“It sure would be nice to think so.”

“The fucking Patriot Party is going around blowing shit up so that they can blame it all on supes and sweep the election? Stan, I knew those guys were assholes, but … come on.”

“I know, I know,” I said. “It’s crazy. Except that it’s been done before.”

“Where?

“Germany,” I said. “The Thirties, soon after Hitler was elected Chancellor. One night the Nazis burned down the Reichstag, which was their Parliament building. Burned it to the ground. Then they found some Communist doofus and hung the whole thing on him.”

“Why that guy?”

“Because, like I said, he was a Commie, and the Commies were the Nazis’ biggest political rivals. As a result of the public panic over the fire, the Communist party was outlawed and the Nazis gained absolute power – which they hung onto until the end of the war.”

“OK, I see the parallel, assuming what we’re thinking about the Patriot party is true,” Karl said. “But, dude, this is Scranton. Not Nazi Germany. Scranton.”

“I know,” I said. “But when I was talking to Loquasto about this earlier, he said something that had a weird association for me, but I don’t know why.”

“What’d he say?”

“Just like us, he was trying to get his mind around the idea that somebody would do all this bad shit just to get political control of Scranton. And then he said something like ‘Maybe it’s a pilot project.’”

“Pilot project,” Karl said. He chewed his lower lip, which is a tricky thing for a vampire to do. Then he said to me, “Maybe we better go see McGuire.”

After Karl and I had finished talking, McGuire sat back in his chair, the worn springs creaking under his weight. He studied Karl, then spent a few seconds looking at me.

“I suppose I could order both of you to see the department shrink,” he said. “He’s probably seen a lot of cops with paranoia and has some ideas on how to treat it.”

“Doc Watson, you mean?” I said. “Yeah, he’s pretty good. He’ll probably have Karl drinking Type O laced with clozapine. He’d still be paranoid, but it wouldn’t bother him so much.”

The look McGuire gave me said he thought I was about as funny as diarrhea. It’s a look I’ve seen from him more than a few times.

“Alright,” he said. “Assume, for the sake of discussion, that the two of you aren’t bat-shit crazy. What do you plan on doing about this… conspiracy you think you’ve stumbled onto?”

“We were hoping you might have some advice for us, boss,” Karl said.

“I hope you weren’t thinking about arresting somebody,” McGuire said. “Right now, you haven’t got enough probable cause to justify a fucking traffic ticket.”

“We don’t need probable cause to bring somebody in for questioning, though,” I said.

McGuire raised an eyebrow at me. “Who’ve you got in mind?”

“How about the head of the Patriot Party…?” I looked at Karl.

“Slattery,” he said. “Phil Slattery.”

“You’re assuming he’s the head of the party,” McGuire said, “because he’s their candidate for Mayor?”

Karl frowned at him. “You’re saying he isn’t? If not, then who is it?”

“I didn’t say that Slattery wasn’t the head honcho,” McGuire said. “But there’s a rumor floating around City Hall, something about a power behind the throne.”

“Slattery hasn’t got the throne yet,” I said.

“Just an expression,” McGuire said. “But there’s some guys in the Mayor’s office who think there’s somebody behind the Patriot Party, pulling the strings.”

Karl shook his head. “And you called us paranoid,” he said quietly.

“Has this somebody got a name?” I asked McGuire.

“Fuck, no,” he said. “Like I told you, it’s just a rumor.”

“We can’t bring a rumor in for questioning,” I said. “Which brings us back to Slattery.”

McGuire put his feet up on the open top drawer of his desk, a sign that he was expecting this discussion to take a while. “We call Slattery in here for questioning,” he said, “and his campaign’s gonna scream bloody murder. They’ll claim the mayor’s using the police to harass him.”

“Let him,” Karl said. “Doesn’t look to me like the Mayor’s office has got a whole lot left to lose at this point. According to the last poll I saw, the Patriot Party’s expected to kick serious ass in the election.”

“Anyhow, that sword cuts both ways,” I said. “If Slattery balks, he could be handing the mayor a nice campaign issue: ‘Why won’t the PP cooperate with a legitimate police investigation?’ he could say. ‘What’s Slattery afraid of?’”

McGuire pursed his lips for a second. “OK, that could work,” he said. “But say we get him in here – so what? He’ll have his lawyer with him, for whatever that’s worth – I hear Slattery’s pretty sharp all by himself. What do you expect the guy to say that’s gonna do this investigation any good? He won’t even be under oath.”

“That’s right,” I said. “He won’t be under oath. He won’t even be under arrest.”

“Not without probable cause, he won’t be, and we sure as shit haven’t got any,” McGuire said.

“Which means we won’t be reading him his rights beforehand.”

McGuire didn’t say, “Well, duh!” but the look he gave me got the point across pretty well, anyway.

“The Barlow decision says you can’t have a vampire anywhere around a suspect who’s being questioned by the authorities,” I said. “Once he’s been read his rights.”

My boss isn’t stupid, and neither is my partner. They were both looking at me now, and their expressions said they thought I might actually possess an IQ higher than two digits. I tried to enjoy the experience, since it happens so rarely.

“Nothing Slattery says’ll be admissible in court,” Karl said, but not as if he was disagreeing with my idea.

“It wouldn’t be admissible, anyway, since we’re not gonna read him his rights,” I said.

“He won’t come alone,” McGuire said.

“No,” I said. “We’ve already stipulated that he’s not stupid.”

“So whoever’s with him,” McGuire said, “his lawyer or his bodyguard or his mother or whoever the fuck he brings, is probably gonna figure out pretty quick what we’re doing.”

“Yeah, the boss is right,” Karl said to me. “We might get only one question under Influence.”

“In that case,” I said, “we’d better make it a good one.”

McGuire said he’d do his best to get Phil Slattery down to headquarters some night for questioning, but nothing was likely to happen until tomorrow at the earliest. It was already after 11pm, and I agreed with McGuire that guys like Slattery probably weren’t available to anybody as unimportant as a cop at that hour of night.

For a while after that, Karl and I sat at our desks in the squad room and tried to figure out what to ask Slattery, assuming that Karl would be able to use vampire Influence on him.

“Should we assume that Slattery or his people are gonna shut everything down once they figure out that I’m using Influence?” Karl said.

“We should probably assume the worst,” I said, “which is that we’ll only get one crack at him, if that. But what the hell – we could also have some backup questions prepared, in case somebody on Slattery’s side has a sudden attack of the stupids and lets him keep talking.”

“You figure that’s likely?”

“No, but I can dream, can’t I?”

“Something else just occurred to me,” Karl said. “What if Slattery says, ‘You cops wanna talk, then come to me. I’m not going down to police HQ – not until I walk in as mayor, anyway.”

“That would kinda complicate things, wouldn’t it?”

“Just a little,” Karl said. “There’s a good chance one of Slattery’s people would figure out that I’m undead before I ever get near him –- which means I never would get near him.”

“Discrimination against supes is illegal,” I said.

“Yeah, I bet that matters a great big bunch to the haters in the Patriot Party.”