Sucker Punch (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter #27) - Laurell K. Hamilton Page 0,53

what a wereanimal can do. Has he?” I asked.

“I don’t know, but why would he lie about it?”

I shrugged. “Some people do.”

“Duke can brag with the best of them, but he always lets you know when he’s pulling your leg. He’s never claimed expertise he didn’t have to my knowledge.”

“Maybe whatever he saw wasn’t someone he knew. That can make a difference,” I said.

I opened the top left-hand drawer and found the usual office bits and bobs. The drawer below it was deeper and had hanging file folders in it. I’ve worked so few cases where this kind of evidence mattered that I wasn’t entirely sure if I messed with the files whether it would hurt the case later. A warrant of execution covered almost any kind of violence and death, but I wasn’t sure about regular evidence.

“If the evidence didn’t look like a shapeshifter attack, you’d have gone after the money angle?” I said.

“You mean, who inherits?” Newman said.

“Yeah.”

“Like Muriel and Todd?” he said.

“Oh, yeah. I’m wondering if messing with the files in the victim’s desk will mess us up if it turns into a financial case.”

“Warrants of execution let us kill almost anyone or anything that’s associated with the crime, but the legalese doesn’t mention papers and files,” Newman said.

“We can look at anything in plain sight, or if we have reasonable suspicion of something specific, but we’re just fishing here. If we find something, it could get thrown out on the grounds of the warrant not covering what we discover,” I said.

“So, we leave the drawers alone,” he said.

“We can peek inside them, but I’d rather not move shit around without a different kind of warrant.”

“You’re the senior marshal on this one.”

“I’ve got seniority, but it’s your warrant, so technically you’re the lead on this one,” I said.

“It seems like every time we work together, the warrant starts out as mine,” he said.

“No shame in signing it over to someone with skills you don’t have,” I said.

“Have you ever signed a warrant over to another marshal?”

“No, but remember, I’m one of the old-timers in this business. You young whippersnappers have things to learn. I’ve learned them already.”

“You’re only two years older than me, Blake. You don’t get to call yourself an old-timer or me a whippersnapper. Who uses that word anymore?”

“Apparently I do,” I said, but I was smiling as I opened the right-hand drawers to look but not touch.

The second drawer down had a gun in it. I actually reached out to touch it but stopped myself. It hadn’t been in plain sight, and since there had been no shots fired in self-defense, we had no reason to think that Ray Marchand had a gun in his desk. I called Newman over to see it.

“Why didn’t he use the gun?” he asked.

“We already said it: He trusted them and didn’t think they were a threat.”

“A shapeshifter that has lost control looks like a threat,” Newman said.

“Maybe Bobby moved too fast for him to go for the gun?” I asked, playing devil’s advocate.

We both looked at the door, trying to visualize the scene. The leopard could potentially make the leap from the door to the desk. “Were all the drawers closed like this?”

“As far as I remember, yes.”

“Ask around to anyone else that was a first responder. Just ask if they noticed anything moved, disturbed, or open in the desk area besides the stuff on top being on the floor,” I said.

“And if no one remembers the drawer being open?” Newman asked.

“Ray was prepared to defend himself. Even if the leopard hit the door and made the leap to the desk, the drawer should have been open. I’m not saying he’d have had time to draw the gun and aim, let alone shoot. You know how fast shapeshifters move.”

“So, he opens the drawer, and then the leopard is slashing at him. He does have defensive wounds on his arms.”

“The leap could have knocked over the lamp, and the struggle cleared the desk,” I said.

“Are we trying to figure out how Bobby did it, or how someone else did it?” he asked.

“We’re trying to get to the truth,” I said.

He nodded. “Okay. Now what?”

“I’d really like to make sure that gun is loaded and if it’s silver-plated ammo.”

We looked back down at the gun. Could we check the gun for ammo by saying we didn’t want to leave a loaded gun unattended in a house where there’d already been one murder, or was it outside the purview of