Sucker Punch (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter 27)

I didn’t have to stoop much to go under the crime scene tape in the hallway. Newman had to bend almost double like he was doing reverse limbo. He stayed near the tape and let me walk alone, studying the footprints. The blood was drying to rust and would eventually look brown even against the white carpet.

“Who puts white carpet on the kids’ side of the house?” I asked.

“I asked Duke that. He said that they’d remodeled once Jocelyn and Bobby were both in high school. They let the kids choose the colors up here.”

“What teenage boy would choose white carpet?”

“Maybe it was Jocelyn’s pick?” he said.

“Maybe,” I said, and then gave my attention to the bloody footprints.

They were bare feet, and they looked a similar size to Bobby’s feet, though honestly I’d been looking to see if there was blood on his feet, not sizing him for shoes. There weren’t that many steps until they turned into the open door of a bedroom. One of the prints crossed the threshold, but then the floor was covered in short beige or maybe taupe carpet. It wasn’t as pretty as the white in the hallway, but it was a lot more practical. It also acted like a nice neutral to the blue walls of the bedroom. I stood peering in the doorway but didn’t walk inside the room. Something was bothering me, and it was outside the room. What else was bugging me about the prints?

“You’ve got that thinking look again,” Newman said from down the hallway.

I turned around and went back to the footprints in the hallway, but this time, I tried to match the stride pattern. I had to damn near do splits to take them step for step. I got all the way to Newman, who to his credit hadn’t remarked on me funny-walking my way down the hallway.

“Bobby Marchand is maybe five-ten at best, right?” I asked.

“I’d say five-eight, maybe five-nine,” Newman said.

“Come walk beside the footprints in the hallway, and let me watch where your stride hits.”

He didn’t argue, just did what I asked. When he got to the end of the hallway prints, he turned back to look at me. His face was expectant, as if he just knew I’d explain it to him.

“How tall are you?” I asked.

“Six-two.”

“Are you a solid six-two or like a fraction below it?”

He smiled and looked almost embarrassed. “Okay, technically, I’m six feet one inch and three-quarters.”

“I thought so.”

“You thought what?”

“Most men round up on size.”

He grinned. “I promise I only round up on how tall I am. All other questions are answered accurately.”

It took me a second to realize what he was implying, and then I had to shake my head hard to stop myself from speculating. Newman was not and never would be more than a coworker and work friend at best. It meant that I would not, could not let myself speculate about certain things. I’d found that where my thoughts went, the rest of me usually followed, so I’d started being a lot more careful about certain thoughts.

“No offense, but not pertinent to what we’re doing,” I said.

“It was a joke, Blake.”

“I know, and it was funny, clever, whatever, but unless Bobby has a weirdly long stride for his height and inseam, then whoever made these prints is closer to your height or maybe just your leg length.”

“Do you think it’s enough to get a judge to grant me a stay of execution?”

“No, but if we take prints of Bobby’s feet and they don’t match these prints, that would probably get a judge to extend the wind

ow by at least forty-eight hours beyond the original.”

“That’s only two extra days, four days total, before I have to kill someone that neither of us thinks is guilty.”

“Yep,” I said.