“You know that I'm a deputy sheriff, don't you?”
“Now what?” He had a right to be suspicious, and he certainly appeared to be.
“Well, Toby, since you've run once, and since you're a material witness in a felony case, I'm placing you under arrest as a material witness.”
“You can't do that!” They always say that. Hell, even their attorneys say that.
“It's done, Toby,” I said. “Don't be too bothered about it. I told you about that earlier today, didn't I? We'll take good care of you.” I gestured to Sally. “Go ahead and take him in. Stop and have him checked at the Maitland Hospital before you book him. Just in case of some lawsuit over his leg.” I moved a bit closer to him. “Okay, now, you've got the right to remain silent, anything you say can be used against you in a court or courts of law. You have the right to an attorney, and to have him present during questioning.” I smiled. “Got that?”
“I don't believe this,” said Toby. “I just don't believe this.”
“But, do you understand what I've just said? You gotta understand it, Toby.”
“Yeah, yeah, I understand all that shit. But it just isn't gonna help, is all.”
“Don't worry,” I said. “It should be a lot easier than running through the woods in the dark.”
“Yeah. Right.”
“Hey, Toby, just consider it revenge for scaring the hell out of me.” I smiled.
“What?”
“When you ran right by us in the woods. Just before you fell in the foundation.”
He shook his head. “I never ran by you. I was lying down until I got up when you turned your lights on. When I ran into the hole.” He gave kind of a satisfied smile. “Like I said, dude. Like I said.”
Sally and I exchanged what I would call meaningful looks and then she glanced back toward the woods. “I think we'll be leaving now,” she said quickly. She turned to Toby, in the backseat behind the thick Plexiglas screen. “Now you behave, Toby, and just be quiet back there, and put on your seat belt.” She got into the squad, and left the door open while she buckled herself in.
“Don't pick up any hitchhikers,” I said. That earned me a look from Sally. “Don't forget, cite under Code Chapter 804.11. Make certain you include that.”
“Okay, boss.”
“And no questions to him until one of us gets down there.”
I went back to Hester. “We can talk to him when we get back to Maitland. Ought to be good enough.”
“You know what bothers me?”
“Tonight? Hard to tell,” I said. “What?”
“The man who joined us at the restaurant. That Chester dude.”
“Yeah.”
“So, somebody shows up who hunts vampires, then we have a suspect say that our victim is killed by a vampire. What're the odds?”
“Tonight? Pretty good.”
“Yeah,” she said. “I'm afraid we better talk to this Chester guy again. Not right away. Damn. Not tonight, anyway.” She brushed a wayward strand of hair from her forehead. “But this stinks. It almost feels like some sort of setup.”
“Maybe… ”
“Do you want your office, then, to get hold of this vampire hunter and set up an appointment?”
“Oh, Harry will keep us in touch,” I said, half kidding. “Right now, the two of us are the only people who know all the connections. I'd like to keep it that way.”
“There's a third one, Carl.” She was beginning to smile, broadly.
“Who?”
“Dangerous Dan the Vampire Man,” she said, and snickered. “Honest to God, I'm never coming to Nation County again.”
“We're entertaining, you gotta admit,” I said.
“Right. So, anyway, regardless, then we need a search warrant application for the house and related property, real quick.” She looked tired. “And then we need to do the damned search, and in a house this big, that could take a day or more.” She regarded the Mansion, looming in the dark. “Easily. Can your department stand the cost of putting the residents up for the night?”
Well, we sure as hell couldn't leave them in the house.
“Let me call Lamar,” I said, “but I think we should talk to the group inside, first.”
“Sure.”
We explained to Hanna, Huck, Kevin, and Melissa that we were going to make out an application for a search warrant, and submit it to a judge.
“Then what?” asked Huck.
“Then,” I explained, “the judge either issues the warrant or he doesn't. If he does, we begin the search.”
“If he doesn't?”
“Then,” I said, “we go home to bed.”
“What about us?” asked Melissa.
“Well, that's the tough part,” I said. “We can't let you just go about your business, because we have the right to secure the premises while we make application to search it.”
“You mean we can't go to our rooms?” This from Hanna.
“Not without an escort,” I said.
“I don't think you can do that,” said Kevin. “I don't think that's legal.”
I sighed. “Okay, let me explain it this way. If I tell you it's legal, and it isn't, then I can't use anything in court that I find here at the house. See?”
He just looked at me.
“Neither can I use anything that I'm led to by any evidence in the house that I've discovered under the search warrant.” He was still quiet. I sure had their attention, though. “Judges call that the fruits of a poisoned tree. Means it's all tainted and unusable. Okay so far?”
“Yes.”
“Good. So, then, you understand that when I say we sure as hell can do that, that only an idiot would tell you that if it wasn't true, because then it would totally screw up his investigation. Right?”
“Yeah.”
“So you don't have to worry, even if I am an idiot.” I grinned. “And what are the odds?”
He didn't return the grin, but Melissa and Huck did.
“The bad news,” Hester said, “is that, if we do get the warrant, you all won't be able to remain here tonight, and can't be let back in until we're done.”
That didn't go over well.
Once we got that all straightened out, and the group had started to settle down, I dropped the bomb.
“Oh, yeah. Before we do anything else, any of you know the whereabouts of a Dan or Daniel Peel?”
You could almost hear their mouths clamp shut. They tried as hard as they could to communicate with one another without speaking, and I think they were remarkably successful. Even I could read the looks that selected Holly Finn, or Huck, as their spokesperson. Not bad at all.
“Certainly,” she said. Her mind was racing, I could tell by the clipped tones and her eyes darting upward, left, then right, then back to me. All in a split second, she appeared to have considered what she wanted me to know, what Toby might have said, Toby's precipitate flight, and the death of Edie. I know by what she said next.
“Dan comes here once in a while, just like other people do. I don't know where he lives, and I'm not even sure what he does for a living.” She glanced around, having given her instructions to the crew. She continued, “He's okay, he seems to be harmless.” She looked me straight in the eye. “I assume Toby told you he thinks he's a vampire?” She grinned, and it looked genuine.
“Peel thinks he's a vampire, or Toby thinks Peel's a vampire?” I wasn't quite clear.
“Oh,” she said, “Toby thinks he's one, all right.”
“Why's that?”
“In case you hadn't noticed,” she said, with mock confidentiality, “Toby is a little bit dorky.”
