Sucker Punch

by Laurell K. Hamilton

  “Trish, just Trish,” the nurse said with a smile, but it didn’t quite fill up her brown eyes. There was discomfort in them. Maybe she hadn’t liked being introduced as Nurse Trish. She hadn’t felt free to correct the doctor, but apparently, she thought it was fine to correct a marshal. In the world of the hospital, the doctor had more clout.

  “Well, Trish, thank you for taking the time to help us today,” Newman said, giving a reassuring smile that must have melted the hearts of women who were looking for a nice guy.

  She flashed him a smile that showed a dimple in one cheek. It made her look younger, lighter, as if the smile lifted some burden of seriousness that she’d been carrying. I hadn’t noticed until her face lit up that she was pretty. There was a glimpse of a woman who, with her pixie haircut and darker eyeshadow, might go dancing. I was betting in a dance club she wouldn’t be wearing kittens and unicorns on her clothes, but you do what you can to cheer yourself up when your job is dealing with other people’s misery.

  Dr. Jameson frowned at the nurse as if he’d caught her flirting, and maybe he had. “You said you had some questions for Jocelyn.”

  “Yes, sir,” Newman said.

  “I don’t understand why you want to talk to me again,” Jocelyn said, still stirring her food around on her tray.

  “We just have a few more questions for you, Jocelyn,” Newman said.

  “What questions? You know what happened to Dad, and you know that Bobby did it. What else do you need to do your job?”

  She looked up at us then, and I realized she had used more eye makeup than I’d thought. It was subtle, but it brought out her eyes. She aimed all that beauty at us like a shield. Her eyes were a deep, rich brown, large in the smooth perfection of her face. She was even more beautiful than she had been before, and it wasn’t until I sensed how angry she was that I realized that was it. Telling women that they’re beautiful when they’re angry has become a cliché, but for some women, it was true. Jocelyn Marchand was one of them. I began to see how it might have been hard for Bobby to see her as just his sister, and the moment I thought that, I knew it wasn’t right. Plenty of beautiful women and handsome men have siblings who never think a single incestuous thought about them. It was more than beauty that made the difference.

  “We just want to double-check our facts, Jocelyn, that’s all,” Newman said.

  “What facts, Win?” she asked, voice impatient. She half dropped, half tossed the fork onto her food tray as if what she really wanted to do was throw the whole thing across the room. Anger was the second stage of grief, and she had plenty of things to grieve.

  “Bobby says that you and he . . . spent time together after dinner,” Newman said.

  Jocelyn shook her head hard enough for her curls to swing. She crossed her arms over the front of her hospital gown.

  “Okay, then, what did you and Bobby do after Ray went to his study?”

  “We didn’t do anything together!” she said, and it was almost a yell. She closed her eyes, lowered her head, and breathed deep and slow as if she was counting to ten. She was so angry, and she was right there.

  All I had to do was touch my hand to her bare arm, and I could feed on all that rage. I took a few deep breaths myself then, because it wasn’t like me to see a crime victim as food. She was hitting my radar as food, and I didn’t know why. I thought I had all the metaphysical hungers under control, but maybe not. Crap, I did not need this right now. Jocelyn Marchand had been victimized enough. I would not add to that because I was some creepy anger vampire. Just thinking that all the way through hurt my sense of self a little. I spent half my time thinking I’d already become a monster and the other half fighting not to make it a reality. I was a little conflicted about some of my supernatural abilities. Maybe Jocelyn was more than a little conflicted about having sex with Bobby?

  “Bobby says you spent the evening together,” Newman said, voice gentle.

  “Well, he’s a liar!”

  “I know you went out with friends, and Bobby stayed home.”

  “Then you know I did not spend all night with him. You know he’s lying.” Jocelyn looked up at Newman with those big brown eyes, giving him the full impact of that lovely face, willing him to believe her.

  “So you didn’t see him change into his leopard form before you left the house?”

  “No, I shut the door to my room so I wouldn’t have to see anything across the hall.”

  “It must be hard with the rooms right across from each other,” I said.

  Jocelyn looked at me then, giving me the full weight of her eyes, the face. She knew the effect she had on people. Nothing wrong with that. I was marrying someone who knew it, too.

  “I was hoping to get a job and an apartment of my own, but now I don’t know what’s going to happen.” The loss and confusion filled her eyes before she looked down at her lap.

  “Did you know Bobby planned to turn into his leopard that night?” Newman asked.

  She shook her head without looking up. “It was the dark of the moon. He never changed form then.”

  “Any idea why he decided to change that night?” Newman asked, as if asking why Bobby had decided to change clothes instead of skins.

  Jocelyn stared at her hands as they plucked at the white sheet. “I think so. I’m afraid so.” Her voice was almost a whisper. The anger was fading into something else, but since I didn’t feed on any other emotion, I couldn’t tell what she was feeling.

  “He told you his fantasy, didn’t he?” she asked, voice somehow small, as if she didn’t want to say her words too loud, because doing so would make them bigger, more real.

  “He told us about your relationship,” Newman said.

  Jocelyn looked up then, tears shining in her eyes, but the anger was back blazing so that her brown eyes looked almost black like dark water glistening in sunlight as the first tear trailed down her cheek. “The only relationship I have with Bobby is as brother and sister.”

  “I’m sorry, Jocelyn. Bobby says it was a little bit more than that,” Newman said, and he sounded almost apologetic.

  “He wanted it to be more, but I said no.”

  “Bobby says that the two of you aren’t genetically related and that Ray only adopted Bobby and not you, so you’re not even legally brother and sister.”

  She threw her hands up in the air, more tears trailing down her face from those angry eyes. “Bobby’s my brother. He told me all that stuff about not being related, but I was only five when my mom married his uncle. To me they are my dad and my big brother.”

  “So you and Bobby never had sex?”

  She looked disgusted. “No, I would never . . . That’s a horrible thing to say, and I told Bobby that. I told him I was going to tell Dad.”

  “You planned on telling Ray?” Newman asked.

  “I told him. He was shocked, but he said he’d talk to Bobby and get him to leave me alone.”

  “You told Ray the night he died that Bobby was wanting to date you?” Newman asked.

  “Yes. Dad said he’d talk to Bobby after I left for the night.” She started to cry in earnest. “Don’t you see? It’s all my fault.”

  “How is it your fault?”

  “Dad must have confronted Bobby and told him to leave me alone, that I didn’t feel that way about him, and he went crazy and killed Dad.” She hid her face in her hands. The nails were that pale-pink-and-white French that always looked weird to me, like something you’d do for a wedding but not for real life.

  Newman glanced at me as if for help, so I took the hint and said, “Bobby says he proposed, and you told him that you had to see him change into his leopard before you’d know if you’d be comfortable with it.”

  She looked up with tears drying on her face, but no new ones. Her voice finally held the angry scorn that I’d felt roll off of her earlier. “That’s ridiculous. I’v
e lived with his leopard for ten years. I don’t have any problem with him being a wereanimal. Well, I didn’t, but after what I saw . . . after what he did to our dad. Oh, God! It’s all my fault. I should have told Dad sooner or stayed home, but I never dreamed Bobby would hurt him. We both loved our father, or I thought we did.” She stared off into space as if seeing things we couldn’t: maybe the sight of her father’s bloody body or maybe things we couldn’t have guessed at.

  “Did you tell anyone else that Bobby was trying to be . . . inappropriate with you?” I asked, struggling to find words that wouldn’t make it worse for her.

  She nodded. “I told Helen that he was leaving his door to his room open so I’d see him undressing as I walked by, and that he’d peek at me if I left mine open. I couldn’t tell her the worst of it. It was so wrong and embarrassing.” She shuddered, hugging her arms to herself.

  “Helen Grimes, the cook?” Newman asked.

  “Yes, and I told my friend Marcy at a lunch a few days before the girls’ night out. Bobby had tried to . . . He forced his way into my room, and he . . . he tried to make his fantasy a reality. It’s what made me finally try to tell Dad. I didn’t even know if he’d believe me. You hear about women telling their families all the time that someone is molesting them, but nobody believes them, you know. Dad loves us both—loved us both—and it was like making him choose between us.”

  “We believe you, Jocelyn,” Newman said.

  She smiled up at him, but it left her eyes empty and sad. “Did you believe Bobby, too?”

  “He believes what he says,” Olaf said.

  His comment made her look past us to where Olaf stood trying to be nonthreatening by the door. “I know he does, which is what scared me, but I wasn’t scared because he was a wereleopard. I was just scared because my own brother was trying to force himself on me, wanted me to marry him. It’s crazy, and when Dad confronted him over it, Bobby killed him. So you see, I did it. I killed my father, just as much as Bobby. We killed him together!” Her voice rose in hysteria with the last two sentences until she started to sob—big, deep, hyperventilating sobs.

  “That’s enough,” Nurse Trish said.

  “I agree,” Dr. Jameson said.

  Newman nodded. “We’re done for now.”

  The nurse looked at him with eyes shining with tears and said, “How much more do you want from her?”

  Newman shook his head. “Nothing. We’re leaving.”

  Dr. Jameson was already putting a needle of something into Jocelyn’s IV line as she sobbed and screamed on the bed. I think in between wordless screams she was gasping out, “I did it. I killed him. I killed him.”

  We walked out into the hallway with her screams echoing after us.

  45

  NEWMAN WALKED AWAY down the hospital corridor, striding fast as if he wanted to run but wouldn’t let himself do it. The three of us followed him, though I had to do some serious quick time to keep up. Newman was already in the open elevator when we got there. Edward put an arm in the door to keep it open long enough for us to join him. Two people were already in the elevator, so we still couldn’t talk.

  Newman stood pressed in the corner, looking pale and tense. In the mirrored surface of the elevator, the rest of us just looked bored as we rode down. The people looked at us with our badges in plain sight but didn’t say anything.

  The doors opened, and Newman pushed past all of us to head for the parking lot. We followed, and a glance back showed the couple watching us. It would be hospital gossip that the marshals looked upset, or maybe the story would grow and we’d be accused of brandishing weapons. We needed to be calm.

  “Newman,” I called, “I’m almost twelve inches shorter than you are. If you want me to run to keep up, I can, but I’ll feel silly.”

  He stumbled and turned around to look at me, and a car honked its horn before it almost hit him. The three of us jogged up to be with him then. Be a shame for him to get injured in the parking lot by being careless. Our job had so many other more interesting ways to get hurt; being hit by a car was just too mundane.

  Newman crossed to stand by our vehicles, hands on hips, hat in his hand as if it had become too heavy. “Jesus,” Newman said, “I fucking hate this case.”

  “It’s got all the awfulness of both regular police work and the supernatural,” I said.

  “Incest. Fuck, I do not want to put that in my report. If Bobby has to die and Ray’s already dead, I do not want that following them to the grave.”

  “Jocelyn doesn’t need that following her around the rest of her life either,” Edward said.

  “They aren’t actually related to each other,” I said.

  The two of them looked at me.

  “Legally it’s not incest,” I said.

  “I double-checked—Bobby was seven and Jocelyn was only five years old when her mother married Ray. They have been raised as brother and sister. Jocelyn probably doesn’t even remember a time when Bobby wasn’t her brother,” Newman said.

  “So, you will simply accept that the woman is telling the truth because she cried?” Olaf asked.

  I looked at him. “Are you saying she smelled like she was lying?”

  “Yes and no.”

  “What does that mean?” Edward asked.

  “She was disgusted with Bobby. She does not feel for him what he feels for her, but she also smelled like truth when she said she killed her father.”

  “Can you blame her for thinking she killed him?” I asked.

  Olaf stared down at me and finally said, “If her version is true, then I can see why she might feel guilty.”

  Edward said, “But you said that Bobby is telling the truth, too.”

  Olaf nodded. “He believes what he says. There is no doubt or lie in him when he speaks of the love between himself and his sister.”

  “Is he delusional?” Newman asked.

  “That’s for a court-appointed therapist to say,” Edward said.

  “If Bobby were human, then we’d get him in to be interviewed by professionals, but he’s a wereleopard. There won’t be any doctors doing talk therapy with him,” I said.

  Newman leaned against the side of his Jeep, head down. “Jesus, have I been wrong all along? Did Bobby kill Ray?”

  I went to him, touched his arm. “I’m sorry, Newman, but if the friend and the cook corroborate Jocelyn’s story, then no judge is going to give another extension on the execution.”

  He looked at me with anguish in his eyes. “But did Bobby do it? Does he deserve to die?”

  “If he was delusional, then he may not remember killing his father.”

  “Which means when I shoot him, he’ll beg for his life, and he will believe that he’s innocent and I’m killing him for nothing.”

  “I’m sorry, Newman,” I said. It seemed so inadequate, but sometimes it’s the best you have to offer.

  He started to cry then, and though it was against all the male rules of cop life I hugged him, and because it was Newman, he hugged me back. I held him in the parking lot while he curled all that six feet plus of police officer around me and wept. He cried his grief out now, so maybe, just maybe, he could do his job later.

  46

  WHEN NEWMAN CALMED down a little, Edward tried to take over from me. Newman didn’t hug him like he had me. Maybe it was a guy thing or a girl thing? Edward tried to get him thinking about calling the cook and the friend who was Jocelyn’s alibi, and seeing if we could set up an interview ASAP. I thought it was interesting that Jocelyn had told only the one girlfriend, Marcy, about Bobby molesting her. Why not tell both? We’d find out. But in the end Newman asked me if I could catch a ride back to the sheriff’s office with Ted and Otto.

  “I may drop by the house and check on Haley, but I won’t be long.”

  “Sure, Newman, whatever you need.”

  He nodd
ed, managed a weak smile, then went for his Jeep. Edward ushered Olaf and me toward his SUV.

  “Who is Haley?” Olaf asked.

  “His fiancée,” I said.

  Olaf scowled so hard his sunglasses couldn’t hide it. “Women make a man weak.”

  “I’m not sure he’s really going home,” I said.

  “He wanted some time to himself,” Edward said.

  “Why did he not simply say that?”

  “Pride,” I said.

  “Everyone in the car,” Edward said, “in case he just goes straight back to the sheriff’s office.”

  “I would respect Newman more if he hadn’t used the woman in his life as an excuse,” Olaf said as he opened the driver’s-side back door. He was going to sit behind Edward, just as I’d asked him to do on the drive over. It was nice that he just did it without my having to debate with him about it. He really was trying his best not to piss me off this time.

  I got my seat belt fastened, and Edward had even started the engine, before Olaf said, “I think you are weakening Newman.”

  I turned in the seat so I could look at him. It really was easier to talk with him sitting catty-corner from me. “Weakening? What are you talking about?”

  “Some men will show emotion and weakness around women that they would never show around men. Newman needs to be strong, not weak right now.”

  “I agree with that last part, but not the first part.”

  “You’re a woman. You do not understand the effect you can have on men.”

  Edward started backing out of the parking spot.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked. My tone was a little angry.

  Olaf scowled at me. “It means exactly what I said.”

  “That’s not an answer,” I said.

  Edward was paying a lot of attention to getting us out of the hospital parking lot. He hadn’t tried to make eye contact with either of us. I was sitting right beside him, so he had to actually work at not looking at me.