Hunter's Trail (A Scarlett Bernard Novel) (13 page)

More or less.

Chapter 17

Leah Rhodes and her roommate had shared a two-bedroom apartment in a big concrete box of a building just off the 405 freeway, near the border of West LA and Culver City. I had the van’s window down as I parked, and the sound of traffic from both the 405 and Sepulveda was loud enough that conversation would have been difficult. It was a still, cool January day, with no breeze to speak of, and when I stepped out of the White Whale at Leah Rhodes’s apartment, a thick haze hung over the city like a canopy of poison. The chemical scent of car exhaust stung my nose. The building’s architect hadn’t bothered adding balconies to the apartments, and I understood his reasoning.

Cane in hand, I limped up to the apartment directory and was extremely grateful to see that the
Rhodes and Lewis
apartment was on the first floor. I pressed the button, expecting to have to go into a long detailed explanation, but to my surprise Leah’s roommate bought the consultant story with absolutely no fuss and buzzed me in.

Inside the building, I made my way down the hall and found Amanda Lewis waiting for me in her apartment’s doorway, leaning against the frame with her arms crossed over her chest. She was a short, plump Caucasian woman in her late twenties with strategic clothing that probably made her look slimmer than she really was. She had long, white-blonde hair tied in a careful, high ponytail, almost at the very top of her head, and bubblegum-pink lip gloss that practically showed my reflection in its shine. “
You’re
Laverne?” she asked, a little doubtfully. “You don’t look like a Laverne.”

“That’s just what I keep saying,” I said lightly as I approached.

Amanda Lewis led me into a small, cluttered living room. All of the furnishings, down to the threadbare rug, had obviously outlived their expiration date from IKEA. She pointed me to a lumpy sofa, and lowered herself into an adjoining armchair that had been dressed up with a pale-blue cover. I sat down in one of the two obvious ass-dents and pulled a little reporter’s notebook and pen out of the blazer pocket. Jesse had instructed me to download an app that would let me record the conversation on my phone, and had been comically dumbfounded when I informed him I didn’t have a smartphone.

“I’m not sure what I can tell you,” Amanda began, a little frown creasing her features. She wasn’t really pretty but had access to high-quality makeup that enhanced her pleasant-enough features until she was almost there. “I mean, Leah and I have been roommates fo
r . . .
oh, five or six years. But we aren’t exactly close.”

“You’ve been roommates for that long, and you’re
not
close?” This felt so weird, learning about someone after I’d already covered up her murder. I had to work not to use the past tense as we talked.

She bobbed her head. “We roomed together at UC Riverside; randomly assigned, you know, by the school. We got along okay, stayed out of each other’s way real well, but we didn’t, like, socialize. When we both got jobs in West LA—she’s an industrial designer at this place on Overland; I manage a restaurant at the Bev Center—it just made sense to get an apartment up here together.” Amanda gave me a tiny smile. “Leah always says that there’s friend chemistry and romantic chemistry and roommate chemistry, and we have the last one like nobody’s business.” For the first time, a look of genuine emotion came over her face. “I hope she’s okay,” Amanda added softly.

I clenched my jaw so I wouldn’t wince. Sorry, Amanda. I threw her into a furnace twelve hours ago; she’s probably not okay. “Is there someone she may have decided to go visit? A friend or boyfriend?”

“The cops at the station asked me that too,” Amanda sniffed. “I don’t know of anywhere she’d go and not be back by now. She has a boyfriend, but it’s pretty casual, I think, and he’s out of town a lot for his work.”

“Does she have family nearby?” I asked.

“Her family is all in San Diego; they haven’t heard from her, either,” Amanda replied. “Diane—that’s her mom—she’s planning to come up late tonight to file another report or whatever. She’s really freaking out.”

I wrote
Diane Rhodes
in my notebook. “Do you know her boyfriend’s name?” I asked.

Amanda shrugged again. “She just introduced him as Henry. I don’t think I ever heard his last name. He was older, maybe in his forties.”

I wrote
Henry
—
40s.
Amanda was looking at me, a little impatient. “You said you guys weren’t—aren’t,” I corrected hastily, “really friendly, but you must know how she spends her time. She’s here, she’s at work. What else does she do?”

Amanda leaned back in the armchair, her eyes going distant as she considered the question. “Well, she likes to knit. She has a knitting group at the library on Thursday nights. She goes to San Diego once a month or so to visit her family—her sister just had a baby.” Her hands unconsciously clasped and unclasped in her lap. “She volunteers at the Humane Society, walking dogs, and she was active in a couple of animal rights groups, although I’m not sure she’s still doing that.”

Walking shelter dogs to werewolves was kind of a big stretch, but my ears perked up anyway. “Which groups?”

“Uh, let’s see. It’s P-A-
W . . .
” Amanda stared at the ceiling, squinting to remember. Then she met my eyes in sudden triumph. “Protect America’s Wolves, that was it.”

This time I did wince. Leah Rhodes had been mauled to death by a werewolf. Irony-wise, that was pretty brutal. But it couldn’t be a coincidence, could it? I wrote down the name.

I talked to Amanda for a bit longer, but all I really learned was that Leah had liked
The Bachelor
and had recently developed a case of baby fever, after the birth of her new nephew. “She’s been talking about kids lately,” Amanda added, shaking her head in amazement, like having kids was some weird thing they only did in Japan. “I mean, Henry just doesn’t seem like the dad type to me”—she wrinkled her nose a little—“and I can’t picture Leah as the ‘hear me roar’ do-it-yourself type.”

I felt another stab of sadness as I pocketed my notebook and thanked Amanda for her time. Leah Rhodes was never going to have a baby. She was never going to have a conversation with her nephew, either.

You didn’t kill her
, I reminded myself.
Go find the fucker who did.

Back in the van, I called Jesse and left him a voicemail describing my interview with Amanda Lewis. Then I headed toward the South Bay to talk to Kathryn Wong’s boyfriend. I was getting the hang of driving with just my left foot, but my injured knee ached even when thrown over the passenger seat, a powerful, insistent wave of pain that was always cresting. It only seemed to recede when I downed one of the Vicodin that Dr. Noring had given me. I was doing my damnedest not to take them, though. Not because I was trying to be a hero, but because the pills made me feel sluggish, like I’d just had an intense workout and two glasses of wine.

If Leah and Amanda’s apartment had come across as the typical LA early professional habitat, then Kathryn Wong’s place screamed “South Bay Money.” It was a condo one block away from Manhattan Beach, with a spacious emerald lawn that pretty much guaranteed the grass was never greener anywhere else. The air smelled of saltwater and sunshine, and there was careful, minimalist landscaping lining the sidewalks and side of the building. The lobby had been decorated just as carefully, with ornate pots of fresh flowers on glass-tipped end tables in each hallway. However the nova wolf was choosing his victims, it definitely wasn’t for their socioeconomic similarities.

I hadn’t wanted to make the trip south unless I knew that Kathryn Wong’s boyfriend would be there, so I’d called ahead with my victim support story and David Mailt had agreed to see me. After he’d buzzed me through the entryway, I limped toward a bronze-door elevator and rode up to the fifth floor, careful not to get fingerprint smears on the pretty interior paneling.

Mailt opened the door of 5E a heartbeat after my knock.

“Did you find her?” Mailt demanded immediately, before the door had swung all the way open. I felt an instant twinge of disappointment when I felt him in my radius—he was human. It would have been so much easier if he’d just been the nova wolf. I tried to adopt Jesse’s professional cop voice. “I’m sorry, sir. We have no new information on Kathryn.”
Liar.

Mailt sagged against the door frame. He was a skinny white guy in his mid twenties, with narrow square-framed glasses and a look that could be best described as “student filmmaker.” “You’d better come in anyway, I guess,” he said, defeated, and turned around without another word, trudging back into the condo. I followed.

The interior would have been gorgeous under other circumstances. It was airy and filled with light, all cream-colored walls and light wood-paneled floors. Decorative accents of bright fuchsia, deep violet blue, and emerald green popped out against beige or wood furniture. There were two distinctive work stations in the large living room, each covered with electronic equipment. Mailt pointed me toward a nearby Pottery Barn sofa that would never deign to be dented by a human ass. I perched on its edge just in case I was inadvertently dirty.

“What can you tell me?” Mailt asked wearily, tugging at his tousled black hair. “Or do you need something from me? Pictures of Kate, or you need to get her fingerprints or whatever?”

“No, no,” I said, retrieving the pad and smoothing down the blazer. “I’m not in charge of evidence collection. Mostly, I’d just like to check in on how you’re doing, and see if you can tell me a little bit more about who Kate”—
don’t say was, don’t say was
—“is.”

Mailt stared at me, and now I could see the bleariness in his eyes from lack of sleep. “How will that help you find her?” he asked bluntly.

What would Jesse say? “Please, Mr. Mailt. Just humor me. I want to do everything I can to help you find your girlfriend,” I said, feeling like a worm.

I felt even worse when he apologized. “You’re right, I’m sorry,” he said, holding his hands up deferentially. “I’ve just been frantic. Kate’s never done anything like this. She doesn’t jus
t . . .
disappear.” He leaned over to rest his elbows on his knees. “What can I tell you? Ask me anything.”

“Well, why don’t you start by telling me what Kate does for a living,” I said gently.

“Right, right.” He bobbed his head. “Let’s se
e . . .
we both graduated from the film program at UCLA a few years ago. Kate went right into a job at Sony, and I worked for an indie producer. After a couple of years, she decided she didn’t want to deal with the politics, and she started working on some short films. Kate, a
h . . .
” He hesitated, trying to read my face. “Well, Kate has money. But I don’t get any of it if something happens to her,” he added hurriedly.

He didn’t have to worry. I’d known he wasn’t a real suspect the second he’d hit my radius. “Where does the money come from?” I asked anyway, because it seemed like I should.

“Her grandfather left Kate and her sister trust funds when he died, uhh”—he looked at the ceiling a second, doing some mental math—“six or seven years ago now.”

Okay. That didn’t seem likely to be connected to her death, so I switched tacks, mentally shuffling the index cards Jesse had provided. “Does Kate have a lot of friends? Does she go out a lot?”

He leaned back in his chair, thinking it over. “We hang out with people from college, but nobody really close. Kate’s sister is her best friend, but she’s in San Diego with the rest of the family.”

I remembered Leah Rhodes’s interest in wolves and asked if Kate liked animals. Mailt shook his head. “She’s funny about animals—she’s a vegan, and I think she even used to be in PETA, and now she’s in HPA. But she’s super allergic herself. The family across the hall asked us to feed their guinea pigs once, and Kate couldn’t even go into the condo without sneezing. I had to do it.”

I’d at least heard of Humans for the Protection of Animals, which was one of the big three animal rights groups, along with PETA and the Humane Society. I wondered if there was a connection between Kate being in HPA and Leah being in PAW—but then again, this was LA, where your “activism” could be as much of a status indicator as your haircut or job. I wrote Mailt’s info down just in case.

David Mailt was looking at me with desperate eagerness, just hoping I would ask him a question so he could answer it. Meanwhile, I had helped destroy his dead girlfriend only a few hours earlier. I asked him some more questions about Kate’s activities, and found out that Leah and Kate had gone to different schools, lived in different parts of town, and worked at jobs that didn’t seem like they’d intersect. They weren’t from the same area, or even the same tax bracket. Other than being about the same age, same size, and not all that social, they seemed as different as could be. I was flailing. So much for Jesse’s assurances that I had enough investigative experience to do these interviews.

Finally I ran out of ideas and thanked Mailt for his time. I also promised to call if I got any new information. Which I wouldn’t. As I limped out to the car, leaning on the cane, I started to wonder if Jesse had given me this assignment just to punish me. I wasn’t finding any connections, but I
was
learning an awful lot about the two victims. Was he trying to make me feel guilty on purpose?

And if so, was it working?

Chapter 18

By mid afternoon, Jesse was beginning to have doubts about his own plan.

With Scarlett working the victim end of the case, Jesse had to try to find the nova by figuring out who’d created him. Jesse also just wanted to talk to the werewolves who had clashed with Scarlett and her roommate. It annoyed him that Scarlett and Molly seemed to be taking the attack as just another part of life. No one should have to live with that kind of threat over their head, much less find it mundane.

Luckily he could do both things at once. Will had given him a list of the nineteen other werewolves in the pack, in rough order of their place in the pack hierarchy. He’d suggested that the nova had been created by either someone very high on the list, or someone very low on the list. The stronger and more dominant a werewolf was, the more likely he’d be to ignore the alpha’s wishes that they not change in between full moons unless they were with other pack members. The pack members who were the lowest on the list, on the other hand, were more likely to have trouble controlling themselves in between moons.

Jesse had figured he’d start with the top three wolves and the bottom three wolves on the list, a group which included Drew Riddell and Terrence Whittaker, two of the wolves who’d ambushed Scarlett. The plan, he’d decided, would be to simply interview the werewolves and try to get a sense of their truthfulness. Jesse wanted to ask the kind of questions that would give him a sense of how each person felt about Will, the pack, and being a werewolf in general, and hope someone gave himself away.

Will had also pointed out that whoever turned the nova wolf had successfully kept it from the rest of the pack without stinking of deceit. He (or she) had to be a world-class liar, but Jesse had had plenty of experience figuring out when suspects were lying. At any rate, it’d be good to get a better sense of wolf pack behavior from the point of view of someone who
wasn’t
the alpha. So he plotted all six addresses on his phone’s GPS and loaded his backup gun with the silver bullets he’d bought from Tommy Vrapman.

It was a tenuous plan to begin with, and he just kept striking out. Two of the wolves on his list—Lydia, the lowest werewolf in the pack, and Astrid, the fourth highest—weren’t home when Jesse called on them. Ryker, number eighteen on the list, turned out to be a broody, obnoxiously well-groomed aspiring actor who answered his door shirtless and stayed that way for the whole interview. He came off to Jesse as too vain and one-dimensional to deceive the rest of the pack, and when Jesse pushed him, Ryker immediately cowered into his chair. He was all bluster.

The next closest werewolf, number seventeen, was a meek Hispanic woman named Rosarita Hernandez who was so grateful that Jesse could speak to her in Spanish that for a moment he thought she might cry. She pushed tamales and iced tea at him and showed him pictures of the cats she used to have before she’d become a werewolf. She was not going to be the one who’d lied about the nova, either.

An accident on the 10 freeway forced him to slog through forty-five minutes of traffic, and by two thirty, Jesse was tired, frustrated, and really needed to use the bathroom after all the iced tea. The whole endeavor was starting to feel like a waste of time he didn’t have.

After a pit stop to use the bathroom, though, Jesse found his first real possibility. Drew Riddell, number three on the list, was a short, thick Caucasian man with short, curly hair and a restless energy that practically came off him in gusts. After a few calls to Riddell’s home and office, Jesse tracked him down at a construction site off Fairfax. Riddell was a contractor, and when Jesse walked up, he was deep into a heated argument with an older man in a hard hat with an electrical company logo on the side. Jesse hung back and watched the two men for a few minutes. If you knew to look for it, Riddell’s body language had “dominance” written all over it.

After the electrician had slunk away, Jesse approached Riddell and identified himself. The shorter man jerked his head toward an RV parked nearby. “Let’s talk in there,” Riddell grunted. He had a hint of an accent, maybe midwestern.

After a few minutes, conversation with the werewolf, however, Jesse wasn’t convinced that Riddell was the guy who’d turned the nova. He was aggressive, but no more so than most of the LA residents Jesse had pulled over back when he was on traffic duty. Riddell denied changing in between moons and attacking a human. And he didn’t seem to have any particular animosity toward Will.

“Then why are you trying t
o . . .
I don’t know what the term i
s . . .
overthrow him?” Jesse asked.

Riddell shrugged his beefy shoulders. “I don’t know that
any
of us want to overthrow Will, so much as help Ana.” He paused, and then added, “Okay, there are some who want to overthrow Will. Not me, though. I don’t want to be alpha, so I don’t really care who is. But I do want Ana to get her answers.”

“Even if it meant kidnapping and torturing someone?” Jesse asked, unable to keep the anger out of his voice.

If Riddell was distressed about being accused of a felony by a police detective, he didn’t show it. “You’re talking about the girl, right? Bernard?” Riddell shrugged. “I’m a werewolf,” he said seriously, his voice low and unapologetic. “And a contractor. If there’s one thing I know for sure, it’s that sometimes you have to get your hands dirty to get what you want.”

“All the same,” Jesse retorted, his voice hard. “If you go near her again, I’ll arrest you for kidnapping, assault, and conspiracy to commit murder, just for starters.”

Riddell looked at him speculatively for a long moment, his nostrils flaring slightly, and Jesse realized the other man was searching him for signs of a lie. “I believe you would,” he said at last. “You’d catch hell from Will and Dashiell, but you don’t care about that, do you?”

Jesse shook his head. There was another long silence, interrupted by the buzz of a table saw just outside the trailer and the traffic noise from Fairfax. “All right,” Riddell said finally. “I’ll leave her alone. Not because I’m afraid of you, but because if I got arrested, Dashiell would make sure I died in jail before the full moon.”

As he drove toward the next name on the list, Jesse thought back over the interview. The werewolf could have been lying about not attacking any humans, but there was really no reason for it. Why lie about that if he was willing to be up front about conspiring to kidnap Scarlett? And he had believed Riddell when he said he didn’t want to be alpha. The man might be aggressive, but he didn’t seem like a leader.

Half an hour later, Jesse was knocking on the door of the second name on Will’s pack roster: Terrence Whittaker, another one of the guys that had gone after Scarlett outside of Will’s house. Whittaker lived in one side of a ramshackle old duplex in central LA, on a street with rusted cars parked on every lawn and pockets of loud music blasting out of half the driveways. Whittaker’s lawn, like all the others, was strewn with pieces of litter in varying stages of decomposition. A big, muscled Harley was parked alone on a strip of blacktop next to the paint-thirsty building. Jesse parked behind the Harley and circled the motorcycle to get to the peeling front door. No doorbell, so he raised a fist to knock.

The door popped open before his knuckles made contact. A thin, shirtless black man in his late thirties opened the door and looked Jesse over, leaning casually into the door frame. Long, thin scars were scattered over his arms, including one on his shoulder that strayed most of the way across his chest. A forty-ounce can of beer dangled from the fingers of one hand.

“Terrence Whittaker?” Jesse asked briskly.

“What can I do for you, officer?” Whittaker drawled. He took a long pull from the beer, his eyes never leaving Jesse’s. He was about the same height as Jesse, but he somehow managed to loom over the detective, challenging him.
Showing off his dominance
,
Jesse thought.

“Detective Cruz,” Jesse corrected. “Will Carling sent me. Is there somewhere we can talk?”

Whittaker’s eyes sparked just a little at the mention of Will’s name. Slowly, he looked over his own shoulder at the dingy living room. Jesse saw a bong and some lighters amidst the trash on the crappy old coffee table. Whittaker turned back to Jesse with a smirk. “Let’s go around back. The house isn’t real
presentable
.”

Jesse stepped back to let him pass, then followed Whittaker through the overgrown lawn to the back of the house, where an obviously stolen wooden picnic table stood next to a massive barbecue. Whittaker hopped effortlessly onto the picnic table, sitting on top with his feet on the bench. He took another long drink. “What brings you here, Detective? Noise complaint again? That Spanish mama down the street mad about me revving my bike?” His speech seemed to get more and more choppy, like a gang thug in a bad movie.

Jesse frowned. He was already sick of this guy. “Cut the ghetto bullshit, Whittaker,” Jesse said brusquely. “I looked you up. You have a PhD in astrophysics from Berkeley. Until recently you were a full professor at UC Santa Cruz. I don’t know what happened to you”—he glanced around the tattered backyard, the broken blacktop—“but you’re not fooling anyone with the act.”

Whittaker’s grin disappeared, and for a second something flashed across his face—real anger. His teeth bared, but then he got control back and glared at Jesse. “I took my three best grad students and a telescope to the desert. That’s what happened,” he hissed, the choppy speech pattern vanishing. He spread his arms wide. “And now this is my kingdom.”

Jesse contemplated the litter-strewn yard, the blistered house paint. “The kids survive?” he asked quietly. For the first time, Whittaker looked away from Jesse’s face. He took that as a
no
. “That where you got the scars?” Jesse said, nodding at the man’s arms.

Terrence shook his head. “Misspent youth.” He looked down at his naked biceps with a wry smile. “I studied in London for a year, took fencing. We thought it was more fun with real blades.”

Jesse shook his head a little. He may not have always been a werewolf, but Whittaker had been wild for a long time. “Why come here?” he asked, gesturing around the dingy yard. “They fire you?”

Whittaker jerked his head up in defiance. “Naw, man. But I couldn’t be around students anymore. Wasn’t safe for them. My grandma left me this place.” His fingers twitched emptily, and he dug into the back pocket of his blue jeans, pulling out a pack of cigarettes. After a second of hesitation, he held it out to Jesse, grudgingly. When Jesse shook his head, Whittaker shrugged and pulled out a lighter, tilting his head toward the duplex at the same time. “I own the whole building. Collect rent on the other half.” His fingers shook as he flicked the lighter open. Jesse had seen that kind of tremor many times.

“Scarlett thought you were pretty together at Will’s place the other night,” Jesse observed. “But I bet you’ve been drinking since you got up this morning. Smoking too.”

Whittaker smiled bitterly around the cigarette in his mouth. He didn’t speak until it was lit and he’d taken a long, desperate drag. “We’re two days closer to the full moon now. Only five out. For me it’s tied hard to the moon.” He held up the cigarette and looked at it speculatively. “Every little bit helps.”

“That why you change between full moons?’ Jesse asked offhandedly. “Does it help keep the magic under control?”

This time when Whittaker looked at him, his eyes were calculating. “Is that why you here, Detective Jesse Cruz? You Will’s new hall monitor?”

Jesse hadn’t mentioned his first name.

He must have reacted, because the werewolf laughed. “Oh, yeah, we know who you are. You’ve been running around town with that, that”—Whittaker’s eyes burned—“that pretty little atrocity. We keep tabs on her.”

“Will know you do that?”

Whittaker’s upper lip curled. It was nothing like a smile. “Will may be our alpha, but he doesn’t speak for all of us.”

“So you do change between moons,” Jesse stated, getting back on topic. Whittaker’s nostrils flared but he remained silent, not denying it. “You ever bite anybody,” Jesse asked casually. “Maybe leave ’em for dead?”

It happened so fast that Jesse thought for a moment that he’d been sucked into the ground. The werewolf’s speed was disorienting, and before he knew it Jesse had been tackled and Whittaker was on top of him, hands on Jesse’s throat, snarling.

“I would
never
,” he screamed, straight into Jesse’s face. Spittle flew. “I would
die
before I did this to anyone, you piece of shit, coming here like you know the
first thing
—”

His rant broke off suddenly as he felt the cold barrel of Jesse’s Glock press into his temple. Jesse hadn’t been able to get it out of the holster before he’d hit the ground, but he had it out now. “I can survive that,” he growled at Jesse.

The werewolf was pressing down on Jesse’s throat, but not quite hard enough to cut off all his air. “Silve
r . . .
bullet
s . . .
” Jesse wheezed.

Surprised, Whittaker sprang back, twisting a little in midair to land in a graceful crouch on the bench of the picnic table. Then he remembered where he was and glanced around. Jesse did too.

No one was watching. Nobody looked out of their windows in this neighborhood.

Jesse stood up warily, not bothering to brush the dead grass off his clothes. He kept his gun out, but pointed at the ground. “Someon
e . . .
someone was attacked?” Whittaker said. His brow was furrowed, as if he were trying to add large numbers in his head. “She sai
d . . .
” He trailed off and shook his head. “It wasn’t me.”

“Who’s she?” Jesse asked.

Whittaker waved a hand. “I meant your girl, Bernard,” he said offhandedly. “She didn’t say anything about attacks when we met the other night.”

Jesse studied the other man. “You’re high up in the pack,” Jesse reminded him. “If you know somethin
g . . .
”

“Yeah, I’m high in the pack,” Whittaker interrupted, his voice sour. “Because I’m powerful. Too powerful, which is exactly why I’m so fucking dangerous. Nobody tells me anything.”