Sucker Punch (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter #27) - Laurell K. Hamilton Page 0,42

he should have been unless he already knew that Anthony would lie for him.

“Let’s get your deputy up here. Once she backs you up, then this discussion is over,” Livingston said.

“Deputy Anthony is with our female suspect,” Duke said.

“I’ll have one of our female officers stay with the woman.”

“We are wasting time here,” Duke said.

“Yeah, it would be a shame to waste time when we could just kill the suspect and find out he’s innocent later,” I said. I should have saved the sarcasm, but sometimes old habits die hard.

“I met Bobby when he was playing peewee football. I’ve known him all his life. I don’t want to see him executed like this, but he’s proved himself too dangerous to be living beside other people. He has forfeited his right to live by killing someone else. It’s as simple as that, Marshals. If I thought he could spend his life locked up, maybe I’d vote for that, but the only thing the law allows for this crime is death. If that’s all we can do to punish the crime and protect the rest of the people, then we need to do it. The two of you need to do your damn job.”

“I didn’t realize you knew Bobby that well,” Newman said in the sudden almost uncomfortable silence.

“My son was the same age as Bobby, so I saw a lot of him and the other boys that were close to my son’s age.”

Leduc spoke of his son in the past tense. He also didn’t mention a name, just my son, as if the name was too painful, too real. If his son had been a friend of Bobby’s when they were boys, and then the son had died young, seeing Bobby all grown-up must have been hard. Having Bobby be the one who had killed the man who was paying for Lila Leduc’s medical bills was just rubbing salt in old wounds. No wonder the sheriff was all over the board emotionally. If he hadn’t been the only sheriff in town, I’d have tried to get him to take himself off the case, but their force wasn’t big enough to take anyone off the roster.

I wasn’t sure what we should have said in that suddenly silent room. I knew I wasn’t about to say a damn word. I did not know Duke well enough to risk saying anything in the face of such possible grief. A purposeful knock at the double doors ended the awkward pause.

“Come in,” Livingston said, voice a little gruff. I didn’t think I was the only one who was happy to have an interruption.

“You texted, sir,” a woman in a state trooper uniform said as she came through the door.

“Yes, I want you to relieve Deputy Frankie Anthony and send her up here.”

“Will do, sir,” she said, and closed the door behind her much more softly than she’d knocked.

“So you don’t believe me,” Leduc said.

“I never said that,” Livingston said.

“You’re about to double-check my story with my own deputy. Fuck that, Dave. You and I have known each other too many years for you to doubt my word.”

“It’s not your word I’m doubting,” Livingston said.

“Then what is it?”

“Some cases are harder on us than others, Duke,” he said. It took me a second to realize the gruff voice was Livingston’s version of kind.

“You think I can’t handle this one? You think I’ve gone soft?”

“No, Duke, I’d never think that.”

“Then, what the hell, Dave? Frankie is going to back me up, and then what? Is your heart bleeding for the poor wereleopard, too?”

“You know me better than that, Duke.”

“I thought I did.”

I realized that Livingston had caught on that maybe, just maybe, Duke was too emotionally involved to oversee this murder investigation. If I hadn’t thought someone would see it, I’d have crossed my fingers that we could get Livingston on our side and that Deputy Frankie wouldn’t throw us under the bus to keep in good with her boss.

14

DEPUTY FRANKIE ACTUALLY sat in one of the pretty stiff-backed chairs. It was as if we’d been waiting for someone to be the first, because Duke sat down on the edge of the couch closest to her. Kaitlin sat down in the matching chair beside her.

“The suspect did start to shift in the cell with both Marshal Newman and Marshal Blake still locked inside with him,” Frankie said.

“His eyes changed, but that was all,” I said.

Livingston held up a hand and said, “Let the deputy finish answering the question