“Ahhh,” my lawyer said, tearing himself away from his breakfast and belching softly. “Very full, thank you.”
“Well, if it wouldn’t be too much trouble, perhaps you could help me here? The police are on their way and we have a lot of evidence to hide.”
“Oh,” the vampire said, seeming to remember suddenly that his job was to keep me out of jail. He looked down at his tailored English business suit, now stained with copious amounts of blood, and then back up at my shirt, which was rather bloody as well. “Yes, it would appear that there is a lot of evidence to hide.”
“Go inside and change real fast. There’s a suit in my closet, and you can grab me a fresh shirt,” I said, pulling mine off and handing it to him. “Then come back and do your freaky memory thing with my neighbor across the street. He’s the source of our police problem.”
Leif moved with all the speed at his disposal. He knew we had a couple of minutes at most, probably less, before the police would arrive. In that time we had to make it look as if no one had died here tonight. I went back to my lawn and summoned some more power. It allowed me to drag six-hundred-pound giant bodies quickly to the east side of my lawn, farthest from my driveway, and stack them on top of one another. The ones in the street would have to be Leif’s problem: The power stored in my bear charm would drain quickly if I tried to handle them alone. But what I could do was cast camouflage on all the bodies and the spreading pools of blood. Oh, and maybe I should conceal my sword too. Nothing to see here, coppers. Move along.
Leif returned in a minute, wearing a suit I had bought at the Men’s Wearhouse. “So did you like the way you looked wearing this?” he said, mocking the commercials as he tossed me a fresh T-shirt. It didn’t fit him perfectly: It was tight across the chest, and he was a little longer of limb than I-he was a bloody Viking, after all.
The sirens were awfully close. “You need to get those bodies out of the street and put them over there,” I said, pointing to the pile I had made. “And then take care of my neighbor’s delusions.”
“No problem,” he said, and then he zipped out into the street and started tossing giants, being careful not to get blood on his hands. I pulled on the clean shirt and kept my eyes on the blinds across the street. My neighbor, Mr. Semerdjian, had always been the snoopy sort. He had held me in deep suspicion from the day I moved in, because I did not own a car.
I started casting camouflage on every spot of blood I could find and then on the pile of bodies as well. Leif ran across the street to lay some vampire hoodoo on Mr. Semerdjian: “Look into my eyes. You didn’t see anything.” It was like an old Jedi mind trick.
I was fairly confident I had taken care of all visible evidence before the first patrol car rounded the corner. If they went snooping around the east side of my lawn, they would run into some major invisible evidence, but hopefully they would never have reason to do that. As they wailed down the street, I muttered a little something to magnify the scent of local plant life, which would hopefully mask the scent of so much spilled blood.
I sent Oberon to sit quietly on our front porch while Leif and I dealt with the authorities. He probably needed another bath anyway.
Three black-and-whites pulled up to my house, alerting all my other neighbors that the noise they had been ignoring was something to worry about after all. Six officers jumped out of the cars and pointed guns at us over their car doors.
“Freeze!” one of them shouted, even though we were standing perfectly still. Another one snarled, “Hands above your head!” and yet another said, “Drop the sword!”
Chapter 11
How can one freeze and put their hands above their head at the same time? Do they teach cops to shout contradictory instructions at suspects at the academy for some sinister purpose? If I obeyed one cop, did the other cop get to shoot me for resisting arrest? The only one who worried me was the guy who told me to drop my sword. It was camouflaged but still hanging in its scabbard across my back. Could he see through the camouflage?
“Good evening, gentlemen,” Leif said smoothly. Neither of us raised our hands. “I am an attorney for Mr. O’Sullivan here.” All the cops looked at him standing there serenely in his suit and got real quiet.
I am an attorney is a trigger phrase for cops. It tells them they have to go slow and follow procedures or their case will get tossed out of court. It meant that they wouldn’t be able to wave their guns around and bully me into anything. Unfortunately, it also told them that I needed an attorney at my house after normal business hours. If I were a mind reader, I would be hearing the same thing from each one of their heads: “This bastard is so guilty he already has his lawyer here.”
“What can we do for you tonight?” Leif asked pleasantly.
“We received a call that there was someone cutting down people with a sword here,” one of them said.
Leif snorted in amusement. “A sword? Well, I suppose that’s refreshing, perhaps even charmingly retro. But would there not be some signs of struggle if that were the case? People missing their arms, lots of blood, and maybe an actual sword in somebody’s hand? You can see for yourselves that nothing like that is going on here. All is well. I think you received a crank call, officers.”
“Then why are you here?” the cop asked.
“I’m sorry, Officer… um?”
“It’s Benton.”
“Officer Benton, I am Leif Helgarson. I am here because Mr. O’Sullivan is not only my client, he is my friend. We were simply standing here, enjoying the autumn evening and discussing baseball, when you drove up and pointed your weapons at us. Speaking of which, isn’t it about time you put those away? Neither of us is about to threaten you.”
“Let me see your hands first,” Officer Benton said.
Leif slowly took his hands out of his pockets and I did the same, raising them to shoulder height. “Look,” Leif said, wiggling his fingers like they were jazz hands. “No swords.”
Officer Benton scowled at him, but then he reluctantly put away his sidearm and the other officers followed his example. “I think we should take a look around, just to be thorough,” he said, stepping around his car door and walking toward us.
“You do not have probable cause to look around,” Leif told him as he lowered his hands and crossed his arms. I put mine in my pockets.
“The 911 call gave us probable cause,” Benton countered.
“A crank call that clearly has no basis in fact. The only disruption to the peace in this neighborhood tonight has been your sirens, and if you want to search my client’s property, you should go get a warrant.”
“What is your client trying to hide?” Benton asked.
“It is not a matter of hiding anything, Officer Benton,” Leif said. “It is a matter of protecting my client against unreasonable search and seizure. You have absolutely no reason to search these premises. Your call described a sword fight in progress, but nothing like that has gone on here, so I think your time would be better spent protecting the city from real threats instead of imaginary ones. In addition, if the caller was the elderly Lebanese gentleman across the street, he has a long history of harassing my client over imagined trespasses. We are considering a restraining order against him.”
Officer Benton looked supremely frustrated. He knew, he just knew, I was hiding something, and of course he was right. But he wasn’t used to dealing with lawyers-detectives usually handled them-and he wasn’t confident enough to proceed when he couldn’t see anything wrong. Apparently the officer who had told me to drop the sword couldn’t see it strapped to my back either, because he hadn’t said a word since he got out of the car. He must have been shouting at me based on the 911 call. All hearsay. But Benton couldn’t resist trying to bully me anyway.
“Haven’t you got anything to say, mister?” he sneered at me. “Why did we get called out here?”
“Well,” I said, “I cannot say for certain, of course, but it might be because Mr. Semerdjian across the street there really doesn’t like me. You see, about three years ago my dog escaped and pooped on his lawn. I apologized and cleaned it up, but he’s never forgiven me.”
‹Hey, I heard that!› Oberon called from the porch. ‹You told me to poop on his lawn!›
Yeah, so what’s your point? I asked.
‹You’re making it sound like I’m some ordinary dog who just poops anywhere.›
