“Ms. Norville, I think I’d like to take you down to the station and ask you a few questions.”
Hardly surprising, but my stomach still did a flip-flop. I may have been a werewolf, but I’d never even gotten a parking ticket, much less been arrested for anything. Then again, I’d never owned a car.
But I wasn’t being arrested. This was just questioning.
“Let me get a jacket,” I said, my voice a whisper. When I stood, my injured side turned toward her. Hardin tilted her head, glancing at the red slashes and puckered skin on my arm.
“When did that happen?”
“Tonight.”
“Impossible. Those have been healing for weeks.”
“You need to do more reading. Did you get those articles I sent you?”
“Yeah.” She stared, like she was trying to read my mind. “Who did this to you?” She said it like she actually cared about me or something.
I glared. “The ripped-up body downstairs.”
She waited a beat, then, “Are you telling me that guy was a werewolf?”
I finished shrugging on the jacket and grabbed the key to the apartment. “Should I call a lawyer or something?”
Outside, there must have been a half-dozen cop cars, along with the coroner’s van. They had the whole street blocked off. Yellow tape fluttered everywhere. A swarm of people wearing plastic gloves huddled around Zan, swabbing things and sticking them into baggies. Evidence. All the evidence they needed.
Too much exposure. Carl had always warned me this might happen. He really was going to kill me this time.
Cormac and I got a ride in the nice police car. He’d already called his lawyer, who he thought would represent me as well, if I asked him.
I shuddered to think of the kind of experience a lawyer got working for Cormac. But hey, the bounty hunter wasn’t in jail.
They put Cormac and me in separate rooms. Mine was similar to the interview room I’d been in before, the size of a small bedroom, institutional and without character. I didn’t get coffee this time.
It must have been four in the morning. I hadn’t slept, and I was feeling light-headed. I wanted to ask someone for a glass of water. The door wasn’t locked. I opened it, looked in the hall outside, and didn’t see anyone. I had a feeling that if I tried to sneak out, a swarm of cops would suddenly appear. I went back inside.
I laid my head on the table, thinking about how much this week had sucked, and dozed. When the door opened, I jerked awake, startled, and shivered inside my coat. I felt worse for the few moments’ worth of napping.
The man who entered was in his early thirties. He was rumpled, with swept-back, mousy blond hair that needed trimming, a stubbled jaw, a gray suit jacket that fit but still managed to seem too big, and an uninspiring brown tie. He slouched and carried his briefcase under one arm.
He strode to the desk, switching the briefcase out from under his arm so he could extend his hand for me to shake.
“Hi, Kitty Norville? I’m Ben O’Farrell. Cormac says you need a lawyer.” He had an average voice, but spoke with confidence and met my gaze.
“Hi.” Tentatively, I shook his hand. I tried to get more of a sense of him. He smelled average. Normal. The jacket maybe needed washing. “I don’t know if I do or not.”
He shrugged. “Never hurts when the cops are around. Here’s my card, my rates.” He pulled a card out of one pocket, a pen out of another, tried juggling them and the briefcase, then set the briefcase down so he could write on the card, which he handed to me when he was finished.
That was a big number. It was a per-hour number.
“You any good?” I said.
“Cormac isn’t in jail.”
I smiled in spite of myself. “Should he be?”
When O’Farrell matched the smile, he looked like a hawk. It made me feel better; at least, it would so long as he was on my side. It made me glad I hadn’t pressed charges against Cormac that night he barged in on the show.
“Can you stick around for tonight? Hopefully I won’t need you any longer.”