“I didn’t know we had a choice.”
“We’re the vampire experts. All you have to do is tell the local cops that it’s too dangerous when they’re awake. You don’t want anyone to get caught by the vampire gaze. Or, as a more senior marshal, you can literally say you’re leaving the less dangerous assignments for the newbies.”
“I’ll try that next time.” His face was all serious, but his head was so not in the game.
“When all this is over, I’ll be happy to sit down over coffee and talk. I’ll share all the tips I’ve learned over the years for keeping the personal horror level low, or as low as possible on this job, but right now we have work to do. Bobby needs you, Newman. I need you present and accounted for, not lost in the nightmares. Can you do that?”
He nodded, taking a big breath and letting it out in a big rush. “You’re right. We have to try to buy time for Bobby. I’ll take you up on that coffee later.” He shoved the anger down so that his eyes were almost friendly as he looked at me. “Let’s go see if the state forensic people are here yet.”
His voice was even, unemotional, except for that lingering anger. If I hadn’t known he’d take it wrong, I’d have patted him on the back and said Atta boy. Men stuff their emotions because life and death are more
important than any emotion. If you don’t survive, then what the fuck does it matter? I was one of the boys in more ways than one. I’d teach Newman how to survive; any emotional damage from the survival was someone else’s job.
13
NEWMAN AND I, along with some of the state police and Sheriff Leduc, were almost having a fight in the living room of the Marchand mansion, aka the crime scene. The living room was the size of my first three apartments combined, with elegant furniture done in silky-looking brocade in shades of pink, cream, and pale mint green. The carpet was deep burgundy with hints of the same pale colors swirling in shapes that I think were supposed to be flowers. There were real oil paintings on the walls, and I’d have bet that all the knickknacks were real antiques. It looked more like a movie set than any living room I’d ever seen, so maybe it was a drawing room. There were chairs, two couches, and a love seat, but none of us was sitting down. I think we were all afraid to muss the furniture.
“You cannot put one of our people in the cell with a wereanimal that is already suspected of killing someone,” Captain Dave Livingston of the state cops declared loudly. He wasn’t quite yelling yet, but he was getting more forceful every time he said no.
The urge to say Captain Livingston, I presume was very strong. His parents had actually named him David Livingston, like the famous missionary and explorer, even though the last names weren’t spelled the same. The original was Livingstone, but they were pronounced the same, so he’d probably heard the joke a bajillion times. It made it easier for me to resist.
It had seemed like such a simple idea to get prints from Bobby Marchand to compare to the ones at the house, and half of it was simple. The forensic team from the state police was happy to collect evidence at the house, but we needed evidence from Bobby’s body. At minimum we needed his feet to be printed, and that meant either one of the techs went inside the cell with him, or he came out of the cell to us.
“I will not let that monster out of the cell and endanger anyone else,” Sheriff Leduc said, also not quite yelling.
“Well, you’re not endangering one of my people by sending them in with a shapeshifter,” Livingston said.
He was looming over the sheriff, not from height since he was only a couple of inches taller, but where Duke had let himself go after getting out of the military, Livingston had not. The captain was big, lean, and if his short, nearly buzzed hair hadn’t been mostly gray, I’d have thought he was at least ten years younger. Once he took his hat off and I could see the hair, I’d known to notice the extra smile lines near his steel gray eyes and the parentheses around his mouth, which suggested that every sentence he’d spoken had left its mark around his lips. His mouth was wider than it looked, because the angrier he got, the thinner his lips seemed. I was never sure how some people’s mouths did that when they were angry or sad.
I was letting the sheriff and the captain argue with each other, because neither of their viewpoints was going to help us gain more time on Bobby Marchand’s execution warrant. Until I figured out a way to get what we wanted, I was content to let the men yell at each other rather than me, because anyone who interrupted the “discussion” was going to have both of them angry with them. I really didn’t want to fight with both the sheriff and the captain until it would gain us something. Of course, Newman was newer at this than I was in every way. He still thought he could save the world if only the world would let him.
“Marshal Blake and I will be in the cell with drawn weapons,” Newman said. “If Bobby tries to hurt anyone, we will take care of it.”
Livingston turned on him, happy to have another target for his aggression. “Why haven’t you executed your warrant, Marshal Newman? If you had done your job, we wouldn’t need to be having this discussion.”
Leduc moved in beside Livingston. “I’ve already had to save Blake’s ass from that damn wereleopard once.”
“That’s not what happened,” Newman said.
“Duke already told me that he and his deputy got you out of the cell, but the shapeshifter grabbed Blake. She’s lucky to be alive. Hell, she’s lucky she got out of there without getting cut up. Now you want me to let one of my people go into the cell with that thing. No. Just no.”
I wondered if Leduc really believed his heroic version of the incident, or if he’d knowingly lied to make himself look better. If he believed the story, then we were fucked, because that would be how he wrote it up later. If he knew he was lying, then I might be able to get him to back down and use that to get some wiggle room with Livingston.
“You didn’t tell me that the suspect attacked you, Marshals.” This came from Kaitlin, the crime scene tech who had volunteered to help us. She was a few inches taller than me, five-five, maybe five-six, which made her short compared to everyone else in the room but me. Her straight blond hair was tied back in a tight, perky ponytail that bobbed in the air when she spoke. Most of the people I knew who did ponytails had longer hair, so the weight of the hair held it down more. If she hadn’t talked with her hands, maybe the hair would have lain there like normal, but she was so animated when she moved that her hair was, too.
“He didn’t,” Newman said.
“I saw him start to change form,” the sheriff said.
“You saw his eyes change,” I said, finally joining the conversation. I’d try for logic but didn’t hold out much hope that logic was what would win the day.
“You didn’t tell me he started to shift in the cell after the murder,” Kaitlin said.
“Eyes can change from strong emotions,” I said. “Finding out you’re accused of killing your father is pretty emotional.”
“He killed his uncle, not his father,” Livingston said.
“Bobby was raised by his uncle,” I said.