phone? How had she been that certain that it was worth bringing in to the police?
Those were good questions—questions we should have thought of earlier. I stopped arguing with myself about what felt good and what was a bad idea and just leaned against Olaf, finally feeling in the front of my head what the back part had already noticed, a faint hum of energy: his lion to my lion. It didn’t raise our beasts, it didn’t do anything bad, it just was, and in that moment, it was enough. If he would only give up the serial killer stuff, maybe we could cuddle.
57
BY THE TIME Edward got Helen calmed down, I had stopped leaning against Olaf. Even if he’d been my sweetheart for real, I wouldn’t have allowed myself to show affection in the middle of an interrogation. The other marshals would have made fun of me.
Helen was smiling at Edward, but when she turned to Newman, the smile vanished. “Why haven’t you done your duty, Win?”
“I’m not sure what you mean, Helen.”
“It’s not Bobby’s fault that the animal inside him is turning him into a monster, but it’s still a fact. It started with him lusting after his own sister, and when Mr. Ray told him that it was sinful, the animal side of him went crazy and killed him. Ray Marchand raised that boy like his own, adopted him and everything, but Bobby still turned into an animal and killed him. He’s not safe anymore, Win.”
“Did you see him kill Ray?” Newman asked.
“No, I wasn’t there that night. I told you that.”
“Were you safe and snuggled up at home, Helen?” Edward asked in his best country drawl.
“I was with my quilting group. We’re making a cathedral-window pattern. None of us has ever tried anything that intricate before.”
“The one that meets in the basement of the Lutheran church?” Newman asked.
“Yes,” she said, smiling and relaxed from talking about her hobby.
“Was it your night to bring refreshments?” he asked.
“No, I was on cleanup duty this week.”
“So, you locked up and went home pretty late,” Newman said.
I realized that between the two of them, they had Helen’s alibi. I hadn’t even thought of Helen Grimes as a possible accomplice in the murder, and I should have. I just wasn’t used to looking at ordinary people for my murderer. Once you had a victim who had been clawed to death, normal human fingernails just couldn’t do the job.
Helen leaned across the table and touched Newman’s sleeve. “I know it’s an awful thing that you have to do, Win, but it’s your job to keep the rest of us safe from the monsters, and that’s what Bobby is now, a monster.”
He patted her hand but moved back so she couldn’t touch him again. “If Bobby did everything you say he did, then you’re right, Helen.”
“If? What do you mean, if, Win?”
“If you had to walk into that cell and kill someone, wouldn’t you want to be certain first?”
“Jocelyn said you didn’t believe her, that you thought she was lying about what Bobby did to her, but you’ve seen the pictures and the video on his phone now. You know he was stalking her, or I don’t even have a word for what he was doing.”
I made myself smile at her. “How did you know that the pictures were on his phone, Helen?”
“Jocelyn told me.”
“When did she tell you about the phone, Helen?” Newman asked.
“When I visited her at the hospital today. She’s got no family left now.”
Newman said, “There’re still Muriel and Todd Babington.”
Helen looked angry and shook her head. “They never treated Jocelyn like a niece, not the way they treated Bobby, though heaven knows they didn’t treat him all that well. Did you know that they were supposed to take Bobby when Muriel’s sister, his mother, died, but they didn’t want him? Mr. Ray took him because Muriel was the only remaining sister and she didn’t want children. She’d have let the state have Bobby and him just a baby.”
“I didn’t think you’d worked for the Marchand family long enough to know the history, Helen,” Newman said.
“I remember when Bobby’s mother died. We all assumed that her sister would take the baby. I mean, Ray Marchand had divorced twice because he was married to his career. Everyone knew that. We couldn’t believe that he took the boy. Muriel Babington got asked a lot why she didn’t take Bobby, and she told anyone that asked that she never wanted children, her