“Jocelyn, you can’t just pretend we’re not here. I’m really sorry, but we have to talk to you,” Newman said.
There was movement at the door behind us, and both Olaf and I turned toward it as a tall nurse stepped through the door. It hadn’t been movement inside the room that had alerted me. I’d have sworn I sensed movement, but maybe it had been Olaf reacting to hearing her in the hallway that had made me turn. Whatever. He and I looked at the nurse as she came through the door.
She was well over six feet tall. I personally knew only one woman taller, and that was Claudia back home in St. Louis. Claudia was also a serious weight lifter, so she was the most physically intimidating woman I knew. The nurse looked to be in good shape, but she was as slender as most people her height. Words like willowy came to mind. Her pale brown hair was cut very short around a face devoid of makeup. She had high sculpted cheekbones and a wide mouth that made her brown eyes look smaller than they actually were. She wore a pink smock with little kittens on it as if it would disguise her size and make her more approachable, or maybe she just liked kittens.
“I’m sorry, but she’s still sedated,” the nurse said.
“She’s feigning sleep,” Olaf said.
“What he said,” I said.
“We really do need to speak with Jocelyn. I’m sorry that it can’t wait,” Newman said.
“I’ll get the doctor,” the nurse said like someone who was going to tattle to your parents, as if the doctor would be able to convince us that Jocelyn was asleep when a mere nurse could not. She left in search of a doctor.
“Hi, Jocelyn. I’m Marshal Anita Blake. This is Marshal Otto Jeffries. We really need to speak with you.”
Newman leaned over the bed and said, “Jocelyn, I’m sorry. I know you’ve been through a lot, but I need to talk to you.”
She kept her eyes closed as she said, “Leave me alone.”
“I would if I could, but it’s a matter of life and death,” Newman said.
That made Jocelyn open her eyes. She looked so much like her mother that her eyes being brown instead of extraordinary green was almost jarring. Until I saw her eyes, I hadn’t realized just how well I knew her mother’s face. I’d grown up seeing her mother in tabloids at the grocery store and on the celebrity gossip shows that my stepmother, Judith, had loved. It was almost like having a friend show up with the wrong eyes.
“What do you mean, Win? No one else could have died. It was just . . . Dad.” The flicker of pain in her eyes when she said that last word was hard to watch, and I’d just met her. It had to be even harder on Newman.
“No, no one else is dead, and I’d like to ke
ep it that way,” Newman said.
“What do you mean?” Jocelyn asked.
Her voice was breathy and sounded far younger than I knew she was, or had I been expecting to hear the deep contralto of her mother out of that so-similar face? I hated to think that was it, but after my reaction to Jocelyn’s eye color being different, I couldn’t rule it out. I hated that I might be trying to put her mother over the top of her like a mask that she was supposed to wear, but if I kept the idea in mind that I might be doing it, maybe I could avoid actually doing it. I wasn’t even sure that made sense really, but I’d lived as the ghost of my own dead mother for most of my life. Except for having my father’s pale complexion, I looked like my mother’s clone, too.
“We need to ask you about what happened, Jocelyn,” Newman said.
“I told the police already.”
“I know, but I wasn’t there for the initial interview, so I need you to tell me . . . to tell us,” he said, glancing behind himself at Olaf and me.
“I don’t want to have to talk about it again, ever. It’s done, over with. Dad . . . is dead and Bobby’s dead. Everyone but me is dead,” she said. Tears sparkled in her eyes; her fingers dug into the sheets like she was trying to find something to hold on to.
“That’s just it, Jocelyn. Bobby isn’t dead.”
She stared up at him, eyes going wide, which made the tears slide down her cheeks. “He killed our father. You were supposed to kill him for what he did to Dad.”
“And if he did kill Ray, then I’ll do exactly that. But before I do something that I can’t undo, I want to be absolutely certain that Bobby is guilty.”
“What are you talking about? He did it. I found the body. I saw what his”—she made a gesture in the air like she was tearing at it—“claws did to my father . . . our father! How could he do that to Dad? How could anyone do that to their own father?” Her breathing was erratic, eyes too wide, pulse rising. She looked like she was on the verge of a panic attack.
I thought Newman would back off, but he didn’t. He asked one of the questions we’d come here to ask. “Bobby said he was with you that night, that you left him in his bedroom about to pass out after shapeshifting. Is that true, Jocelyn?”
“I was not with him. What an awful thing to say! He’s my brother.”
Newman backed up both physically and verbally. “Of course not. All I meant was, did you see him start to pass out in his bedroom?”
“No, of course not! I saw his bloody footprints in the hall, and I saw what he did to Dad! That’s what I saw!” She sat up and started flailing her arms, which put her in danger of pulling out her IV.