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“Let me try.”
“Be my guest.”
“Tell us exactly what you see in your mind.”
“I don’t know,” Bobby said. “It’s darkness and flashes.”
“Tell us what you see. Do not edit yourself. Just talk.”
Bobby frowned and then winced again as if even frowning hurt. “Anger. I was angry, and then I started seeing in leopard vision.”
“What the hell does that even mean, leopard vision?” Leduc said from the doorway to the offices. I think he’d delayed the ambulance call now that our suspect was awake and talking.
“My leopard eyes don’t see color the way my human eyes do. That’s usually my first clue that I’m changing.”
“What do you remember next?” Olaf asked.
Bobby drew the blanket around him as close as he could and shivered. I wasn’t sure if it was from coldness or from what he saw in his own head. “I could smell the gun, feel it against my head. It scared the animal part, but the human part wanted it.” He stared up at Olaf with confusion in his eyes. “I tried to get . . . I wanted to die for what I’d done to Uncle Ray.”
Bobby tried to wipe his hands over his face like he was going to hide, but it hurt too much, and his blanket began to slide down. He seemed very serious about the blanket staying in place. Again, it made me wonder about some kind of abuse background. He could have just been that modest, but he was a good-looking, fit man in his early thirties. I hadn’t met many of them who were this modest. If he’d just tried to keep his groin covered, maybe. But he seemed equally intent on keeping his upper body covered, which was usually more a woman’s problem unless something had happened to make the man self-conscious of his body.
“Do you remember the fight now?” Olaf asked, his deep voice as serious and calm as I’d ever heard it.
“Yes, most of it. I’ll
remember all of it in a few minutes.”
I looked up at Olaf. “How did you know to question him like that?”
He met my gaze with his own, but for once the eyes were thoughtful and serious, nothing more. “Even the best of us sometimes need a few minutes to reorient ourselves when we awake.”
“Are you saying that I didn’t knock him out? He just passed out from the change?”
“No, but even a partial change can be disorienting. Add several blows to the head and even a human might have trouble remembering the last few minutes.”
Olaf was right. “Damn it, you’re right. I was so busy thinking of him as a wereleopard that I forgot that his human half could be knocked silly, too.”
“If you hadn’t been here to help us question Bobby, I might have thought he was lying about not remembering,” Newman said.
“Which would have made us doubt his whole story,” I said.
Kaitlin piped up from the doorway. “Guess he’s not just a pretty face after all.”
It startled me that she was referring to Olaf. Pretty was so not an adjective that I would ever have used for him.
“I am not a pretty face,” Olaf said. He made it a statement.
“Handsome, then,” she said.
I nodded. “If you like.”
“I like,” she said, and I realized she was flirting with him.
He seemed to realize it, too, because he scowled; frown just didn’t cover that look. He’d reacted badly to compliments from women when I’d first met him, but I knew he could flirt and pretend because I’d seen it. I wondered if the reason he didn’t bother was that Kaitlin wasn’t his victim preference. I mean type. He liked petite women with dark hair, and preferred darker eyes. Yeah, I fit his type to a T. The only thing Kaitlin fit was the petite part, so she was safe and apparently held no interest for him. He didn’t even pretend to flirt back. He ignored her. Kaitlin would probably take that as a snub, but she didn’t know how lucky she was that he wasn’t interested in her. I wondered if dyeing my hair blond would make him lose interest. I’d never dyed my hair before, but to get Olaf off my back, I’d dye it Technicolor rainbow. If I did it before the wedding, Jean-Claude would never forgive me, but afterward he might agree. Anything to move me off Olaf’s dating menu seemed like a great idea.
“Thank you, Marshal,” Bobby said.
“Marshal Jeffries,” Olaf said.
