Sucker Punch (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter 27)

He gave me a look. I gave him one back and said, “Normally it would be the first stop, but we were already upstairs, so we started there. Once I saw the prints, they seemed like our best bet to get a delay in the execution timeline. If we don’t get extra time, then this is all moot.”

“The warrant hasn’t been faxed to my office yet. You get forty-eight hours after it arrives—there’s plenty of time to waste on this footprint nonsense,” Leduc said.

“Most warrants start their countdown from the moment the document is written, not when it’s received,” I said.

“So, if there’s a delay on the judicial end, you could end up with a warrant that’s past due?” Frankie asked.

“I’ve heard of it happening, but most of the time, the warrant arrives with the clock already ticking on how long the marshal has to complete the job, but not expired,” I said.

“Is it just two days to complete the execution, or does the warrant become null and void after that time period, so killing the suspect would be murder?” Livingston asked.

“The ability to kill the suspect or suspects with legal impunity remains until the warrant is completed by their deaths,” I said.

“So why does the warrant have a timeline written into it?” Frankie asked.

“Some of the marshals were delaying fulfilling their warrants,” I said.

“The newer ones,” Newman said, “like me that were cops before, but had only classroom experience with the monsters. You spend years training to keep the peace and do your best to save lives, and then you join the preternatural branch and suddenly it’s all about taking lives. Not all of us can make the transition.”

“What happens if a marshal doesn’t make the deadline?” Kaitlin asked.

“If it’s a hunt and the marshal in question just can’t safely locate and destroy the target, then no harm, no foul. They may send in more experienced marshals to help with the hunt, but it remains the original marshal’s warrant, and they remain in charge of the hunt,” I said.

Newman added, “But if it’s someone like Bobby that’s already in custody, then refusal of the warrant by the marshal gets written up. If you refuse to complete three warrants, then you’re given a chance to transfer to normal Marshals Service or you’re fired.”

“Is the preternatural branch losing a lot of personnel that way?” Livingston asked.

Newman shrugged.

“Some,” I said. “Not everyone has the stomach for it.”

“But now do you understand why it’s so important for us to find reasonable cause to lengthen the warrant timeline?” Newman asked.

“So you can avoid getting written up for dereliction of duty,” Duke said.

“It’s not dereliction of duty, Duke. How would you feel if you let me kill Bobby and then we do find out he was framed? Could you live with that?”

Duke shook his head, but I’m not sure it was an answer to the question. “Let Blake see the room where Ray died. Let her smell it. Then see if she still wants to save the poor wereleopard.”

“Fine, let’s go,” I said.

We left Livingston and Kaitlin discussing if she was getting in the cage with a wereleopard. Frankie stayed behind to answer questions about what had happened back at the jail. I hoped she was willing to share that Duke had lost it, but in the end, I guess that didn’t matter. What mattered was that the state cops helped us delay long enough to either kill Bobby Marchand with a clear conscience or save him.

15

IF THE LIVING room was big, this room was cavernous. I’d never been in a regular house that had a room this large. Jean-Claude and I had looked at some wedding venues that had ballrooms, and even most of them weren’t as big as Ray Marchand’s study. It was big and dark, with only a handful of lamps around the room giving off golden pools that seemed to make more shadows rather than illuminate the darkness. Maybe the smells of blood and death in the air made the room feel grim. Maybe, but I’d have given a lot for an overhead light. There were chairs and a couch that looked like leather, more masculine versions of the living room furniture. There were two lamps: one beside the couch and the other, a reading lamp, curved over the back of the room’s comfiest and highest-backed chair, which was closest to the fireplace. That chair looked cozy. I shone my flashlight near it and found beside it a short stack of books on a table. Very cozy. I caught a shape at the edge of the light and had my gun out and pointed before I’d really shone the light full on it.

My heart was in my throat, beating so hard, it almost choked me as I stared into the eyes of a full-grown bobcat. Newman said, “Don’t shoot. It’s stuffed,” about the time I’d already decided that the yellow eyes staring at me were glass.

“Shit,” I said softly but with feeling.

“There’s a lot of taxidermy in here,” Newman said, and swept his flashlight up along the right side of the room to show a herd of animal heads on the wall.

I recognized water buffalo and more kinds of antelope, or maybe they were gazelles, than I could name, all silent and staring, their horns curving gracefully in the still air. The rhino head did not look graceful; it just looked big. There was a pair of lion heads—a big maned male and a lioness snarling beside him. She looked shorn next to her mate. My own inner lion flared to life just at a glimpse of amber eyes in the darkness of my mind or maybe my gut. I had a second of smelling the sun and heat on grass halfway around the world that I’d never smelled as a human being, and then it was gone. The leopard head didn’t seem to offend my inner one, because it didn’t react.

“Wait until you see what’s in the corner,” Newman said. I joined my flashlight beam to his, and we swept across animal heads from almost every continent, and then in the corner was the showstopper: a full-grown elephant. I mean a full-size bull elephant complete with tusks gleaming in the dark like huge white fangs.

“Well, fuck,” I said.