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“That was fast on the rooms,” I managed to say without going close enough to touch him.
“Ethan and the others are handling it. We all decided it would suck if you needed help keeping your prisoner in human form and none of us was here to help.”
Deputy Frankie was on the landline phone. She put the receiver to her shoulder to say, “Everyone else is out on calls. I’m manning the phones and guarding the prisoners.”
I realized the door to the cell area was open so she could be at the desk and see into the other space, though maybe there was more than one reason she wanted a good view.
I could hear Angel’s voice. She was sitting in the little hallway on the chair that Frankie had been using when she was on guard duty earlier. She was leaning forward and talking to either Bobby or Troy; it was hard to tell which from a glance. Angel laughed at something that one of them said; she used a very feminine laugh that usually meant the joke wasn’t nearly as funny as it was meant to be. Either a lot of women are socially conditioned to laugh at men’s jokes, or they’re flirting. I’d never been socially conditioned as a girl for much of anything, and I’d never been able to fake a laugh, and I made it a rule not to fake anything else, but I could recognize when others did.
Deputy Frankie hung up the phone and glanced back into the hallway. Maybe Angel’s flirting wasn’t really aimed at the men in the cells. Angel dated both men and women, so you never knew which way she’d swing. Maybe she had a thing for women in uniform?
“We need to ask Bobby a few more questions,” I said.
The phone rang, and Frankie waved us through the open door while she took the call. Angel stood up as we walked into the cellblock. Did two cells count as a block? She smiled at Olaf and me. Some lingering energy from the flirting seemed to cling to her, or maybe it was the extra wiggle she put into her hips as she swayed toward us in her pencil skirt.
“I know the rules: The sheriff lets us sit with Bobby, but we’re not allowed to be in on any official police business like questioning the prisoners.” Angel wiggled her eyebrows as she said the last word like it was something naughty.
Olaf and I frowned at her as she left. I don’t know what he was thinking, but I still didn’t like her and Pierette making themselves bait for him. I closed the door between us and the office for what privacy it offered. Everyone outside except for the deputy was a wereanimal. The door was thick, but I wasn’t sure it was that thick. Since I’d have let Angel stay in the room, I really wasn’t worried about it. I’d closed the door because I’d made the deal with Leduc that only the people with official badges would be involved in official businesslike interrogations.
Bobby and Troy were sitting as close as the cells would allow, visiting through the shared cell bars. They looked at Olaf and me as we walked in, and there was something in their expressions that told me they were on the same side. The whole cop-and-criminal thing didn’t seem to apply anymore. Maybe it was their shared history, or maybe they’d bonded because one of them had nearly killed the other one. Men can bond over some strange stuff. Of course, maybe they were just bored, and they didn’t have anything else to do but talk to each other, and I was just overthinking it. Yeah, probably that.
“What’s wrong?” Bobby asked. He started moving to the front of his cell.
“Why do you think anything is wrong?” I asked.
“You look grim.” He stopped moving toward us and just stood looking at us. He went pale, and his voice was a little breathy as he asked, “Are you going to kill me now?”
I shook my head.
He let out a long breath, or maybe he just breathed again. I thought for a second he was going to go to his knees, but he managed to back up and sit on his bunk. “I keep thinking every time one of you comes in here that it will be the last time.”
I had no honest comfort to offer him, because he was right. I could kill when people were trying to kill me, when I had to protect others, or even when I was sure that someone had murdered others and would do it again, but this . . . this wasn’t right.
“You’re right, Bobby. We’re running out of time, so I’m just going to ask you what I need to ask. I’m sorry that we don’t have privacy, but the interrogation room is full.”
“I understand that you want to help me, Anita, so just ask. If Troy tells anyone my secrets, I’ll tell everyone what happened at our senior prom.”
“Oh, dude, that is low,” Troy said.
Bobby smiled at him. “Just reminding you that I know where your bodies are buried, too.” Bobby frowned and looked at us. “Wow, that sounded way better in my head. Now it just sounds creepy.”
“About that kind of thing,” I said, “you say that you and Jocelyn had a consensual relationship.”
“We’re in love,” he said.
“Okay, then, why do all the pictures on your phone look like stalker pics?”
“What are you talking about?”
“She looks asleep in all of them, like you snuck into her room and took them without her knowing. That’s not what couple pictures look like, Bobby.”
He looked angry, embarrassed. “This sounds so weak, but she didn’t want any pictures until after we went public with the relationship. She was adamant about no intimate pictures.”
“So, you did sneak int
o her room at night and take the pictures?”
“No, we’d make love and she’d fall asleep and then I’d take a few pictures. I loved her so much—I love her so much—that I wanted something to prove to myself that it was real. I know that’s not a good excuse for promising not to take pictures and then taking them anyway, but they’re not all like that. I have some of her smiling at me during the day, and those are good.”
