Sucker Punch

by Laurell K. Hamilton

  Hazel brought our coffee and my Coke. “I’ll be back to fill those waters up, and with the juice,” she said before she left again.

  I so wanted to start questioning her, but this was Newman’s warrant and everyone else besides Olaf was local. They knew Hazel. I didn’t. I’d let them play it for now.

  The coffee was fresh and hot and surprisingly good for a mass-produced cup. I did add sugar and cream, so it wasn’t great coffee, but I didn’t add much, so it wasn’t bad either. Olaf put in way more sugar than I did, so his cup would have been too sweet for me. He didn’t take cream. I guessed we could be snobby about each other’s coffee habits later.

  “But it was Forrester who taught you how to fight empty hand?” Livingston asked.

  “I had some martial arts when we met, but he started me on more real-world training that worked outside of a judo mat or a martial arts tournament.”

  “I thought he was out of New Mexico,” Livingston said.

  “He is.”

  “And you’re in St. Louis, Missouri.”

  “I am.”

  “Hard to train long-distance.”

  “I have people I train with at home.”

  “How often do you train?” Kaitlin asked.

  “At least three times a week in hand-to-hand and blade.”

  “Really that often?” Newman asked.

  “Yeah. How often do you train?”

  “I go to the range two, three times a month.”

  “Any martial arts?” I asked.

  “I go to the gym three times a week.”

  “Weights?” I asked.

  “Interval training with weights and cardio.”

  “That’s more than you were doing when I first met you, isn’t it?” I asked.

  “Yeah. How did you know?”

  “You’ve put on muscle.”

  “Thanks for noticing.”

  “Is that all you do?” Olaf asked.

  “Yeah. What do you do?” Newman asked.

  “More,” Olaf said.

  “Blake only trains three days a week. Why are you giving me attitude and not her?”

  “She trains in close-quarters combat three times a week, but that is not all she does.”

  Newman looked at me and raised an eyebrow.

  “Three days a week for weights, sometimes with cardio between sets, sometimes straight weights,” I said. “I run at least twice a week, three if I have time. I do gun training of some kind at least twice a month, and I try for every week.”

  “So you’re in the gym or training every day of the week?” Newman asked.

  “I try to take one day off a week.”

  “How can you keep that up?”

  “How can you be happy with three days a week of cardio and weights? Seriously, Newman, what kind of workout are they using in training now?”

  “What were they using when they grandfathered both of you in?” he asked.

  Olaf and I looked at each other. “They needed to keep as many of us as possible until they could get you newbies trained and in the field, so the physical requirements were the regular ones for the Marshals Service.”

  “Same for me,” Newman said.

  “They were talking about doing a physical-training program that would help prepare new recruits for the job. Are you telling me that they didn’t do that?” I asked.

  “Once we become marshals, as long as we keep meeting physical requirements, there’s no forced PT.”

  “That’s typical of most law enforcement,” Livingston said.

  “They don’t force us to train,” Olaf said.

  “Well, no, but”—I tried to think how to put it into words—“but if you don’t train and train hard, you won’t make it in this job.”

  “Do you mean you’ll fail when you get retested?” Kaitlin asked.

  “No, I mean if you can’t run, fight, just have the stamina to make it through a hunt, you’ll get hurt or worse.”

  “It’s not just that, Anita,” Olaf said. “The new executioners lack mentorship. They have only classroom experience with the monsters and no one to show them how to stay alive in the field.”

  “They are sending the newest marshals out with older marshals now,” Newman said.

  “They haven’t asked me to babysit anyone, so who are they asking?” I said.

  “They contacted me,” Newman said.

  “You’ve been doing this barely two years.”

  “I know. That’s why I told them that I didn’t feel I had the experience to help anyone newer than myself. I told them that I’d found you, Forrester, Jeffries, and Spotted-Horse to be the most help to me. They didn’t like me crediting working with all of you as a reason I was better than most of the marshals that joined at the same time I did.”

  “Why don’t they send out the Four Horsemen with the new recruits?” Livingston asked.

  “They do not trust us,” Olaf said.

  I nodded and said, “Yeah, what he said.”

  “Don’t trust you how?” Kaitlin asked.

  “They think we will corrupt the recruits,” Olaf said.

  I glanced up at him. “Not the word I’d have chosen, but yeah, that’s sort of it. They think we’ll train the new marshals to be as independent and lone wolf as we are.”

  “Will you?” Livingston asked.

  “Probably. Almost all of us that were grandfathered in were freelance operatives that were only marginally with the police. I was a consultant with the police, but a lot of the other marshals were bounty hunters before they got badges. Those of us that passed fitness training and the firearms test were grandfathered in, but that didn’t make us police officers. We don’t have the training, and most of us don’t even have a police background.”

  “What background do you have?”

  “Military,” Olaf said.

  “Magic,” I said, “or technically psychic gifts that made us good with the undead or shapeshifters or both.”

  “So none of the people grandfathered in was a cop first?” Livingston asked.

  “Not to my knowledge.”

  “No,” Olaf said.

  “Surely some police were hunting vampires before the laws changed and made them legal citizens,” Livingston said.

  “They were some of the first, actually,” I said.

  “So why weren’t they grandfathered in?” Kaitlin asked.

  “One, cops weren’t allowed to be bounty hunters. Two, they were dead.”

  “So you’re saying that you’re better at this job than regular police,” Livingston said.

  “Yes,” Olaf and I said together.

  “That’s just insulting all your brothers and sisters in blue,” Livingston said.

  “I’m not insulting them. I’m stating that police are trained to save lives. Most officers can do their twenty years without ever having to shoot anyone. I know every shooting makes the news now, but if you do the math between how many police are in this country and how many people die by gun violence, it’s mostly civilian-on-civilian crime. Police are trained to keep the peace. You need to think very differently to do our job.”

  “You were a cop before you became a marshal, right, Newman?” Livingston asked.

  “Yes.”

  “You’re good at the job.”

  Newman shook his head. “My first hunt in the field was with the Four Horsemen. I got to see how the job is supposed to be done, not what our bosses want the job to be.”

  “What do they want it to be?” Livingston asked.

  “They want cops that kill on command like the dog half of a canine team attacks, but the rest of the time, we’re supposed to be good dogs, man’s best friend, until they tell us to kill again.” His face as he talked got more and more unhappy.

  “Wow,” Kaitlin sai
d, “that’s grim.”

  “It feels grim,” Newman said.

  “But you’re not dogs. You’re police officers,” Livingston said.

  “And that’s the problem, sir. Part of the time, they want most of us to be regular marshals, but then they push the button, and we’re supposed to become something else—something that I don’t understand how to be. And the fighting you saw Blake do in the cell, that’s her training with Forrester and Jeffries and others like them. No one is teaching that to the rest of us.”

  “You’re saying that you need to be more like SWAT than regular police,” Livingston said.

  Newman shook his head. “No, sir. SWAT is still about saving lives, containing the violence, but that’s not what the preternatural branch does.”

  “Preternatural branch goes out with SWAT to serve warrants on known preternatural citizens,” Livingston said.

  “Only after the marshal goes through extra training closer to our Special Operations Group, SOG. Once you pass that, you can be picked to accompany local SWAT on regular police warrants to known or suspected supernatural citizens.”

  “You sound like you’re quoting,” Livingston said.

  “I am.”

  “Have you gone out with SWAT?” Kaitlin asked.

  “No,” Newman said.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Yes,” Olaf said.

  “Sounds like a good idea to send the supernatural experts out with SWAT on warrants like that,” Livingston said.

  “It is. It’s a great idea,” said Newman, “except we’re supposed to be protecting SWAT in case the supernatural citizen goes completely rogue and tries to kill them, but most of the newer marshals are greener than me. They think like cops, and that’s not what a SWAT unit needs if the monster tries to eat them.”

  “What do they need from the marshals?” Livingston asked.

  “They need them to kill the monster, not contain it, not handcuff it, not put it in a cage or into the back of a cruiser. This job isn’t police work at all. It’s closer to special operations units like SEALs or Delta Force. Or maybe it isn’t even that. Maybe we’re just assassins with badges, like Blake says, but whatever we are, it’s not police. When they nicknamed Blake War, they were being honest about what the preternatural branch does. It’s war. It’s deep, dark, behind-enemy-lines shit that our government is allowing us to do right here on American soil. But you have to want to be a SEAL, and you have to know what one is and what one does. Same for any of the other special operations units. You don’t end up on one of them by accident. They don’t recruit you for regular service and then throw you out into the dark with Delta Force and expect you to be okay.” When Newman finished talking he was not looking at any of us but staring off into space, and whatever he was seeing inside his head wasn’t anything good.

  I looked at the side of Newman’s face. I wanted to touch his arm, to let him know he was all right, but it would have been a lie. I caught Livingston looking at him, too. Our eyes met for a second, and I think we both thought the same thing: Newman needed a new job.

  “Newman, Win, you can go back to being regular police or transfer to the other side of the Marshals Service,” I said.

  “You said ‘back to’ like it’s a step backward, lesser.”

  I opened my mouth, closed it, and tried to think of something to say. “I’m an assassin with a badge, Newman. I couldn’t be a regular cop. I don’t have the temperament or training for it.”

  “And I don’t have what it takes to be an assassin with a badge,” he said, and looked at me. His eyes were shiny, and if it had been allowed, I’d have said he was nearly in tears. But I pretended I couldn’t see them, and he pretended they weren’t there. Even if the tears started, we’d all pretend we couldn’t see them unless Newman let us know it was okay to acknowledge them.

  He excused himself for the bathroom. Olaf and I would have moved, but Kaitlin started the scoot-out first, so we let Livingston and her clear the way for Newman. I watched him walk away until he turned a corner and was lost to sight.

  I don’t know what we would have said out loud, because the juice and the food all came at once. The bacon was perfectly crisp, like a hard look would make it fall apart, and Kaitlin was right. The pancakes were great. We all ate as if Newman hadn’t bared his soul moments before. One, we were all hungry and the food was that good. Two, how would it have changed anything to talk about it?

  When Newman came back to the table with his face damp but clear, he sat down to his food as if nothing had happened. That was our cue to do the same. We talked about the food and made harmless small talk until the food was gone and Hazel came back to the table to ask if there was anything else we needed. Why, yes, there was. Let’s talk murder.

  32

  HAZEL DIDN’T WANT to sit down with us. “I have tables to wait on.”

  “You know what Kaitlin and I do for a living, Hazel?” Livingston asked.

  “Yeah,” she said, and the one word was sullen, like a shadow of the rebellious teenager she might once have been.

  “Do you know Marshal Newman?” Livingston nodded toward Newman, and since they were sitting next to each other, it was a small gesture.

  “I know him.” Again her demeanor was sullen and instantly guarded. It didn’t mean that she knew a damn thing that we needed to know. A lot of people are just naturally suspicious of the police. Go figure.

  “This is Marshal Anita Blake and Marshal Otto Jeffries,” Livingston said, motioning down the table toward us.

  I said, “Hi, Hazel.” I was going to try to be the good cop, because Olaf sure as hell couldn’t do it.

  She mumbled, “Hi,” before she could stop herself. A lot of people will do automatic social cues if you give them a chance. She frowned harder, showing where some of the harsh lines around her mouth had come from. To get such deep lines, she must have frowned a lot more than she smiled.

  “We just want to ask you a few questions, Hazel,” Livingston said.

  “I don’t know anything,” she said. She hadn’t asked us what it was about, just gone straight to not knowing anything about it. Either she did know something, or she’d had a run-in with the police before.

  “I bet you know lots of things,” I said, smiling.

  Hazel frowned harder, looking at me. “I don’t know anything.”

  She put a lot of emphasis on don’t, and again there was that echo of sullenness that teenage girls seem to specialize in, as if a part of Hazel was stuck at about fifteen or sixteen. If you have something bad happen to you, sometimes you can get stuck at the age when it happened, and without therapy, you can stay stuck for the rest of your life. I was beginning to want to know more about Hazel’s childhood. If it wouldn’t help us figure out who done it, I’d leave it alone, but if we needed leverage to get her to talk to us, then I was pretty sure her past would give us a lever to move her or at least to try.

  “I bet you can figure out the math on a good tip faster than I can.”

  She frowned even harder so that the lines in her face looked almost painful, more like scars than lines, as if her unhappiness was a wound that showed on her face.

  “And I bet you know this menu backward, forward, and sideways.”

  She gave a half smile that softened the pain in her face. “I’ve worked here for over three years, so yeah.”

  “Please have a seat, Hazel. We just want to talk to you,” Livingston said.

  The smile vanished, and she was back to sullen and wary. “I have other tables, Dave. Sorry.” She actually started to walk away.

  “Hazel, we can talk here, or we can talk at the station. It’s up to you,” he said.

  She turned and looked at us all. The scorn on her face was epic. I wondered what she’d have been like if she was really mad at someone, and I realized we might find out. “Unless you’re arresting me, I don�
�t have to go with you or answer your questions.”

  “Do you know Bobby Marchand?” Newman asked.

  Hazel narrowed her scorn onto him. I would not want to date someone who had that look and attitude in them. “Of course I do.”

  “We’re trying to save his life.”

  “I thought you were one of the supernatural marshals.”

  “I am.”

  “Then isn’t it your job to kill him?”

  “I have a warrant for his execution.”

  “Then why do you want to talk to me about anything? It’s a done deal. Bobby killed his uncle, and now you have to kill him so he doesn’t attack anyone else.”

  “What if Bobby is innocent?”

  “The whole town knows he did it.” Hazel rolled her eyes at Newman, as if to ask how stupid he could get. Again, it was that echo of a teenage girl, because no one does scorn as well as they do.

  “If I kill him and find out later that he didn’t do it, then whoever had knowledge of the real murderer and didn’t speak up to save Bobby’s life could be charged with manslaughter or even third-degree murder.”

  I wasn’t sure that was strictly true, but watching Hazel with hesitation in her eyes, I just sat there and kept my doubts off my face. Newman might have found a way through all that scorn and bad attitude.

  “That’s not true.” But her eyes said plainly that she wasn’t a hundred percent sure of that.

  “Sit down and talk to us, Hazel, and we won’t have to find out,” Livingston said.

  She finally sat down on the edge of the seat near Kaitlin. She looked at all of us and then said, “You wanted to talk, so talk.” Most people chat and get themselves in trouble, but apparently, she was going to make us do the talking. I’d have bet money this wasn’t her first police rodeo.

  “Carmichael said that he slept over at your place the night of the murder,” Newman said.

  “Yeah, he did. Now, I have other customers waiting for their food.” She moved to the edge of the seat like she was going to stand up.

  “Don’t he and the Chevets usually check with one another to make sure that someone is at the house just in case?”