I finally got the Lycan’s trunk open, and the light came on to reveal the body bag, bent at a sharp right angle. We’d had to bend Karl at the waist in order to get him into my trunk, which isn’t exactly roomy. Most Toyotas are compact cars, unless you want to spring for the Hexus, which is the luxury model, and I’ve never had that kind of money.

I could see slight movement from inside the body bag. Karl could have torn his way out of that thing in about a second, but I’d asked him to wait, and that’s what he was doing.

I grabbed the tab of the big zipper and yanked it down all the way to reveal my partner, who was looking a whole lot better than when I’d zipped him in there six hours earlier. For one thing, his eyes were open.

He blinked at me a couple of times. “What the fuck, Stan?”

“I’ll explain in a second,” I said. “But first, let’s get you out of there.”

It took a little while to get him straightened out and completely free of the bag, but finally Karl was standing on the sidewalk next to my car, making a futile effort at brushing out the wrinkles his suit had developed during the day. He gave up after a few seconds and raised his head to look around.

“Hey, we’re in front of my building,” he said.

“I figured once you were out of there, you might want a change of clothes, maybe a shower and something to eat.” Like any self-respecting vampire, Karl had a supply of blood in his fridge.

“You figured right,” he said. “But what the hell was I doing in… oh.”

“Remember what happened now?”

He slowly ran a hand through his hair, which was pretty mussed up from getting in and out of the body bag. “I’d just used some Influence to slip what’s-his-name, Slattery, a question, right?”

“Uh-huh.”

“I remember he answered, something about helter-skelter. Then all the PP guys walked out in a huff. I went over near the door, hoping for another shot at Slattery when he passed, but then his pet gorilla started waving a cross at me.”

“How’d you feel, when he did that?”

Karl made a face. “At first, it was the same as always – I saw the cross and had the urge to be someplace else – fast. But then the stuff I’ve been working on with Doc Watson came back to me. I used one of the relaxation techniques he’d had me practicing, and, shit – it worked. I was able to look at the cross, and then…” Karl shook his head in wonderment.

“And then you took it away from him, remember? You grabbed his wrist, made him let go of the cross, and then you caught it. You held it in your hand, Karl.”

He lifted his right hand and stared at it, turning it back and forth as if checking for damage. “Shit,” he said again. “No burns, nothing.”

“Guess Doc Watson was right, after all,” I said, and we just stood there for a minute, grinning at each other like a couple of idiots.

Karl’s grin slowly faded, then he said, “That’s the last thing I remember – holding the cross.”

“I’m not surprised,” I said. “You kind of flaked out on us after that.”

I told him what had happened, and explained how he’d ended up in a body bag inside my trunk for the last five hours or so.

“And you drove here just before sunset,” he said.

“Yep.”

“You must’ve been pretty confident that I was OK.”

“Of course I was,” I said. “Never doubted it for a minute.” He looked at me for a second or two, not speaking, then gave me half a smile. Vampires are good at detecting lies, but the one I’d just told didn’t seem to bother him very much.

Karl made a head gesture toward his apartment building. “Let’s go inside,” he said. “You can bring me up to speed while I clean up a little and get into some fresh clothes.”

“Good idea,” I said. As we headed up the sidewalk toward his building’s front door, I pulled out my phone. “But I’ve got a couple of calls I need to make first.”

What with one thing and another, we were over an hour late reporting for our shift. But McGuire didn’t seem inclined to dock us for the time.

“Good to see you, Detective,” he said to Karl as we walked in. “I was pleased to learn that I won’t have to dig my dress uniform out of the closet again just yet. It was a little tight, the last police funeral I attended, and I haven’t lost any weight since then.”

Fucking McGuire – sentimental, as always.

“Sorry I flaked out on you, boss,” Karl said as we sat down. “But at least we got something good out of Slattery. It wasn’t a wasted effort.”

McGuire twitched one side of his mouth. “Depends on what you mean by ‘good’. It was interesting – I’ll say that much. The only problem we’ve got now is what the hell to do about it.”

“I don’t guess it would do Slattery’s campaign much good if word got out about his thoughts on helter-skelter,” I said.

“I dunno,” Karl said. “There’s folks in this town who’d think that was a reason to vote for the son of a bitch.”

“But there’s plenty who wouldn’t,” I said. “Supes, especially.”

“I think you can assume that Slattery’s already lost the supe vote, Stan,” Karl told me. “He wrote us off a long time ago.”

“Anyway, there’s no video of him saying it,” McGuire said. “Nothing for the media to run with.”

“There’s about thirty cops who heard him say it,” I said. “Including the three of us.”

“Doesn’t matter much,” McGuire said. “Slattery would say we’d all been ordered to lie by the mayor, who wants to keep his job come election day. And there’s something else.”

We both looked at him.

“Maybe Slattery admits he said all that stuff about helter-skelter, OK? But then he says there was a vampire in the room who used Influence to make him say it – further proof that vampires have no place on the police force.”

“Influence doesn’t work that way,” Karl said.

“You and I know that,” McGuire said. “But do you think the average human living in Scranton knows it – or even gives a shit? People believe what they want to believe.”

People believe what they want to believe. McGuire wasn’t saying anything that I didn’t already know, but there was something… Shit.

“You’re right, boss,” I said. “We haven’t got any ironclad proof that Slattery said it. But, shit, who needs proof when you’ve got innuendo?”

McGuire shook his head. “I’m not following.”

“It’s simple,” I said. “We just follow the advice of Lyndon Baines Johnson, a guy who knew a few things about politics.”

Karl looked at me and said, “If you’re waiting for somebody to feed you the next line, I’ll do it – what’d Johnson say?”

“When all else fails, call your opponent a pig fucker – and let him deny it.”

After a few seconds, McGuire said, “I think the light is beginning to dawn.”

“I wish you wouldn’t say stuff like that, boss,” Karl said with a slight smile. “Especially after yesterday.” Then he looked at me and said, “I still don’t get it.”

“Print media may be on its way out,” I said, “but it isn’t dead yet. Plenty of people still read the Times-Tribune every day. It’s online, too – so even the geeks see it.”

“Yeah, they do,” McGuire said. “And if somebody were to leak the story to the T-T–”

“On deep background, of course,” I said.

“Of course. I bet they’d run with it,” McGuire said, “especially if they had the names of a few cops who were there, so they could confirm the story.”

“I know a guy at the Times-Tribune,” I said. “He’s always pestering me for stories.”

“Then maybe you oughta give him one,” McGuire said.

“Yeah, I think I will.”

“I love the idea,” Karl said, “But we’re not gonna sink Slattery’s campaign with something like this.”

“No,” I said. “But maybe we can cause it to spring a leak or two.”

“Then what?” Karl asked.

“Then we’ll see,” I told him.

Karl and I went downstairs to pay Rachel a visit – the first time either of us had seen her since early in the morning, when Karl was still defying the laws of nature by being awake after sunrise.