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“Legally you are still bound to kill the person named on the warrant within seventy-two hours from the moment the warrant is live.”
“And the fact that legally my only option is to kill someone I now know is innocent just because he happens to be a wereanimal—sorry, Therianthrope—is why the supernatural-execution system needs more legal options.”
“You complicate things, Anita. The law is clear.”
“Marshal Jeffries, are you seriously telling us that you could go in there and kill Bobby Marchand knowing that he is innocent of this crime?” the lawyer asked.
“You know that rule in court that you don’t ask questions unless you know the answer will help your case?” I asked.
She nodded. “It’s not always possible, but yes.”
“Otto’s answer won’t help you.”
She looked at the big man. “Are you seriously telling me you would kill an innocent man?”
“I do my job to the letter of the law as written,” he said, and he gave me a look that even hidden behind sunglasses was chilling, or maybe that was just me, because Ms. Amanda Brooks didn’t seem to be afraid of him.
“The entire warrant system is just a due process and civil rights nightmare,” she said.
Edward and I agreed with her. Olaf just listened to us talk after that. I think he was still upset because he and I weren’t going to get to torture and kill anyone together this time.
“Go tell Bobby the good news,” Edward said in Ted’s thickest down-home-on-the-range accent. He even put a big smile with it.
“Oh, he heard you,” Angel said from the doorway, where she was still leaning seductively.
I’d have looked like I’d broken my hip if I’d stayed leaning that long; she made it seem just right. She wasted a smile on me and then turned it behind her toward the cells and Bobby.
I was smiling by the time I got to the doorway. Angel didn’t move, just turned that red-lipsticked smile back toward me. I expected her to move out of the way so I could get past, but she smiled at me with a glint in her eyes that almost dared me to comment. I ignored the challenge in her face and squeezed past her hip, rubbing my arm along the promising swell of it. If we hadn’t had a lawyer and other cops watching, I might have put more body English into it, or then again, I might not have. I could see Bobby in the cell beyond her, and he was my goal. He was standing at the bars smiling, and I was smiling back like an idiot.
“Am I really getting out of here today?” he asked.
I shook my head.
His smile faded. “I thought . . .”
“You are getting out, but we can’t let you out of your cell today. We’re thinking tomorrow.”
He wrapped his fingers around the bars. “You said you knew who killed Uncle Ray. Why aren’t they in here and I’m out there?”
“They’re in jail,” I said.
Edward poked his head in the doorway without having to push his way past Angel. “They’re human, so they’ll be processed like any other criminal.”
Deputy Troy Wagner, or maybe ex-deputy Troy by now, spoke from the other cell. “I haven’t been processed like normal, and I’m human.”
“Yeah, but you’re a jackass,” Leduc yelled from the other room.
“I’ve told Duke that I don’t want you punished for what you did, Troy,” Bobby said.
“I’d take it as a good sign that you haven’t been processed yet,” I said.
Troy looked at me, face uncertain. “Do you think I deserve to go to jail for what I tried to do to Bobby, Marshal Blake?”
I shrugged as much as the body armor would let me. “It’s not up to me. I’m strictly about the supernatural stuff, so you’ll have to ask the sheriff.”
Leduc yelled from the office again. “I’m still thinking about it.”
“If I get out tomorrow, then so should Troy,” Bobby said.
