Sucker Punch (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter 27)

Edward’s text tone sounded, so I checked my phone. The message was simple. “They found it.”

I showed the message to Newman. He started for the door, and I followed him. I think we both wanted to see Muriel and Todd put in handcuffs. Would they break down and confess? I thought Todd might, and if we had that Perry Mason, Matlock, Law & Order moment, I wanted to see it. I’d yet to see one of those television-show moments, but if it happened, I didn’t want to miss it. Legally I had a warrant in my pocket that could be expanded to save the cost of a trial for the murderer or murderers of Ray Marchand, but I was finally on a case on which I wasn’t going to have to be the one who did it. I wasn’t even sure Michigan had a death penalty for nonsupernatural crimes. Usually I didn’t have to know, because I was a walking-talking death penalty all on my own.

We heard Muriel Babington before we saw her. “We did not kill my brother!”

Todd Babington said, “I don’t know how that barbaric thing got in this house.”

Barbaric thing? I had to see the bagh nakha in person before it disappeared into evidence. I had a feeling of relief that was totally atypical to the way I usually felt at the end of a case. Maybe it was the fact that it was ending without me having to kill someone. Yeah, that might have had something to do with it.

“Don’t touch me!” Muriel yelled.

We were still on the stairs when the knot of people near the door parted, and we had a great view of Muriel struggling against the state cops trying to handcuff her. She was fighting harder than I’d have thought she had in her, but the staties weren’t just physically bigger than she was. They had more practice putting cuffs on people than she had at stopping them from doing it. She wasn’t going to win, but she didn’t give up until they took her to the floor and knelt on her. It looked rough, but it was the safest way to handcuff someone who was struggling that hard—not just for the officers, but for Muriel. The more control they had of her, the less likely that someone would get hurt accidentally.

She was screaming, “You can’t do this to me! I’ll have your badges!”

Her husband, Todd, stood handcuffed and passive with Leduc holding one of his arms loosely. They were both watching as if it was interesting, but neither man looked upset. Todd did not look like a man watching the love of his life being professionally manhandled by the police.

Two officers raised Muriel off the floor, each of them holding one of her arms. I couldn’t see if her feet were even touching the floor. They carried her thr

ough the door. Duke came behind them with Todd. If I hadn’t seen the handcuffs, I would have thought they were just two friends strolling outside.

Muriel, on the other hand, was trying to kick the police on either side of her. They pulled her forcefully off her feet so that she was too busy not falling on her face to try to hurt them.

“Bastards! Let go of me!”

I was betting she hadn’t thought that last part through, because if they let her go now, she’d fall on her face with her hands still cuffed behind her and no way to catch herself. She might want a lot of things, but she didn’t really want them to let her go.

I saw Livingston standing in the midst of it all like a calm rock in the middle of the furious energy. It was like the excitement didn’t even touch him. He was so steady that it helped keep the rest of the people around him steady.

I wondered where Edward and Olaf were. I might have missed Edward in the mass of tall, bulky cops, but Olaf would still have been the tallest person in the room, and I didn’t see him either. Newman and I started down the stairs. He followed after Duke and the handcuffed suspects. I went to Livingston, because for once I didn’t have to follow the prisoners and do a damn thing. I was relieved, and it wasn’t just because I thought we had enough to set Bobby Marchand free.

“Captain Livingston,” I said, projecting my voice so he’d hear it above the tumult.

He turned toward me and then had to look down to meet my eyes. He smiled and gave a nod. “Marshal Blake.”

“So where was the barbaric thing hidden?”

He gave a small smile. “You heard that, did you?”

“Hard to miss.”

“Garden shed on a shelf, wrapped in dirty rags.”

He held out the evidence bag, and through the plastic, I could see it like a phantom made of gold and jewels. It swung heavily in the bag, and even in the interior light, it gleamed. I had an urge to ask to see it in brighter light, but it wasn’t just jewelry and history. It was a murder weapon, or potentially one. The police would have to match it to the wounds on the body now. There’d be a chance for a really good attorney to try to get the murder weapon excluded on some technicality. Once the judicial side of things got involved, a conviction and punishment weren’t a given, not even for murder.

“Chancy to hide it outside the house,” I said. “What if some neighborhood kid found it by accident?”

“We almost didn’t find it tucked up on a shelf hidden in what looked like trash. The real danger would have been the landscape crew throwing away the trash in the shed.”

“Can you turn it over so I can see the claw part?”

Livingston turned the weapon carefully in his hands so I could see the metal claws that were supposed to sit tucked in against the upper part of the palm. “Forrester and Jeffries both thought this would match the wounds on the victim.”

“Where are they, by the way?”

“Outside. If I didn’t know better, I’d say that Jeffries is upset that no one is getting executed today.”

He made his comment a joke, and I laughed with him, because wasn’t it funny that Olaf might want to kill someone? Yeah, it was freaking hilarious.