“AHHHHHHHHIEEEEEEEEE!”
The two jumped back farther as she climbed to her feet. Cavuto shook his head as if trying to clear a cloud from his vision.
“See?” Said Rivera.
“Do you have any ID ma’am?” asked Cavuto.
“I’m Bean Sidhe, ya great mortal twat! AHHHHHHHIEEEEEEEE!”
“ZZZZZT!” said the stun gun.
She fell back into a pile of rags. Cavuto had snatched the stun gun and put her down himself. He handed it back to Rivera then knelt, drew the handcuffs from his belt, and snapped them around her slight wrists.
“She’s cold.”
“Supernatural,” said Rivera.
“She’s not the only one, evidently.” He took off his hat so Rivera could see his cocked eyebrow of inquisition.
“I’m not supernatural.”
“I don’t judge. I am not a judger. It’s traumatic. I know how I felt when I got outed by surprise.”
“How was that a surprise? You were marching in the Pride Parade wearing your dress blue uniform with no pants and a yellow codpiece.”
“Didn’t mean I was gay; Cops without Pants was the theme that year. You got any duct tape? That shriek is fucking spooky.” Cavuto rolling with the weird, as he always had. He had the ability to deny a supernatural situation while simultaneously dealing with it in a practical way, which is why Rivera had called him in the first place.
“You’re going to tape her mouth?”
“Only until I get her to St. Francis and can get them to sedate her and sign off on a psych hold. I’ll say she did it herself.”
“St. Francis isn’t ten blocks from here. Throw her in the car, hit the lights, and you’ll be there before she comes to.”
“I’m not going to carry her to the car when she is perfectly capable of walking on her own, probably.”
“I’ll help you. It might be twenty minutes before she comes to.”
“Plenty of time for you to go buy burgers down the block and bring them back.”
“I’ll call the order in and go pick it up.”
“Curly fries. Two doubles, no tomato. You’re buying.”
“Inspector Cavuto, you are a huge lunch whore,” said Rivera, reaching for the phone.
“Protect and served, lunch—SFPD motto.” The big cop grinned. “But it may not be a bad idea to keep her down. I have some zip restraints in the car for her ankles. Call for burgers.”
Rivera hit the burger button on speed dial and watched his ex-partner lumber out to the brown Ford sedan, which was, as usual, parked in a red zone. The big man popped the trunk and stirred around inside.
The girl from the burger place came on the line with a perky, “Polk Street Gourmet Burgers, can I help you?”
“Yeah, I’d like—”
ZZZZZT!
He barely heard the sound, just a spine-wrenching white-hot pain that started at the back of his neck and bolted to his extremities. Through the sizzling disruption of his thoughts he remembered he’d left the stun gun on the counter behind him. When he came to, Cavuto was kneeling over him.
“How long was I out?”