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“I should have gone to the sheriff and told him that Bobby was molesting his sister. I should have done it, even if Jocelyn hated me or they fired me. I should have told someone. If I had, maybe Mr. Ray would still be alive.” Helen started to cry harder again, shoulders rounding and starting to shake.
We were trying to reassure Helen that it wasn’t her fault when Edward finally came back with her drink. I moved back to stand beside Olaf so that Edward could have the room to work his sweet Ted magic on her. I was out of sweet talk about this case.
So Jocelyn had lied about the affair with her brother because she was embarrassed about it. It didn’t mean she’d killed her uncle. Ray Marchand could have seen it as incest and told Bobby to break it off with Jocelyn that night. Nothing we’d learned—even Jocelyn’s lying—helped clear Bobby of the murder. We needed another murderer to put in Bobby’s place, with enough evidence to convince the judge, or we were still going to have to kill him.
I had a sudden urge to lean my head against Olaf’s arm, because I couldn’t reach his shoulder, just to touch someone. It’s one of the ways that lycanthropes soothe themselves, and I carried enough beasts inside me to just want to lean against someone for a moment so I could think. As if Olaf had read my mind, he moved that small distance to me so that his arm touched my shoulder. Yeah, I knew it was Olaf, and he was a scary fuck, but I found myself leaning my head against his arm, resting my weight against him for a moment. It felt good, comforting in that puppy-pile kind of way that I’d grown to depend on when I was home with my polycule. I’d thought it was because they were metaphysically tied to me, but maybe it was just the physical closeness, the way stray dogs huddled together for comfort.
Whatever it was, it helped me think. Leduc had said that Helen Grimes had brought in Bobby’s phone because it had evidence that proved Jocelyn was telling the truth, or something like that. How had Helen known what was on the phone? How had she been that certain that it was worth bringing in to the police?
Those were good questions—questions we should have thought of earlier. I stopped arguing with myself about what felt good and what was a bad idea and just leaned against Olaf, finally feeling in the front of my head what the back part had already noticed, a faint hum of energy: his lion to my lion. It didn’t raise our beasts, it didn’t do anything bad, it just was, and in that moment, it was enough. If he would only give up the serial killer stuff, maybe we could cuddle.
57
BY THE TIME Edward got Helen calmed down, I had stopped leaning against Olaf. Even if he’d been my sweetheart for real, I wouldn’t have allowed myself to show affection in the middle of an interrogation. The other marshals would have made fun of me.
Helen was smiling at Edward, but when she turned to Newman, the smile vanished. “Why haven’t you done your duty, Win?”
“I’m not sure what you mean, Helen.”
“It’s not Bobby’s fault that the animal inside him is turning him into a monster, but it’s still a fact. It started with him lusting after his own sister, and when Mr. Ray told him that it was sinful, the animal side of him went crazy and killed him. Ray Marchand raised that boy like his own, adopted him and everything, but Bobby still turned into an animal and killed him. He’s not safe anymore, Win.”
“Did you see him kill Ray?” Newman asked.
“No, I wasn’t there that night. I told you that.”
“Were you safe and snuggled up at home, Helen?” Edward asked in his best country drawl.
“I was with my quilting group. We’re making a cathedral-window pattern. None of us has ever tried anything that intricate before.”
“The one that meets in the basement of the Lutheran church?” Newman asked.
“Yes,” she said, smiling and relaxed from talking about her hobby.
“Was it your night to bring refreshments?” he asked.
“No, I was on cleanup duty this week.”
“So, you locked up and went home pretty late,” Newman said.
I realized that between the two of them, they had Helen’s alibi. I hadn’t even thought of Helen Grimes as a possible accomplice in the murder, and I should have. I just wasn’t used to looking at ordinary people for my murderer. Once you had a victim who had been clawed to death, normal human fingernails just couldn’t do the job.
Helen leaned across the table and touched Newman’s sleeve. “I know it’s an awful thing that you have to do, Win, but it’s your job to keep the rest of us safe from the monsters, and that’s what Bobby is now, a monster.”
He patted her hand but moved back so she couldn’t touch him again. “If Bobby did everything you say he did, then you’re right, Helen.”
“If? What do you mean, if, Win?”
“If you had to walk into that cell and kill someone, wouldn’t you want to be certain first?”
“Jocelyn said you didn’t believe her, that you thought she was lying about what Bobby did to her, but you’ve seen the pictures and the video on his phone now. You know he was stalking her, or I don’t even have a word for what he was doing.”
I made myself smile at her. “How did you know that the pictures were on his phone, Helen?”
&nbs
p; “Jocelyn told me.”
“When did she tell you about the phone, Helen?” Newman asked.
