“No. Well, I don’t know. He just joined the pack; I barely knew him.”
“Okay, well...um...Give it some thought. I might come around later today with that cop to ask you more about him.”
“Yeah. I gotta find his family...” He wasn’t really listening anymore, so I said a polite good-bye and hung up.
The sky was getting light by the time I pulled into my parking garage, and Molly would be dead to the world. Pun intended. I decided not to wake her. Maybe I could grab a couple hours of sleep while I waited for Cruz. But when I finally peeled off my clothes and climbed into bed, my mind was spinning too fast for sleep. I was thinking about the clearing in the woods and the dumpster. It had to be the same killer. Aside from the obvious connection—Ronnie had been at the first crime scene and was the victim at the second—both murders had the same feeling of cruelty and anger, and a null had been present at both scenes. I could understand wanting to kill Abraham to hurt Dashiell, and I could even understand killing the other two vamps to throw off the scent. But why kill Ronnie? It served no real purpose. Ronnie wasn’t powerful or useful or a good tool to hurt someone. He was just a werewolf, low on the totem pole. Then I realized how Ronnie could be connected to the killings.
Through me.
As soon as the thought struck me, I was doubtful, figuring it was either paranoia or just self-involvement. But the idea nagged at me. Finally, I put on my bathrobe and went downstairs to make a pot of coffee, sitting down at the table to think. I had been summoned to do the cleanup at both scenes. But in both cases, the police had arrived at the scene very quickly, way too soon for me to do anything except maybe get caught holding the bag. It isn’t unheard-of for the cops to simply get to a crime scene before I do—once in a while a crime scene doesn’t get reported to my employers, so they can’t call me in. At that point, a whole different set of strings has to be pulled by Dashiell, and I’m out of that side of it.
But they’d been too fast. Ronnie’s blood had still been all fresh and drippy. Cruz had told me that he happened to be close to La Brea Park when that call came in; otherwise the cops would have been a few minutes later, right when I was up to my elbows in blood. I picked up the phone and dug Cruz’s card out of my wallet.
“Cruz.”
“Hey, it’s Scarlett.”
“I’m going to be a while still. We’re talking to neighbors—”
“It’s fine. Listen, can you find out how the police found the body? I mean, how did you guys know there was a body?”
“Oh, easy. There’s an all-night Starbucks a few blocks away. A couple reported hearing screams as they were walking in the door.
Then an anonymous caller also phoned it in fifteen minutes later, must have heard the same thing.”
“What time was the first call?”
“Let me check.” There was a pause, and I waited. “Three fourteen exactly. Took the cops seven minutes to get there.”
I thanked him and hung up, then sent a text to Will:
What time was text from Ronnie, exactly?
There wasn’t an immediate answer, so I used the bathroom and threw on some sweats. I wasn’t going to be sleeping anytime soon, and I was determined to go for a run today. After a moment’s hesitation, I dug out my old fanny pack and put the Taser inside. Better to be alive than to be fashionable, I always say. When I checked again, the phone was blinking. Will had kept it short and sweet:
3:17
.
I spent a few minutes stretching, then I left Molly’s house at a light jog. The sky was overcast, which had made sunrise more or less pointless, but I knew the route and could have run it in a blackout. I pelted down the hill by Molly’s house, heading for my usual big loop, but my mind was on the case. Ronnie’s murder had happened at 3:14, but the text from Ronnie’s phone came three minutes
later
, which meant that it must have been from the killer. He or she had wanted me to get to the scene but hadn’t realized that Ronnie’s screaming had alerted other people, who called the cops. The killer gave me fifteen minutes to get there and then called the police himself. I felt a quick burst of that escaped-death kind of adrenaline—if the Starbucks couple hadn’t called the cops, and I’d been at home on the West Side instead of in Orange County, I would have beat the cops to the scene by just a couple of minutes. Again.
“It’s me,” I said out loud, panting. Without really deciding to, I had slowed to a walk and then stopped. But why me? Had I pissed someone off so much that they wanted me in jail? Maybe someone wanted to expose the whole Old World and figured I’d sing like a
canary if I got arrested? Well, he was wrong there—if the cops ever caught me, I’d make up a story and do my time. Dashiell would never let me breathe a word about the Old World to the cops, Jesse excluded. I thought about how horrible Ronnie had looked, the welts on his skin. Someone wanted to pin that on me?
I leaned forward, resting my hands on my knees. Welts on his skin. Whoever had killed Ronnie—and I was assuming it was a human, because there was no other reason to use a null—must have subdued him with the null, then tied him up with the silver and sent the null away. With that many silver chains, the killer could have basically laid the chains on top of a werewolf in either form and completely immobilized his victim. Ronnie, panicked and desperate, would have made the painful switch back to wolf form, which is what the werewolves tend to do when they get cornered. It must have hurt like hell, especially covered in silver. That’s how Ronnie’s teeth were pulled out. Then, by command or on his own, the null came back, and Ronnie had switched back to human, where he died. Or, I realized, the null might not have come back, but the bad guy could have killed Ronnie. The thing about werewolves changing back to human when they die, that’s actually true. But it takes a
lot
to kill a werewolf, even with silver chains.
People were starting to stare at me, standing dead still in running clothes, panting heavily, so I moved back into a light jog, heading home. I was picturing those chains in my head. They’d been shiny and untarnished, either brand-new or very well taken care of. Where do you
get
chains like that?
As soon as I got home, I called Will—I can never tell whether he’s one of those people who can wake up instantly and sound fine on the phone or if he just doesn’t sleep, but he answered—and asked him. Not only did he not know, but he was offended that I might think he’d keep that kind of thing around. Will takes pride in not having to beat the crap out of his wolves to maintain his power, the way that some alphas do. I wanted to ask Dashiell the
same question—he, unlike Will, would have no qualms with tying up a belligerent werewolf—but it was seven in the morning, and I couldn’t wait the entire day to talk to him. I was running out of time.
Back at Molly’s, I took a quick shower and put on a T-shirt and underwear. As I was digging through my dresser for clean jeans, I called Cruz and left a simple message for him to call me as soon as possible. Giving up on the jeans—laundry had not been a priority this week—I paced the room a little and plopped down on the bed. I wanted to bounce my idea off someone, but I was pretty much stuck until Cruz finished up at the crime scene.
I didn’t mean to close my eyes, but at that point, I’d been awake for almost twenty-four hours for the second time that week, and even all the coffee and the adrenaline couldn’t keep my exhausted body conscious. As I drifted off, I felt a muted jolt of fear that I would dream of the clearing. I shouldn’t have worried, though; instead, I dreamed of Olivia once again.
It was the smirking, pre-cancer Olivia, as she’d been when we first met. In my dream, she was so real, so present, her chestnut hair drifting loose from its bun and her heavy jewelry clinking on her chest. We walked along the beach, and though we didn’t speak, I could feel Olivia radiating that unique sense of purpose. Next to her, I felt ungainly and inexperienced, a colt trying to keep up with its graceful mother. We were heading toward something, two figures in the distance. When we got close, I realized it was my mom and dad, who both rushed to greet Olivia, ignoring me. Olivia pulled out a knife, grinned at me, and in one long swipe, slit both of my parents’ throats. Then, with blood covering them, all three danced off into the distance, leaving me behind.
The nightmare woke me up at seven forty-five, less than an hour after I’d drifted off. The first thing I felt as my eyes opened was the loss, all over again, like when you fall and the ground
rushes up to meet your face. I curled up into a ball and took a few sobbing gasps. I struggled to get my breathing under control.
“Scarlett?”
I jumped about four feet in the air, leaping off the bed and backing into the corner farthest from the doorway before I realized what I was doing.
Cruz was standing there, a tentative smile dying on his face. “Whoa, sorry. I’m sorry. The door was open, and I saw your van. I got worried when you didn’t answer. Are you okay?” He took a step forward, hands lifting to touch me, but stopped.
Good instinct. Anger rushed through me like an electric current—anger and fear and grief, all braided together. I counted to ten, still panting, and as soon as I’d calmed a little, I realized that I was wearing a clingy T-shirt, underwear, and nothing else.
Fantastic
.
He looked down at me at the same time I did, and I heard him take in a breath. “Um, sorry, I—”
“Turn around,” I yelped.
He spun. “Sorry! I’m sorry!”
I yanked open the top dresser drawer and pulled out a bra, then scooped a pair of less-than-clean jeans off the floor.
When I was dressed, I said, “Okay. You can look.”
“God, Scarlett, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to stare,” Cruz said, pivoting. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine. Please don’t sneak up on me again. Breaking and entering is still a crime for cops, you know.” My voice came out frosty.
He just said, “Sorry. But I got your message. I thought we should talk.”
“Just...Meet me in the kitchen, okay?”
He left, and I took a deep breath, sitting back on the bed. Less than twenty-four hours to deadline. I didn’t have time to be rattled.
When I couldn’t stall anymore, I jerked my fingers through my hair, pulling it into a ponytail, and went down to the kitchen. Cruz had figured out the coffeemaker and was opening cupboard doors to find a mug. I skirted him to get to the right cupboard, next to the sink, and pulled out two of Molly’s kitschy Hollywood souvenir mugs. He didn’t ask for cream or sugar, and I didn’t offer. We just sat down at the kitchen table, black coffee in front of us, and I began to talk.
I started with the crime scene and what I’d noticed about the silver. Then I told him about the timing of the whole thing, how it almost seemed designed to hurt me. By then I was beginning to doubt myself, wondering again if sleep deprivation had just gotten the better of me, but he looked very thoughtful, nodding. “What about you?” I said finally. “Have you learned anything?”
“I got stuck doing interviews with people in the area, and then I had reports and stuff. I gotta get back to the official investigation, but I did call San Diego to get James Rucker’s alibi. He checks out.”
I sipped the coffee. “Okay...”
“I also swung by Thomas Freedner’s place, but he wasn’t home. Guy has a crappy rental in Studio City, and there was no sign of life. I went around, peeked in the windows. Everything was neat as a pin, hardly looked lived-in.”
“What does that mean?”
He shrugged. “Might mean nothing. The guy could just be neat. Or maybe he left town, like the other human servants. I’ll keep trying, but meanwhile, I also had an idea, along the same line as yours. It’s about where those chains came from.”
“I told you, I’m on it. But I don’t know what else to do until Dashiell wakes up. It’d be different if I had the actual chains, but I don’t suppose you want to steal them from police evidence, right?”
“No, no.” He waved his hand dismissively. “But I had another idea. There can’t be that many people who make restraints out of pure silver.”
“No, I wouldn’t think so.”
“Well, then maybe the chains came from the same place as those handcuffs, the ones that your friend was...um...wearing. Maybe if we figured out where those came from, we could figure out where the chains came from.”
“Yeah, but I already know the cuffs were Dashiell’s, and he’s...” I paused, and an idea sparked in my head. “Okay, you’re onto something. What time is it?”
He checked his watch. “Seven forty-five.”
“Let me make some calls. If I can get the handcuffs from Eli, I can trace them to their maker.”
He looked puzzled. “How?”
“Well, I know a pretty good witch. And she can probably get the morning off.”
Cruz had to get back to the precinct, so I had to go see Kirsten by myself. He’d been unhappy about my going alone, but I’d just scoffed at him. I’ve been alone with Kirsten many times, and though witches sometimes give me the willies, they can’t actually hurt me. Not with spells, anyway. Besides, I didn’t have her permission to bring a civilian cop—not an oxymoron here, trust me—over for spell time, and of all the Old World creatures, the witches take that kind of thing the most seriously. Historically, witches and law enforcement have not been good bedfellows.
First, though, I had to go by Eli’s and get the handcuffs, which he’d taken home with him, probably to dispose of. I was really hoping he hadn’t gotten that far.
Eli’s apartment is down in Santa Monica, three blocks from the ocean. It’s a ramshackle old adobe building, the kind that’s “decorated” with that dingy-seashell look. I parked illegally behind the building’s dumpster and climbed three floors of outdoor stairs to knock on Eli’s door.
“Hey,” he called from below me. I stepped away from the door and peered down the alley. Eli was walking toward his apartment, wearing a wetsuit and carrying a surfboard. He looked as happy and relaxed as I’d ever seen him, at least outside of my radius.
“Hey, yourself,” I said back. It was too quiet for humans to hear, but he wasn’t human—yet.