at ease in the military. His gray hair was cut high and tight. I’d have said Marines, but it felt more like Army. Marines fucked about a little less and were less likely to rise as high in rank as Army, due to a certain cussedness that seemed to go with being a nonpracticing Marine. You had Marines who rose to high rank, and you had ex-Army who were as stubborn as a Marine, but it was usually the other way around.
‘Sir,’ Hatfield said, ‘I knew about the rotting vampires in Atlanta. I read the same information that Blake and Forrester did, but I failed to make the logic leap that these vampires might need fire just like the ones in Atlanta did. I’d never seen anything like them, and I thought … heads blown up, spines damaged, hearts … I could see through their chests, sir. I thought that was dead enough; I was wrong.’
Hatfield’s willingness to fall on the grenade for what had happened made me like her better, and it was even true. She should have erred on the side of caution, and she hadn’t, and people were dead because of it, but … she was letting the guilt tear her up.
‘They were missing civilians, Marshal Hatfield. We owed it to their families to identify them before the bodies were burned,’ Chapman said.
‘Are you saying it’s become acceptable practice to not burn vampires once we’ve taken their heads and hearts?’ I asked.
‘Outside of special circumstances, it has worked very well. We’ve closed missing-person cases that were decades old.’
Huh. ‘I honestly hadn’t thought about that, sir, that some of the vampires that go bad would be filed missing persons from decades and probably cities away.’
‘It’s given closure to families who had given up on ever hearing news.’
‘But you need an intact head for dental records, so only decapitations, not blowing the face away with an AR or shotgun, right?’ Edward asked. His voice was a little less hostile, but not much.
Chapman nodded. ‘Exactly; many people don’t have their fingerprints on file.’
‘If you’re looking at people missing for decades, then dental records don’t always help either,’ Edward said. ‘It’s routine that when a dentist retires, old patient records aren’t kept track of if the patient isn’t being referred to another dentist.’
‘That is true.’
‘How are you identifying the dead vampires then?’ I asked.
‘DNA of surviving family members, female in particular.’
‘Because the maternal line carries the most direct DNA,’ I said.
He nodded. ‘Yes, most people don’t know that.’
‘In my misspent youth I got a BS in biology,’ I said.
‘I read that in your file. There’s been some discussion that your science background is part of what makes you so effective at this job; do you believe that’s true?’
I thought about it, then nodded. ‘I actually took preternatural biology classes and classes on myth and folklore beasts and beings that exist in the real world, so yeah, it gave me a jump on knowing what I was supposed to be up against.’
‘You had no police background, no military, nothing but the biology, and yet new marshals who have come straight from the classroom to the Preternatural Branch aren’t doing as well as you did at the beginning of your career.’
‘I was trained in raising the dead and hunting vampires by a fellow animator, and by Marshal Forrester here when he was a bounty hunter specializing in monsters.’
‘The animator you’re referring to is Manuel Rodriguez.’
I nodded.
‘He has no background in police or military either.’
‘No, sir, he was an old-fashioned vampire hunter. What we call a stake-and-hammer man.’
‘That’s still standard for morgue executions,’ Chapman said.
‘Yeah,’ I said, and couldn’t quite keep my disdain for it out of that one word.
‘You disapprove, Marshal?’
‘You try putting a stake in someone’s heart while they’re chained to a gurney and begging you not to kill them, then come tell me how much you liked it.’
‘It’s supposed to be done during daylight when the vampires are comatose.’
‘Yeah, it is, but when I was new to this business I let people bully me into executing as soon as possible; sometimes that meant the vampire was awake. A few executions like that, sir, and I lost my taste for it.’
He nodded again, rocking on the balls of his feet, hands behind his back. I think it was a nervous gesture. Hmm … why was he nervous? ‘I can certainly understand that, Marshal Blake.’
‘Good to know,’ I said, and studied his careful eyes and face. Either there was more and worse to