Hit List(7)

“What’s killing the weretigers?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Why are they being killed?”

“Why does any serial killer choose his victim?”

“So you know it is a he.”

I sighed. “Statically speaking, over ninety percent of all serial killers are male. Using he as the pronoun is probably accurate, but, you’re right, I don’t know that it’s a he. Though female serial killers are more likely to use poison or a gun; a blade is more typical of male serial killers. Whoever is killing these victims is sure of his skill with a blade, and that he has the strength to get the job done before the weretiger can fight back. That level of physical confidence is usually male, rather than female.”

He looked at me, but there was a touch less hostility in his face. “That’s true.”

“You seem surprised that I knew that,” I said.

He settled back in his chair and looked at me, but now it was an appraising look. “I’d been told that the only reason you have more executions than anyone else in the preternatural branch is that you’re fucking the monsters, so they talk to you, but maybe that’s not all of it.”

I gave him an unfriendly look, and then it seemed too much trouble. I leaned forward in the chair. “Look, Raborn, if I were living with a group of men and having sex with all of them, and everyone were human, the other cops would still hate it, or they’d see me as a slut. But my live-in sweeties are vampires and shapeshifters, so the other cops really don’t like my choice in boyfriends. I accept that, because there’s nothing I can do about it, but I want to stop these killers. I don’t want to see any more of these bodies. I want to go home to my sweeties, and stop seeing cut-up bodies in my dreams.”

He rubbed his eyes with his thumb and forefinger. “Yeah, once you start seeing the bodies in your dreams, it’s a bitch.”

“Trust me, Raborn, I’m motivated to solve these crimes.”

He looked at me then, and let me see that he was tired, too. “I believe you want to go home, but how can I trust a marshal who’s shacking up with the master vampire of her city?”

“It’s illegal to discriminate against me because of who I’m dating.”

“Yeah, yeah, no discriminating on basis of race, religion, or lack of being human, or something like that.”

“I know that other cops say that I’m sleeping my way to all the information, and I do sleep with the monsters. I can’t deny that, but the idea that the only skill set I have is sex is just jealousy.”

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“Most of the preternatural branch is male. They actually have a lower percentage of female marshals than the regular branch. Men don’t want to admit that a little bitty girl is kicking their asses in the field. They need me not to be better at their job than they are, and the only way they can explain my having the highest number of executions in the entire service is to tell themselves that if they were a woman and could sleep their way to the top it would make all the difference.”

“You are a little bitty thing. You look dainty as my youngest daughter. I’ve read your cases. I know what you’ve managed to kill. You’ve been called in on cases where the first marshals were hospitalized, or killed outright. You, Marshal Forrester, Marshal Spotted-Horse, and Marshal Jefferies are the go-to guys for cleaning up the mess.”

The “Otto Jefferies” identity was to Olaf what “Ted Forrester” was to Edward. Olaf was scarier than Edward, though, because among the mercenary stuff his hobby was being a serial killer. He’d promised Edward and some part of some government that he wouldn’t do his hobby on American soil. It was one of the ways he kept his day job helping train some uber-secret unit. His victims of choice were petite dark-haired women. He seemed to have a crush on me now, and had flat-out told me he’d be willing to try for normal sex with me, or at least sex that didn’t involve my being tortured and dead. Edward wanted me to encourage the attraction, because it was the closest to healthy Olaf had ever been around a woman, but we both agreed that the line between being Olaf’s serial killer girlfriend as we killed vampires together, and triggering his own serial killer needs toward me, was probably a thin one. Bernardo Spotted-Horse, like me, just had one name, our real names. Neither of us had ever made a living doing things as harsh as Edward and Olaf.

“We do what we can,” I said.

“They all have military backgrounds, special forces. They’re all big, physically imposing men.”

“Ted is only five-eight, not that imposing,” I said.