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.
Now Jesse felt very, very stupid.
Chapter 29
I woke up to a dripping sound.
Plurp...plurp...plurp went the water, and I squeezed my eyes open and shut a few times, trying to clear them. My eyes and nose still hurt, but in a fading way, like when your cold medicine is just beginning to kick in. My head felt like it was full of thick soup, though, and for a few minutes—or maybe a few hours—I couldn’t seem to organize myself. Where were my hands again? Was I lying down or sitting up? I shook my head back and forth until my orientation started to return, and then I moved my hands up to rub my eyes, only they stopped halfway to my face. I squeezed my eyes shut again, then opened them and looked around.