Newman stared at me, looking shocked. “You can’t mean that.”
“Legally, I’ll have no choice.”
“You can’t mean that you would really kill Bobby when you know he’s innocent of any wrongdoing,” he said.
“She’ll sign the warrant over to Otto or me if it comes to that,” Edward said.
Newman looked at him. “Could you do it?”
“I could,” Olaf said.
Newman just stared up at him. “I hope you don’t mean that.”
Leduc said, “Dill said if our suspects confess to the crime, then he’ll work with us on a stay of execution until they can figure out a legal way to make the warrant of execution null.”
“The warrants are worded loosely,” Edward said, “so we can use them to wipe out all the vampires in a lair and their human servants, or an entire pack of werewolves, not just the individual that did the killing.”
“Which helps us how?” I asked.
“If we treat the Babingtons like human servants, then the warrant covers them,” Edward said.
Everyone in the huddle of police officers except for Olaf and me stared at him as if he’d sprouted a second head with fangs and one eye in the middle of its forehead.
“You can’t execute humans as if they were supernatural,” Livingston said.
“But Muriel and Todd don’t know that,” I said.
Livingston frowned at me, but Duke smiled. “You going to try to scare Muriel into talking without a lawyer?”
“No, I’m going to try to guilt Todd Babington into talking without a lawyer, and if guilt doesn’t do it, then I’ll try to scare him.”
“We have the murder weapon hidden in their house. We have Carmichael’s suicide note implicating them. It’s enough to charge them,” Duke said.
“Can they be charged like it’s a regular murder and still be covered under the warrant of execution?” Newman asked.
“I’m not sure,” I said, and looked at everyone in our little group.
“Don’t look at me,” Rico said.
But it wasn’t just Deputy Rico. None of u
s knew.
“Let’s not charge them with murder, then, not until we’ve used the warrant to get a confession,” Edward said.
“How can you be sure that we’ll get a confession out of either of them?” Livingston asked.
“If you stay out of our way and let us do our jobs, we’ll get a confession,” Edward said.
“What do you mean, stay out of your way?” Duke asked.
“He means that under the warrant system we have total discretion on the level of . . . vigor with which we act,” I said.
“What does that mean, vigor and act?” Duke asked.
“Violence,” Olaf said.
“Yes, that is what I mean,” Edward said.