Sucker Punch

by Laurell K. Hamilton

  “Heidi,” Brianna said.

  The baby didn’t look like a Heidi to me, but then what did a Heidi look like? I guess newborns didn’t look like any name; they were all so unfinished and tiny whenever I visited friends and their newborns. By the time they had enough personality to earn a name, it was too late, and they were Heidi, or Frankie, or Anita. Weird to think that the name I thought of as mine had probably not matched me once either.

  “She likes you,” Brianna said, standing beside me with the other twin.

  “She seems like she’s thinking serious thoughts,” I said.

  Brianna frowned and then said, “Thank you for saying that. I told my mother-in-law that, and she told me babies don’t think that deeply at this age, but Heidi is always watching, studying the world like she’s memorizing it all. Clara is the one who does everything first, and Heidi hangs back and waits to see how it goes. My mother says that Heidi is shy, and Clara is outgoing, and she’s right, but it’s more like Heidi is cautious like Daryl, and Clara is like me, trying anything once.”

  “Heidi and Clara, like the characters in the book Heidi,” I said.

  Brianna looked a little embarrassed but nodded. She hugged Clara and said, “It was my favorite book when I was a little girl. Most people don’t even recognize the names or remember the book.”

  “I read it when I was a little girl, and I remember the Shirley Temple movie.”

  “I loved that movie,” Brianna said.

  “They played all the Shirley Temple movies in the afternoon on one of the old cable channels when I was little.”

  “I loved watching all those on summer afternoons with my sister and mother.” When Brianna smiled, her face appeared younger and happier with the memory.

  Her reaction made me smile back. “I watched them with my mother.” In my head, I added, Before she died, but the memory of watching them with her on summer afternoons was still a happy memory. “I totally forgot about the Shirley Temple film festival. Isn’t that what they called it?”

  “Yeah, I think you’re right. What was your favorite movie?”

  “The Little Princess, I think.”

  “Oh, that was a good one. Mine was Heidi,” she said, laughing, and I found myself laughing with her.

  Clara joined in with the laughter, and after a second, so did Heidi. Nicky joined in on the laughter, because that was what you’re supposed to do as a social animal. I watched the baby’s face light up with laughter, and it made me happy. Damn it, hormones. My life would not work with babies, would it?

  “And then puberty hit, and I forgot all about Heidi and Shirley Temple,” Brianna said.

  “My mother died before I hit puberty, and it was just my dad and me for a while.”

  “Oh, I’m so sorry,” Brianna said, and she reached out and laid her hand on my arm.

  Usually that would have bugged me from a stranger, but this time it was all right. It felt like she meant it and really was sorry about all the time I’d lost with my mother when she’d had all those years with her own.

  “My dad was more into hunting than Shirley Temple, so I learned how to shoot.”

  Brianna took her hand back and studied me, and suddenly I could see that maybe Heidi didn’t just take after her dad. “Funny how things work out. You grow up to be a cop, and I grow up to be a Realtor that meets her husband on the job.”

  “Things work out, I guess,” I said, “and if you could give us the name of the club and the dancer that took Jocelyn up onstage, we’ll get out of your hair.”

  “And the time you arrived and left the club,” Olaf said from the couch.

  I glanced behind me at him, and it was almost jarring that he was still there while I was holding a baby and remembering my mother. He seemed to belong to a different life from the one that had my mother and Shirley Temple marathons in it.

  Brianna gave us the information. Olaf wrote it down in his phone while we girls continued to hold the babies. Normally I’d have given Heidi back to her mom, but she seemed content, and Clara was happy in her mother’s arms. It just seemed logical to keep the babies happy and quiet while we got the rest of the information. Yeah, it was just logic, not that some part of me enjoyed holding the baby.

  I handed Heidi back to her mother at the door, so Brianna had a baby in each arm. She encouraged them to wave bye-bye. Clara waved first and then Heidi. I waved back to them as we went to get in Olaf’s rental. He threw a hand up in their direction, which made Brianna smile brighter, though Heidi stopped waving. She was going to be the smart one.

  54

  I CALLED EDWARD from the car and got put straight to voice mail, so I texted him. If they didn’t need us to question the second friend, we’d head to the strip club to try to get an address for the dancer who was part of Jocelyn’s alibi. I punched the address of the strip club into my phone so we could find it. We’d have to start there to find the dancer since they all used stage names.

  I wasn’t sure how I felt about taking Olaf to a strip club. It was like taking the fox to the chicken coop and trusting he wouldn’t eat any of them, but he’d given his word he would behave himself. Either I trusted him to keep his word, or I didn’t. After the interview with Brianna, it just seemed like a day designed to test his limits.

  “You enjoyed holding the baby,” Olaf said, and there was something in his voice that I wasn’t sure of: accusation, surprise?

  I fought not to squirm as I tried to figure out what to say. “It wasn’t awful,” I said finally, and even to me it sounded lame.

  Olaf made a disdainful sound, somewhere between a snort and a growl. “Are you lying to me or yourself?”

  “I’m not lying. I just don’t know what to say, okay?”

  “This makes you uncomfortable,” he said.

  “Yeah, it does, so can we change topics?”

  “Why does it bother you that you enjoyed holding the baby?”

  “Why does it bother you?” I asked.

  “I did not say that it bothered me.”

  “Now who’s lying?”

  Olaf spoke to Nicky in the backseat. “You must have felt that she enjoyed interacting with the baby.”

  “Like Anita said, she didn’t hate it, but she was too conflicted to actually enjoy it.”

  I didn’t really want to share my biological-clock issues with Olaf, of all people. Or that one of my fiancés was pushing for babies. Nicky was almost neutral on the topic, which was a nice change from everyone else having an opinion about what I did with my womb.

  My phone rang with Edward’s ringtone, “Bad to the Bone,” so I knew to answer it.

  He didn’t bother to say hello, just went straight to the point. “We’re headed back to the sheriff’s station. Meet us there.”

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “The Marchands’ cook, Helen Grimes, came into the station and backed up Jocelyn Marchand’s story. She brought Bobby Marchand’s phone in with more damning evidence against him.”

  “What kind of evidence?” I asked.

  “Sheriff says we need to head that way and see it. He seems to feel it wraps the case up nice and tidy.”

  “Well, shit,” I said.

  “We’re supposed to want the case finished, Anita.”

  “Usually I do.”

  “The sheriff has a hard-on for killing the Marchand kid, so don’t count the evidence as conclusive until we judge it for ourselves.” I think he was saying that for Newman’s benefit as much as or more than mine.

  “Fair point. Okay, we’ll turn around and head that way.”

  Olaf found the nearest cross street without me saying anything else. He used a driveway to turn around in so we could head toward the sheriff’s station. Then I realized what he’d done.

  “Do you know where we’re going?” I asked.

  “Back to the sheriff�
�s station,” he said, eyes on the road, big hands at nine and three on the steering wheel, which thanks to airbags are the new safe positions.

  “I didn’t say the location out loud.”

  “I heard Edward say it on the phone.”

  “Did you hear both sides of the conversation?”

  “Yes.”

  I looked back at Nicky. “Did you hear it all?”

  “Yep.”

  “I have some of the special abilities of a real lycanthrope, but I wouldn’t have heard the entire conversation.”

  “Perhaps the fact that you are only a carrier for the disease but do not change forms limits your secondary abilities,” Olaf said.

  “Probably. Even your hearing isn’t as good in human form as it would be in lion.”

  “I have not tested it. Most people do not talk on phones around me when I am in lion form.”

  “I’ll bet they don’t.”

  “I would think people would treat all the lycanthropes in their lives the same way.”

  I didn’t really like his putting himself in the same status as the other shapeshifters in my life, but I let it go. Sometimes you pick your battles with an eye to winning the war. “Actually, we talk on the phone around everyone in whatever form.”

  “Then their control of their secondary form must be perfect indeed for the rest of your people to treat them so normally.”

  “We’ve all been lycanthropes years longer than you have. It takes time to master your inner beast,” Nicky said.

  “I have been told that my control is admirable for one so new.”

  “It is. I was impressed with your control in Florida the last time we worked together,” I said.

  “Thank you.”

  “Praise where praise is due,” I said.

  “Do you want to have children?”

  “We aren’t going to talk about the case or speculate on what evidence may have shown up?” I asked.

  “We will know soon enough, and we will do nothing but speak about the case when we arrive back at the station, so I would speak of other things.”

  “I really didn’t think you and I would ever talk about babies, Olaf.”

  “Nor I, but I saw you with the baby, and something harsh in you softened. I hadn’t expected to see that.”

  “It surprised me, too,” I said, and that was honest.

  “You talked to the woman in a way that surprised me as well.”

  “You mean Brianna?”

  “Yes.”

  I said, “She surprised me because she named her kids after characters in her favorite book. I really didn’t see her as a reader.”

  “She was different as a child. You heard her. She found boys, and books were forgotten,” Olaf said.

  “If they were forgotten, she would have named her twins something else,” I said.

  “That was unexpected,” he admitted.

  “I know. I thought she was just some sexy airhead, but there’s depth in there if you get her talking about something besides strip clubs and her friends.”

  “She would cheat on her husband,” Olaf said as if it was just true.

  “You don’t know that.”

  “I believe I could seduce her.”

  “I noticed you putting some effort into flirting with her.”

  “Did it bother you?”

  “I wasn’t jealous if that’s what you mean.”

  “I am jealous of you.”

  I didn’t know what to say to that, so I ignored it and said, “She fits your victim profile, except for being a little too tall, so when you started flirting with her, instead of being jealous, I was more worried that you were going to see her as a potential target.”

  “So your concern for her safety overrode any jealousy issues?”

  “Yes,” I said. I thought, I don’t think I would have been jealous over you, but that was probably a fact best kept to myself.

  “Why do you care about her? She is not your friend. She is nothing to you.”

  “Brianna’s a person, Olaf. I held her baby and enjoyed it. I know what her favorite book from childhood is and that she named her kids after it. I know that her mom and mother-in-law are buying so much stuff for the babies that she’s trashing her living room to try to get them to stop. I know she’s probably a voyeur at the clubs. She’s real to me now, and the thought that she’s not real to you in the same way is disturbing.”

  “I am a sociopath, Anita. I do not feel empathy. You know that.”

  “Intellectually I know it, but that doesn’t help me understand it.”

  “As I do not understand your sympathy for the woman we just left.”

  “I guess we just agree to disagree,” I said.

  “You are being very quiet, Nicky,” Olaf said.

  “I’m just listening,” Nicky said from the backseat, where he had been unusually quiet.

  “You are a sociopath. Do you feel anything for the woman we just left?” Olaf asked.

  “I can feel what Anita feels.”

  “Do you have no feelings of your own anymore? Have you become only an echo chamber for Anita?”

  I heard Nicky sigh. It made me reach back over the seat so he could take my hand. It was an awkward position for hand-holding, but any touch felt better than no touch. I didn’t like that heavy sigh, and I really didn’t like that I might have been the cause of it.

  “I have my own thoughts and feelings.”

  “Can you act on them?” Olaf asked.

  “Of course.”

  “If you wanted to hunt Brianna Gibson, could you do it, knowing that Anita would disapprove?” Olaf used the rearview mirror to glance at the other man.

  “I have no interest in Brianna Gibson, so it doesn’t matter.” Nicky rubbed his thumb over my fingers as he spoke.

  “Your reputation for forcing information from informants was almost as good as mine. You don’t get that good at torture without enjoying it, Nicky.”

  I tried not to feel anything about that statement, because if Nicky felt how unhappy it made me, it would mess with his answer. His hand had stopped moving in mine.

  “I enjoyed some of it,” Nicky said, “but after a certain point, it stopped being fun and was just part of my job.”

  “I don’t believe you,” Olaf said, glancing back in the mirror again.

  “I don’t care if you believe me or not.”

  I said, “I know you took pride in that part of your job. You liked having the reputation for being a bad guy.”

  Nicky nodded and started rubbing my fingers again with his thumb. “I liked having a reputation that scared other bad guys. Yeah, I enjoyed that part.”

  “You enjoyed causing pain,” Olaf said.

  “Up to a point, absolutely, but beyond that point, not so much.”

  “What point?” Olaf asked.

  “I don’t think Anita would enjoy us talking shop until we figured out exactly what point it stopped being fun for me.”

  “I would enjoy it,” Olaf said.

  “Maybe over late-night drinks sometime but not now,” Nicky said.

  “I would like to understand how we are different from each other.”

  “We talked about that earlier. You’re a born sociopath, and I was made this way. It probably means I have more of an emotional range than you do.”

  “Did you feel sympathy for your victims? Is that why it stopped being fun for you?”

  “No, it just didn’t please me anymore. I like rough sex, rougher than most people, but after a certain point, torture isn’t sexual for me. It’s just information gathering. It’s taking pride in how long I can keep someone alive, how much pain I can cause them and get the truth out of them. I saw people in the industry that did shit that would make anyone talk, but making them talk isn’t the same as get
ting the truth out of them. People will lie to save themselves, to get the torture to stop. They’ll tell you anything you want to hear, but lies won’t keep you and the people you work with alive. Lies won’t help you accomplish your mission. Put people through enough, and they can start hallucinating from the pain. Once that happens, their information is useless.”

  “You can heal them and question them later,” Olaf said.

  “Most of my pride’s jobs were time sensitive. We didn’t have time to nurse our prisoners back to health. My job was to get useful information, details that helped our unit stay alive and accomplish our objectives.”

  “What did you do with the people once you had all the information you needed?” Olaf asked.

  I fought to not feel, to try to be empty of emotion so Nicky could answer truthfully. I tried to go into the big static emptiness where I used to go when I knew I was going to have to pull the trigger on someone. It was an empty, quiet place.

  “Killed them or let someone else kill them.”

  “Fast or slow?” Olaf asked.

  “Fast. Once they talked, it was over.”

  “Didn’t you enjoy the kill?”

  “Not really. Killing them was just part of the job at that point. Sometimes I was glad to kill them.”

  “You enjoyed it.”

  “Not in the way you mean,” Nicky said. He let go of my hand and sat back in his seat.

  “You said you were glad to kill them,” Olaf said. “That implies joy in the kill.”

  “I enjoy a good hunt. I enjoy killing people that are trying to kill me. I like proving I’m better than they are, but killing someone who’s chained up or so hurt they can’t do anything back to you, that’s like a canned hunt. There’s no enjoyment in that for me.”

  “Then why were you glad?”

  “Glad it was over and done,” Nicky said. “Glad we could get on with the next part of our job. Glad I could put the people out of their misery.”

  “Are you saying you felt pity for them?”

  “Maybe.”

  “I saw some of your videos, Nicky. The man who did that had no pity for his victims.”