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“Elegant as always,” Newman said. He was smiling when I glanced at him.
“I’m glad you’re enjoying the stuffed toys,” Leduc said, “but could you look at the blood and actual crime scene?”
He seemed offended that I’d ignored the signs of new death to goggle at the old. But I’d seen more wereanimal attacks than I could count now. I’d never seen this many taxidermied animals outside of a natural history museum. I mean, who has a stuffed adult African elephant in their house? It was u-fucking-nique.
But I dutifully moved toward him in the plastic booties that we were all wearing so we wouldn’t contaminate the crime scene. If it had been a normal warrant of execution, we might not even have bothered, because what did it matter if we contaminated everything if we were just going to shoot someone and leave?
The blood was beside a huge wooden desk that dominated the center of the room. The desk was obviously an antique. It had that rich, much-loved patina to it that only time and care will give to wood, like the banister on this side of the house. The wooden printer stands were nice but modern. The wooden file cabinets were a mix of old and new. They formed a half wall behind the big leather office chair. It was a complete office in the middle of the room; its “floor” was differentiated by a large square Persian or Oriental, or whatever the politically correct term is for it now. The carpet looked as old as the desk and as well-made, but they’d never get all the blood out of it.
There’s more blood in an adult human being than any forensic show will ever be able to put on TV or in a movie. You’ll have some horror films that go overboard and cover everything in gore, but no fiction hits that middle ground of truth. No episode of CSI has ever shown the viewer how much blood there would actually be. No visual can give you its raw-meat smell—it smells close to raw hamburger to me—but if I ever had any doubts that our bodies are just so much meat, violent murder scenes take any illusion away.
The top of the desk was completely clear because everything that had been on it was on the floor, as if the struggle had knocked it all off. A stapler, a desk lamp, and a real, honest-to-God corded telephone landline were in among the smaller office supplies and the blood. The office chair was set so that the victim would have been facing the door when he was sitting at his desk. He might have turned his back to check the file cabinets, but other than that, he had to have seen anyone coming into the room.
I moved carefully around the debris on the floor. The only thing that seemed to be damaged was the desk lamp. It was shattered as if someone had picked it up and slammed it against the floor or something else. Had our victim tried to defend himself with it? Except it was on top of the blood. All the things that looked like they’d come off the desk were on the blood, not under it. I knelt down, perching on the balls of my feet so I had less chance of stepping in or on evidence as I peered at the lamp.
“There’s blood on the lamp,” I said.
“There’s blood on everything,” Duke said.
“No,” I said, standing back up, “there isn’t. There should be blood all over the things that got knocked off the desk, but they’re all on top of the blood, like they fell to the floor after he was dead or at least after he was on the floor.”
“So what?” Duke said.
“So, if the things were knocked off the desk during a struggle, some of them should have blood on them,” I said.
“You are so busy trying to make this into something it’s not that you don’t see what’s in front of your face,” Duke said.
I faced him. His brown eyes looked almost black in the dim light. “Or maybe it’s you that’s trying to make it something it’s not. We’re trying to save a life. What’s your motivation?”
“What are you trying to say, Marshal??
??
“I’m just asking why you are so set on this being a wereanimal kill.”
“Because that’s what it is, Blake. It’s you and Newman who are complicating things, not me.”
“Not every case is simple,” I said.
“Do you complicate the rest of your life as much as you do your professional one?”
I almost answered an automatic no, then realized it wasn’t true. “The older I get, the more I realize that most people’s personal lives are complicated, but professionally my job is usually dead simple, Sheriff. I hunt down murderers, and I kill them.”
He made a harsh sound that was almost a laugh. “The older you get, Blake? You haven’t hit thirty yet. You don’t even know what older means yet.”
“I’m thirty-two. Does being over thirty automatically gain me more respect?”
“Yeah, it does,” he said.
“Why? I understand that you gain experience as you get older, but growing wiser and better at being a human being isn’t automatic with age.”
“Is that a jab at me?” he asked, trying to hook his thumbs in his belt and failing because of his weight. It made me debate again how rapid the weight gain had been if he was still trying to use his body like it was far smaller. Had he eaten the stress of his daughter’s illness, and this was the result?
“No, but you’ve been in uniform long enough to have met losers and idiots of every decade. Older doesn’t mean wiser for some people. Hell, some people live hundreds of years, and they’re still idiots.”
“Vampires don’t count, Blake. They aren’t people.”
“Is that a jab at me because I’m about to marry one of them?”
