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“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.”
