“How was your holiday?” he asked.

“Spent it with Claris and her boyfriend Brando. Grilled steaks, did a few sparklers. Nothing big.”

“No date?”

Not very subtle, she thought and returned a dismissive shrug. “Somehow guys are turned off by females who could obliterate them with fire and habitually carry guns and knives. What did you do?”

“Family barbeque. Ate way too much. My pager kept going off from all the disorderly conduct arrests. Mom took the interruptions in stride, until I got called away on this murder case.”

“At least you got a call. I didn’t. No one paged me until this morning. What happened with that?”

His face creased with immediate remorse. “Just a crazy mix up. I thought they’d called you. And dispatch thought I’d made the call.” He shook his head. “What can I tell you? It was the 4th of July. Too many calls, too many chances for error. It was our screw up. When you didn’t show at the scene, I figured you were out of town at your grandparents. My mistake. Next time, I’ll check.”

Huh. Ari wanted to protest—remind him she’d never gone out of town without notifying him, but instead, she said, “It’s OK.” It wasn’t, of course, but complaining now was a waste of time. What was done was done. “But it’s going to take me time to catch up.”

“I appreciate you not making a big deal of this, but it’s not OK with me. Especially on this case. I have a dispatch officer tightening our procedures so it won’t happen again.” His office door opened and a clerk interrupted with their coffee. As soon as the woman was gone and they were fortified with caffeine, Ryan leaned backed and crossed his arms, watching Ari. “Have you talked with Eddie yet?”

She noted the defensive posturing. It took her a minute to realize Ryan thought she might be angry with him over Eddie’s arrest. Or maybe a little worried she’d think they deliberately kept her from the crime scene. Well, the thought had crossed her mind. Oh, yeah. But Ryan wouldn’t do that. She accepted the screw-up explanation because she knew her partner. He was born a boy scout.

“I just came from seeing Eddie, for all the good it did.” Despite her frustration, she forced warmth into her voice. She didn’t want Ryan to misinterpret her mood as a grudge over the botched notification. “He won’t talk to me. Any clue what that’s about?”

Ryan’s eyebrows shot up. “No, I figured he’d spill it all as soon as you got here. In fact, I counted on it. We don’t know exactly how or why this happened. I’d sure like to hear his side of the story.”

“That makes two of us. But no luck. What did he tell the responding officers?”

“Hardly anything, except the confession. They found him in the parking lot standing next to the dead body. When they asked what happened, he said, ‘I did it.’ Then he clammed up. Now all we get is name, rank, and serial number.”

She nodded absently. “Same attitude I got. The desk officer said it was a shooting?” She flipped her hair back to avoid dunking it in the coffee cup and sipped the hot liquid. When she realized Ryan hadn’t answered yet, she looked up. “Is there a problem with the cause of death?”

He cleared his throat. “There could be.”

“Why?” Ari frowned, puzzled. “What did the medical examiner say?”

“Not enough.” Ryan sighed and met her gaze. “It was a night of mistakes. The patrol officers didn’t know anything about vampire biology.”

Ari groaned. She knew what was coming. She’d had enough contact with the Riverdale Police Department over the last thirteen months to realize that regular patrol cops had limited experience with vampire deaths or Otherworld forensics. Most recruits and even experienced PD officers had never seen a vampire corpse. The vampires maintained a secretive community, and the rare deaths—usually at the hands of another vampire—weren’t reported to outside authorities, not even to her bosses at the Magic Council. The officers wouldn’t have known the basics.

Ryan was trying to explain what happened. “A crowd had gathered, and our officers were collecting witness names before anyone got away. That delayed the call to Doc Onway until they noticed something wrong with the body. They didn’t know decomp would start that fast.” He shook his head. “Why don’t they listen to me? I keep telling them we need to train anyone working in or near Olde Town. Anyway, patrol reported they saw round, bullet-like punctures to the head and the chest area. But, thanks to the rapid decay, there wasn’t much left by the time Doc or I arrived.

“So, it could have been any instrument that made a round hole. Like a stake or a pole?”

Ryan shook his head again. “Don’t think so. Bar patrons reported hearing shots. But we didn’t find any sort of weapon on the scene. The delay cost us good evidence.”

“Are they sure it wasn’t fireworks?”

“Claimed it wasn’t. And whatever it was came from the parking lot.”

“Drive-by?”

“Not likely. But look at the scene yourself.”

While the delay was discouraging, Ari wasn’t sure the arrival of the PD experts would have made much difference in the evidence. Not calling her or the magic lab was the problem. A vamp corpse began to decay within minutes and turned to bones within an hour, ashes shortly after, depending on the chronological age of the vampire. Ordinary forensic procedures weren’t much use, but Otherworlders had additional senses, magical ones, to use. The lab even had handheld sensory instruments now. That was the reason the Magic Council had recently expanded the Otherworld research lab: so these problems wouldn’t occur.

“Wounds to both the head and heart, huh? Double tapped?” Ari looked thoughtful. “Someone was thorough. Almost sounds like an execution.”

“What do you mean, someone?” Ryan puckered his mouth, his voice tinged with suspicion. “You mean Eddie. You might not want to hear it, but we got him cold on this, Ari. And, yeah, I’d say your boy wanted to be sure the vamp was dead.”

“It does look that way.” She kept her voice neutral. “What about the lack of weapon?”

“Just because we haven’t found the gun, doesn’t mean there wasn’t one. We’re still looking for any possibility—stakes, weapons made from silver—but the bar crowd and neighbors heard gunshots.”

“Any other physical evidence? Gun powder residue, brass, silver bullets?”

“Nothing. If I didn’t know better, I’d think someone had policed the area. An accomplice may have fled with the gun, but according to witnesses there wasn’t time for anything else. Residue tests on Eddie’s hands were negative, but you know we get a lot of false readings.” Ryan scowled in frustration. Ari knew he’d been lobbying for an upgrade to a better testing system, but his department was balking at the cost.

If Eddie’s test had been accurate, it reinforced a critical question. No weapon, no bullets, no gun residue. How could Eddie, a slightly built human, kill a vampire without a weapon?

Ryan’s thoughts must have centered on a similar concern. “In spite of the current lack of a weapon or forensic evidence, we have the killer in custody. Eddie confessed. And no one else was in the parking lot.”

“As far as we know,” she hastened to remind him. “You suggested the possibility of an accomplice. If you believe someone had time to get away, couldn’t there have been a different killer? And Eddie just happened to be there?” Ari was beginning to see possibilities in the case. So many missing pieces. “If there really was no one else, and there’s no weapon, what are you suggesting Eddie used? His bare hands?”

Ryan tightened his lips but gave her a faint smile. “Very funny. It was a gun. Everyone heard it. Just haven’t found it. Yet.”

“So, until you do,” she insisted, “your only real evidence of Eddie’s guilt is the confession.”

Ryan’s grin vanished. “Come on. What more do you want? He was standing over a dead body. How do you explain that?”

At the moment, she couldn’t, but considering the repercussions for Eddie, she couldn’t give up either. “Any objections if an Otherworld tech goes over the scene?”

“None. Suit yourself. But there’s nothing supernatural about this, except the victim.”

She made a quick call, requesting a tech from Otherworld Forensics & Research (OFR) meet her at the scene in thirty minutes. Regardless of how good Ryan thought his case was, Ari would look under every rock for a different answer.

Before she could get started, she had a responsibility to fulfill, one she really didn’t want to do. Loyalty was a big thing with her, and this time she was caught in the middle. “I don’t agree Eddie’s guilty, not yet. But I have to tell you something that’s going to make things look worse for him.”

Ryan straightened. “I thought he didn’t talk to you. How can you hurt his case?”

She repeated the conversation she’d had with Eddie in her office three weeks ago, even including Eddie’s damning final words that Jules’s death couldn’t come too soon. “But I don’t think he meant it as a threat,” she finished. “He was just venting.”

Ryan leaned back, his lips pursed in thought. His chair creaked, tilted precariously to the left as it had done for years and stopped short of dumping him on the floor. “So, Eddie had a motive. A strong motive. I know he’s your friend, Ari. Hell, I like him too. But he sure looks guilty.”

Ari glowered at the coffee mug. She was beyond unhappy about her part in this, felt like a traitor to Eddie. But she and Ryan were partners. That meant something. In the last year or two, the police lieutenant had come a long way in trusting Otherworlders, and she wasn’t about to keep secrets that would destroy that trust.

So, where did that leave Eddie? She had a responsibility and loyalty there, too. He’d helped her out on her first big case. Been there when she’d needed a friend. Maybe she should have looked deeper into his complaint about Jules when he first came to her. Could she have stopped this? Maybe not, but Ari wished she knew. In any case, Eddie needed her now more than ever.