AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“On what?”
I sighed and holstered my gun. I couldn’t stand there forever with it bare in my hand. This wasn’t a matter of guns now, nothing as concrete as that. “How much control the individual Therianthrope has on his inner beast. How close it is to the full moon.”
“I was told Bobby had perfect control of his animal side, but after what he did to Ray and what just happened in the cell, I don’t think his control is perfect.”
“Perfection is a pretty high bar, Sheriff,” I said.
“When you turn into a man-eating beast once a month, I think perfection is the minimum I’d want.”
I couldn’t win this argument, if it was an argument. Whatever it was, I stopped putting energy or words into it. I was done with trying to convince Leduc that lycanthropes weren’t monsters. A lot of people believe that supernatural citizens are people just like the rest of us until they see what preternatural strength and power can do to a natural citizen. Then suddenly they want to change their votes. I couldn’t even blame them. I’d spent years thinking that the vampires I executed were soulless monsters, so it was okay to kill them. I was saving the lives of their future victims. It had all seemed so morally black-and-white until I’d met enough humans who were as evil and murderous as any vampire. Then I began to question my morality. It’s a slippery slope once you start that kind of soul-searching. The kind that can lead you to fall in love and be about to marry one of the soulless undead. My grandmother Blake had informed me over the phone that I was damned if I married Jean-Claude, damned for all eternity. So many reasons I didn’t visit home much.
“If Bobby is guilty, then he’ll die for his crime,” I said, “but I’m not convinced he is guilty.”
“I told you, Blake, he is the only wereanimal we have in this area. It has to be him because it can’t be anybody else.”
“Did you check the body for signs of abuse?” I asked.
“It was abused all to hell.”
“She means sexual abuse,” Newman said.
Leduc looked at us both as if we’d said something so outrageous, he just couldn’t believe his ears. “What the hell are you talking about, Win?”
“The blood on Bobby’s groin . . .”
Leduc took a few steps away from us, then circled back like he was pacing in one of his own cells. “W
hat the fuck, Win? Isn’t it bad enough that Ray is dead and Bobby did it? I will not add to the scandal and pain for his family by even hinting about that kind of shit.”
“Sheriff,” I said, “the blood evidence on Bobby Marchand is all wrong. It’s not in the right places even if he’s guilty.”
“That’s your opinion, Marshal.”
“It’s an opinion backed up by a decade of working cases involving the supernatural.”
“Anita has been called as an expert witness multiple times, Duke. It’s one of the reasons I wanted her help.”
“Fine, she’s an expert on the supernatural. That doesn’t give her the right to tell me we need to check Ray’s body for sexual assault. That’s just crazy talk. I believe that Bobby killed his uncle in some sort of animal rage, but I do not believe that he would . . . do that to the only father he’s ever known.”
I wanted to ask if there had ever been a hint, even the faintest whiff of talk, about the possibility that Ray Marchand had been abusing his nephew. I wanted to ask, but I didn’t, not yet. I stuck to known facts. “Then how did the blood get all over Bobby Marchand’s groin?”
“I don’t know!” Leduc yelled, his voice raw with pain.
“We could have Dale look at the body,” Newman suggested.
“Who’s Dale?” I asked.
“Local coroner,” he answered.
“I will not call Dale and ask him to look for signs of sexual assault on Ray’s body,” Leduc said. “I won’t do it. We already have Bobby for the murder. We don’t need anything else.”
“We don’t need it to get a warrant of execution and kill Bobby—that’s true. But if the coroner checks for sexual abuse and doesn’t find it, then the blood all over Bobby’s groin has no reason to be there, just like most of the blood evidence on his body. It might give us enough to get a stay of execution,” I said.
“He did it,” Leduc said, and he was fumbling in his pocket for cigarettes even while he growled at me.
“But what if he didn’t?” Newman said. “What if Bobby is innocent and we don’t figure that out until after I kill him for the crime? I couldn’t live with myself if I let that happen.”
“Then give the warrant to Blake.”
