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WE INTRODUCED MARSHAL Ted Forrester to Bobby. In clothes, he looked less like a victim and more like a person. He wore jeans, a T-shirt, and jogging shoes, as if he were going to walk out of here soon. That wasn’t true, but the clothes made him seem more real somehow. Bobby’s attitude was more solid now, too, as if the clothes had given him more confidence, or maybe he just felt more himself in them. The deputy who had brought his clothes had forgotten a belt, so Bobby kept pulling his pants up as he paced in his cell. He’d started pacing when we asked him to give us more details about the night of the murder. I didn’t need Olaf’s supernatural senses to know Bobby was nervous and hiding things from us. Bobby ran one hand through his straight blond hair so often that if it had had any body to it, it would have been a mess, but lucky for him it was so straight and so baby fine that it just kept falling back into place.
The five of us watched him pace back and forth behind the bars like we were at a zoo. Newman said, “Bobby, we’re trying to save your life here. Duke is pissed that I gave you the name of the lawyer that’s willing to try to help you, but it doesn’t matter what the rest of us do if you won’t help yourself.”
“I told you what happened that night.” He gave a quick look up at us and then went back to staring at the floor as he paced. He couldn’t even meet anyone’s eyes for long. He must have sucked at bluffing in poker.
I tried. “You said that Jocelyn saw you pass out in your bedroom after you shifted back to human.”
He nodded and stopped walking long enough to look at me, and then his eyes were back to the floor and the pacing recommenced as if he had lost something small and had to stare at the floor hard to find it.
“We talked to her, and she said she didn’t see you in your bedroom that night.”
That made him hesitate between one step and the next, then stumble. He studied my face to see if I was lying to him. I kept my face calm because I wasn’t lying, so it was even easier than normal when interrogating a suspect.
“But she saw me pass out, or start to. I mean, I saw her in the doorway as I started to black out.”
“Jocelyn says she wasn’t in your bedroom that night.”
“I didn’t say she was in my room, just that she saw me pass out. She saw me change back to human, and she knows I came in the window like I always do. I never even went downstairs as a leopard that night. Joshie knows that.”
I shrugged. “She says you did it, Bobby, that you killed her dad.”
“Did she see me do it?” he said, and he finally seemed indignant.
“No, she just found the body,” Newman said.
“Then I don’t understand. I’ve been thinking about it, and I remember going hunting outside in the woods. The deer I killed should still be in the tree outside my window. It’s where I stash kills that I can’t eat all at once.”
“Leopards in Africa put kills in trees so lions and hyenas don’t get to them. What are you hiding your kill from here?” I asked.
He shook his head. “Coyotes mostly, though a lot of animals will scavenge. Even the animals that can climb or fly are less likely to try it with the carcass so close to the house. If there’s a fresh deer in the tree, then what I’m remembering is true and I didn’t kill Uncle Ray.”
“You seemed pretty certain you did it when you first woke up in the cell,” Duke said from the doorway to the offices.
“I woke up covered in blood, and you told me I’d killed Uncle Ray. What else was I supposed to think? I’ve been trusting your opinions since peewee football league when you were just one of the other dads. You gave all of us on your . . . on the team better advice on how to play than our coach.” Bobby had almost said your son’s, I think. I wanted to know the backstory of Leduc’s dead son, but not enough to pry into something that painful.
“You said you didn’t remember before,” I said.
“I didn’t, except in glimpses—sometimes it’s more like remembering dreams than real memories.”
“You have been a shapeshifter for over ten years, and you still only remember as if it is a dream,” Olaf said.
“Yes. Do you remember your full moons?”
“More clearly than you do.”
“Bobby also shifts only into a leopard about the size of a normal one,” I said.
“Really?” Edward said.
“That is not typical,” Olaf said.
“I just thought it was because Bobby doesn’t seem to be very powerful,” Newman said.
“That just affects how many forms you shift into, not how
big each of them is,” I said.
Bobby looked at us, his hands wrapped around the bars of the cell, and I was suddenly aware that his hands fit through the bars and the hallway was narrow. If he’d been a regular shapeshifter, I wouldn’t have wanted to be standing this close. I realized that Edward was standing farther away from the bars. Olaf had moved up with me, but then he didn’t have to worry about Bobby’s extra strength or speed, because he had his own. I had some of my own, true, but that wasn’t it. I didn’t see him as that dangerous, because he probably hadn’t killed his uncle, and . . . he was so not in the same power level as the shapeshifters I lived and worked with regularly. But small dogs can still bite. When had I decided Bobby was more person than suspect? Oh, now I remembered: when I put my body between him and a bullet. Yeah, saving someone’s life usually made me feel protective toward them, damn it.
