"Swell. A psychotic werewolf." She stood up, kicked the desk. "Just what we need."
Suddenly she whirled toward me. "Wait a second. We're searching for a cannibal. Now you tell me there's a lunatic in town. That seems like too much of a coincidence to me."
"But the brown werewolf ate the others."
"Did he? You told me you saw the brown wolf, he killed one; then later we found them eaten. It doesn't mean he's our man." She frowned. "I mean wolf."
"But if he isn't, that means we've got a brown wolf killing and a white wolf eating."
"Or two of them doing both."
"Hell," I muttered.
Silence fell.
"Jessie?"
She glanced at me and something in my face must have reached her, because she sat down and spread her hands. "What?"
"I'm not sure I saw Hector. I - " This was hard to say, especially to her. "I lost my mind when my family died. Saw a lot of things that weren't there for quite a while. Maybe I saw Hector." I took a deep breath, let it out slowly, wished like hell for a cigarette. "And maybe I didn't."
I expected her to make some biting comment, put me in my place, then tell me she'd call Edward and have him take me away. Instead she shrugged, pulled a pad of paper across the desk, and picked up a pencil. "That's Menen-dez? M-e-n-e ... ?"
I stared at her. She made an impatient sound. "How the hell do you spell his name?"
"But - "
"But what? If that psycho is in my town, I want to know about it."
"But what if I was seeing things?"
"What if you weren't?"
"Doesn't it bother you to work with someone who was once certifiable?"
"No more than it bothers me to work with someone who's as big of a pain in my ass as you are."
We stared at each other for several more seconds, until she gave an annoyed growl. "Do you mind, nut job? I've only got so much time available to check out your delusions."
Wow, another warm and fuzzy bonding moment.
" M-e-n-e-n-d-e-z," I spelled out.
"Gracias," she mocked.
Miss Politically Incorrect.
"I doubt you'll find much," I said. "Back when my family was killed... Well, by the time I was able to..."
Think without screaming? Talk without babbling? Breathe without crying?
"Articulate," I managed, "Hector was long gone. They checked him out."
"And?"
"He'd been pronounced dead in 1977 from a hunting accident. Kind of made it hard to put out an APB
on him."
"What did the police do then?"
I rolled my eyes. "What do you think? When they arrived at the scene of the crime, I was in a corner talking to myself. Three months later I blame a dead man. They thought I was loony toons."
"In other words, they did nothing."
"What were they supposed to do, Jessie?"
"Let me ask a better question: What did Mandenauer do?"
Her words made me smile. "He saved me that night, then called the police and disappeared. I saw him next at the hospital." I lifted a brow. "The psychiatric hospital."
She shrugged and made a whirling motion with her finger. Big deal; get on with it.
"After weeks of being told I was crazy, he believed me. He got me out of there. I'm not sure how."
Having someone to talk to who didn't give me a pill every time I said "werewolf" had cleared my head better than a cold shower. Just being with Edward had made me feel sane again.
"He told me my family was at peace. He'd made sure they wouldn't rise."
"I hate it when that happens," Jessie muttered.
I glanced at her quickly. "You've seen one?"
"Not seen - no. But I had a few disappear out of the morgue. One went in there with her head blown off."
"Uh-oh, someone didn't use silver."
"Bingo."
I found it disturbing, to say the least, to have corpses with body parts blown off suddenly rejuvenate. But when you were dealing with werewolves such things happened all the time.
Being bitten will cause a change within twenty-four hours. Day, night, full moon, no moon, it doesn't matter. You're bitten, you change. After that, you can heal damn near anything - except silver.
Hector had murdered my family. He'd been after me. He'd been inches away from biting me, but Edward had gotten there first. Too late to save the people I loved, but not too late to save me. Even so, Hector had left his mark on me forever.
"After Mandenauer sprang you from the crazy ward," Jessie continued, "what did he do?"