"If you want to sue Alice and Sheriff Marks for harassment, I'm all for it. I think you have a good case against them. You don't even have to bring up magic to prove that leaving dead dogs in someone's yard is harassment. But it's a different case. I'll certainly bring it up, but the judge might decide that a suit against Marks doesn't have any bearing in the case of Miriam Wilson's death."
The pizza had gotten cold and I'd lost my appetite. Ben wasn't eating either.
"The whole thing seems rigged," I said. "It's not fair."
"Welcome to the American justice system." He raised his bottle of beer as if in a toast.
"Cynic." I pouted.
"Lawyer," he countered, grinning.
"Ben. Drink your beer."
I went to see Sheriff Marks the next morning. I told Ben I was taking a walk to the grocery store for donuts.
Carefully, I approached the front desk at the sheriff's department like it was a bomb. I asked the woman working there, a nonuniformed civilian, "Hi, is Sheriff Marks in? Could I speak to him?"
"Yes, I think he is. Do you have an appointment?"
"No," I said, wincing. I fully expected Marks to refuse to see me. But I had to try.
The receptionist frowned sadly, and I tried not to be mad at her. She was just doing her job. "Then I'm afraid he probably won't be available, he's very busy—"
"It's all right, Kelly." Marks stood in the hallway to the side, just within view. His expression was guarded, pointedly bland, like he'd expected me to be here all along and didn't mind. He knew his place in the world and I couldn't shake it. "I'll talk to her. Send her back."
He turned and went down the hall, presumably to his office.
"Go on back," Kelly the receptionist said. I did.
Marks disappeared through a doorway halfway down the hall, and I followed him into a perfectly average, perfectly normal cluttered office: a desk with a computer sat against the wall. There was an in-box overflowing with papers and files, bookshelves, also overflowing, certificates and plaques on the wall, along with a huge map labeled Huerfano County. Colored pins marked various spots; a red pin was stuck about where I guessed my cabin was.
Marks sat at the desk and gestured me toward a couple of straight-backed plastic chairs by the opposite wall.
"Thanks" I said, sitting. "I didn't think you'd even talk to me."
He gave an amiable shrug, donning the persona of a friendly small-town cop. "I figure the least I can do is hear you out."
"The least you can do is let Cormac go."
"Have you seen that guy's file? You know what he's done? He should have been locked up years ago."
"And if he had, I'd be dead, and so would you and four other people." I matched him, glare for glare. "He saved my life, Sheriff. That's all I'm paying attention to right now."
His glare set like stone, unrelenting. "That man's a killer."
Yes, but… "You can't deny he saved my life."
"That girl couldn't have really hurt anyone," he said, giving a huff that was almost laughter.
"Didn't you see what she did to me?"
"You had a few cuts," he said.
Then I realized, maybe he hadn't seen. It had been dark; I hadn't even known how bad it was until I got inside and saw all the blood. Marks simply might not have seen it. Once again, I kicked myself for not taking pictures.
I said, "Then you don't believe she really turned into a wolf. You're buying the 'insane woman in a wolf skin' version." He answered with a cold stare that said it all. "How can you believe in werewolves but not in skinwalkers? How can you believe in magic enough to curse my house, but not enough to believe what she was? You just want to put Cormac away because you can, without giving him the benefit of the doubt or anything!"
"Ms. Norville, I think we're done here."
"You're a hypocrite—you've broken the law yourself, in the name of protecting people, when you did those things to me. Well, Cormac was doing the same thing."
Marks leaned forward, hand on his desk, his glare still hard as stone. Nothing could touch this guy, not when he was like this. "He shot and killed an injured, dying woman in cold blood. That's what he's being charged with. Goodbye, Ms. Norville." He pointed at the door.
I glared at him, my throat on the edge of a growl, and he couldn't read the stance. All he saw was an angry, ineffectual woman standing before him. And maybe that was all I was.
I left, gratefully slipping out of his territory.
I went back to the hotel, where Ben greeted me with, "Where are the donuts?"
I'd forgotten. Crap. I shrugged and said, "Didn't get them. Got lost."
"In Walsenburg?" Clearly, he didn't believe me. I just smiled sweetly.
Later, we returned to the county jail to see Cormac. I hadn't had a chance to talk to him, not after the attack, not before or after the hearing. It had been frustrating, sitting five feet away in the courtroom and not being able to say anything to him.
I had hoped Marks would be there to meet us. That he'd have seen the error of his ways and come to make amends by releasing Cormac. That all this would just go away. Wishful thinking. He wasn't there, and Cormac was still locked up.
"Has Marks talked to you?" I asked Ben. "Maybe changed his mind about all this?"
"Are you kidding? He's not even returning my calls."
So much for my grand speech at him having any influence and giving us that Disney happy ending.
Still, Ben had a plan. "I have to go to New Mexico. Talk to people who knew Miriam Wilson. Find out if they knew what she was, and if she killed anyone there. Espinoza's not going to have to dig too much to prove that Cormac's a dangerous man. So I have to prove that he didn't have a choice but to kill her."
"He didn't," I said. "Did he?"
"That's what I have to prove."
A deputy ensconced us in a windowless conference room, like a thousand others in police stations and jails all across the country. I bet they all had the same smell, too: dust and old coffee. Strained nerves. Ben got me in by claiming I was his legal assistant. Then the deputy brought Cormac.
Ben and Cormac sat across from each other. I hid away in the corner. I both did and didn't want to be there. I hated seeing Cormac like this. I didn't know exactly what this meant. Objectively, he looked the same as he always did, half slouching, appearing unconcerned with what went on around him—moving through the world without being a part of it. That orange jumpsuit made him look wrong, though.
Ben had a pen and paper out, ready to take notes. "I need to know everything that happened while you were gone. Between the time you left the cabin in Clay and when you got back in time to shoot her."
"I told you before."
"Tell me again."
"I got in my Jeep, I drove all night to Shiprock. Stopped to get some sleep at a rest stop. Went back to the place where we'd gone to bait them." As in, the place where Ben was attacked. "I spent a lot of time just looking around. I honestly didn't think she'd leave the area. That was her territory."
"Except she wasn't a lycanthrope. She didn't have a territory."
"Sure, we know that now."
"Go on."
"I talked to the werewolf's family. The people who hired me. The Wilsons. Trying to find out more about the second one. They wouldn't tell me anything. They wouldn't believe me when I said there was a second one running around. They thanked me for freeing their son from his curse, and that was it. End of story. I didn't know anything about Miriam. I didn't know they were related."
I hadn't intended on interrupting, but I did. "You shot this guy and nobody said anything. Nobody hauled you in on murder charges there."