Trail of Dead (2 page)

“Molly gave me your itinerary,” he said shortly, without looking at me. “I need to show you something.”

“It’s almost midnight.”

“This can’t wait.”

Without another word, Jesse opened the sedan door for me, and I actually saw his hand twitch up for a second, as though he was about to guide my head into the car, perp-style, but he managed to suppress it. When we were situated on the on-ramp for the 405 North, I looked over at him, trying to adjust to the sudden turn of my night. A couple of months earlier, I had helped Jesse solve a murder case that connected back to the supernatural world, which
calls itself the Old World. Afterward Jesse had made it known that he was interested in being, as the kids say, more than friends, but we’d gone on just one date that ended in enough of a disaster that I wasn’t exactly thrilled to be trapped in a car with him. And he definitely didn’t seem thrilled to be trapped in a car with me.

“So where are we going?” I finally asked.

“Crime scene.”

That got my attention. “What do you mean? A murder?”

He didn’t answer me, which wasn’t like him. Why was he taking me to a crime scene? And why the snappishness? At this point I probably should have just kept my mouth shut and let it play out, but I’m not known for my subtlety. Or my manners. “Dude. Have I done something to piss you off in the
five minutes
I’ve been back in the state?”

The line of his mouth quivered into a frown. I may have forgotten to mention that even in a town full of movie stars, Jesse is alarmingly gorgeous, with dark Latino good looks on a muscled frame. He makes those perpetually topless Abercrombie & Fitch guys look like homely wannabes.

I had been at least half kidding, but he took the question seriously. “I’m not sure, but I think so.”

Great. His tone said
don’t ask
, and for once, I listened to my inner Dr. Phil and didn’t. I was just too tired for this. Instead, I just stared out at the city lights. Some of the towers were lit up with red and green lights for the holidays. Presumably, someone from the Old World had been killed, though I didn’t know why Jesse would necessarily call me in for that. I make my living working for the three heads of the LA Old World community—the witches, the vampires, and the werewolves—cleaning up supernatural crime scenes before the police can get there. If a vampire spills blood somewhere, or a werewolf accidentally murders a neighbor’s chickens, I get called in to hide all the evidence. I almost always make it in time, and Dashiell, the city’s master vampire, pulls strings to cover it up if I can’t.
The system works because, despite being the second-largest city in the country, Los Angeles has just never had much of a supernatural population. The wolves don’t like being two hours of unpredictable traffic away from good natural areas, and most of the out-of-state vampires I’ve met think living in LA is…tacky. Basically, most of the Old World’s attitude about LA is sort of the equivalent of most of the humans’ attitude about, say, Boise: sure, it’s
there
, but who the hell cares?

So yeah, I’d helped Jesse on a case before, but I still couldn’t figure out why he was bringing me to a crime scene now: If he was already officially on the case, then the police knew about it, so what would be the point in bringing me in? It was now up to Dashiell to pull some strings with the higher-ups. I gave up on trying to logic it out and settled for yawning and resting my head against the cool glass of the window.

I dozed off after Jesse got on the 101 on-ramp, but snapped awake when the car finally stopped. Blinking, I peered in the direction of the nearest major street: Ventura Boulevard. We were in Studio City. Jesse was out of the car before I had my seat belt undone, so I had to scramble to catch up as he strode toward the front door of a dingy stucco apartment building. A half-assed attempt had been made to throw Christmas lights on the tree-shaped shrub next to the front door. It probably would have looked better if they had forgone the Christmas lights entirely.

Jesse ushered me into a little vestibule with beige paint and a couple of neglected-looking potted plants. No lights for them. He made a beeline for the call box, stabbing the button for apartment 313 with an index finger. He identified himself to the female voice on the other end and marched us through the buzzing interior door—all without saying a word to me. I clenched my jaw. Fine. I was too tired and travel-worn to try to apologize for whatever it was I had allegedly done to piss him off. If Jesse wanted to play the quiet game, I could hold my own.

He led me up two flights of stairs, down a very long, very beige hallway, and to the last door on the right, the only one with a cheerful welcome mat and a plastic wreath adorning the door. Jesse rang the bell and held his badge up to the peephole.

After a moment, the door creaked open a few inches and two large, red-rimmed brown eyes appeared in the space. The girl was maybe a couple of years younger than me, college aged, with gorgeous dark-brown skin. She had a crumpled washcloth in her visible hand and that wrung-out look of someone who’s been crying for hours.

“Ms. Jackson?” Jesse asked. “I’m sorry for the late hour, but I did want to have the specialist here as quickly as possible.”

Her voice was soft and grave, with a slight Southern accent. “Of course, please come in.” The door swung all the way open, and she stepped back to let us in. I looked around. The apartment was very small, but the space had been used with efficiency and color in mind. It had a whole Urban Outfitters dorm room kind of feel to it. Not exactly my thing, but not terrible, either.

Cruz made the introductions. “Jubilee Jackson, this is Scarlett Bernard. Scarlett is the crime-scene specialist I told you about.”

“Uh, hi,” I said. She was plump, but in a natural, self-confident way. She wore a summery yellow top with dark-green pajama pants and those long, stripy wool slippers that go halfway to your knee. She held out a hand, which I shook, and then I glanced over to Cruz, waiting for my next cue.

“Could we have a moment alone in the room, please, Ms. Jackson?” he asked.

“Of course,” she said, waving her hands absently toward a hall. “I need to call Erin’s mom back, anyway. They’re flying in later this morning.” She sniffled, dabbing at her nose with the washcloth.

I followed the two of them through the entryway and down a long hall, completely bewildered. Jubilee stopped in front of a door. “I haven’t touched anything, like you said,” she told Jesse,
her worried eyes lingering puppy-style on his face. “I’ll just be in my room if you need me.” She nodded to the door across the hall.

“Thanks, Ms. Jackson. We’ll let you know when we’re finished,” Jesse said, in the soothing “it’ll be okay” voice you use with broken people. He reached out to touch her arm, and she nodded trustingly. Jeez. I was glad that Jesse used his hotness powers for good.

When Jubilee’s door had closed, Jesse opened the door in front of us and flicked on a light switch. “Go ahead,” he said, tilting his head. “I want to hear your impressions.”

I should have been angry that he’d dragged me out here only to give me the silent treatment, but he was beginning to really freak me out. I straightened up and stepped forward, looking around the small bedroom. I saw the enormous bloodstain on the carpet right away, and glanced back at Jesse. His arms were folded in front of him, face expressionless. No help there. I squatted down for a closer look. The stain ran almost the length of the room, maybe five or six feet. It had to be at least a few hours old—I figured Jesse’s crime scene guys had come and gone already—but it still looked soaking wet. It was also much longer than it was wide—vaguely person shaped, I guess, but more like a snow angel than a chalk outline. I deal with blood all the time, but usually it’s just little spatters. The vampires, of course, don’t waste much blood, and the werewolves usually start healing before it gets this bad. The only other time I’d seen this much blood in one place was during the massacre in La Brea Park in September. I shuddered. Turning to look at Jesse, I spotted a framed picture on the wall of a young woman, twenty or so, smiling arm in arm with Jubilee. She had light-brown hair, an easy smile, and a hint of something secretive in her eyes. Erin, I presumed.

“Is this…Erin’s blood?”

“We think so. Blood type matches, though it’ll take a while for DNA.”

“Did your experts think…can she still be alive?” I asked, keeping my voice low.

“No. With that much blood loss, unless she’d basically been
at
the hospital…she’s dead.”

I sidestepped the pool and continued around the room. The girl who lived here was a student, judging from the textbooks that were stacked on the small bookshelf above the computer table and the backpack tossed against the wall just inside the doorway. All of her belongings also had this look like they’d been purchased separately over time. The curtain and bedspread were a matching purple-and-green pattern, but the desk and desk drawer were a different green that didn’t quite match. The desk lamp was from a completely different style…genre, I guess. I’d seen the same thing when my brother Jack was in college; it happens when you move a lot.

I turned in a circle, and finally figured out what was bothering me. The entire room was fairly neat, especially by my own low standards, but the half with the desk and the bed was slightly tousled. Books were stacked haphazardly on the shelf instead of lined up, and the pillow and covers were thrown across the bed, like someone had shaken them out without smoothing them down. In a hurry. That could have just been Erin’s style, except that the opposite half of the room was pristine.

And the window…Erin’s window was standing open, and had no screen or bars. When I stepped closer I realized why—the whole apartment building was like a big hollow box, with a little courtyard in the middle, containing a few picnic tables and a small spa pool. This window faced inward, with a straight thirty-foot drop to the courtyard below. Cool air drifted into the room, and I shivered in my wool peacoat, which had seemed too warm only a few minutes ago.

“We found the window screen floating in the spa,” Jesse’s voice said behind me. Reading my mind. I pulled my head in and turned around.

“Did your guys find anything else?”

He gave me a little
not much
shrug. “There was some gray dirt on the floor. The roommate says they were both pretty careful about tracking mud in, so we’ll try to match it to a pair of her shoes to see if it’s related.”

I went back to the bloodstain and crouched down, automatically tucking the bottom of my jacket against my body so it wouldn’t drift into the blood. There was just something wrong with the bloodstain, and in spite of the hour and the travel and the cryptic detective beside me, I was getting interested. I ran through a grisly list of injuries in my head, things I’d seen or heard about: gunshot, stabbing, decapitation, dismemberment, throat cutting. Nothing seemed to fit. If Erin had died from straightforward blood loss—a stab wound, for example—there would be a smeared end where the body had lain, and then the rest of the stain would be circular, if the floor was even, or all misshapen and wispy on carpeting like Erin’s. If she’d died from a cut artery, there would be blood spray everywhere. This wasn’t right. I looked up at Jesse. “It’s too…neat.”

He nodded, and his voice had an edge. “Techs said the blood is nearly the same depth over the whole stain.”

Huh. “What causes that?”

“My crime-scene people had one theory, but only in a half-joking kind of way, because it was so out there.”

I froze.

“They said it looked like she’d been crushed. Slowly.” He gave me a pointed look, and I finally understood why I was here. It wasn’t for my expert opinion. It was an accusation.

The crime scene had been cleaned. Professionally.

“I don’t know anything about it, Jesse. I just got off a plane, remember?” As I said it, I was really wishing that I’d gotten a chance to check my messages before Jesse had grabbed me in baggage claim. Eli, my apprentice/former sex buddy, had been in charge of the cleanup business while I was in New York. He would definitely have called about a complete body; those were rare. Jesse didn’t know that Eli was the one covering for me, though, and since what we do is technically illegal, I wasn’t about to tell him.

He took another step toward me, looking angry. “I know you did. But someone was filling in for you while you were out of town, right? I mean, the Old World doesn’t stop making messes just because you aren’t here to clean them up. Look around—someone tampered with this room.”

I rolled my eyes. “You’re right. No human being could stack books that way.”

He didn’t smile. “This is serious, Scarlett,” he snapped. “Ordinary murders don’t look like this. And the only reason to take the body but leave the blood is to hide what was done to the body, which just screams Old World. So who cleaned the room?”

Now I was starting to get mad. “Are you kidding me? You of all people should understand that even if this is an Old World thing—which I have absolutely no idea about, by the way, because
I just got here
—there’s no way the police can get involved.”

“Look where you are right now,” he hissed, not backing down an inch. “This room belongs to a twenty-year-old kid whose roommate is devastated. Her parents are catching the first flight out of Michigan, and I have to tell them something when they get here. Maybe you don’t know—yet. But you’re involved, or you’re going to be. So who’s been covering for you?”

Dammit. Jesse hadn’t just grabbed me at the airport to get to the crime scene faster: he had picked me up instead of calling or coming to my house because he hadn’t wanted to give me a chance to get my story straight with someone. That was so…cop-like. I rubbed my eyes, which were stinging with tiredness, and thought about it for a second. If Jesse knew that Eli worked for me, it would put Eli in legal danger and be yet another way for Jesse to mess around in Old World affairs. Dangerous for everyone. “I can’t, Jesse. But if I hear anything that I think would be useful to you, I’ll pass it on.”