Sucker Punch (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter #27) - Laurell K. Hamilton Page 0,97

was sullen, like a shadow of the rebellious teenager she might once have been.

“Do you know Marshal Newman?” Livingston nodded toward Newman, and since they were sitting next to each other, it was a small gesture.

“I know him.” Again her demeanor was sullen and instantly guarded. It didn’t mean that she knew a damn thing that we needed to know. A lot of people are just naturally suspicious of the police. Go figure.

“This is Marshal Anita Blake and Marshal Otto Jeffries,” Livingston said, motioning down the table toward us.

I said, “Hi, Hazel.” I was going to try to be the good cop, because Olaf sure as hell couldn’t do it.

She mumbled, “Hi,” before she could stop herself. A lot of people will do automatic social cues if you give them a chance. She frowned harder, showing where some of the harsh lines around her mouth had come from. To get such deep lines, she must have frowned a lot more than she smiled.

“We just want to ask you a few questions, Hazel,” Livingston said.

“I don’t know anything,” she said. She hadn’t asked us what it was about, just gone straight to not knowing anything about it. Either she did know something, or she’d had a run-in with the police before.

“I bet you know lots of things,” I said, smiling.

Hazel frowned harder, looking at me. “I don’t know anything.”

She put a lot of emphasis on don’t, and again there was that echo of sullenness that teenage girls seem to specialize in, as if a part of Hazel was stuck at about fifteen or sixteen. If you have something bad happen to you, sometimes you can get stuck at the age when it happened, and without therapy, you can stay stuck for the rest of your life. I was beginning to want to know more about Hazel’s childhood. If it wouldn’t help us figure out who done it, I’d leave it alone, but if we needed leverage to get her to talk to us, then I was pretty sure her past would give us a lever to move her or at least to try.

“I bet you can figure out the math on a good tip faster than I can.”

She frowned even harder so that the lines in her face looked almost painful, more like scars than lines, as if her unhappiness was a wound that showed on her face.

“And I bet you know this menu backward, forward, and sideways.”

She gave a half smile that softened the pain in her face. “I’ve worked here for over three years, so yeah.”

“Please have a seat, Hazel. We just want to talk to you,” Livingston said.

The smile vanished, and she was back to sullen and wary. “I have other tables, Dave. Sorry.” She actually started to walk away.

“Hazel, we can talk here, or we can talk at the station. It’s up to you,” he said.

She turned and looked at us all. The scorn on her face was epic. I wondered what she’d have been like if she was really mad at someone, and I realized we might find out. “Unless you’re arresting me, I don’t have to go with you or answer your questions.”

“Do you know Bobby Marchand?” Newman asked.

Hazel narrowed her scorn onto him. I would not want to date someone who had that look and attitude in them. “Of course I do.”

“We’re trying to save his life.”

“I thought you were one of the supernatural marshals.”

“I am.”

“Then isn’t it your job to kill him?”

“I have a warrant for his execution.”

“Then why do you want to talk to me about anything? It’s a done deal. Bobby killed his uncle, and now you have to kill him so he doesn’t attack anyone else.”

“What if Bobby is innocent?”

“The whole town knows he did it.” Hazel rolled her eyes at Newman, as if to ask how stupid he could get. Again, it was that echo of a teenage girl, because no one does scorn as well as they do.

“If I kill him and find out later that he didn’t do it, then whoever had knowledge of the real murderer and didn’t speak up to save Bobby’s life could be charged with manslaughter or even third-degree murder.”

I wasn’t sure that was strictly true, but watching Hazel with hesitation in her eyes, I just sat there and kept my doubts off my face. Newman might have found a way through all that scorn and bad attitude.

“That’s not true.” But her eyes said plainly that she wasn’t a hundred percent sure of