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.
Chapter 28
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.