He shook his head. "I attended Sergeant Storr's lectures at Quantico. The way he talked about you, I thought you'd be bigger." He smiled when he said it, halfway between friendly and condescending.
A lot of scathing comebacks came to mind, but never get in a pissing contest with the Feds. You'll lose. "Sorry to disappoint you."
"We've already talked with Officer Wallace. He makes you sound taller, too."
I shrugged. "Hard to make me sound shorter."
He smiled. "We'd like to speak with Detective Freemont in private, Ms. Blake. But don't go far; we'll want a statement from you and your associate, Mr. Kirkland."
"Sure."
"I took Ms. Blake's statement personally," Freemont said. "I don't think we need her any more tonight."
Bradford looked at her. "I think we'll be the judge of that."
"If Ms. Blake had called me in when there was only one body on the ground, there wouldn't be two dead policemen, and a dead civilian," Freemont said.
I just looked at her. Somebody's ass was going to be in a sling, and Freemont didn't want it to be hers. Fine.
"Don't forget the missing boy," I said. Everyone looked at me. "You want to start pointing fingers, fine; there's enough blame to go around. If you hadn't chased me off earlier, I might have called you in, but I did call the state police. If you'd told your superiors everything I told you, they'd have connected the two cases, and you'd have been here anyway."
"I had enough men with me to cover the house and the civilians," Freemont said. "Not including me cost lives."
I nodded. "Probably. But you'd have come down here and kicked me out again. You'd have taken St. John and his people out in the dark with five vampires, one of them ancient, when all you've seen is pictures of vampire kills. They'd have slaughtered you, but maybe, just maybe, Beth St. John would be alive. Maybe Jeff Quinlan would still be here."
I stared up at her, and watched the anger drain from her eyes. We looked at each other. "It took both of us to f**k this one up, Sergeant." I turned back to the two agents. "I'll wait outside."
"Wait," Bradford said. "Storr said that sometimes the legal vampire community will help on a case like this. Who do I talk to down here?"
"Why would they hunt down one of their own?" Agent Elwood asked.
"This kind of shit is bad for business. Especially right now with Senator Brewster's daughter getting killed. Vampires don't need any more bad publicity. Most of them like being legal. They like the fact that killing them is murder."
"So who do I talk to?" Bradford asked.
I sighed. "In this area, I don't know. I'm not a hometown girl."
"How do I go about finding out who to talk to?"
"I might be able to help you there."
"How?"
I shook my head. "I know someone who might know a name. I'm not trying to give you a hard time here, but a lot of the monsters don't like dealing with cops. It just hasn't been that long ago that the police shot them on sight."
"So you're saying the vampires will talk to you and not to us?" Elwood said.
"Something like that."
"That makes no sense. You're a vampire executioner. Your job is to kill them. Why would they believe you and not us?" he asked.
I didn't know how to explain it, and wasn't sure I wanted to. "I also raise zombies, Agent Elwood. I think they sort of consider me one of the monsters."
"Even though you're their version of an electric chair."
"Even though."
"That's not logical."