"Deputy Aikensen, this is our preternatural expert, Anita Blake."
He shook his head. "No civvies, unless the sheriff okays it."
Perry glanced back towards Dolph, and what I now assumed was the sheriff.
"He's not even allowing us near the body, Deputy. What do you think the chances are of Sheriff Titus saying a civilian can see the body?"
Aikensen grinned then, most unpleasant. "Slim and none." He still held the gun very steady on the middle of my body. He was enjoying himself.
"Put the gun away and Ms. Blake will leave," Perry said.
I opened my mouth to say, The hell I will, but Perry gave a small shake of his head. I kept quiet. He had a plan, better than what I had.
"I don't take orders from no nigger detective."
"Jealous," I said.
"What?"
"That he's a big city detective and you're not."
"I don't have to take crap from you, either, bitch."
"Ms. Blake, please, let me handle this."
"You can't handle shit," Aikensen said.
"You've been totally uncooperative and rude, you and your sheriff. You can call me all the names you like, if that makes you feel better, but I can't let you point a gun at one of our people."
A look passed over Aikensen's face. I could see the thought flicker into life. Perry was a cop, too. He probably had a gun, and Aikensen had his back to him. The deputy whirled, bringing the gun up as he moved. His hand flexed.
I went for my gun.
Perry's empty hands were held out from his body, showing he was unarmed.
Aikensen was breathing hard. He raised the gun to head level, two-handed, steady, no hurry.
Someone noticed us and yelled, "What the fuck?" Indeed.
I pointed the Browning at Aikensen's back. "Freeze, Aikensen, or I will blow you away."
"You're not armed."
I clicked the hammer back. On a double-action you don't need to do that before you fire, but it makes a nice dramatic sound. "You didn't frisk me, asshole."
People were running towards us, shouting. But they wouldn't get here in time. It was just the three of us in the psychedelic snow, waiting.
"Put the gun down, Aikensen, now."
"No."
"Put it down or I'll kill you."
"Anita, you don't need to shoot. He's not going to hurt me," Perry said. It was the only time he'd ever used my first name.
"I don't need no nigger protecting me." His shoulders tensed. I couldn't see his hands well enough to be sure, but I thought he was pulling the trigger. I started to squeeze the trigger.
A bellowing voice yelled, "Aikensen, put that damn gun down!"
Aikensen pointed the gun skyward, just like that. He hadn't been pulling the trigger at all. He was just jumpy. I felt a giggle at the back of my throat. I'd almost shot him for being twitchy. I swallowed the laugh and eased off the trigger. Did Deputy Numb-nuts know how close he'd come? The only thing that had saved him was the Browning's trigger. It was stiff. There were a lot of guns out there where a tiny squeeze was all you needed.
He turned towards me, gun still out, but not pointed. Mine was still pointed. He started to lower his weapon to point it back at me. "If that barrel drops another inch, I'm going to shoot you."
"Aikensen, I said put the damn gun up. Before you get somebody killed." The man that went with the voice was about five foot six and must have weighed over two hundred pounds. He looked perfectly round like a sausage with arms and legs. His winter jacket strained over his round little tummy. A clear, grey stubble decorated his double chins. His eyes were small, nearly lost in the doughiness of his face. His badge glittered on his jacket front. He hadn't left it inside on his shirt. He'd pinned it outside, where the big city detectives couldn't miss it. Sort of like unzipping your fly so company could see you were well-endowed.
"This nigger ... "
"We don't hold with talk like that, Deputy, you know that."
From the look on Aikensen's face you'd have thought the sheriff had told him there was no Santa Claus. I was betting the sheriff was a good ol' boy in the worst sense of the word. But there was intelligence in those beady little eyes, more than you could say for Aikensen.
"Put it away, boy, that's an order." His southern accent was getting thicker, either for show, or because he was getting teed off at Aikensen. A lot of people's accents got stronger under stress. It wasn't a Missouri accent. Something further south.
Aikensen finally, reluctantly, put up the gun. He didn't snap the holster closed, though. He was cruising for a bruising. I was just glad I hadn't been the one to give it to him. Of course if I'd pulled the trigger before Aikensen had raised his gun skyward, I'd never have known he wasn't pulling his trigger, too. If we'd all been cops with Aikensen as a criminal, it would have gone down as a clean shoot. Jesus.
Sheriff Titus put his hands in the pockets of his jacket and looked at me. "Now, miss, you can put your gun away, too. Aikensen here isn't going to shoot nobody."
I just stared at him, gun pointed skyward, held loose. I had been ready to put the gun away until he told me to do it. I'm not big on being told anything. I just stared at him.
His face still looked friendly, but his eyes lost their shine. Angry. He didn't like being defied. Great. Made my night.
Three other deputies gathered at Titus's back. They all looked sullen and ready to do anything their sheriff asked them to do. Aikensen stepped over to them, hand hovering near his freshly bolstered gun. Some people never learn.
"Anita, put the gun away." Dolph's usual pleasant tenor was harsh with anger. Like what he wanted to say was shoot the son of a bitch, but it would be hard to explain to his superiors.
Though not officially my boss, I listened to Dolph. He'd earned it.
I put the gun away.
Dolph was made up of blunt angles. His black hair was cut very short, leaving his ears naked to the cold. His hands were plunged into the pockets of a long black trench coat. The coat looked too thin for the weather, but maybe it was lined. Though he was a little too bulky to leave room for him and a lining in the same coat.
He beckoned Perry and me to one side, and said softly, "Tell me what happened."
We did.
"You really think he was going to shoot you?"
Perry stared down at the trampled snow for a moment, then looked up. "I'm not sure, Sergeant."
"Anita?"
"I thought he was, Dolph."
"You don't sound sure now."
"The only thing I'm sure of is that I was going to shoot him. I was squeezing down on him, Dolph. What the hell is going on? If I end up killing a cop tonight, I'd like to know why."
"I didn't think anybody was stupid enough to pull a weapon," Dolph said. His shoulders hunched, the cloth of his coat straining to hold the movement.
"Well, don't look now," I said, "but Deputy Aikensen has still got his hand right over his weapon. He's just aching to draw it again."
Dolph drew a large breath in through his nose and let it out in a white whoosh of breath from his mouth. "Let's go talk to Sheriff Titus."
"We've been talking to the sheriff for over an hour," Perry said. "He isn't listening."
"I know, Detective, I know." Dolph kept walking towards the waiting sheriff and his deputies. Perry and I followed. What else could we do? Besides, I wanted to know why an entire crime-scene unit was standing around twiddling their thumbs.
Perry and I took a post to either side of Dolph, like sentries. Without thinking about it we were both a step back from him. He was, after all, our leader. But the automatic staging irked me. Made me want to step forward, be an equal, but I was a civvie. I wasn't equal. No matter how much I hung around or did, I wasn't a cop. It made a difference.
Aikensen's hand was gripping the butt of his gun tight. Would he actually draw down on all of us? Surely, even he wasn't that stupid. He was glaring at me, nothing but anger showed in his eyes. Maybe he was that stupid.
"Titus, tell your man there to get his hand away from his gun," Dolph said.
Titus glanced at Aikensen. He sighed. "Aikensen, get your damned hand away from your damn gun."
"She's a civilian. She drew on a policeman."
"You're lucky she didn't shoot your ass," Titus said. "Now, fasten the holster and tone it down a notch, or I'm going to make you go home."
Aikensen's face looked even more sullen. But he fastened his holster and plunged his hands into the pockets of his coat. Unless he had a derringer in his pocket, we were safe. Of course, he was just the sort of yahoo that would carry a backup weapon. Truthfully, sometimes so did I, but only when the alligator factor was high. Neck deep instead of ass deep.
Footsteps crunched through the snow behind us. I turned halfway so I could keep an eye on Aikensen and see the new arrivals.
Three people in navy blue uniforms came to stand on the other side of us. The tall man in front had a badge on his hat that said police chief. One of his deputies was tall, so thin he looked gaunt, and too young to shave. The second deputy was a woman. Surprise, surprise. I'm usually the only female at a crime scene. She was small, only a little taller than I, thin, with close-cropped hair hidden under her Smokey Bear hat. The only thing I could tell in the flashing lights was that everything on her was pale, from her eyes to her hair. She was pretty in a pixielike way, cute. She stood with her feet apart, hands on her Sam Brown belt. She was carrying a gun that was a little too big for her hands. I was betting she wouldn't like being called cute.
She was either going to be another pain in the ass, like Aikensen, or a kindred spirit.
The police chief was at least twenty years older than either deputy. He was tall, not as tall as Dolph, but then who was? He had a salt-and-pepper mustache, pale eyes, and was ruggedly handsome. One of those men who might not have been very attractive as a young man, but age had given his face character, depth. Like Sean Connery who was better looking at sixty than he had been at twenty.
"Titus, why don't you let these good people get on with their work? We're all cold and tired and want to go home."
Titus's small eyes flared to life. A lot of anger there. "This is county business, Garroway, not city business. You and your people are out of your jurisdiction."
"Holmes and Lind were on their way into work when the call came over the radio that somebody had found a body. Your man Aikensen here said he was tied up and couldn't get to the body for at least an hour. Holmes offered to sit with the body and make sure the crime scene stayed pure. My deputies didn't touch anything or do anything. They were just baby-sitting the crime scene for your people. What is wrong with that?" Garroway said.
"Garroway, the murder was found on our turf. It was our body to take care of. We didn't need any help. And you had no right to call in the Spook Squad without clearing it with me first," Titus said.
Police Chief Garroway spread his hands in a push-away gesture. "Holmes saw the body. She made the call. She thought the man hadn't been killed by anything human. Protocol is we call in the Regional Preternatural Investigation Team anytime we suspect supernatural activity."
"Well, Aikensen and Troy here don't think it was anything supernatural. A hunter gets eaten up by a bear and your little lady there jumps the gun."
Holmes opened her mouth but the chief held up a hand. "It's all right, Holmes." She settled back down, but she didn't like it.
"Why don't we ask Sergeant Storr here what he thinks killed the man?" Garroway said.
I was close enough to hear Dolph sigh.
"She had no right to let people near the body without us there to supervise," Titus said.
Dolph said, "Gentlemen, we have a dead body in the woods. The crime scene is not getting any younger. Valuable evidence is being lost, while we stand here and argue."
"A bear attack is not a crime scene, Sergeant," Titus said.
"Ms. Blake is our preternatural expert. If she says it was a bear attack, we'll all go home. If she says it was preternatural, you let us do our job, and treat it as a crime scene. Agreed?"
"Ms. Blake, Ms. Anita Blake?"
Dolph nodded.
Titus squinted at me, as if trying to bring me into focus. "You're the Executioner?"
"Some people call me that, yeah."
"This little bit of a girl has over a dozen vampire kills under her belt?" There was laughter in his voice, disbelief.
I shrugged. It was actually higher than that now, but a lot of them were unsanctioned kills. Not something I wanted the police to know about. Vampires have rights, and killing them without a warrant is murder. "I'm the legal vampire executioner for the area. You got a problem with that?"
"Anita," Dolph said.
I glanced at him, then back at the sheriff. I wasn't going to say anything more, honest, but he did.
"I just don't believe a little thing like yourself coulda done all the things I've heard."
"Look, it's cold, it's late, let me see the body and we can all go home."
"I don't need a civilian woman to tell me my job."
"That's it," I said.
"Anita?" Dolph said. That one word told me not to say it, not to do it, whatever it was.
"We have licked enough jurisdictional butt for one night, Dolph."
A man appeared, offering us steaming mugs on a tray. The smell of coffee mingled with the scent of snow. The man was tall. There was a lot of that going around tonight. A lock of white-blond hair obscured one eye. He wore round metal-framed glasses that made his face look even younger than it was. A dark toboggan hat was pulled low over his ears. Thick gloves, a multicolored parka, jeans, and hiking boots completed his outfit. He didn't look fashionable but he was dressed for the weather. My feet had gone numb in the snow.
I took a mug of coffee gratefully. If we were going to stand out here and argue, hot anything sounded like a great idea. "Thanks."
The man smiled. "You're welcome." Everybody was taking a mug but not everybody was saying thank you. Where were their manners?
"I've been sheriff of this county since before you were born, Ms. Blake. It's my county. I don't need any help from the likes of you." He sipped his coffee. He had said thank you.