Cerulean Sins

56

O’Brien had started the interrogation before we got there. People in St. Louis didn't seem to understand that sirens and lights on a police car meant get the fuck out of the way. It was almost as if the police car with all flags flying made a gawkers' block around us. The drivers were so busy trying to figure out why we were in such a rush that they forgot to get out of the way.

I had never seen Zerbrowski so angry. Hell, I wasn't sure I'd ever seen him angry. Not for real. He'd raised enough of a fuss to drag O'Brien out of the interrogation, but she kept saying, "You can have him when we're through with him, Sergeant."

Zerbrowski's voice had crawled down so low it was almost painful to listen to it. That dragging, careful voice held enough heat to make me nervous. O'Brien didn't seem impressed.

"Don't you think, detective, that questioning him about a serial killer that's already butchered three, maybe four people, takes precedent over questioning him about following a federal marshal?"

"I am questioning him about the serial killer." A small frown formed between her eyes. "What do you mean three, maybe four?"

"We haven't finished counting the pieces at the last crime scene. There may be two victims."

"You can't tell?" she asked.

He let out his breath in a loud humph of air. "You don't know anything about these crimes. You don't know enough to be questioning him without us," His voice shook with the effort not to start screaming at her.

"Maybe you can sit in, sergeant, but not her." She jerked a thumb in my direction.

"Actually, detective, technically, you can't exclude me from the interrogation now that Heinrick is a suspect in preternatural crimes."

O'Brien looked at me, a blank, unfriendly stare. "I excluded you just fine before, Blake."

"Ah," I said, and felt myself smiling, I couldn't help it. "But that was when Heinrick was a suspected terrorist, and guilty of nothing more than illegal weapons violations, very mundane stuff. And nothing that my federal marshal status puts under my jurisdiction. As you pointed out earlier I'm not a regular federal marshal. My jurisdiction is very narrow. I have no legal status on nonpreternatural crimes, but on preternatural crimes I have jurisdiction all across this country. I don't have to wait to be invited in." I know I looked smug when I finished, but I just couldn't seem to help myself. O'Brien was being pissy, and pissiness should be punished.

O'Brien looked like she'd bitten into something bitter. "This is my case."

"Actually, O'Brien, it's everybody's case now. Mine, because federal law gives me the jurisdiction. Zerbrowski, because it's a preternatural case, and that means it belongs to the Regional Preternatural Investigation Team. Truthfully, you have no jurisdiction on the murders. They didn't happen on your turf, and you wouldn't even have known that Heinrick was involved if we hadn't shared information so freely with you."

"We played fair with you," Zerbrowski said, "play fair with us, and we all win." His voice was almost normal. He'd lost that frightening bass.

She pointed a finger at me, rather dramatically, I thought. "But it'll be her name in the paper."

I shook my head. "Jesus, O'Brien, is that all this is about? You want your name in the headlines?"

"I know that cracking a serial murder could make me a sergeant."

"If you want your name on this case, fine," I said, "but let's worry more about solving the case than who's going to get credit for it."

"Easy enough for you to say, Blake. Like you said, you don't have a career in law enforcement. Getting credit for this won't help you, but you'll still get the credit."

Zerbrowski pushed away from the wall where he'd been leaning. He touched the files on the edge of the table. He opened one just enough to pull out a photo. He half-slid, half-threw the picture across the table at O'Brien.

It was a splash of shape and color. Most of the color was red. I didn't look too hard at it. I'd seen the real deal, I didn't need a reminder.

O'Brien glanced down at the picture, then looked again. She frowned, and almost reached out for the photo, then stared harder. She concentrated on the image. I watched her try to make sense of what she was seeing, watched her mind rebel at making sense of it. I saw the moment she saw it, on her face, in the sudden paleness of her skin. She sat down slowly in the chair on her side of the table.

She seemed to have trouble looking away from the picture. "Are they all like this?" she asked in a voice gone thin.

"Yes," Zerbrowski said. His voice was soft, too, as if he had made his point and wouldn't rub it in.

She looked up at me, and it looked like a physical effort to pull her gaze away from that photo. "You'll be the darling of the media again," but her voice was soft, like it didn't matter.

"Probably," I said, "but it's not because I want to be."

"You're just so damned photogenic," her voice had held a hint of her earlier scorn, then she frowned and glanced down at the photo again. She seemed to hear what she'd just said, and with that awful, hideous photo sitting in front of her, it seemed the wrong thing to say.

"I didn't mean…" She rallied, and put back on her angry face, but it seemed more like a mask to hide behind now.

"Don't worry, O'Brien," Zerbrowski said, and he had his teasing voice back. I knew enough to dread what would come out of his mouth next, but she didn't. "We know what you meant. Anita is just so damned cute."

She gave a weak smile. "Something like that, yes," she said. The smile vanished as if it had never existed. She was all business again. O'Brien never seemed to get very far from business. "Seeing that this doesn't happen to another woman is more important than who gets credit."

"Glad to hear we all agree," Zerbrowski said.

O'Brien stood up. She pushed the picture back towards Zerbrowski, doing her best not to look at it this time. "You can question Heinrick, and the other one, though he doesn't say much."

"Let's have a plan before we go in there," I said.

They both looked at me.

"We know that Van Anders is our guy, but we don't know for sure that he's our only guy."

"You think one of the men we have here helped Van Anders do this?" O'Brien motioned towards the picture that Zerbrowski was tucking away.

"I don't know." I glanced at Zerbrowski and wondered if he was thinking the same thing I was. The first message had read "we nailed this one, too." We. I wanted to make sure that Heinrick wasn't part of that 'we'. If he was, then he wasn't going anywhere, not if I could help it. I really didn't care who got credit for solving the case. I just wanted it solved. I just wanted to never, ever have to see anything else as bad as that bathroom, that bathtub, and its… contents. I use to think I helped the police out of a sense of justice, a desire to protect the innocent, maybe even a hero complex, but, lately, I'm beginning to understand that sometimes I want to solve the case for a much more selfish reason. So I don't ever have to walk through another crime scene as bad as the one I just saw.