Free Secrets and Ink by Lou Harper

night. What do you mean killed?” It seemed surreal, and all I could feel was numbness. Strangers and people on TV shows got killed, not people you knew.
    Lipkin’s face was unreadable. Frigging cops. “It would be best if you came to the station to give a statement.”
    “Yes. Of course.”
    He gave me the address and driving directions while I put on shoes and grabbed my keys. Confusion and disbelief churned in my head during the whole drive. Riley dead? Seemed impossible—I’d just seen him less than twenty-four hours ago. “Killed” was such a vague word. It could’ve meant anything from a car accident to having his head bashed in by a homophobe. I was still in a daze as Detective Lipkin steered me through the bustling police station and into an interview room. At least it was quiet there.
    “Coffee? Soda?” he asked.
    “Uhm, coffee.”
    He left, and I looked around. Small desk, a couple of chairs. No mirror, only a clock hanging on the scuffed wall. It was the Hollywood Station, the same where I’d been taken at my arrest many years ago, but they’d just thrown me into a cell back then. However, it was also where Nick worked. I hadn’t seen him as we’d come in.
    Lipkin came back with a paper cup and a brown folder. He handed me the coffee, I had a sip and put it aside. It tasted like warm mud. He asked me about the last time I saw Riley, and I told him I’d met Riley on personal business, we talked for a few minutes, and then I left.
    “You still haven’t told me what happened,” I reminded him.
    “Mr. Moore was strangled in his apartment. His roommate found him,” he said with his eyes fixed on me.
    I stared back at him in disbelief. “Strangled? By whom? Why?”
    “We’re investigating it. Another roommate said you and Mr. Moore were arguing.”
    Oh. That had to be Ginger. Just then it dawned on me—I was a suspect. Thinking about it, it made perfect sense. I’d had an argument with Riley shortly before he was murdered, and we had a history. The situation seemed unreal, like a movie. A weird feeling took over me, as if I stepped out of my own skin and watched myself with the detective.
    “What did you argue about?” he asked.
    “Nothing serious. We used to be lovers.” I looked him squarely in the eye, searching for reaction and getting none. “He was playing head games, trying to get me back, or get back at me. I don’t know. I went there to tell him to knock it off. Then I left.”
    “A witness stated you’d been shouting about a photograph.”
    “Ginger exaggerates. I might have raised my voice, but I wasn’t shouting.”
    “What about the photo?”
    “Riley liked emailing me photos of us to remind me of the old days, or whatnot.” Technically, I didn’t lie. I couldn’t possibly tell this cop about the photo of me blowing a stranger. There was no way. Too humiliating. “Look, Riley and I had our problems, but who doesn’t? I told him we were through, and that was the end of it. I had no reason to kill him.”
    “I didn’t say you were a suspect.”
    “Right. I’ve seen Law and Order. Isn’t this when you ask where I was at such and such time?”
    A muscle in the corner of Lipkin’s eye twitched at the mention of the TV show. “Okay. Where were you last night between eight and eleven?”
    That was some mighty precise timing. I wondered how they’d come to it. I doubted he’d tell me. “I was at the movies with my sister, and then we went to dinner.” I wasn’t sure why I didn’t tell him about Nick being there too. Probably because of some old secretive instincts and too much of my mind taken up with the realization I’d never see Riley again, and the guilt over our last exchange.
    Detective Lipkin took Charly’s address and phone number and then kept pestering me with questions about Riley for another hour before he finally let me go.
    The first thing I did back at home was open my laptop and search the local news sites. I didn’t learn much, only that the