NEWMAN LAUGHED. DEPUTY Anthony laughed. Sheriff Leduc did not. Apparently, I did not amuse him. That was okay. My sense of humor didn’t work for a lot of people.
“Did anyone take pictures of the prisoner when he was brought in?” I asked.
“No need,” Leduc said.
I knew what he meant, but I took him out of earshot of the prisoner, which meant out in the office area. Newman trailed us, leaving Anthony alone with the prisoner again. I really didn’t think he was going to try to escape. He seemed to have given up completely. The thought of this jail holding a shapeshifter who hadn’t given up and still wanted to live was just such a bad idea. They’d gotten lucky this time. Hopefully there wouldn’t be another time if, like they all said, this was the only lycanthrope within a hundred miles.
Leduc leaned against the edge of his desk as I talked, so that he didn’t tower over me. “Photographs will help us get size for the wounds and stuff later, just in case there’s any questions about us going ahead with the warrant.”
“Why should there be any questions about that?” he asked.
“From what Newman told me, the Marchands are the family around here for money and power. It’s not fair, but that can mean more lawyers get involved. I’d rather cover all our asses.”
That seemed reasonable to Leduc; if it didn’t to Newman, he didn’t show it. Either he’d learned to hide his emotions in the years since I’d met him, or he trusted my more experienced call. Either way, he agreed to help me take pictures of the prisoner that we could use as reference photos at the crime scene. It was pretty much bullshit. Even in half-man form, the size of hands, feet, teeth, mouth, everything is different from the full human form. The only reason these photos would be useful was if there was a regular trial later, and they could be used as proof that someone had tried to inexpertly frame Bobby Marchand. I was almost certain that Newman understood why we wanted the extra photos. I’d ask him in private later, because if he didn’t, I’d share the info, and if he did, then his level of trust in me was a little scary. Trust but verify, even if it’s me.
It’s standard procedure in any “prison system,” no matter how small, that you never take weapons into a cell with you. You just don’t want to run the risk of a prisoner grabbing your gun and using it against you. There are exceptions to all rules, but tonight wouldn’t be one of them. I gave my .45, Gerber folder, and both wrist sheath blades to Anthony. The sheriff got impatient and said, “Oh, for Pete’s sake, you’re disarmed enough. Get in there and take your pictures or measurements or whatever so I can drive you out to the house.”
I was actually done disarming myself, but I didn’t bother to explain that to Leduc. Let him wonder what else I might be carrying.
“We can find the house on our own, Duke. I told you that,” Newman said.
“And I told you that I’d take you out there,” Leduc said, sounding defensive, or angry, or just cranky.
Anthony asked, “Can I put some of your stuff on the floor, Marshal Blake?”
I looked at her and realized the pile was a little unwieldy to carry in your arms. “Sure. Just don’t scuff anything.”
“Oh, I’ll be careful,” she said, and she sounded way too earnest about it. I shaved a few years off her age. You just don’t stay that eager much over the age of twenty-five.
The sheriff unlocked the cell, and Newman and I walked in voluntarily. I’m never a fan of disarming myself and walking into a cage. It just seems bad on principle. The big metal door cha-chunking behind us didn’t make me like it any more, but over the years, I’d learned not to startle when it happened.
We’d already explained to Bobby that we wanted to take pictures of him for evidence later. He was fine with that. His reaction had been so flat, it made me want to ask him something outrageous to see if he’d react more.
Newman helped Bobby hold the blanket and put his arms out to his sides at the same time. Apparently, they hadn’t given him anything to wear but the blanket, and either Newman was modest, or he knew that Bobby was, because they worked hard at making sure that he didn’t flash me or the deputy. What glimpses I did get showed that Bobby Marchand worked out and kept himself in good shape. Some people believe that becoming a wereanimal or a vampire automatically gives them washboard abs and a lean, muscled body, but it doesn’t. Yes, supernaturals are stronger than human normal, but they don’t automatically come with bigger muscles. Those you still have to go to the gym and create yourself even if you’re a shapeshifter. If you’re a vampire, you can’t even do that. If you want a good-looking corpse, you have to do the work before you cross over, because once you become one, you’re stuck with what you look like on the day of your death for all eternity. Some vampires, my fiancé Jean-Claude being one of them, are powerful enough that exercise can cause the same changes to their bodies that humans experience, but it’s an enormous use of energy. And even if you’re willing to use the power, most master vampires still can’t do it. Jean-Claude is the exception to a lot of vampy rules.
Something about the blanket moving let me see Bobby’s feet and one leg, which made me say, “I need to see anywhere there’s blood, Mr. Marchand.”
“Call me Bobby. Everyone does,” he said automatically without even making eye contact.
I didn’t really want to call him Bobby, just in case I had to pull the trigger on him later, but I’d already looked into his eyes from inches away. He was becoming real to me and not just a job, so why not?
“Okay, Bobby, I need to see anywhere there’s blood evidence. I got your feet, but I saw some higher on your legs on one side. I need a picture of it, okay?”
“Okay,” he said in that same emotionless voice he’d had the whole time. He gathered the blanket close to his body and lifted it up almost like an overly long dress. There was blood smeared on his right lower leg. I got an image of it.
“Is this all the evidence?”
He nodded without looking at me. He had avoided eye contact the whole time. He didn’t remind me of a criminal; he was reacting more like a victim. If he’d been a woman, or even a man under other circumstances, I’d have wondered if he’d killed in self-defense after an attack. That was the sort of vibe I was getting off of him and his reactions. I couldn’t figure out how to ask if his uncle, the man who’d raised him from a toddler, had molested him. Had he fought back finally? No, that didn’t feel right, and that wouldn’t explain the blood evidence on him being so wrong. A shapeshifter would know that his human form wouldn’t have blood on it from the kill. Only someone who didn’t know much about wereanimals would do it this way.
“Are you sure these are all the pictures I need?”
He nodded again but stared at the floor.
“Bobby,” I said, “what aren’t you telling me?”
He shook his head this time, still staring at the floor.
“Bobby, is there blood evidence somewhere else on your body?”
He went very still in the way that trauma victims can go deep inside themselves as if they believe that if they’re still enough, quiet enough, they won’t have to answer any more questions. If they go away in plain sight, then the worst thing won’t happen or won’t have to be shared. Everything about him screamed victim, not perpetrator. What the hell was going on here? What had happened to Bobby Marchand to make him react like this? I’d ask Newman later in private if Bobby was usually this quiet and withdrawn; if he was, then that usually indicated long-term abuse. If it wasn’t normal for him, then something bad had happened to him very recently, like yesterday recently. Maybe waking up covered in blood and being accused of murdering the only father you’ve ever known would be enough? Yeah, that sounded like enough. I was just used to looking for horrors, as if tragedy alone wasn’t enough.
“Bobby, we’re trying to help prove that you didn’t kill your uncle. Don’t you want us to prove that?” I asked softly, gently, the way you do with victims when you don’t want to spook them.
He answered, still staring at the floor, “If I killed Uncle Ray, I don’t want you to save me.”
“But if you didn’t kill your uncle Ray, then someone else did, Bobby. Don’t you want to catch them?”
He looked at me then, eyes startled, but trying to see me, really see me. He looked into my eyes—trying to see if I meant it, I think.
Sheriff Leduc said, “Don’t you go lying to him, Marshal. He did it, and he’s going to have to die for it. Giving him false hope is just . . . cruel.”
Bobby looked at Leduc. “You know I did it, don’t you?”
“I’m sorry, Bobby. I’m truly sorry, but I know what I know. I know what I saw at your house.”
Bobby started to look down at the ground again, but I waved a hand in front of his face so close that he startled back from it. He frowned at me, a moment of anger flashing through his eyes. And with that anger came the faintest warmth of his beast, like the hint of heat when you walk too close to an oven. There’s no need to open the door to know it’ll burn you.
My own inner beast rose toward his. Oh, I knew the oven was on, but there was something sweet baking inside it, and my own inner leopard wanted to find out if it was cookies or cake. I had better control than that normally, but something about Bobby had unsettled me.
His eyes went wide with surprise. “How can you be . . .” he started to whisper, and then stopped himself, glancing toward the officers outside the bars. He thought I was a wereleopard like him, but he didn’t want to out me. It was still legal grounds for dismissal from most police forces or military. The preternatural branch was the exception, but Bobby didn’t know that. Just like he couldn’t have known that I carried multiple strands of lycanthropy inside me, but never changed form. The doctors thought that catching so many types of the disease so close together had made me a medical miracle, so I was a carrier but didn’t have a full-blown case of any of the inner beasts I carried.
I stared into his blue eyes in their mask of blood and said, “There’s more blood on you somewhere, isn’t there, Bobby?”
“Yes,” he whispered as he met my gaze.
“Show me, Bobby, please.”
“I don’t want everyone to see,” he whispered, voice even lower.
Newman said, “Can you give us some privacy, Duke, Frankie?”
“Privacy, what the hell do you need privacy for? We brought Bobby in here jaybird naked. We seen the show.”
Bobby flinched at that and went back to looking at the floor. What little animation had been in his face just drained away.
“Humor us, Sheriff,” I said.
“I won’t leave you in there alone with him unarmed, but we can turn our backs if that will help.”
“If that’s the most privacy we can get, then we’ll take it,” I said.
The sheriff turned his broad back first, thumbs in his duty belt. He had to tell the deputy to turn around. She seemed puzzled, but she turned around with my weapons still dangling off of her.
I leaned in close to Bobby and said, “They won’t see now, Bobby.”
“They already saw. You heard Duke.” He sounded stricken; that was the only word for it.
Newman spoke slow and soft; he’d caught on to what I was doing. “We want to help you, Bobby, but you’ve got to help us do that.”
Bobby shook his head, still staring at the floor.
I called just a hint of leopard back so that it glided along my skin and trailed like warmth between us. It made him look at me again. “Bobby, show me, please.”
He stared into my eyes as if he couldn’t look away, and he slowly began to drop the blanket. Newman didn’t try to catch it this time. He just let it fall open to expose the front of Bobby Marchand’s body. There was blood on his groin, caked into the short hairs around him.
He started to shake, and if Newman hadn’t caught him from behind, he’d have fallen as much as his chains would have let him. “What did I do? What did I do to Uncle Ray? God, please tell me I didn’t do that to him. I don’t know why I would do that. I never, ever thought about anything like that. He’s my dad. I would never, but if I didn’t, then why is there blood there? What the hell happened last night?” He wailed his grief and horror. More than a scream, it was what people meant when they used to say keening for the dead.
Bobby’s grief tore through him, and like all strong emotions could, it brought out his beast. Newman was still trying to get him on the bunk with the chains, with Bobby’s nearly deadweight hampering him, when I felt the rush of heat. It was as if I’d opened the oven instead of just walking past it. That blast of heat washed over me in a skin-prickling rush. Bobby raised his face upward and wailed again, but this time his eyes were pure yellow. His leopard looked out of his human face. It was the first part of his humanity to go, but it wouldn’t be the last.