Sucker Punch

by Laurell K. Hamilton

  “Shoulda thought of that before you left him in one of the main rooms in the house for someone to find. Didn’t you think it would be her? Only people that live at the house are the three of you and servants,” Leduc said.

  “There were no servants last night,” Bobby said.

  “What did you say?” I asked.

  The sheriff said, “Last night was the regular night off for most of the staff.”

  “Did everyone in town know that?” I asked.

  “Probably. Why?” the sheriff asked.

  “Don’t you find it suspicious that the one night all the servants are gone is the night someone murders Raymond Marchand?”

  “We’re just lucky that no one else was home when it happened. Otherwise we’d have had a massacre on our hands.”

  “Even Carmichael was gone,” Bobby said.

  “Who’s Carmichael?” I asked.

  “The live-in handyman. You know, a dogsbody,” Newman said.

  “Dogsbody. I haven’t heard that term outside of an old British mystery novel.”

  “I like old British mystery novels,” Newman said.

  “You’re just full of surprises, Newman. How unusual was it for Carmichael to be gone?”

  “Unusual,” Bobby said, “or it used to be before he started dating his new girlfriend. It was still part of his job to be there most nights.”

  I turned to the sheriff. “Did other people know Carmichael was going to be out of pocket?”

  Newman answered, “Carmichael is dating Hazel Phillips. She’s a waitress at the Sugar Creek.”

  “What does Carmichael’s personal life have to do with my question?” I asked.

  “Carmichael spent the night with Hazel. Sugar Creek’s the most popular restaurant in town for breakfast and lunch. If he talked to her about his plans to spend the night at her place while she was at work, then half the county could have overheard it.”

  The sheriff shook his head hard enough for his jowls to shake. He reminded me of a tall bulldog. “If Ray had been shot, I might agree with you, but he was cut to pieces with claws. We don’t have any other shapeshifters in this area.”

  “Come on, Sheriff. If it wasn’t death by wereleopard, what would you think about it being on the one night when everyone else was gone?”

  He scowled at me. “I know what I saw, Blake. No human being could have done that to a man.”

  “You might be surprised what human beings do to one another,” I said.

  “You think I’m just some hick cop that hasn’t seen anything.”

  “That’s not what she means,” Newman said.

  “I just meant that I’ve seen some shit normal people do to one another that made me wish it had been monsters.”

  Leduc took in a lot of air and let it out slow. “All right, I aimed a gun at you once, and you’ve aimed one back at me. Let’s call it even and start aiming at the real monster.”

  “I thought if I did it, then it would all be over,” Troy said, face still wet with tears, though the actual crying had stopped.

  “Bobby would be dead, but you’d be up on murder charges, Troy. It wouldn’t be over for you,” Newman said.

  “I have the warrant in my pocket,” Troy said.

  Everyone in the hallway with a badge looked at the deputy. Leduc spoke slowly like you would for a very young child who had done a bad thing. “Troy, what difference does it make if you have the warrant in your pocket?”

  “You called it a get-out-of-jail-free card,” he said, and his eyes were guileless, like he didn’t realize his mistake.

  “For the marshal whose name is on the warrant, yes, but not for you or anyone else.”

  Troy blinked at Leduc. I was beginning to wonder how bright Troy was or wasn’t. He certainly wasn’t catching on fast.

  Newman tried. “Troy, the warrant has my name on it. If I’m part of the hunt, then and only then is it a legal execution. Anything else is murder.”

  “Now, Newman, if Bobby goes changing into his beast in the cell, then we will shoot him to make sure he doesn’t get out and hurt anyone else,” Leduc said.

  “Deputy Wagner, was the prisoner changing shape when you fired at him?” I asked.

  Troy looked at me, shaking his head. “No, but he killed Ray, and I had the warrant in my pocket.”

  “Troy, damn it. I know you’re not a deep thinker, but ya gotta think better than this,” Leduc yelled.

  “Troy Wagner, we’re holding you on suspicion of attempting to murder Bobby Marchand,” Newman said. Newman said all the words that normal cops say to suspects all the time. I’d actually never read anyone their rights. You only did that when you took suspects into custody. I didn’t do that. The vampires had nicknamed me the Executioner. I didn’t take prisoners.

  19

  CAPTAIN LIVINGSTON AND Kaitlin the crime scene tech were a little surprised when they found Deputy Wagner in the cell beside Bobby’s, but when we explained what he’d done, they didn’t question it.

  Livingston did say, “I heard you were a shoot-first-ask-questions-later kind of person, Blake. I’m surprised you didn’t just shoot Troy.”

  “You know, I’m a little surprised about that, too. Must have been something to do with the uniform he was wearing.”

  “Don’t believe the bad stuff you hear about Marshal Blake. She’s one of the best preternatural officers I’ve ever worked with,” Newman said.

  I smiled at him and said, “Thanks, Newman.”

  “If I believed it all, I wouldn’t be here helping the two of you,” Livingston said.

  “You’d really let an innocent man be executed rather than help the Whore of Babylon out?” I asked.

  “I never used that word or anything like it,” Livingston said.

  “And I really appreciate that,” I said.

  “Are you saying that other officers have called you that to your face?” Kaitlin asked.

  “I am,” I said, and I smiled when I said it, because sometimes you have to smile when you say the bad stuff out loud, or it gets too deep a hold on you. Smile and think Fuck you as you say it.

  “Wow, that’s . . . awful,” she said.

  “Agreed.”

  “I’m sorry you experienced such a lack of professionalism at the hands of other officers,” Livingston said. He seemed to mean it, so I thanked him.

  “Weirdly, the insults have gotten fewer since we announced the wedding. If they were upset I was sleeping with monsters, I thought marrying one would make it all worse,” I said.

  “You’re marrying him,” Livingston said. “We don’t bad-mouth one another’s spouses. That’s sort of off-limits.”

  “I’ve never had a spouse before, but good to know. Now, what do you need from us to take the prints from Bobby?” I said.

  “I want Kaitlin safe while she gathers evidence, and I’d like to avoid killing the prisoner to keep her safe since that would defeat the entire purpose of why we’re doing this.”

  “I’m sorry I had to break the chains,” Bobby said.

  “You were trying to take cover while someone shot at you. No apology needed,” I said.

  “I don’t have anything stronger to chain him up with,” Duke said.

  “I have cuffs rated for preternaturals,” Newman said.

  “It’s a start,” Livingston said.

  “I can get more chain to go around the cuffs,” Duke said.

  I shook my head. “It won’t hold him.”

  “Well, then, Ms. Expert, tell me what will hold him.”

  “That’s Marshal Expert to you, and the cuffs that Newman and I have are it.”

  “I thought silver chains worked,” Livingston said.

  “One, you got any silver chains that big?” I asked.

  Livingston looked uncomfortable, and it took me a second to r
ealize that it was his embarrassed look. “No.”

  “Second, silver rubs their skin raw like a mild corrosive agent, or a metal allergen, but it doesn’t actually make the chains any stronger against them.”

  “I thought silver burned them,” Kaitlin said.

  “No, nothing that spectacular. It takes time for the silver to damage the skin unless it’s the edge of a silver blade or a bullet with high silver content. Then the weapons work against them as if they were plain human.”

  Bobby added, “We can wear silver next to our skin to hide what we are or wear it with clothing between us and the metal.”

  “Well, aren’t you just being helpful,” Duke said.

  “You’ve known me most of my life, Duke. I’m still me.”

  “What slaughtered your uncle wasn’t human, so the boy I helped coach is gone. He died in Africa when that leopard got him and what came home was a monster.”

  “That’s enough,” I said.

  “You don’t get to tell me what’s enough in my own jail.”

  “I think I just did.”

  “The two of you don’t have to like each other to work together,” Livingston said.

  “Oh, good,” I said. “For a minute there, I was worried that Duke and I would have to make nice.”

  “Blake,” Newman said, and the one word was sort of pleading.

  “If I have to call you Marshal, then you call me Sheriff.”

  “Duke,” Livingston said, not pleading, more warning.

  I sighed, took a deep breath, and let it out slow. “You’re right, Newman, Captain. We don’t have to like each other to be professional on the job.”

  “Fine,” Duke said. “Then let’s get this done, so you can go back home and we can dislike each other from a distance.”

  I nodded. “Works for me.”

  20

  WE KEPT KAITLIN safe by having Livingston stand over them with a shotgun aimed at Bobby’s head. The barrel of the gun was so close to Bobby that if Livingston had pulled the trigger, it would have pretty much decapitated him. It was one of the few absolutely surefire ways to kill a shapeshifter or a vampire, so it seemed even more important that Bobby stay in human form and not give Livingston an excuse to do it, which was why I was in the cell with them to metaphorically hold Bobby’s hand. I couldn’t really do it, because Kaitlin was taking evidence from more than just his feet, and holding his hand would have put me in the line of fire.

  Newman was standing outside the locked cell with Leduc. The sheriff had tried to get us to give up our weapons because it was procedure. He’d conceded that Livingston needed his to shoot the monster, but he tried to insist on me giving up mine just like the first time I got into the cell. Not only no, but fuck no.

  “Once someone’s pointed a gun at me, Duke, I don’t give up my weapons to them again.”

  “And I don’t let weapons just waltz into my holding cells for the prisoner to take.”

  “Duke,” Livingston said, “just let it go. If the prisoner so much as twitches wrong, I’ll kill him before he can grab for anyone’s weapons.”

  I could have added that if Bobby had started to change into a leopard, he wouldn’t have been going for our weapons. He’d have been too busy growing his own. But I didn’t say that out loud. They were spooked enough without me overexplaining.

  Deputy Wagner came to the bars on the wall that the two cells shared. “Do you really think that Bobby didn’t do it?”

  Newman answered, “We think it’s a possibility.”

  “You mean, I could have killed him, and he was innocent?” His voice rose with the edge of guilt and panic that it had had earlier when he was hysterical in front of the cells.

  I flicked my gaze to him. His hands were wrapped so hard around the bars, they were white. His face looked anguished. God, he was emotional.

  “You didn’t kill Bobby,” I said. “You didn’t even shoot him.”

  “But I tried.”

  “It’s okay, Troy,” Bobby said, and his head moved as if to look back at the other cell.

  “Don’t move that much,” Livingston said, and his words were almost a growl, which meant he had a lot more testosterone floating through his body than the outward calm, cool, professional demeanor showed.

  “You don’t have to see Wagner to talk to him,” I said.

  “Right,” Bobby said, but his pulse had sped up against the side of his neck. He’d been playing it as cool and calm as Livingston had looked until that moment.

  “Duke, go calm your deputy down,” Livingston said, still in that low bass growl.

  “Troy, stop being an ass.”

  “Is his bedside manner always this awesome?” I asked quietly enough that it was mostly for the people in the cell with me.

  “He’s usually pretty nice,” Kaitlin said as she drew a small piece of thread or fiber from the palm of Bobby’s left hand. She’d already filled other plastic bags and containers with tiny crystals, or maybe they were rocks. I was a little fuzzy on the difference, just like thread and fiber. I mean, were all threads fiber the way that all poodles were dogs, but not all dogs were poodles, or were thread and fiber totally interchangeable?

  “You’re not catching Duke at his best,” Livingston growled, and his voice had an edge to it that made me glance up at him. His eyes stayed focused on where the shotgun was pointed, which I appreciated, but if I hadn’t been afraid that I’d set Bobby’s beast off, I might have reached some energy into the big state cop. Was his voice going lower because of the tenseness of the moment, or was it something more?

  I couldn’t sense any animal energy off him, or off Bobby, for that matter. If your control was good enough, you could pass for pure human even to someone who had their own beast. That level of control was rare, but I’d met a few people who could do it. The only thing I couldn’t figure out was how Livingston could have passed the blood work that was mandatory after you survived an attack on the job. Blood work didn’t care how good your control was, or maybe I was just looking for monsters where there weren’t any . . .

  Bobby had dropped the blanket so that Kaitlin could get whole-body pictures. It meant that he had to stand up, which made us all have to readjust our positions. Livingston had the shotgun barrel pressed against the bottom of Bobby’s skull, but at an upward angle so that he’d miss me. If he had to pull the trigger now, he’d paint Bobby’s brains on the ceiling instead of on the wall. I stepped back while Kaitlin took her own pictures of the visual evidence on Bobby, but Livingston stayed put so that he was probably in at least some of the images. It would have been interesting if they’d had to be presented in court. I hoped they did get used in court, because that would mean Newman hadn’t had to execute Bobby and that we’d found someone else to put on trial for the murder.

  Bobby had been a good sport about Kaitlin looking for trace evidence in the dried blood on most of his body. He even managed not to get overly embarrassed when she knelt in front of him so that her head was placed in front of the bloody mess of his groin. Then she found something in the blood there that she wanted to pluck and put into a plastic Baggie. I don’t know if it was the tweezers coming toward his junk, or if he still didn’t know why there was so much gore caked on him there, but whatever the reason, he tried to back up, which made Livingston dig the gun into his head. Bobby pressed back against Livingston and his gun barrel as if he didn’t feel it.

  “Stop moving,” Livingston said in that low, gravelly voice.

  Bobby kept trying to back away from Kaitlin and her tweezers. I felt his energy spike with the fear that I could see on his face. It wasn’t his beast yet—his eyes were still human—but the energy prickled along my skin, raising goose bumps.

  “I will shoot you!” Livingston growled, and he had to change angles again to keep me out of harm’s way.

  I appreciated his attempt, but Bobby was a
cting as if the threat was the woman in front of him, not the man behind him with the shotgun. This was going to get out of hand, and Newman was right there outside the bars, so it would even be a legal kill.

  “Bobby,” I said. “Bobby, look at me.”

  I watched yellow pour through his irises like golden water drowning the human blue. His leopard eyes stayed wide and focused on Kaitlin.

  “His eyes are gold,” Kaitlin said, voice low.

  “Do something, Blake, or I will have to shoot him,” Livingston said.

  He was talking through gritted teeth as he tried to hold his ground with the gun changing its aimpoint as Bobby pushed backward. The hair on Livingston’s arms was standing to attention. He was reacting to the energy rush; most people didn’t. Bobby’s hands were in the cuffs Newman had supplied, but I wasn’t honestly sure what would happen if he started to shift. Would the cuffs stay on, or would the sliding bones and ligaments help him slip the only restraint he had? I’d never actually seen those cuffs used on anyone during the change. I promised myself that when I got home I’d remedy that. Nathaniel would probably enjoy helping me test the equipment.

  I waved Kaitlin back, and she scooted back behind me slowly, like she didn’t want any sudden movements to spook him. I gave her brownie points for not just scrambling away or running for the door and yelling for them to open it and let her out.

  I yelled, “Bobby!” He finally looked at me, golden eyes so wide, you could see white all the way around them, like the eyes of a horse that was about to bolt. The irises had changed color, but the structure was still human, though you had to be this close to realize that. To everyone else, his eyes were leopard eyes. They’d sign statements to that effect, and they’d all believe it.

  “How could I do that to Uncle Ray?” Bobby whispered so low that I think only Livingston and I could hear him.

  “We aren’t sure you did anything to your uncle,” I said, “but to prove that, we need to collect evidence. We need you to let us do our jobs, okay?”

  “It’s a hair—a hair caught in all that blood. It’s not my hair.”