Chapter Eleven
R on sat across from us in the same godforsaken, depressing room he had when we’d first talked to him, only this time, he was handcuffed to the table.
A surly, overweight guard with angry eyes and a bulbous, red nose had warned us we had fifteen minutes with him and not a second longer.
Ron sported a black eye and a split lip that appeared as though they were in the early stages of healing. Nevertheless, he looked like hell, and I was unsure whether I thought he deserved his wounds or not.
His nostrils flared as we approached. “Why do you smell like dirty water? Are you three okay?”
“Long story, Ron.” I slid into the chair across from him, ignoring the lingering scent of dirty water on my skin. “Are you all right?”
He dismissed my concern with a shake of his head. “Don’t worry about me. How is Charmaine? Rafe? Eve?”
Wanda, who still didn’t believe Ron wasn’t a flaming cheater, leaned back in her chair. “They’re as well as can be expected when their father and husband has confessed to murder.”
Instantly, his spine went straight, his eyes almost glowing like they did when we shifted. Nodding his head, he agreed. “I murdered Zinnia.”
“So you fucking told us.”
Nina shifted her stance from the other side of the room, where she leaned against the wall. She looked hilarious in my shirt and slacks. Her shins were exposed, and the slacks were much too baggy for her around the hips and waist. The ruffles around her face kept flapping against her chin and her work boots were still soaking wet, leaving damp marks on the concrete floor.
When our eyes met, I wondered if maybe my favorite vampire was seeing what I was seeing. What I was hearing. Ron almost always reverted to this strange robotic tone when referring to Zinnia’s demise. As if he were on autopilot.
And that’s what kept me from reading him the riot act. That, and the fact that Rafe had now come into play. I’d come into this thinking we’d treat him like a criminal. Now, I wasn’t so sure. However, seeing as time was of the essence, I decided to just go for it—no holds barred, but a gentle no holds barred.
“Ron, did you know Zinnia was pregnant?”
I watched carefully as his eyes went wide for a very brief second before he nodded. “I did.”
We all cocked our heads.
But Nina was the first to react. Go figure.
“So were you having a fucking affair with her? Dude, you’re twice her age in human years! What the hell is wrong with you?”
He blinked, his dark eyes glazing over. “I know it was wrong.”
Wanda shifted in her chair, and I knew she was itching to ream him, but something was very wrong here.
My brow furrowed in confusion at another monotone response. “When did the affair start, Ron? How long had it been going on?”
He looked over my shoulder at the wall and shrugged. “Months and months.”
Leaning over the rusty table, I grabbed his whisker-covered chin and forced him to look at me. “ Why ? Why would you risk losing everything for a woman who was practically family? Who’s not much older than Charmaine?”
His eyes focused on me, but only for a moment before he responded in a wooden tone. “We were in love.”
“Oh, baloney!” Wanda yelled, smacking her hand on the table, clearly taking our tact to treat him like a criminal to heart. “You were in lust , you slimeball!”
Ron looked directly at Wanda. “Yes. Yes, I did.”
When he agreed with Wanda, even she appeared surprised.
This was nuts. Absolute madness. He wasn’t confessing with any emotion, with any sort of facial expressions. It was almost as though the words had been fed to him.
Maybe magic was involved again? Our last case had plenty of that, but I didn’t smell anything out of the ordinary. Of course, we didn’t smell anything out of the ordinary then, either.
I sniffed again to be sure, but only smelled Ron’s pent-up fear, simmering beneath the surface, and his deodorant, which was failing under the pressure of the cold sweats.
Nina knocked him from behind with a flat palm to his shoulder. “So you’re not fucking denying railing somebody you treated like family and knocking her up? Not even a little?”
He shook his head, his salt-and-pepper hair greasy and sticking out at odd angles. “No. I did it, and you should hate me for it. I deserve it. I did a bad thing.”
I sensed Wanda’s sudden confusion. Now I knew she definitely saw what I saw. “When did Zinnia tell you she was pregnant, Ron?”
“I… I can’t remember. She just told me.”
Nina crouched down beside Ron, forcing him to look at her. “And is that why you killed her, Ron? Is that why you fucking bashed the kid’s head in? Because she was gonna fuck up your marriage?”
He gulped, tears filling his eyes. “I don’t remember!” he cried, with the first bit of emotion I’d seen him display since we’d arrived.
Reaching across the table, I tapped the table with my finger, but I kept my voice sympathetic. “If you don’t remember, how do you know you were the one to kill Zinnia?”
Now he looked panicked, like a racoon trapped in a corner. “I don’t know. I just know! It was me! It was me !”
We were only agitating him more than he already was. Each time we asked about Zinnia, he reverted to that weird numb state of confession.
But I still had another question, and I wasn’t leaving until he answered it. “Did you ever write Zinnia a letter, Ron? A private letter?”
Now he looked absolutely baffled, but almost as if on cue, his eyes quickly shadowed again. “Yes.”
When he didn’t say anything else, I pressed. “What did the letter say, Ron?”
He stared at me for a long time, licking his thin lips before he answered. “I don’t remember.”
Now, I was becoming frustrated. “How is it that you don’t remember almost anything, Ron? You can’t remember your affair with Zinnia or why you killed her. You can’t remember when she told you she was pregnant. For God’s sake, what do you remember, Ron?” I yelled through clenched teeth.
The door swung wide open then, and the angry guard who’d brought us to Ron when we arrived stomped in. “Time’s up, ladies,” he growled, crossing his beefy, tattooed arms over his chest.
I blew out a breath. The one I held while I contemplated killing him.
“Marty, come with me,” Wanda coaxed, taking me by the arm. “We could all use some dinner and a chance to catch our breath.”
But when I looked at Ron, he looked so lost, so desolate, so despaired, I felt horrible for yelling at him—especially because he wouldn’t yell back.
As we rose to leave, I gave him a look of apology, leaning over the table to grab his hand. “We’re going to figure this out, Ron. I promise.”
His gratitude showed in the form of a watery smile, but his eyes remained dark pits of confusion. “Thank you, Marty. Please tell everyone I love them.”
“I will,” I whispered, more convinced than ever something really weird was going on here.
As we were leaving, I heard Ron ask the guard, “Can I call my wife?”
The guard scoffed as he unlatched his handcuffs. “You had your phone call for the day, Killer. You just talked to somebody an hour ago. Don’t you remember us making fun of you for being such a kiss-ass? All you kept saying was yes .”
For some reason, that made me pause. I stopped short, turning around to look at a haggard Ron. “Who did you talk to, Ron?”
His eyes found mine, once more with that same dead look. “I don’t remember.”
I frowned, looking to the guard. “Do you know who he talked to? Don’t all calls have to be cleared through the head of the council? Don’t they know who incoming calls are from?”
He shrugged his big shoulders, making his ill-fitting shirt lift up over his bloated belly. “How should I know, lady? I’m not his social coordinator.”
Nina leaned into him, flashing her fangs. “She fucking asked you if calls have to be cleared through council and if you know who they’re from. Don’t be a dick. Answer the question.”
He rasped an irritated sigh, glaring at us. “I told you, I don’t know who he was talking to. He just kept saying ‘yes’ and that he understood. That’s all I got, no matter how much your girly friend here gives me the eyeball of death.”
“Bite me, fucknut?—”
No sooner had Nina opened her mouth to make a threat than Ron let out a screeching howl, followed by a roar so loud, my eardrums almost burst.
As he morphed into his were form, twisting and bending, his orange jumpsuit tearing and melting off his body, he reared back and leapt right through the open doorway, knocking us all against the wall in the hallway.
Nina, as always, was the first to respond, chasing after him in a blur of limbs. Wanda ran, too, as best she could in my borrowed heels.
“Get him!” the guard bellowed, grabbing a walkie-talkie from the belt on his waist. “Prison break!”
I couldn’t believe what just happened. I looked to the guard. “Didn’t you have something on him to keep him from shifting?”
It was my understanding that all prisoners’ handcuffs were coated in something that kept them from being able to shift.
The guard pointed to the floor, where the handcuffs had fallen, guilt in his eyes as the hallway turned into chaos. “I guess I must have unlocked both of his cuffs…”
I didn’t have time to stand around and listen to his weak excuses. I gave him a dirty look before I took off after Nina and Wanda, pushing my way through the mob of guards and people all yelling in the waiting room.
Bursting through the double doors, I fell outside, stumbling down the concrete steps, slipping in the freshly fallen snow.
“Nina! Wanda!” I yelled against the wind. Visibility was low with the curtain of snow, but I stormed into it anyway.
Thick flakes slapped my cheeks and pinged my eyes when I saw two figures stood at the edge of the parking lot. As I got closer, I saw one of them wave at me.
“Marty!”
I stopped short when I ran into Wanda and Nina. “No luck?”
Nina planted her hands on her hips, the ruffles on my shirt lifting up with the wind to slap her in the face. She batted at them. “God damn this shirt!”
Wanda grabbed my arm. “He’s gone, Marty. Took off like a speeding bullet. I swear, the ancients are impossibly fast.”
Swiping at the snowflakes, I howled out loud, raising a fist to the sky. “Argh! So, now what?”
Wanda tugged me back toward her minivan. “Now we go back to Nina’s and have some dinner, get some new phones, cancel our credit cards that are somewhere in the bottom of the lake, and finally we’re going to talk to Charmaine. We can’t put it off any longer.”
Wanda was right. I don’t know that Charmaine could shed any light on what her father claimed he’d done, but I sure wanted to talk about how Ron behaved. Something was incredibly wrong.
As we walked back to the minivan with swift strides, Nina complained the whole way, still fighting off the ruffles on my shirt. “How do you even wear this shit, Marty?”
I flicked the material under her chin. “You look sooo pretty, though. That color is totally in your color wheel. You wanna keep it? Maybe wear it on date night with Mr. Vampire?”
“Not if it was the last shirt on this damn Earth. I’d rather go butt-ass naked.”
Tottington stuck his head out of the minivan’s window, the flecks of snow sticking to his salt-and-pepper hair. “Ladies, we must make haste in order to get you fed, and there’ll be absolutely no talk of undressing whilst in my presence!”
Poor Tottington. I often wondered if he regretted coming to work for us instead of staying with his former charge, Robbie—now a witch. We’re a handful, no doubt.
Settling into the backseat, I relished the heated seats, but only for a moment until I remembered…Ron was in the wild. And now he was a fugitive on the lam.
As crummy days go, this was one of the crummier.