Thatcher

“Is he dead? Or the man that came to help me. His name was Robinson too. Was it you?” He said it was his father. “Did he get hurt?”

“Just a little, when he fell trying to get to my brother. Morgan, he’s a professor at the college too, is the one that did the actual saving. But my dad, he’s loving it. A damsel in distress called for him to slay the dragon.” Doc Dawson laughed a little. “I’m going to take the bandages off your face when the police show up again. Anna, they’re going to take pictures of your wounds for the trial. All right?”

“He’s not dead then.” The doctor said that he was. “Then I don’t understand. Why would they try a dead man?”

“Because of the people involved in his death. And I can’t tell you any more than that right now. But the police are here now. I want you to remain calm with them and tell them what you remember. Not what I’ve told you, all right?” She told him that she would. “Also, my sister-in-law, Rogen, she’ll have a couple of questions for you as well. Nothing major, but she’s very much into details. Oh, by the way, is there anyone that I can call for you? Even after you shift, you’re going to be sore for a week or so. As I said, he hit you in the head several times.”

“No. Please don’t call anyone for me.” Anna wasn’t sure how to explain to him that she wasn’t welcome at home any more, and even if she was, it was doubtful that she’d go there. “I’ll be fine. I have a nice apartment, and I’ll be fine.”

“We’ll see. All right. I’m going to allow them to come in. If they get too rough for you, just ask for Rogen—she’s here for you too. All right?” She nodded again. “Good. Now, I have to go and see to other patients. None of them are as calm nor as pretty as you are.”

When he spoke the next time, it wasn’t to her but to the police, and a woman who she assumed was Rogen. As soon as the door clicked shut, they bombarded her with questions.

“Hang on a fucking minute. You’ve had a couple of hours with this. I just woke up.” There was laughter from the woman, and it made her feel stronger for some reason. “One at a time. And if you irritate me again, you’ll have to ask your questions of me with one of you in here at a time. I have a splitting fucking headache, and a man just tried to rape me today.”

“Yesterday.” She turned her head to the woman. Anna couldn’t see. Her eyes were swollen shut and they hurt when she tried to pry them open. “You were hurt yesterday. You’ve been in the hospital for an entire day now. I was going to tell you that I had your back in here, but I think you can handle these guys pretty well. Go on, keep them in line and do what you need.”

“Ms. Hayes, my name is Andrew Keen. I’m with the local police. I’d like to ask you if you and Mr. Long had a relationship before yesterday.” She told him no. “You’ve never been to his house, never been on a date with him? Nothing?”

“No. Why would you ask me that?” There was silence. “If you don’t answer me, my mind is going to make up all kinds of things, and I come from a very scary background. Tell me why you’d think those things. I’d heard about him, the way that he’d have someone come to his offices to talk. But it’s never been me. I thought—I guess I thought I was just too old for him.”

“No, I don’t think that either. He had some pictures of you. In his office and his home.” She said she never posed for pictures. “These aren’t that sort of picture. There are some with you coming out of a coffee shop. You eating a Danish on a park bench. There are quite a few of them.”

“How many?” This time it was Rogen that answered her question. “Several hundred? Are you fucking with me right now? Several hundred? Why would he—? Holy shit. He’s the one. It was him.”

Pictures were taken then. They were of parts of her body that she couldn’t see. But she could feel the tearing of stitches, the pull of muscles that were hurt. And when someone asked her if they could see the bottom of her feet, she asked him why.

No one said anything to her for several seconds, then she heard the door open and close. She wasn’t sure that she wanted to be alone right now, but she thought she might have sickened them. Then Rogen spoke, not to her but to the police officer, Keen.

“I told you that she would understand.” Rogen laughed. “All right, Andrew, ask her what you want to, and I’m going to ask her the rest. That way we can wrap this up and be out of her life.”

“Ms. Hayes.” She asked him to call her Anna. “All right, Anna. I’m going to tell you things that are straight up true. Then when you’ve had enough of me, Rogen is going to fill you in on the rest. However, when you leave here, you cannot under any circumstances tell a soul what she is going to brief you on.” Andrew asked if that would be all right. She said yes. “And the bottoms of your feet would be covered in bite wounds. First as a human, which we couldn’t understand until today wouldn’t match his. He wore false teeth over his own. And of course, we couldn’t see those of his wolf.”

“Wait a minute. Did you say brief me? Brief me on what? I don’t understand. What happens if I tell someone?” Rogen answered that she’d be as dead as Long was. “I see. And I believe you too. I don’t have any idea what is going on. Nor did I encourage or tease him into doing what he did to me.”

“We believe you. You’re not the first one, as you know. There have been seventy-five complaints about Long. All of them from young women, all whom dropped out of school as soon as Long was proven to have not been the man who had raped them. He is a shifter, wolf, and before he could be examined, he’d shift and—”

“He’d be clean of all the wounds he might have had. The women. Did he take pictures of them as well?” Rogen told her not that they could find. “I don’t know if you need it or not, but I have a list of women that I know he’s been with. I mean, I’m a cat, as you know, and when he’d come around me, I could smell them on him.” She said that it was in her notebook in her back pack.

“It’s in evidence, but I’ll make sure that I get it. Anything else you can remember or have done?” Anna told Rogen that she carried a gun on campus, she’d been that afraid of him. “Good for you. I think I’m going to like you, Anna Hayes.”

After a few more questions, Andrew left them. Anna’s head really was pounding, and she laid her head back on the

pillow behind her. Rogen asked her if she wanted anything for pain.

“No thanks. I don’t react well to them, and I don’t take much because I don’t want to be in a position that might get me killed.” Rogen said nothing. “What have you found out about me, Rogen? I have no idea why, but I think that you’re one of those people that does research on other people. We can cut the bullshit, and you can just ask me whatever it is you want to.”

“As I said, I like you, Anna.” She didn’t even bother saying anything. After this, it would be important that she moved on. “I did research you. In depth and completely. Also, you’re right, I am one of those people that finds the messiest dirt on people and lays it out for others to use. On you, however, I found not so much dirt as the shit being heaped up on you.”

“You got that right. I’ve had a rough childhood and a rougher life. I’m not a full-blooded Bengal, as you more than likely know. I just turned up as one when my parents had me. They told my parents that it might have been several generations back that a cat was in their family, or just recently. That’s all my dad heard, and he kicked my mom to the curb, and me along with her.” Anna laughed, feeling the bitterness of bile come up to the back of her throat. “But he forgot that Mother was the breadwinner, and the person who had parents that were wealthy. Good old Dad decided that she could stay with him, be his fuck buddy, but nothing more. He actually called her that instead of Ruth, her actual name.”

“You have three brothers as well.” Anna started to nod but stopped herself and verbally told her that was right. “Noah Jr. In prison for robbery with a weapon, murder in the first degree, as well as possession of a hand gun when out on parole. David, and he’s my favorite idiot of all time, murdered a young woman while she was out with her friends. Then when he realized that he didn’t have gloves, he took her credit card and bought them for himself, and a candy bar. He signed the card with his own name. Then there is Buddy. Goes by Bud. At sixteen he was the driver of the car that was used in a drive by shooting. Six people were killed and two more injured. This moron of the highest degree then takes his car to the car wash down the street from his house and tells one of the people there that he just made an easy six hundred bucks for driving the car.”

Yes. And that man told his brother, who was the chief of police at the same time. You’re right, morons, all of them. And my dad—what did you find out about him that you think I might not know?” No answer. “I don’t know why you need to go over this with me. I can’t imagine that it would be useful to anyone other than me. Why do you even care?”

“Because, Anna Hayes, you’re the mate to my brother-in-law, Morgan. And he’s the one that saved your life by killing Long.”

~*~