THE TABLE IN the middle of the room took up most of the floor space. There were two chairs. We put Bobby in one, and then there was barely room to walk behind the chair. I could squeeze my hips between the chair back and the wall, but barely. Newman took the chair opposite Bobby, and that left the rest of us to figure out where to stand. There weren’t a lot of choices.
Edward took up a corner behind Newman so he could watch Bobby’s face, and then Olaf and I had one of those comedic moments of both trying for the other corner that would let us watch Bobby. Under other circumstances I’d have accused him of trying to rub up against me, but we both genuinely wanted the same spot. Edward solved it like we were kids to his adult.
“Anita gets shotgun,” he said, and that meant I was beside him. Olaf took it gracefully enough, but even he couldn’t ease behind Bobby’s chair gracefully. He managed it, but it was one of the most physically awkward things I’d ever seen Olaf do. He finally ended up in the corner closest to the door so that he and I mirrored each other.
Newman smiled at Bobby like he meant it and said, “Bobby, I need to know everything that happened the night your uncle died.”
“I told you before the other marshals got here, Win. I told you what I remembered.”
“Bobby, you know that you’ve left things out.”
“Do you think I did it?” Bobby’s voice had more emotion in it, not exactly anger but something.
“No, but I think if you don’t tell us everything now, then it won’t matter in just a few hours. I only got an eight-hour extension on the warrant of execution. When the time is up, there will be no choice, Bobby. Do you understand that?”
“I don’t think you’ll kill me, Win.”
“Maybe I can’t, not like this, but I’ll be forced to give the warrant over to one of the other marshals. Even if I give up my badge, the warrant will just go to the next marshal. I can’t save your life by refusing to take it, Bobby, because if I don’t do it, one of the marshals in this room will.”
Bobby looked up at Edward and me and then turned his head so he could see Olaf. He turned back to look at me. “I don’t think you’ll do it either, Anita.”
“Maybe not, but Ted will, and Otto will, but honestly, Bobby, after I nearly got shot saving you once, I’ll be really pissed if that was for nothing because you won’t tell us the whole truth.”
He looked startled. Maybe I’d sounded angrier than I’d meant to sound, but what I’d said was still true.
“Why did you shapeshift at the dark of the moon?” Olaf asked.
“I wanted to.” Bobby looked down at the tabletop.
“Who was the woman that asked you to shapeshift?” Newman asked.
Bobby shook his head.
“Are you still trying to suicide by cop?” I asked.
Bobby looked up then and again he was startled, or maybe it was confusion on his face. I didn’t know him well enough to be certain. “I didn’t—”
“Bullshit. I nearly died protecting you when you decided to lose control and let us shoot you.”
He looked down again, but this time he murmured, “I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking clearly then.”
“Are you thinking clearly now, Bobby?” Newman asked.
“Yes, I am.”
“Then who is the she that you mentioned before?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Let us decide that.”
“I promised I wouldn’t tell anyone until we’re both ready.”
“What did you promise not to tell?” Newman asked, voice soft.
“I gave my word.”
Olaf spoke from the corner. “Will you die to keep her secret?”
“It’s not like that.”
“Why did you change into your leopard form on one of the few nights that almost nothing could make you do it?” I asked.
Bobby licked his lips and swallowed. I realized that I hadn’t seen him drink or eat anything since we’d been here. I guess I’d assumed that someone else had taken care of that, but I didn’t know that for certain. I just wasn’t used to having prisoners, and dead bodies didn’t need to be fed.
Edward must have noticed, too, because he said, “Do you need a drink, pardner?”
“That would be nice. Thank you,” Bobby said.
It took some maneuvering past me, but Edward finally managed to get the door opened without hitting the table. He shut the door carefully behind him.
Bobby was way too at ease. He should have been scared, and he wasn’t. I realized that he was a lot more relaxed outside the cell. Had it been a mistake to bring him out of it? We could always take him back and do it the other way, but we had to either get him relaxed enough to let his guard down, or we had to up the emotion and scare him into talking.
Newman talked to Bobby but didn’t push too hard until Edward got back with a soda. We waited in silence while Bobby opened the can and took a few drinks. He actually laughed and said, “You’re all staring at me. I’m not doing anything that interesting.”
“In seven hours . . .” I made a big deal out of looking at my watch. “Oh, wait, in six hours and forty minutes, you’re going to die, because you won’t tell us the whole truth about that night.”
“But I’m not holding back anything that can help save me.”
“How do you know?” Edward asked.
“What do you mean?”
“How do you know that we won’t find a clue in what you’re not telling us?”
Bobby seemed to think that through as he sipped his soda.
“We’re cops, Bobby,” Newman said. “It’s our job to make sense out of stuff like this. You never know what might help us to help you.”
“You’ve never been a police officer, right?” I asked.
“You mean me?” Bobby asked.
“Everyone else in the room is a police officer, so yeah, you.”
“Sorry, yes. It’s just you all asking questions from all over the room is sort of disorienting.”
I filed that thought away for future interrogations and asked, “So you don’t know how to do our jobs, right?”
“No, I don’t.”
“Then why don’t you stop deciding what will and won’t help us figure out whodunit, and just tell us everything you know so we can try to do the crime-busting part of our jobs?”
“I thought crime busting was your jobs.” He smiled as he spoke as if I’d said something to amuse him.
“Only part,” I said.
“What’s the other part?”
“Executing people,” I said.
“Killing people,” Edward said.
“Killing,” Olaf said.
Bobby looked around the room at all of us one at a time. “You’re trying to scare me.”
“If that will get you to talk, sure, but that last part wasn’t planned. It’s just the truth,” I said.
Bobby turned back to Newman, who was the only one of us who hadn’t said that particular truth. “Don’t you want to scare me, too?”
“No, I want to save your life and find out who killed Ray and framed you for it, because if they’ll do all that, then they are a danger to everyone else in our town.”
“I don’t know who killed Uncle Ray. I just know I didn’t do it.”
“Then tell us what you know, Bobby, please. Once you die for this crime, the investigation is over, and there will still be a double murderer free in our town to kill again.”
“Double murderer? Only Uncle Ray died, right, no one else?” He was scared now, worried for other people.
I’d have let him sweat and asked whom he was worried about, but Newman was lead marshal and he didn’t ask my opinion. “You’re the second murder victim, Bobby.”
“But I’m alive, Win. I’m right here.”
“Not for much longer, Bobby, not unless you help us.”
Bobby’s emotions went across his face like clouds across a windy sky, too fast for me to catch them, but the shadows of them chased across his face as he fought through them all. Whatever he was hiding was important to him and came with an emotional price tag.
“Troy is one of the biggest gossips in town. I couldn’t talk with him right there. I still don’t feel right about it. I gave my word.”
“Bobby, it’s just us now, and I swear to you that anything you tell us won’t leave this room unless it directly relates to the murder,” Newman said.
Bobby looked at him and then at all of us in turn. “Do you promise?”
We all promised. He was so earnest, I half expected him to ask us to pinkie swear.
“Jocelyn and I grew up together. Her mother married Uncle Ray when she was five and I was eight.”
That didn’t seem to have anything to do with anything, but I was betting who the “she” might be.
“She saw me in leopard form after the accident every month. I know you’ve seen the pictures of me with the family in both forms, Win. I’m not sure about the rest of you.”
“I’ve seen them. That’s how I knew your leopard was the same size as a regular leopard,” I said.
“Then you know that I’m in the pictures like the family dog. Joshie saw me in my animal form a lot, but she never saw me shift. I always did that in private, sort of like changing clothes. She wanted to see the change all the way through once.” He looked back at Olaf. “Like you said, I had the most control at the dark of the moon, so that’s when we planned it.”
“Planned what?” I asked. If he said the murder, I was going to be both pissed and pleased: angry I’d almost gotten killed protecting a murderer and pleased we could solve the case.
Bobby looked back at me. “Um . . . to have her see me change form.”
Olaf came up beside Bobby’s chair and leaned over him as he said, “You’re lying.”
Bobby glanced up at him and then away. “I’m not lying. It’s the truth.”
“Then why did your pulse rate speed up? Your body is reacting like you are hiding something.” Olaf leaned closer, bowing his bigger body over the other man’s head so that Bobby reacted like the roof was getting lower.
“It’s the truth,” Bobby said.
“If it is the truth, it is not all of it,” Olaf said, his face nearly touching the other’s man’s cheek.
“Win, tell him to back off.”
“I’m not his boss,” Win said.
Bobby’s eyes flashed up at Win, and he was afraid as he tried to sit up straighter with Olaf’s body almost touching him. For the first time since we had come into the little room, Bobby seemed to realize that he wasn’t safe, that maybe bad things could happen to him and Newman might not be able to help him. Good. Maybe he’d stop playing games and tell us the truth.
Olaf asked the next question damn near curled around Bobby. “Why did your sister want to see you change form?”
“She’s not my sister,” Bobby said, and he sat up so suddenly that if Olaf hadn’t moved back, Bobby’s head might have hit him in the face. Why had that question upset Bobby?
“You were raised together,” I said.
Bobby looked at me, and he was angry. “That doesn’t make us brother and sister. Uncle Ray never formally adopted Joshie, just me, so even legally, we’re not related.”
“Everyone in town calls her Jocelyn Marchand,” Newman said.
“We’re the Marchand family, and when Joshie and I were younger we didn’t even know that her last name wasn’t Marchand.”
I had an idea. It was kind of twisted, but his anger and defensiveness were coming from somewhere. “When did you start having sex together?”
Newman said, “Blake!” at the same time that Bobby said, “It wasn’t like that.”
“So, you and Jocelyn didn’t have sex together?” I asked.
This time Newman didn’t say anything. He was trying to do his best blank cop face, because his mind was having trouble with the detour.
“We love each other,” Bobby said.
“How long have you loved each other?” I asked.
“I’ve had a crush on her since she was in her teens, but she still thought I was her brother, so I didn’t say anything. I figured I was just wrong. I mean, you’re right, we were raised together, but I didn’t feel like a brother. But if she felt like my sister, then I could live with it.”
“What changed your mind?”
“She said she had feelings for me, and I finally told her how I felt.”
“Then what happened?” I asked, because apparently this line of questioning was my lead, or Newman didn’t want to touch it.
“We couldn’t date exactly, because people do think of us as siblings here. We were planning to tell Uncle Ray how we felt, and then we were going to move away to a big city where no one knew us. We weren’t doing anything wrong, but Jocelyn didn’t want to have to explain it to the people we’d grown up with. It bothered her more than it bothered me.”
“Would you have just told everyone if she’d agreed?” I asked.
He nodded. “I’m in love with her. I’ve been in love with her for years. I was engaged once, but I realized that Joshie had been my first love and still was, so it wasn’t fair to marry anyone else, not if I couldn’t really love them.”
“Noble,” Olaf said. “Many men would have married and tried to forget what they could not have.”
“It didn’t feel noble. I thought maybe if she found someone else and married, I’d finally be able to let it go, but she couldn’t find anyone either. We finally both realized that it was because we were meant for each other.”
“But you weren’t able to tell anyone,” I said.
Bobby shook his head. “She knew we weren’t really brother and sister, but to the rest of the town we were, and so she made me swear that I wouldn’t tell anyone that we were in love.”
“Or that you were lovers,” I said.
He nodded. “Or that.”
I was beginning to see why Jocelyn might have been a little hysterical in the hospital. She’d been hiding the fact that she was having an affair with the man who was raised as her brother; it’s legal, but if she hadn’t felt conflicted about it, she wouldn’t have made Bobby swear not to tell anyone.
“Why did she want to see the whole transformation from human to leopard?” I asked. Maybe if I concentrated on what we didn’t know, I wouldn’t get hung up on what we’d just learned. Was it incest if you weren’t blood relations? I mean, technically, legally no, but if you were raised together it just felt . . . wrong.
“I proposed, and she said she couldn’t decide if she didn’t see me change. She was comfortable with me being a wereanimal as her brother, but not sure about as a husband.”
“What happened that night, Bobby?” I asked.
He told the story pretty much as he’d told Newman from the beginning up to a point. They’d sat down to dinner with Uncle Ray at seven o’clock like normal, but then all the hired help had left, even Carmichael, who lived on-site in a small house on the grounds.
“Except for Carmichael leaving, it was a normal Friday night up to that point. Uncle Ray went to his study to look over the stocks and write in his journal like he did almost every night. We had some television shows that we watched together, and sometimes we’d watch a movie as a family, but other than that, he went to his study and left Jocelyn and me to entertain ourselves. That’s how he always said it: ‘You kids go entertain yourselves. I’m going to do boring old-man stuff.’”
Bobby’s eyes got shiny at that point. He raised his hands as if he’d rub the tears away, or pretend he had something in his eye, but the shackles brought him up short, and he couldn’t complete the gesture. “I can’t believe he’s never going to hug me and say that ever again. I didn’t see his body, so I don’t believe he’s dead. Does that make sense?” He looked at me.
“Yeah, makes perfect sense,” I said.
He nodded, and the tears started down his face.
“Go on, Bobby,” Newman said. “What happened after Ray went to his study?”
“We went up to my room and made love. She let me hold her for a while, and then she asked to see me change.” The tears were drying on his face by the time he’d finished the sentence.
He hesitated so long that I was debating on asking a question while he struggled to find the words, but Edward beat me to it. “You said she let you hold her afterward. Was that unusual?”
Bobby nodded. “She joked that I was the girl, because I liked to hold her after sex and she just liked to clean up and be done like a boy.” He smiled as he spoke, his face going gentle at the memory.
In my head I thought two things. One, if she could get up every time that fast, then she wasn’t having that good a time. Two, if she didn’t want to be held after sex, she had serious issues about the whole thing, or she was using him for sex or in general.
“How did she react to seeing you change shape?” Olaf asked from the corner to which he’d retreated.
Bobby glanced back at him, and there was an uneasy look on his face, but I think that had more to do with Olaf intimidating him earlier than anything else. “She didn’t scream or run away. She looked happy, smelled pleased. I rubbed up against her legs. She petted me like she always does in leopard form, and then I went out the open window and down the tree outside my window like I always do.”
“The same tree that you put your deer in?” I asked.
He frowned and nodded. “Unless one of the other animals in the area moved the deer, it should have been there.”
“Rico looked in the tree. He didn’t search the woods for it,” Newman said.
Bobby smiled and then looked utterly serious. He glanced at me and then at Newman. “Does she really think I killed him?”
“I’m sorry, Bobby, but yeah, she does.”
“Win, I did not do this. Maybe the deer fell out of the tree. Have Rico look on the ground around it. If the deer is there, then that’s all I killed.” He sounded so certain.
“I’ll have Rico check again,” Newman said.
“Thank you, Win.” Bobby looked up at me. “Thank you, too, Anita, for believing in me when I didn’t believe in myself. Thank you, too, Marshal Forrester and Marshal Jeffries.” He started to lift his hands as if he’d offer to shake, but the shackles stopped him.
“Don’t thank us yet, pardner,” Edward said, pushing away from the corner and smiling his Ted smile at Bobby.
We shuffled him back to his cell and then Newman’s phone rang. It was Dr. Jameson at the hospital. Jocelyn was awake and alert enough to talk to us.
“We’ll be there in just a few minutes, Doctor. Thanks for the call.” Newman hung up.
“Perfect timing,” Edward said.
“What’s perfect timing?” Sheriff Leduc asked as we moved through the office area on our way to the cars.
“We’re off to chase clues,” I said.
“Chase clues? Who are you, Nancy Drew?”
“I was always more of a Hardy Boys fan myself,” I said.
“Me, too,” Edward said.
“I had a crush on Nancy when I was a kid,” Newman said.
“I do not know who this Nancy Drew is or the Hardy men,” Olaf said.
“I knew you missed Sherlock Holmes, but didn’t you ever read any kind of mystery as a kid?” I asked.
“No,” he said, and that one word put a stop to the conversation.
We got our jackets and headed to the hospital. As I settled into the passenger seat of Edward’s rental, I could have sworn I could feel Olaf’s gaze on the back of my head. Maybe if Olaf and I had that coffee date, I could ask him what he liked to read. Yeah, that sounded swell.
I turned in my seat and managed a smile. “If you move over and sit behind Edward, I’ll be able to look at you while we talk on the drive.”
“Would looking at me please you?”
“Yes,” I said, smiling even more brightly.
So long as he didn’t ask why it would please me to look at him, we were good. He could think it was so I could admire his scary good looks, and I could feel safer, not having him pressed at my back in the car. He didn’t question why I wanted him to move over. He just did it. Perfect.