible?

But somebody killed him. Somebody bashed Mr. Zimmerly on the head with a heavy metal clock. I can’t even wrap my head around it.

“Mr. Porter,” Garrison says, “I’m wondering if you could come down to the station with me to give an official statement. I can get you some coffee, and we can have a nice chat over there, and then we can be done with all this.”

“I… I don’t think…”

“Also, it would be great to get your fingerprints on file,” he says. “Just to rule you out entirely so you can be done with this headache.”

He wants my fingerprints.

That’s not good.

My brain is still foggy from all the beer, but I’m still with it enough to know that I shouldn’t go to the police station without a lawyer and start giving this detective information that he can later use to incriminate me.

And also, I’ve got to get rid of what I’m almost certain is a bloodstain on the floor of my living room, as well as the bloody paper towel crumpled up in my right hand.

“Actually,” I say, “I’m not feeling so hot. I don’t think I can help much right now. I think…I need to go to bed.”

“I’d be happy to give you a ride,” he says. “I’ve got my car parked right down the block.”

I have a terrible feeling that if I go to the police station right now, I might never leave.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “I just can’t right now. Unless… I don’t have to, do I?”

Detective Garrison stands there for a moment, and I’m scared that he’s going to whip out a pair of handcuffs and slap them on my wrists and make me go down to the station with him. But he doesn’t do that. He just shakes his head.

“No,” he says, “you don’t have to. Not yet anyway.”

Not yet. That doesn’t sound good for me. But it’s better than the handcuffs.

“Okay then,” he says. “I’ll be on my way. Thank you for your time.”

I let out a breath as he turns around and heads toward my door. He’s leaving. Thank God he’s leaving. I dart ahead so that I can get the door open for him.

“I may have some more questions, Mr. Porter,” he tells me as I fumble with the locks. My fingers aren’t entirely functional right now. “Please make yourself available.”

“Right,” I manage. “Happy to help if I can.”

I’m not happy. I hope he never comes back.

I watch from the window by my doorway, making sure the detective disappears down the block, returning to his car. What the hell was that? Was Mr. Zimmerly really murdered? How could that be? Who would murder such an old man? I mean, another few months and nature would have probably done the job.

Unless…

Is it a coincidence that Mr. Zimmerly was killed so soon after I had a very visible altercation with him on the street? What would that detective have discovered if I let him take my fingerprints?

I nearly trip over my feet hurrying back to the kitchen. The first thing I do is toss that bloodstained paper towel deep in the trash. Then my gaze falls on the far end of the kitchen counter, where Krista had placed that antique clock after we got it at the flea market, back when life was still good.

There’s an empty space where the clock had sat.

Shit.

How long has that clock been missing? I don’t even know. The entire last week feels like a blur. But it’s clear the clock from our kitchen was the same one used to kill Mr. Zimmerly. Then the killer left it on his mantel, knowing that it would be identified as the murder weapon. It’s also covered in my fingerprints, I’m sure.

But maybe this isn’t as ominous as it seems. It’s entirely possible that…I don’t know…Krista gave the clock to Mr. Zimmerly as a gift. And it just happened to be the weapon that a startled burglar used to subdue him.

Except somehow, I don’t think that’s the case.

My heart is pounding as I return to the living room. I pull back the rug again to look down at the stain on the floor. Now that I have moistened it, it is very clearly redder than brown. And when I bring my nose close to the floorboards, it doesn’t smell anything like wine.

A key turns in the lock to the front door, and I jerk my head up. I manage to scramble to my feet just as Whitney enters the brownstone, wearing a light jacket. She raises her eyebrows at the sight of me.

“Hello, Blake,” she says. “Did I interrupt a special moment between you and the floor?”

Is it possible that Whitney is responsible for what happened to Mr. Zimmerly? Did she take that clock from our kitchen and bash him over the head with it to frame me? Despite everything, it’s very hard to imagine her doing something so diabolical and deliberate. But not impossible. You never know what someone’s capable of.

I point at the floorboards, grateful for my alcohol-induced lack of inhibitions. “What is this stain, Whitney?”

She plays along, stepping over to the spot where I am standing. She looks down at the stain, and a smile touches her lips. “Looks like it’s going to be a bitch to get out.”

“Did you do this?”

She blinks innocently. “Boy, you’re getting very paranoid, aren’t you? Perhaps you should cut back on the booze.”

“I had three beers,” I say through my teeth. Okay, four. Maybe five. “Perhaps you should quit acting like a manipulative bitch.”

“What are you going to do to me?” She folds her arms across her chest, her eyes flashing. “The same thing you did to Mr. Zimmerly?”

My mouth falls open. Is she serious?

“Some detective talked to me when I was on my way out this morning.” She’s enjoying the expression on my face. “I made sure to let him know that Herb wasn’t your favorite person in the world.”

The surge of rage that I feel almost overwhelms me. How dare she implicate me with the police? Yeah, he pissed me off sometimes, but I wouldn’t come into his house and murder him, for crying out loud. “I would never have done anything to hurt Mr. Zimmerly. You can’t possibly think I’m capable of that!”

“I’m not sure what you’re capable of. You’re constantly flying into uncontrollable rages over nothing. You’re extremely paranoid. You’ve basically threatened me. And any hour I come home during the night, I find you wandering the house like you’re in a trance. God only knows what you’re up to.”

Is that true? I don’t wander the house all night long. Yes, my sleep has been shit. But it’s not that bad.

Is it?

No, it’s not. Whitney is trying to get to me. She’s trying to make me think I’m losing it. She’s even making me wonder if I could somehow be responsible for what happened to my neighbor, even though I know I’m not. She’s an evil person.

All of a sudden, the overwhelming urge comes over me to reach out and wrap my fingers around Whitney’s skinny little neck. I’m much stronger than she is. All I would have to do is squeeze hard enough, and I would never have to look at her taunting smile ever again.

It would be so easy…

I can’t help but think of that psychic woman who came to our house before we found Whitney. She seemed so certain that I would stab somebody in this very living room. She said she saw me crouching over Krista’s dead body. The fear in her eyes was real—real enough that she told Krista to make a run for it. At the time, I thought the whole thing was bullshit.

But what if she got it right? Or at least part of it?

What if her vision was real, but it was the girl on the floor that she got wrong?

I take a step back, shocked by my own thoughts. I’d never stab someone to death. It’s out of the question. What is Whitney doing to me?

“I…I’m going to bed,” I mutter under my breath.

I’m not tired, but I’ve got to get out of here. I’ve got to get away from Whitney before I do something I’ll regret.

I race up the steps as fast I can, feeling Whitney’s eyes on my back the entire time.