Bobby had done more than look, and she broke down completely.” Helen started to cry again.
“What did she say Bobby had done?” I asked, trying to keep my own voice as gentle as Newman’s.
Helen shook her head hard enough that her short hair bounced around her face. “She was so upset that she couldn’t talk, but her reaction let me know it was worse. I told her to go to the police if he’d touched her, and she completely fell apart. I told her that I’d go with her, that she didn’t have to do this alone, but she refused to go to the police. She said if I went to the cops without her, she’d lie and say I’d made it up. She didn’t want everyone to know, and if the police got involved, then it would be courts and lawyers. She was ashamed, said it was her fault, too. I couldn’t convince her that it wasn’t her fault or to go to the police, so I told her to tell her stepfather. I offered to go with her for moral support, but she wanted to do it on her own. She was so brave.”
Helen raised her face and looked at me with an almost radiant expression, as if the memory of that brave moment from Jocelyn had been some magnificent gesture. I let the moment of shining sisterhood fill Helen’s face and make her eyes look even greener.
“Do you know if she told Ray?” Newman asked.
“She came into the kitchen and hugged me that morning, said that Mr. Ray had believed her and was going to talk to Bobby that night. She was so happy. I offered to stay that night, but she said she was going out with friends and that Mr. Ray wanted to be alone with Bobby for the talk.”
I glanced at Newman and our eyes met. I wondered if he was thinking what I was thinking: It all sounded so reasonable. If Olaf hadn’t heard Jocelyn’s voice on the video, if we hadn’t put our ears nearly touching the phone to hear her being seductive with Bobby, we’d have believed Helen’s story. It would have been enough for one of us to go into the cell and end Bobby’s life.
“I should have gone to the sheriff and told him that Bobby was molesting his sister. I should have done it, even if Jocelyn hated me or they fired me. I should have told someone. If I had, maybe Mr. Ray would still be alive.” Helen started to cry harder again, shoulders rounding and starting to shake.
We were trying to reassure Helen that it wasn’t her fault when Edward finally came back with her drink. I moved back to stand beside Olaf so that Edward could have the room to work his sweet Ted magic on her. I was out of sweet talk about this case.
So Jocelyn had lied about the affair with her brother because she was embarrassed about it. It didn’t mean she’d killed her uncle. Ray Marchand could have seen it as incest and told Bobby to break it off with Jocelyn that night. Nothing we’d learned—even Jocelyn’s lying—helped clear Bobby of the murder. We needed another murderer to put in Bobby’s place, with enough evidence to convince the judge, or we were still going to have to kill him.
I had a sudden urge to lean my head against Olaf’s arm, because I couldn’t reach his shoulder, just to touch someone. It’s one of the ways that lycanthropes soothe themselves, and I carried enough beasts inside me to just want to lean against someone for a moment so I could think. As if Olaf had read my mind, he moved that small distance to me so that his arm touched my shoulder. Yeah, I knew it was Olaf, and he was a scary fuck, but I found myself leaning my head against his arm, resting my weight against him for a moment. It felt good, comforting in that puppy-pile kind of way that I’d grown to depend on when I was home with my polycule. I’d thought it was because they were metaphysically tied to me, but maybe it was just the physical closeness, the way stray dogs huddled together for comfort.
Whatever it was, it helped me think. Leduc had said that Helen Grimes had brought in Bobby’s phone because it had evidence that proved Jocelyn was telling the truth, or something like that. How had Helen known what was on the