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“No way to tell yet,” he said.
I nodded. He was right, of course, but all I could think was in trying to save him from Bobby’s type of Therianthropy I might have given him mine. It was like the harder I tried, the worse things got.
“Rico gained consciousness and said something before he got in the ambulance,” Edward said.
“What?” I asked.
“He said, ‘I should never have listened to that bitch.’”
“What does that mean?” Leduc asked.
“Jocelyn was here when we pulled up,” I said.
“Did he say anything else?” Leduc asked.
“I asked him what he meant, and he said, ‘She’s killed us both.’”
“What the hell does that mean?” Leduc asked.
When Edward told Leduc what Hazel had told Livingston and us, he said, “Son of a bitch, son of a bitch, are you telling me that Rico . . . Ray and Carmichael, and that Bobby was just defending himself?”
I shook my head. “Bobby pulled him through the bars when he still had hands. He wedged Rico in so that he couldn’t get away. He made sure that your deputy got to watch him shift in his cell and was unable to escape, knowing what was going to happen to him. Bobby could have walked away from this. He was free, damn it. Why? Why kill someone now?”
“I’ll go to the hospital and see if I can get Rico to tell me more about Jocelyn’s part in it,” Leduc said.
“Tell the hospital to use minimum heat on the wound, because if he’s caught lycanthropy, then he’ll grow the arm back if they don’t burn the flesh and kill it,” I said.
“Motherfucking son of a bitch,” Leduc said, already on his phone to the hospital.
I looked around for Jocelyn so I could ask her what she’d said to Bobby that had made him lose control so completely. I could aim my anger at her next.
Nicky said, “She got in a car with the older woman who came in to be questioned. She works for the family.”
“Helen Grimes,” I said.
He nodded.
“What did Jocelyn say to Bobby to make him lose his shit like this?” I asked.
“I don’t think it was what she said,” Olaf said.
“What do you mean?” I asked, and I tried to stay angry, but I wasn’t angry at Olaf for this. I could feel the adrenaline from the near-death emergency leaking away. When it left, I’d want to be sitting or lying down.
“I held the deputy in my arms. I was very close to his body, and I smelled the woman’s scent on him.” I looked at Olaf and realized that he was covered in Rico’s blood.
“Woman—you mean Jocelyn?”
Olaf nodded.
“What do you mean you smelled her scent on him?” Milligan asked.
“The scent of her body was underneath his clothes on his skin.”
“You mean they had sex,” Custer asked.
“It is likely. I can tell you that their naked bodies rubbed against each other’s, sharing scent back and forth, but I did not sniff his groin or hers, so I can’t be a hundred percent certain of what they did while they were naked.” Olaf said it all with almost no change of expression, as if it was all completely normal.
“That would mean that she smelled like Rico,” I said.
