Dead Spots Read online

  He didn’t realize he was waiting for his moment until it came: a few seconds when the photographer was setting out equipment and the medical examiner arrived, when everyone else was occupied with paperwork and conversations and tasks. Jesse saw his chance and swooped down to pick up the black plastic garbage bag, tucking it smoothly into his jacket pocket. He immediately felt awful. He’d already lied to his fellow officers and concealed two possible witnesses, and now he was hiding evidence. This was not what he would call being a real cop. For a moment, Jesse considered walking over to the detective in charge and confessing everything. But he didn’t want to get locked away with an army of shrinks.

  Besides, Jesse knew that the girl he’d seen wasn’t the actual killer—the forensics people on-site had already speculated that it must have been a really big, seriously muscled guy, and she was maybe five foot seven on a good day, not much over a hundred pounds. And whoever had killed those people would have been drenched in blood. Still, she had to be important to the case somehow, and if he couldn’t make her part of the official investigation, he decided that it was his responsibility to follow up with her on his own.

  When the detective in charge finally dismissed him, Jesse headed back to the precinct, and straight to the lab.

  Jesse had first met Gloria “Glory” Sherman, the lead forensic pathology technician, at an event for the public high schools in the county. Glory had given a speech on career opportunities in forensic science, and Jesse was there as Officer Friendly. They’d struck up a friendship, and once, he’d even brought Glory and her two kids to see the film set where his mother, a makeup artist, was working. Jesse liked Glory’s no-nonsense kindness, so he made a point to say hello and deliver the occasional Starbucks. There are some people you just want on your side.

  “Hey, Glory, you here?” he called, scanning the cluttered tables and shelves. Suddenly, she popped up into view, stretching to her full five feet one inch. Her face looked stressed and thin, and she’d jammed her glasses on top of her head so she could rub her eyes. “Were you, like, taking a nap on the floor?”

  “Funny. Just cleaning up a spilled beaker.”

  “Blood?”

  She smiled. “Apple juice. What’s up?”

  Jesse entered the lab and pulled the garbage bag out of his jacket pocket, handing it over. “How long would it take you to lift a print off this?”

  She pulled on new surgical gloves and took the bag over to the three hundred–watt bulb on her desk lamp, sliding the glasses back down onto her nose. “Well, they’re latent, obviously, but pretty strong. Even with your elimination prints, it shouldn’t take long. But I’m backed up with this park thing.” She raked her fingers through silvery-blonde hair, looking tired.

  “Has that evidence come in already?”

  “No, it’s still being processed—”

  “Then could you maybe just do this quick first? Please?” He gave her his best pleading look, and she sighed.

  “What is it, exactly?”

  “It’s a...personal project.”

  She looked skeptical. “What, like your neighbor is a litterbug, something like that?”

  “Something like that, but, Glory, I swear I wouldn’t bring this to you if it wasn’t important. Really.”

  Glory checked her watch, and Jesse could see her relenting. “I’ll give you an hour, while they finish compiling all the evidence from the park. If I haven’t gotten a match by then, you’re going to have to wait.”

  “Thank you!” He bent at the waist to kiss her cheek, which just caused her to grumble.

  “You owe me. You’re going to take Rob and Natalie to the batting cages next Saturday.”

  “It’s a deal,” he promised, leaning against a lab table. Everything in the room was solid and purposeful, and being there helped ground him again, made the memory of the werewolf seem like some kind of hallucinogenic side effect of the shock. But it wasn’t, his brain insisted. Jesse ignored it.

  Thirty-seven minutes later, Glory called his extension. Jesse rushed down to the basement lab, where Glory was already checking in new evidence from the park, a pleased grin on her face. “I’ve got your girl,” she said smugly. She handed over a printout with a mug shot at the top. The girl was a few years younger, but it was her. Her green eyes and pretty face glared out from under that pile of dark hair, daring the photographer to do something.

  “Scarlett Kaylie Bernard, now twenty-three. She was arrested last year for arson, burning down a shed in the suburbs. The DA didn’t press charges, which is a little weird—usually they at least plead out. Anyway, that’s her.” She gave him a suspicious look. “Now tell me I didn’t just use department resources to look into your blind date.”

  “No, no, it’s definitely important,” he assured her. He thanked Glory and headed back to his desk to think about his next move.

  Chapter 4

  My dreams were full of blood—splattered over trees and twisted, ripped limbs. This time I was in the middle of the clearing, not just on the edges, and the blood was all around me, 360 degrees of it. It crept toward me, threatening to ooze its way up my legs and onto my clothes, all the way to my face and down my throat. I woke up shivering, the blankets tangled in my legs.

  I spent most of the day sleeping, watching TV, and avoiding my cell phone. Dashiell, Kirsten, and Will all had specialized ring-tones, so it was easy enough to ignore everything else. When I finally checked the little screen late that afternoon, Eli had called three times, probably wondering where I was. Whoops. I had sort of forgotten all about him. I’d also missed a call from my brother, Jack. That was a surprise—Jack and I don’t talk much. He still lives in Esperanza, the little town ninety minutes east of LA where we both grew up. Jack wanted to be a doctor, but when our parents died he couldn’t swing medical school, so now he works as a laboratory technician at Esperanza’s only clinic. We avoid each other by unspoken mutual agreement—him because he feels guilty about not taking care of me when Mom and Dad died, and me because, well, I was responsible for their deaths.

  So why would he be calling me? I decided I would put off finding out. I’m brave like that.

  Just before sunset, I pulled on my gym clothes and took off for my daily four-mile run. I can’t be attacked by supernatural forces, but I can sure as hell be chased, and I bruise and break bones just like any other human. I’m just not a gun-carrying, karate-knowing, kick-ass kind of girl, so I lift weights a couple of times a week, and I run every day. Not that I’m one of those go-getter Nike kind of runners, either. I actually kind of hate it, but it’s the only real responsibility I have.

  Molly “woke” up when the sun went down at six thirty, and we ordered Chinese and watched reruns of Friends for a few hours. Molly gets a huge kick out of things like eating, going to the bathroom, and just generally pretending we live in a bubbly sitcom universe where nobody is undead. I get that, and I was definitely in the mood to hang out in bubbly sitcom land for a while.

  At ten, I went upstairs to shower and change. When I came back down, damp hair darkening the back of my shirt, Molly eyed my jeans and green T-shirt with what could only be described as a foreboding disdain. “That’s what you’re wearing? You’re not going to change?”

  “Molls, I thought you liked me the way I was.” When she didn’t smile, I looked down at myself. “What? The T-shirt’s from Banana Republic.”

  “Scarlett”—she sighed and shook her head—“he’s the most powerful person in the city, for crying out loud. At least find pants without holes. And brush your hair.”

  I looked down and spotted the small hole worn in the knee of my jeans. Whoops. “Spielberg’s got more power,” I grumbled, but I went back up to my room and dug out a pair of khakis. After a moment’s thought, I also swapped my Chuck Taylors—one of the most popular shoe brands on the market, which helps when I have to leave footprints—for my good boots. I tugged the elastic band out of my messy ponytail and picked up my brush from the nightstand. When it was finally
neat, I twisted it up into a smooth ballerina bun and secured it with a rubber band and bobby pins, turning my head back and forth to check my handiwork in the mirror. Good enough. Sometimes I consider chopping my hair down to a nice manageable three inches, but I would miss it too much. It’s less useful and more confidence-boosting, like Superman’s cape.

  Besides, it’s just like my mother’s hair.

  By eleven, my stomach was doing nervous backflips, the way it always does when I butt heads with Dashiell. To be fair, though, I should have seen all this coming quite some time ago. I’d gotten overconfident with eight months of nonemergencies, and then I’d let this smack me down hard. Of course Dashiell was upset. I took my Taser off the charger (although it really only works on vampires while they’re close enough to me to be human, it makes me feel better to bring it along when I can), picked up my keys and wallet, and stuffed everything into the various pockets of my olive-green canvas jacket, which looks like something an investigative journalist would wear in a political thriller. Molly calls it my “coat-o’-nine pockets.” Then I went through the back door and into the autumn night.

  As LA neighborhoods go, West Hollywood is fairly benign after dark. Molly’s house is the unchanging oasis in an area that has developed around it for decades, crowding her in with restaurants and bars that have gone through various stages of hipness. At this point, there are only four other residences on Molly’s street, and the neighborhood is mostly frequented by a middle-aged, upper-middle-class crowd that goes to bed before eleven.

  I went through the teeny backyard in about six steps and closed the decorative gate behind me (vampires don’t worry too much about security), breathing in the cool, congested LA air. It smelled pleasantly of concrete and hamburgers and car exhaust. Molly’s property has a single-spot carport next to the back door where she parks her Prius. I have to pay a small fortune to keep my van in the big parking garage down the street. The garage was mostly empty by the time I got there, and I kept my head down and walked quickly and purposefully down the wide, empty pavement to my van on the lower level. When I glanced up, though, I realized that someone was leaning against my hood. My hand went toward the pocket with the Taser. As I got closer, though, he pushed himself off and turned to face me, hands tense and ready at his sides. I recognized the handsome cop from the clearing.

  I paused, standing twenty feet away. I briefly entertained the thought of Tasing him and running. Then I shrugged to myself and kept going. If he had the van, he knew who I was. Where was I gonna go?

  “You’re under arrest,” he said briskly, as I walked up.

  I snorted. “Bullshit.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You’re not here to arrest me. You came alone, you waited for me to come to you, and you haven’t even identified yourself. Besides, you know damn well that I didn’t kill those people.”

  “How do I know that?”

  I sighed. “Is this, like, a cop test? Because it was done by someone a lot stronger than me. Because I had no weapon, and I wasn’t covered in blood. That much carnage, there’s no way the killer could stay clean.”

  “There’s still plenty I could arrest you for. Obstruction of justice, accessory after the fact, tampering with a body...”

  “Ha. You found me how? Prints? I was in the park earlier that day, and I forgot a garbage bag. The worst thing you’ve got on me is littering. Besides, I have at least three people who’ll swear I was somewhere else.” That wasn’t completely true, but if push came to shove Dashiell could probably arrange something.

  He stepped closer now, into my personal bubble. He smelled like Giorgio Armani cologne and oranges, and his caramel skin was reddening.

  “At any rate,” I continued, “that’s not why you’re here.”

  He loomed over me, trying to intimidate, but I didn’t take a step, didn’t even lean back. I was on my way to see the cardinal vampire of Los Angeles, who was very angry with me. The B-team cop didn’t exactly have me shaking in my boots.

  “So why am I here?”

  “You’re here,” I said right back, tilting my head up to meet his eyes, “to ask me if you really saw a werewolf last night.”

  He broke first, turning away. Probably he was a little embarrassed. “Look,” he said, leaning back against the van again and holding out empty hands, “can we start over? My name is Jesse Cruz. I’m a police officer with the Southwest Homicide Division of the LAPD. And you are?”

  “You already know who I am.” He made a little head motion at me, indicating that I should play the game, and I rolled my eyes. “I’m Scarlett Bernard. I’m a freelance housecleaner.”

  He reached out his hand, and I reluctantly shook it.

  “I’m guessing that you don’t actually clean any houses,” he said.

  I just shrugged.

  “Look, can we go somewhere and talk? Obviously I have a lot of questions.”

  “There’s somewhere I have to be right now.”

  “No problem,” he said. “I’ll ride along.”

  “That’s not happening,” I said shortly.

  “You know, I may not be about to arrest you, but I can certainly make your life harder. Like following you to your next engagement.”

  Oh. Crap. For a moment, I considered trying to lose him, like in the movies, but he was trained in evasive driving and I wasn’t. I checked my watch. “I need to make a call first.”

  “Fine.”

  I pulled out my cell and gave him a pointed look, but he just shook his head. Not going anywhere. Rolling my eyes again, I tossed him my keys and climbed into the van before he could object. He frowned at me through the window, but didn’t open the door.

  I dialed Dashiell, who picked up on the second ring. “It’s Scarlett. I’m going to be a little late.” In a low voice, I explained about the cop.

  Dashiell hissed into the phone. “What does he know for sure?” he demanded.

  I thought about it, watching as Cruz paced a short route back and forth in front of the van. “At this point, it would probably be difficult to convince him that there’s no such thing as werewolves.”

  “That’s it? Nothing about vampires?”

  “No. Although, one often follows the other, at least according to the movies. Can you press his mind?”

  There was silence on the line for a moment. “No. Too much time has passed. That technique exists to erase a few minutes or a simple memory of a person. He has been walking around with this knowledge for nearly twenty-four hours. I can’t take it away without causing telltale damage.”

  “What do you want me to do?” I asked. I was trying to be helpful, so as not to remind him that this was technically all my fault.

  “I will get someone to take care of him.”

  My breath caught in my throat, and I felt very unfamiliar pangs of conscience poking at me. I know I spend most of my time concealing other people’s crimes, including murders, but I had never actually known about someone’s death in advance. Besides, I was the one who’d been too slow to get to the crime scene, and I was the one who’d been stupid and left the garbage bag. This guy was just doing his job. I thought about his face when that werewolf had changed. Without really meaning to, I imagined him having a family—kids, even. I looked back up at Cruz, but I couldn’t see his left hand to look for a wedding ring. “But this kind of thing has happened before, right?” I argued. “And then you just pay him off or whatever?”

  There was a growl of warning in his voice now. “It has happened, but each time, it has been so much simpler to just remove the obstacle. Besides, I am not convinced that your policeman will be willing to work with us.”

  To my own surprise, I heard myself pushing. “Dash, I know that I’m not your favorite person right now, but I’m respectfully asking for you to let me try to fix this. I think I can get through to this guy. Let me tell him the history. If that doesn’t work, you can always kill him later.”

  Dashiell was quiet again, and I waited, glancing out the wi
ndow at the cop in question, who was glaring at me with his arms folded across his chest.

  Finally, Dashiell said, “All right, Scarlett. I’ll let you follow your instincts on this matter, but I still need you here. And if Officer Cruz tells even one person about the Old World, I won’t be killing just him. That’s not a threat, Scarlett. It’s a promise.” And he hung up the phone.

  I leaned forward and rested my head against the wheel. Not. Good.

  Cruz opened the passenger door next to me, and I jumped. “Well?” he said. “Let’s go.”

  I shook my head. “I have permission to fill you in on some stuff, but you can’t go with me tonight.”

  He held up my keys, letting them jingle. “You sure about that?”

  Crud. Way to think ahead, Scarlett. I held out my hand. “Give me the keys.”

  He shook his head, looking mulish. “I’m risking my job just by letting you walk around free. I’m not leaving until I get some answers.”

  It probably wouldn’t be a great idea to Tase the nice police officer. I ran through my other options—get out of the van and run, call the powerful angry vampire to reschedule, or just take the damned cop with me. While I was thinking, Cruz rolled up his jacket sleeve and looked pointedly at a silver Fossil watch.

  “Fine,” I sighed. “Here’s the deal. You can come with me, and we’ll talk on the way, but when we get there, you will stay in the car.”

  “Yeah, sure,” he said casually.

  Crap, crap, crap. I started the van and pulled out of the garage, heading west toward the 101 freeway entrance on Sunset. I felt Cruz staring at me the whole time.

  “Okay,” I finally said, “what do you want to know?”

  “That guy was a...a...”

  “Werewolf,” I supplied. I couldn’t blame him for the hesitation. Pop culture has built this whole supernatural thing up to the point where it’s practically a cliché. Even the werewolves think it sounds silly to say werewolves. “Yes. I haven’t met him, I don’t think, but he must be part of the local pack.”