Sucker Punch

by Laurell K. Hamilton

  Newman noticed them, too. “I didn’t see them behind us until now.”

  “Like we said, they’re good.”

  He just nodded, and we turned to start the hike toward the house. Olaf and Edward went past us, then stopped in the middle of the street and waited for us to catch up to them.

  Olaf rolled down his window since we were on the driver’s side. “Should we just park here?”

  “There’s no parking left farther up,” I said.

  He closed his window and backed up without another word, tucking his SUV behind Newman’s. We waited beside one of the few unmarked tan cars in the line of blue. Unmarked wasn’t exactly accurate since the passenger-side door was marked with the Michigan State Police insignia. At least it wasn’t their trademark blue and was missing the big red light on top and the shark fin with its bold STOP on it. I wondered if all their “unmarked” cars were tan. I hoped not. Working in unmarked vehicles would have been hard enough with a big badge on one door; all the cars being the same color would have made the job harder.

  Edward fell in beside me on the other side of Newman as we started walking back up the street toward the house we were supposed to be searching. Olaf was on the other side of Edward, but there was a flare of power from him like an invisible swat from his lion. It made me stumble a little.

  “You okay?” Edward asked.

  I nodded. “I just need a word with Otto, that’s all. You and Newman go ahead of us.”

  I hoped that let him know that whatever I needed to say wasn’t Newman-safe and he should please distract our newbie. Edward gave a slight nod and continued up the street, talking in his best Ted voice to Newman. I couldn’t understand the words, but I knew the rhythm of his Ted patter.

  “I did not mean for that to happen,” Olaf said as soon as we had privacy.

  “Why did it happen? Your control is admirable.”

  “It is, and I have no excuse for losing that much control.”

  “Then what happened, Olaf?” I asked, and stopped walking so that I could give him better eye contact. Yes, we were both wearing sunglasses, so that eye contact was more figurative than real, but at least I could look at him rather than at the ground or the surroundings.

  “I wanted to be next to you, but it seemed . . . unprofessional to force Newman to move.”

  I blinked at Olaf, happy that he couldn’t see my eyes. “You must have felt very strongly about it for you to lose control like that.”

  “You make me weak, Anita.”

  “I don’t make you anything, Olaf . . . Otto. Your feelings for me may make you feel weak, but I don’t control your feelings. That’s on you.”

  “You are right, of course, but it is so much easier to blame the object of your desire for the desire rather than owning that it is all in your own head and heart. If I desired only your body, I would have taken it by now.” He held up a hand, because my reaction to the comment must have shown on my face. “I would have tried, and you and Edward would have tried to stop me. I know. What I meant to say is that if all I wanted was sex and power over you, it would be easier from my perspective, but I want you to like me, to want me. For the first time I am at the mercy of a woman in the way that I have disdained in other men. What made me lose control of my beast for that second was that you did not look at me at all. You looked at Ed . . . Ted, but you did not see me as I saw you. In that moment I wanted to hurt you rather than feel like that.”

  I didn’t know what to say. It was one of the most honest things that any man had ever said to me, and that it was coming from Olaf just threw me. I finally went for the truth. “You keep surprising me with your honesty, Otto. I mean, seriously, I appreciate it. “

  “But,” he said.

  The fact that he knew there was a but coming meant he really was learning. I’d dated men in the past who, if they’d put this much effort into the relationship, might still be with me. Of course, they weren’t serial killers. That did weigh heavily in the con column for Olaf.

  “But telling me you want to hurt me, because I looked longer at Ted than you . . . What am I supposed to say to that? I’ve known Ted years longer than you. You and I aren’t even dating yet, and you’re already jealous?”

  Olaf started to get angry. It rolled off him like sweet, musky perfume, and just like that, he smelled like food. “I am not jealous over any woman.” His voice was growling, deep with rage.

  Apparently accusing him of being jealous over me had been the wrong thing to do. I should have been afraid; instead my stomach roiled. I’d just had a meal, but I was hungry again, just not for burgers and fries.

  I leaned in to him and spoke low. “Your anger smells like food to me.”

  His anger ramped up to rage. It made me want to lean even closer. It made me want to touch him, to lean my lips in and press them against his skin and drink him down. I almost put my face against his arm. I think if he hadn’t been wearing the marshal’s windbreaker, I’d have been rubbing against him like a cat scent-marking. I froze midmotion.

  He stared down at me, the anger starting to fold away. I didn’t know many people who could go from that level of rage to cold and calm that quickly. It spoke of years of practice. He reached toward me as if he was going to put his arm around me. I moved away, but his arm kept coming like the hug was still going to happen. I stepped back farther, out of reach unless he was willing to grab me.

  I watched, or maybe felt, him think about doing exactly that. “How are we ever going to do this without one of us getting hurt?”

  He seemed to take the question seriously, as he seemed to take almost everything I said seriously. Under other circumstances, a man who paid that much attention to what I thought and said would have been great, but it was Olaf, so instead it was intimidating and a little scary—okay, a lot scary.

  “I do not know,” he said.

  Edward’s voice in full Ted mode called out, “What’s up, pardners?”

  We turned and looked at him. He was standing far enough away that if Olaf had grabbed me, he could have gone for a gun if I wrestled Olaf for a few seconds.

  Edward came a little closer and said, “The other cops are starting to watch. Decide what you want them to see.”

  “We don’t have time to discuss this here and now, Otto,” I said.

  “No,” he said, but he was still angry and uncomfortable. That was different. He was usually very certain of things, maybe too certain, but there was an unease about him I’d never seen before.

  “Newman is waiting for us up ahead. We walk down the street now, and you’re on the other side of me just like you wanted. Problem solved for now.”

  He frowned at me and then said, “I do not like caring about such petty things.”

  “No one does,” I said.

  “What petty things are we caring about?” Edward asked.

  I looked at the bigger man. “Are you okay with me explaining to him?”

  I think I surprised Olaf. “You would keep secrets from him for me?”

  “Not big ones, but I’ll give you this one.”

  “I wanted to walk on the other side of Anita but was unsure how to move Newman without social repercussions.” Olaf’s voice was empty of emotion as he said it, almost matter-of-fact. Again, he surprised me by being willing to be so honest. I knew a lot of people with a full set of working emotions who would never have been that straightforward.

  Edward raised his eyebrows behind his sunglasses, then gave his best Ted smile. “Well, now, I appreciate you sharing that, pardner, and I’ll help out in the future when I can.”

  I looked at Edward then, and wondered exactly what kind of help he had in mind, but I let it go, because Olaf liked the answer.

  “Thank you,” the big guy said.

  “Oh, don’t thank me yet, pardner, but let’s go up to the house and help look for clues.”


  Edward came to stand on one side of me and started walking. I moved with him, and Olaf fell into step beside me so we walked down the street three abreast like some old-time Western movie. Newman fell in on the other side of Edward as we continued up the street. The four of us walked down the middle of the street like we owned it. I had a flashback to all those old Westerns I used to watch with my dad in which the good guys walked up the street to meet the bad guys for that final showdown. I knew from reading real history that that wasn’t how gunfighting worked and the most successful lawmen of the Old West hid and shot at the bad guys from cover, but that wouldn’t have looked nearly as good on the screen.

  “Why are you smiling?” Olaf asked.

  I shared the thought with everyone.

  “I like it. Those old movies are part of why I wanted to be a cop when I was a little boy,” Newman said.

  “Except in the movies we’d be walking up for the final showdown now,” Edward said.

  “And in real police work, we don’t even know who the bad guys are yet,” Newman said, and he wasn’t smiling now.

  “If we find the murder weapon here today, we’ll have our murderers,” Edward said.

  “But there’s no triumphant march to justice if it’s Todd and Muriel,” Newman said.

  “It’s not about triumph, Newman. It’s about saving the innocent and punishing the wicked,” Edward said.

  “That sounds biblical,” Newman said.

  “Well, you do have three out of the Four Horsemen,” I said.

  “Are you saying that your vengeance comes in biblical proportions?” Newman asked, and he almost laughed.

  “It can be,” Olaf said.

  Edward and I just nodded. Newman stopped laughing and glanced at the three of us as if trying to decide if we were teasing him.

  68

  AN HOUR LATER I was standing in the middle of what had started the day as a master bedroom, but now looked like a fabric-and-homes-good store after a big sale. The pillows, comforter, sheets, et cetera were piled knee-deep, as if I had to wade through white-and-tan-flowered snow. I could glimpse the walk-in closet past the bedclothes. It looked like everything had been dumped on the floor. I wondered if the officers who had searched the closet understood that the clothes were probably the most expensive things in the house. Muriel was one of those people who wore or drove her money so people could see it. The house and the furnishings were nice in that modern way, but not as nice as the clothes she wore, the Porsche SUV, and the Jaguar parked in the three-car garage. I hadn’t even known that Porsche made an SUV. The Jaguar was a beautiful, sleek machine, but the SUV looked like all the other SUVs on the road, so paying Porsche prices seemed silly to me, but then I wasn’t a label whore. I wouldn’t automatically pay more because a designer or a high-end name was attached to a car or a piece of clothing. Some designers made great wearable art, but my day-to-day living didn’t really lend itself to wearing art. Jean-Claude despaired of my never truly appreciating the finer things in life. I’d told him that I appreciated him, and he was one of the finer things in life. He’d smiled and conceded the point to me.

  “Where is the damn thing?” Newman said from behind me.

  Edward had said the four of us should split up into pairs and he’d taken Olaf with him. Fine with me. I’d had enough of the big guy for a while.

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “I’m sorry. I know you don’t, but if we can’t find it, then . . .” He let his voice trail off.

  I finished for him. “Then we can’t get more time on the warrant.”

  “Yeah, I thought signing the warrant over to you would make me feel better, but it didn’t. I don’t want anyone to kill Bobby if he’s innocent, and I know that you don’t want to kill him either. I just feel guilty that I’ve put it on your shoulders instead of mine.”

  “You’re a good man, Newman.”

  He shook his head. “No, I’m really not, or not as good as I want to be.”

  “I think that’s true of all of us,” I said.

  He shook his head again. “You know as well as I do that not everyone wants to be good.”

  “Most people want to feel like the good guy or at least feel justified. I’m sure you’ve seen it: the thugs that blame the victim for fighting back, for wearing a short skirt, for having such nice stuff to steal. You know the drill.”

  He made a small sound that might have been a laugh but was way too bitter for the description. “I had a carjacker that shot a banker and his wife so he could steal their Rolls-Royce. They were on their way to a charity event when they got lost. The perp’s defense was ‘What was he doing driving such a nice car in a neighborhood like this? He shoulda known someone would jack his ass.’”

  I said, “Like it never occurred to him that maybe he shouldn’t be stealing people’s cars at gunpoint.”

  “He said he wouldn’t have shot them, but the man wouldn’t open the door when he pointed the gun at the window. He seemed so offended that the rich dude had tried to drive off instead of just giving him the car. Said he wouldn’t have shot either of them if they’d just given up the car.”

  “Like I said, even the bad guys want to be able to feel like they aren’t the bad guys.”

  “You’re right about criminals, but I like to think that the rest of us try to be better than that,” he said, staring down at the mess on the floor.

  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.