"They weren't people I knew," I said quickly. "They weren't people I paid either." Before he asked; that was a favorite question of most people when they asked about that night. Was Leif accusing me of something?
He regarded me for a few moments.
"No, you definitely don't strike me as the sort of person who'd pay to have someone killed."
"Good, because I wouldn't," I said.
Could we talk about something else now?
"Were you one of them?" he asked.
Evidently not.
I squinted at him. "One of them what? You think I helped kill him while I was in the shower? He was on the floor over near the window, a long way from the bathroom."
I tried to get the image of him out of my head, but it haunted my nightmares. Him staring at me with glazed eyes, blood seeping into the carpet. How had I not been sick at the sight of it?
Probably because I was ready to get out a bottle of champagne and celebrate.
I know. What sort of person thinks like that in spite of what he did to me? Maybe I wasn't a good person either.
"I certainly didn't kill him in the shower, dry him off and then drag him over to the other side of the room." If Leif was suggesting that, he was out of his mind.
Also? If he continued along this line of questioning, I was going to get up and walk away. I'd been through all of this enough times. I didn't want to talk about it anymore.
I might slip up and say something I shouldn’t.
He actually grinned. "That would be some mad skills."
I thought he might leave it at that, but then he added, "You might have helped and then washed off the blood." He could have been talking about slicing bacon, he was so blasé. Maybe he was one of those people who were obsessed with true crime, fascinated like he was watching a documentary, not real life.
"I didn't," I said firmly. "I had no part in killing Wolfgang."
"Except wishing he was dead," Leif said.
I sucked in a sharp breath. "Except for that," I admitted. "Wishing for something to happen and actually doing it aren't mutually exclusive."
"Of course they're not." He sipped his coffee and raised his cup toward me. "You saw them? You told the police there were two people, didn't you?"
"I saw them as they were leaving." I said. If my voice was any tighter, it would snap. "I stepped out of the bathroom as they were slipping out the door. That's all I saw."
I saw a lot more than that. I saw them with their masks over their faces. I heard their voices. They told me to go into the bathroom and stay there until they were finished. I'd done exactly that, only coming out after they were gone. After the door clicked shut behind them.
"Then you found him dead and immediately called the police," Leif said.
"Yes, that's what happened." My voice was almost robotic. I might have been an AI reciting facts and figures. "What are you trying to get at?"
"I'm not trying to get at anything," he said. "Just curious about what went down. It's not every day someone witnesses a murder."
"Are you sure about that?" I asked. "Woody seems determined to kill someone. Are you certain he hasn't done it already?"
"I'll tell you mine if you tell me yours," Leif said.
I frowned. "What's that supposed to mean?"
"Look," he said, putting down his half-eaten donut on the paper bag in his lap, "I get you hated Wolfgang. He deserved to die slowly and horribly, if you ask me. But I don't believe you didn't see anything."
"I didn’t—" I started.
