Affliction (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter) - Laurell K. Hamilton Page 0,48

think body, it; depersonalize. Background information got in the way of the pronoun it and made it more a her. Looking down at the body I didn’t want it to be a her. I needed it to be a thing. Sometimes I worried that I’d become like some legal serial killer with my victims just rogue vamps and shapeshifters, but moments like this made me understand that my empathy was way too good for me ever to be a serial killer. Most of them saw their victims as things like a lamp, or a chair, or a tree, no more real than that. It was what allowed them to do their crimes with so little remorse. You don’t feel bad about beating up a chair or breaking a lamp, right?

I stared down at the body and fought to keep in that Zen mind-set where it was all impersonal and I didn’t keep seeing Micah’s dad in the hospital bed, or think what this woman must have gone through before she died. I fought to keep all that in the back of my head, because in the front it would stop me from being helpful. I couldn’t function if my emotions were fucking me over. Yay, I wasn’t becoming some emotionless killing machine. Boo, I was staring down at a partially rotted corpse and all I could think was, What a horrible way to die.

‘Dazzle us, Blake,’ Detective Rickman said.

Did I mention I had an audience? Dr Rogers and the coroner, Dr Shelley, I’d sort of expected, but I also had Sergeant Gonzales; Rickman; his partner, Detective Conner; Commander Walter Burke; Deputy Al; and Deputy Gutterman. Al was apparently senior officer while Rush was hurt, but I wondered, if we had two of their officers, how many were left on their force to protect and serve while they stayed down here? It was a small-town sheriff’s department, it couldn’t be that big, but I didn’t question Al’s use of manpower. He was in charge and he knew his resources.

The audience had been part of what made Rickman not have a hissy fit about me looking at the bodies. Apparently, he was worried I’d mess up the victims or do suspicious magic. I’d run into officers like him before. Some were ultrareligious, so they thought I was evil, but others just had the same problem with me they had with all female cops, or with a federal cop of any kind butting into their case. I was a woman, a female cop, a godless user of magic, and a Fed – so many reasons for other cops to hate me. The fact that this many different flavors of police were cooperating was rare and good to see. I had a feeling it was Sheriff Rush Callahan’s good rep and work that made them all willing to band together. Normally police fought over jurisdiction like dogs over the last meaty bone. It was better than it had been years ago, but it was still a general rule that cops didn’t like to share, except when they wanted to pass the buck so that a messy or boring case was someone else’s problem. This case was messy, but it wasn’t boring, and one of their own was hurt, so it was personal, but more than that, solve a case like this and it could make your reputation. Fail at solving it and it could break you. I wasn’t big on failing or breaking.

Though with this many people in the room it was damn near claustrophobic. I felt like I had a wall looming up behind me that kept bending closer. It was actually Dr Shelley who finally turned around and said, ‘Gentlemen, you were allowed to observe, not to breathe down our necks. Now, everybody take two big steps back.’ She pushed her glasses back up on her nose with the back of her gloved hand and glared at them when they didn’t move. ‘This is my part of the crime, my domain; you’re here because I let you be here. If you don’t give us some room to work, then I’ll clear the room, is that understood? Now step the hell away from us.’

I liked her. The men exchanged glances as if waiting to see who would back up first. It was Gonzales who stepped back first, followed by Burke, then the deputies, and finally Rickman. Maybe it wasn’t just me he didn’t like, or maybe it was all women?

‘Thank you, gentlemen,’ she