Dead Spots (28 page)

There was a long pause while Dashiell stared at the photos. I gazed at him, wondering if his deal was still on the table. Wasn’t this enough? Did I still have to find the actual killer? Didn’t Dashiell have plenty of thugs to handle that kind of thing? I could just send one of them to Corry’s rendezvous, no null included, and—

“I appreciate your efforts, Scarlett, but I’m afraid this changes nothing,” he said at last, interrupting my thoughts. “I am tempted to not even let you leave. It would solve so many problems if I made it known that you’d confessed, and I had simply killed you.”

My eyes went straight to his hands, which were fidgeting in his lap, altogether too close to his gun. “But Jared Hess—”

He held up a hand, glaring at me, and my mouth snapped shut by itself. “You still do not understand, do you, Scarlett? I don’t care a thing for Jared Hess. If I simply kill you, I will remove the only power he has over me, will I not? After all, you still haven’t found this so-called second null, have you?”

I swallowed again. Corry couldn’t be part of this. She still had a chance. “No.”

“So you are still the best suspect, at least from my point of view. I kill you, and even if Hess comes for me, he will not make it so far as the front door before we kill him. And my reputation, as it were, will be restored.”

As he spoke, he looked more and more thoughtful, and my legs started to go all rubbery with fear. I let the silence linger for a moment, then blurted, “But you’re not going to do that, right?”

His attention returned to me, and he tapped his fingers along the antique blotter on his desk. “Not yet. You may thank Beatrice for that; she seems unusually fond of you. I have promised her that I would let you be until our deadline. In, what? Ten hours.”

As I left Dashiell’s and hurried for my van, I worked to push aside my panic and concentrate. What had I learned? Jesse’s theory was probably correct—Jared Hess had to be the killer. But so what?
How did that help me? I glanced at my watch: 10:00. I still had an hour and a half to go before the meeting with Jay at Corry’s place. I tried Jesse’s phone again, but this time it didn’t even ring, which probably meant that the phone was off. So now what was I supposed to do?

I needed Jesse, I decided. If he wouldn’t answer his phone, then I would just have to go get him. I would go to the precinct. Just as I started the van, though, my cell phone began to howl “Black Magic Woman.” Kirsten. I answered, because even in the middle of the most frightening crisis of my life, Olivia’s training still stuck, damn her.

“Hey, Kirsten—”

“Is this Scarlett Bernard?”

I blinked in surprise. The voice was panicked, frightened—and unquestionably male.

“Uh, yeah. I’m sorry, who is this?”

“My name is Paul Dickerson. Kirsten is my wife.”

My heart sank through the floor of the van and into the freeway. “Tell me what’s happening, Mr. Dickerson.”

His voice raised an octave, hysterical. “He took her. He had a thing, a...a stun gun, and he took her. I found your number in her phone. It said,
Emergencies
. This is a fucking emergency. Can you come?”

I suddenly understood. Jared Hess didn’t just hate Joanna or the vampires, he hated the Old World. That was why he’d killed Ronnie, who really hadn’t seen anything in the clearing. The vampires, the werewolf...And now he had Kirsten. God.

But then I remembered how Hess had used Ronnie’s cell phone to text Will, and I hesitated. “Mr. Dickerson, what does Kirsten keep on her kitchen counter? The big granite counter by the sink?”

“What?”

“Please, just answer.”

“It’s a...What do you call it? A pestle and mortar. She has two.”

“I’m on my way.”

For the first time since I’d started my new life in the Old World, I was
shattering
my speeding rule.

As I raced toward Kirsten’s, I tried calling Corry’s cell, but the recorded operator’s voice informed me that the voice mailbox was unavailable. I tried Eli, who was working and must not have heard his cell, and Jesse, who still didn’t answer. He couldn’t be
that
mad at me, could he? With our lives on the line? I pounded the steering wheel in frustration. Where the hell was my backup, dammit! I was not a detective! I did not carry a gun! This was bullshit!

I sped on.

At ten fifteen, nearly all of the lights were off in the houses on Kirsten’s street. A single lamp was lit in Kirsten’s front window, and I felt a chill as I pulled the van into the driveway. If Paul Dickerson was freaking out, why weren’t all the lights blazing? As a matter of fact, why hadn’t he called the rest of Kirsten’s coven? I would think they’d be in full witch mode, working tracking spells. Unless he didn’t know about the coven? I switched off the engine nervously and sat for a moment peering at the house. Then I looked at the clock and shrugged. Fuck it. I did not have time to play Suzy armchair detective. I stepped out of the van, strode up the driveway, and rang the doorbell. Kirsten’s door has a little window at eye level in lieu of a peephole, and I saw the curtain behind it move. A man’s eye looked me over, and then the eye disappeared and I heard the doorknob turn. As the door opened, I peered into the dark house.

“Mr. Dickerson?”

“Not exactly.”

The voice was wrong. I knew right away and took an instinctual step back, turning to run. But before I’d even shifted my weight, a hand shot up and I smelled a harsh chemical like burned cinnamon, and suddenly, I was in terrible, agonizing pain. I gasped, and my overloaded senses put it together—mace.

My eyes were instantly streaming, and I let out a wail of pain, which was the man’s cue to seize my arm, dragging me into the house. I kicked wildly in his direction, but it was like fighting in the dark, and he easily evaded me. Amid the burning pain, I felt another—a sharp prick in my arm. By the time I was able to assemble my thoughts around the word
needle
, I was out.

Jesse Cruz was feeling extremely stupid.

He’d stormed out of the coffee shop like a kid throwing a tantrum, and realized within about ten minutes that he was being ridiculously shortsighted. The revelation that Scarlett was willing to help disappear murdered kids had really thrown him, partly because he really had seen the kind of devastation that unsolved murders wreaked on a family, and, if he was being honest with himself, partly because he was just disappointed that his
crush
would do something like that. That moment in the coffee shop had made him realize, for the first time, just how attracted he was to the damaged girl with the green eyes. And so he’d lost his temper.

Even though it was a much better time to be making sure both of them lived through the night. Back at his desk, Jesse had pulled out his cell to call Scarlett but realized the battery was dead. And, of course, he hadn’t actually written down her number, just programmed it into his phone. Sighing, he had trooped downstairs to the parking garage to get the phone charger out of his car, only to realize that he’d left it at his parents’ house over the previous weekend. He rolled his eyes. Vampires and werewolves were running amok in the city, and he couldn’t remember a cell phone charger.

Jesse had headed back into the building to look up Scarlett’s number in the department’s computer system, but was detained in the hallway by Miranda, who wanted an update on the files he’d
gone through. Thanks to Glory, he’d gotten away with the midday disappearance, but Jesse was still trying to convince Miranda that he could do the job. By the time he had gotten back to his desk, looked up the number, and phoned Scarlett, she wasn’t answering. The call went straight to voice mail, which meant she’d turned the phone off. Could
she
be mad at
him
?

If so, it was a damn juvenile time for the silent treatment, he thought, then felt hypocritical. Jesse decided to give her half an hour, then try again. He spent the time trying to reach Freedner again, but the human servant’s cell phone also went straight to voice mail. Frustrated, Jesse entered Freedner’s name into the department’s system again, on the off chance that he’d been given a traffic ticket or picked up by the police in the last day. He was shocked when Freedner’s name actually got a hit.

Jesse skimmed the report, made that morning by a uniform in the Downtown division. Thomas Freedner, 30, had been found in a cheap downtown hotel that morning, dead by a self-inflicted gunshot wound. There had been a note, and the ME had confirmed the death as a suicide. The uniform had noted that the room was full of empty whiskey bottles and several vials of Valium. The department had already closed the case.

Jesse leaned back in his seat, stunned. Could Freedner have been the La Brea Park killer? He could have holed up in the hotel after the murders, working up the courage to shoot himself, and then finally followed through. But then why kill Ronnie the werewolf? Even if Freedner thought Ronnie had witnessed something, if he was planning to commit suicide anyway, why would it have mattered? It just didn’t fit.

Jesse picked up the phone to try Scarlett, hoping she’d have some insight. When the call went to voice mail again, he started to seriously worry. He left a brief message and then sat at his desk, not even pretending to look busy. Where would she have gone? He thought of the file he’d left with her when he’d stomped out of the
shop—it was no big deal, everything had been copies, but had she decided to try to investigate further on her own? Where would she even go? It had to be something Old World, he finally decided. And that meant it was out of his jurisdiction, so to speak.

Jesse tried to find a number for Molly, but she apparently didn’t exist. He fretted over trying to call Dashiell, but figured that Scarlett would kill him if it turned out she was just somewhere with a dead phone and he’d pissed Dashiell off for nothing. He found a name and address on his computer for a Jack Bernard in Esperanza, California, but when he called, the phone line had been disconnected. If Scarlett really didn’t keep in touch with her brother, Jack was not a great option anyway. Finally, Jesse pulled out the good old-fashioned Yellow Pages and called the werewolf bar.

“Hair of the Dog, this is Eli,” a voice shouted over loud punk rock.

“Hey, this is Jesse Cruz. We met the other night at Scarlett Bernard’s house?”
When I unlocked silver handcuffs for you in front of the girl I think we both might like
, he thought. “Have you seen her tonight?”

“What? No. Hang on, let me get back to the office.” The phone clicked in Jesse’s ear, and he sat through a couple of minutes of a Muzak version of “The Rainbow Connection.” When Eli picked up the phone again, the bar cacophony had vanished. “Has something happened?” Eli asked, straight to business. Jesse realized the guy reminded him of Scarlett.

“No. Well, maybe. I’m not sure. Did she...um...tell you about her deadline with Dashiell?”

“What deadline?” Eli said, the beginning of alarm in his voice.

Praying he wasn’t digging himself or Scarlett into more trouble, Jesse explained about the second null and Dashiell’s demand that she either bring him the killer or turn herself in to die by 5:00 a.m. And that now Scarlett was out of contact, and he was afraid
she’d gone off on her own to investigate. When he was finished, there was a long, heavy silence on the line.

“She told me Dashiell suspected her, but not that he was planning to kill her,” Eli said, his voice just barely above a growl. “Probably because she knew I’d go to Pasadena and rip his goddamned head off.”

“Can you really do that? Beat him?” Jesse asked, a little hopeful.

There was a pause, and then Eli sighed into the phone. “No. I’m strong, nearly as strong as our alpha, but I’m not sure even he could take Dashiell. And Dashiell has an awful lot of guys who work for him. Scarlett would even the playing field, but I still couldn’t take that many.”

“Do you think maybe she ran? Tried to avoid Dashiell entirely?”

“Nah,” Eli said after a moment. “It’s not really her style. Plus, she has no money, no family that I know of, and Dashiell has a lot of contacts. Scarlett knows she doesn’t really have anywhere to go.”

Scarlett hadn’t told Eli about her brother. Interesting. “So either she’s just stranded somewhere with a flat tire and a dead cell battery, or—”

“Not likely. Have you seen how she takes care of that van?”

“Or it’s gotta be the killer,” Jesse continued grimly. “I don’t know much about how you guys handle things. What should we do now?”

“Can’t you, like, trace her cell phone?”

“I tried that—illegally, by the way—half an hour ago. The battery is dead or disconnected. She could be anywhere.”

“Okay. I got something I can try, but I can’t involve you.”

“What? What are you talking about?”

“It’s better if you don’t know, and I don’t have permission to out the party in question, anyway. Give me your number.”

Jesse recited it, still pissed.

“Okay. Do whatever you can on the cop side of things. I’ll call you as soon as I know something.”

There was a click, and Jesse found himself staring at a silent phone. “You’ve got to be kidding me,” he told it. Was Eli going to do something illegal, and he didn’t want Jesse to know about it? But he’d just confessed to illegally tracing Scarlett’s cell phone, so what would that even be? He ground his teeth.

With nothing better to do, he went back to the original copy of the Hess file, flipping through it. Other than the battered arrest photo he’d shown Scarlett, there were no other pictures of Jared Hess, whose identity had been protected as a minor. Jesse dug through the police report until he found the name of Jared’s high school—Elm Grove Senior High. Then he logged on to the school’s website, searching for online yearbook pages. There were some, but only for the last five years. After some thought, he went to
Classmates.com
and laboriously went through the school’s registered users until he found a few that were still in LA. Jesse looked at the clock: 11:00.
Screw it
, he thought. He picked up the phone.

Thirty minutes and three irritated classmates later, Jesse stood by the floor’s ancient fax machine, nervously tapping a beat out on his legs. He’d found a former cheerleader who had been fond enough of her glory days to keep the yearbook handy. The old machine wheezed and sputtered, finally spitting out a scanned page of photos from Elm Grove’s yearbook. He ran his finger along the row next to the name
Hess, Jared
, stopping at a grainy shot of a young man with glasses and protruding ears. Jesse stared. Then he leaned his back on the wall and stared a little more, until he was absolutely positive he recognized the face. And he knew Thomas Freedner had nothing to do with the murders.