“A winning basketball team, I take it,” I said, smiling and shaking my head.
“Yeah, everybody started calling me Win, and I preferred that to Winston,” he said, grinning at me.
“Fine, Win. If I remember right, you helped ride to my rescue, too, but I didn’t fly here to save a life. I flew here to maybe save a life, but if we look at the evidence and Bobby Marchand is guilty of this crime, then the execution will have to move forward.”
All hints of smiles vanished, and when oncoming headlights flashed across his face, he looked tired and years older. “I know, and if he’s guilty, I’ll do my duty. But I want to be certain that killing Bobby Marchand is my duty first.”
I agreed with Newman, but I also knew that once the warrant arrived, there’d be a lot of pressure to finish it. This was probably the most horrible murder this tiny area had seen in years, if ever. They’d want the murderer caught and punished; they’d want to feel safe again. We had a few hours to figure out if there were enough grounds to vacate the warrant, or at least get a legal stay of execution under extraordinary circumstances while the evidence was processed.
Hanuman’s sheriff’s station was roomier than I’d expected after the airport. It had a front area big enough for two desks with room to add another if they were careful around the coffee machine. There was one door in the back wall. I sort of assumed that if they had a jail cell, it was back there, but you never knew in a place this small.
Sheriff Leduc had to be at least five-eight, because my head didn’t come up to the top of his shoulder, but the weight he was carrying around his middle made him look shorter. He’d had to fasten his duty belt underneath his stomach, so it fit more at his hips than at his waist. You don’t have to hit the gym like you’re on SWAT, but being able to run at a medium pace without having a heart attack seems like a minimum for a police officer. I wasn’t sure Leduc was at that minimum.
He smiled and offered his hand, and we shook like we were actually on the same team. I liked that and hoped it was true. “Call me Duke. Everyone does.”
In my head I thought, So your name is Duke Leduc, but I didn’t say it out loud. I didn’t want to tease the man. I could be taught.
“Everyone pretty much calls me Blake when I’m working,” I said. I smiled when I said it, but I didn’t want him calling me Anita. That was for my friends, or at least acquaintances, when I was wearing a badge. Using last names also helped keep that professional distance that every woman in a mostly male-dominated field needs to keep.
“Now, Anita—I can call you Anita, can’t I?” He smiled at me as he said it.
I wanted to ask if he called Newman by his first name, but I didn’t. Sheriff Duke Leduc was being friendly, and that was good. We’d need him on our side if we decided the warrant needed to be delayed. It didn’t cost me much to let him use my first name.
“Sure,” I said, and tried to make sure I smiled instead of gritting my teeth.
Newman was smiling, too, and he looked like he meant it. We were all being so damn pleasant, as if they hadn’t found one of their leading citizens butchered fourteen hours ago. We were all being so nice, it was almost unnerving, as if we were there for a reason totally different from murder.
“How’s Bobby holding up?” Newman said, and the smiles vanished from everyone’s faces.
Leduc—I couldn’t think of him as Duke; unless you were John Wayne, you could not be Duke—shook his head. The light went out of him, and he just looked tired. “I think if we didn’t have him shackled to the bunk in his cell that he might do himself a harm.”
“He didn’t seem suicidal when I interviewed him,” Newman said.
The sheriff shrugged his big shoulders, and again there was the hint of his size and how maybe once there’d been an athlete in there somewhere. “I think he’s beginning to believe he did it. Ray was the only father that Bobby really remembers. How would you feel if you woke up and found out what you’d done?”
“You say woke up, but I’m told that Bobby Marchand typically passes out after he changes from animal to human form,” I said.
“It’s typical of most lycanthropes . . . Therianthropes. The fact that they pass out cold for hours after they change back to human is the only edge we have when they start killing people.”
“Not all shapeshifters pass out after they shift back,” I said.
“Well, God help us if Bobby had been one of them. We’d probably still be hunting him through the woods.”
“Is he a big outdoorsman in human form?” I asked.
Leduc nodded. “He grew up camping with Ray. They were both big into anything they could do outdoors even before Bobby caught lycanthropy. The boy knows these woods.”
“How serious do you think Bobby is about hurting himself, Duke?” Newman asked.
“Well, now, it’s hard to tell. All I can say for certain is he sounded serious enough for me to mention it to you, but Frankie has been sitting in there with him for the last bit, so you’d need to ask her how he’s doing now. He’s all over the board emotionally. One minute he sounds like normal, like Bobby, and then he’ll start getting worked up about things, and there’s no telling what he’ll say. He said if he killed Uncle Ray, that he deserves to die. He said that a lot.”
“That’s not exactly suicidal talk,” I said.
“It’s been my experience that when folks start saying they deserve to die, it doesn’t take long for them to get around to making the wish come true. They may not succeed. It may just be a cry for help, but sometimes those cries turn out to be permanent.”
“A permanent solution to a temporary problem—suicide, I mean.”
Leduc looked at me, eyes narrowing. “Sometimes, but Ray isn’t temporarily dead, and nothing Bobby can do, or say, is going to undo what he did. There’s nothing temporary about the emotions that are tearing that boy up.”