And tonight, it seemed, he wasn’t.
Will’s array of lawn furniture and video games was still artfully arranged. The teal chintz curtains left over from the last owner looked ridiculous and out of place in the half-empty apartment, but oddly seemed to match the cross-stitched Home Sweet Home pillow that warmed up the plastic chaise longue.
The kitchen counters were bare and a single glass glittered in the drying rack. Nothing to signify that Sampson had stayed here at all—nothing to signify that anyone had. I swallowed down a lump of fear and headed for the bedroom, hoping that there would be something there—something to prove to me that my trust wasn’t misguided, that Sampson was spending his evenings reading Tuesdays with Morrie rather than taking out his werewolf urges on innocent San Franciscans.
“Come on, Sampson,” I muttered to myself as I poked around the pristine room. “Prove me right.”
“Soph?”
I spun and Sampson was behind me, dark hair dripping wet, bare chest exposed. He had a towel wrapped around his waist and I was all at once hit with the heavy scent of Will’s soap—plus a heap of guilt, angst, and inappropriate naked-man attraction.
“Oh, Mr. Sampson.” I looked at him, felt the hot blush wash my cheeks, and then looked at the floor. “Sorry to catch you . . . naked.”
“You okay?”
“Can you put some pants on?”
I waited in the living room, doing my best to make myself comfortable in Will’s lawn chair—it was one of those old-fashioned numbers that squeezed every bit of your thigh and butt fat through its plastic slats. I was relieved when Sampson walked out, fully dressed, fairly certain that five minutes more of squirming in that stupid chair and I would be cursed with permanent slat butt.
“Sorry about that,” Sampson said, taking the chair across from me. “I didn’t expect you.”
“I knocked,” I said in a feeble attempt to explain myself and the obvious. “You didn’t answer so I let myself in.”
Mr. Sampson’s smile was easy, trusting—like a knife in my heart. “I’m sure you had good reason. What’s going on?”
Good reason. Yes, I wanted to say. My good reason is that suddenly, after all you’ve done for me, I don’t trust you. I think you’re lying.
I cleared my throat, then looked at my hands in my lap. “Mr. Sampson—” I hadn’t planned out a speech in my head. I hadn’t planned anything out, but it didn’t seem to matter anyway, because all the words I wanted to say were stuck behind my teeth.
Sampson chuckled and his eyes crinkled. He leaned back and crossed one leg over the other, and if he wasn’t in a lawn chair, he wasn’t a werewolf, and I wasn’t about to accuse him of murder, he’d look like a very Norman Rockwell father, about to bite the end of a fat cigar.
I licked my lips and pushed the words out. “Do you know Tia Shively?”
“The woman who was murdered in Pacific Heights?”
He said it. He knew.
I felt all the color drain from my face. I felt my whole body congeal into a quivering mass of terror and despair. Pete Sampson. My Pete Sampson. A murderer.
“I read about her in the paper this morning.” He plucked the folded paper from the floor and offered it to me. I recoiled as if he were offering me a snake.
“I need to show you something.”
“What is it?”
I fished the tapes from my shoulder bag and approached Will’s mammoth wall of electronics, feeding the tape into the dusty VCR.
“We’re watching a movie?”
I didn’t answer. Instead, I took the remote, aimed it toward the television and pushed play.
“Sophie, I—oh my God. Where did you get this?”
“It’s security footage from the Pacific Heights crime scene.” And then, slowly, “It is—was—Tia Shively.”
I chewed on the inside of my cheek while I watched Sampson watching the videotape. He flinched when the “wolf ” crashed through the door and his eyes widened when Tia Shively was snatched up. But other than two tiny reactions, there was nothing else; no indication that he was—or wasn’t—familiar with what was going on. I couldn’t watch the screen myself, but I could tell by the silvery flashes reflected back what was going on.
I pressed PAUSE.
“Did you know her?” I whispered. “Was that you—changed—in the videotape?”
Everything in the world stopped. The entire city held its breath, waiting, waiting for the answer, the explosion, the ultimate firefight. Had I cracked the case, or accused a man who had been nothing but good to me of a heinous crime?
I watched Sampson’s Adam’s apple bob as he swallowed slowly. He was silent, and I couldn’t tell if he was considering his answer or my question. And I didn’t know which one was worse.
“Sophie?”