I passed him my shoddy notes and filled him in on everything I remembered. “So I have a list of names of people that were connected to them—Leah’s boyfriend, Kate’s sister, and so on. And I know of a few activities each one liked. But I couldn’t find any obvious connection between them. The only thing that even comes close to a match are the animal rights groups, but Leah was in this PAW group and Kate’s a member of Humans for the Protection of Animals.”
Jesse sighed. “Because that would have been just too easy, wouldn’t it.” It wasn’t really a question, but I nodded anyway. “Well,” he said thoughtfully, “we’ll widen the circle. You should talk to the parents, if you can find them, and friends, and so on. I’ll try to get some membership rosters for the animal rights groups, too—it’s possible that Leah was in PETA or Kate was in PAW and their roommates just didn’t know about it.”
“True,” I said, brightening a little.
“And I’ll keep talking to the werewolves,” Jesse added. I began to protest, but he overrode me. “I know you want me to stay out of your business. But we need to stay on top of the threat against you, and we need to find out if there are any more connections between the nova wolf and the rest of the pack, aside from one of the pack members accidentally attacking someone.” He finally picked up a chip, dunked it liberally in the guacamole, and chewed. “I just know that there’s another connection here. I know it.”
I sighed. “So who are you going to talk to next?”
Jesse’s eyes gleamed. “Anastasia.”
Oh shit. I didn’t like it, but I didn’t bother to protest. I doubted that Anastasia was involved in the nova wolf debacle, but she had certainly proven herself willing to go against the alpha’s orders before. I texted Will to get Ana’s address.
When my phone chimed I used my hand to shield the screen from the afternoon sun and squinted at it. “Huh.”
“What?” Jesse asked. Traffic was picking up on La Cienega, and we had to nearly shout to hear each other.
“Anastasia’s working at the bar tonight.”
I glanced across the table at him. His eyes were practically bugging out of his head with surprise. “Will’s letting her work, after all the shit she’s stirred up?” he said indignantly.
I shrugged. “I guess he’s just too short-handed.” Since both Caroline and Eli were . . . off the payroll.
“Oh, yeah,” Jesse said, remembering. Then he added, “And I suppose the bar gets busy on New Year’s Eve.”
“That’s today?” I said stupidly. I had completely forgotten.
Jesse snorted with laugher. “You forgot?”
“Hey,” I protested. “I lost track of the days because I was in a coma.” I reached across the table and stole one of his chips. Just out of spite.
“To be fair,” he admitted, “it may have slipped my mind for a minute there too.” His eyes drifted away into what I think of as his “Pensive Cop Face.”
“There’s not much point in trying to interview more people today,” he concluded. “Everybody’s going to be getting ready for New Year’s Eve stuff.”
“What do you want to do, then?” I asked. He was still staring off into space, so I picked up another chip and threw it at his nose.
“What? Hey,” he sputtered.
“Just getting your attention, Detective,” I said sweetly. “What’s the plan? Go home and ice our extremities?”
“No,” he said slowly. “I have another idea.”
Of course he did. “What’s that?”
“Let’s go stake out Will Carling’s house.”
Chapter 20
We knew the nova wolf had changed two days ago, Jesse explained, because Leah Rhodes had died not long after he had attacked her. The nova should need twice as much time before he could change again, but according to Will, he was already more powerful than he should be. “You people are always telling me magic is unpredictable,” Jesse finished. “So it seems possible that the nova wolf can change faster than we expect.”
“Even if he can,” I argued, “and even if he attacks someone else, there’s no guarantee she’ll . . .” I winced. “You know. Die right away. And there’s no guarantee that he’ll dump the body at Will’s again.”
“I think he’s going to keep leaving the women at Will’s,” Jesse contended. “It’s too good of a ‘fuck you’ to the werewolf pack. And you—I mean, we,” he amended, “keep helpfully disposing of the dead bodies for him.”
“Still,” I said, unconvinced.
“Do you have something better to do?” Jesse asked, innocently raising his eyebrows. I glared at him, not speaking. We both knew I have essentially no life. “I’ll buy you a great big bag of ice,” he wheedled.
“You can get ice free at any fast food place.”
Jesse held up two fingers. “Then I’ll buy you two bags of ice,” he said playfully.
I rolled my eyes and reached for another chip to throw, but he pulled the little paper carton out of my reach. “Is that a yes?” he persisted.
“No, that’s a ‘fine, I give up.’ Totally different thing.”
We split up for a couple of hours. Jesse wanted to stop at his place to shower and change, and I wanted to restock my cleaning supplies from my big stash at Molly’s, just in case. At six, we met up on Temescal Canyon Road, which was completely deserted. I left my van on a side street and rode with Jesse in his sedan the rest of the way. On Will’s street we parked as far away from Will’s house as we could while still keeping it in view. I wanted to keep the White Whale close by so we could get to it easily if the nova showed up, but we also wanted it to look like there was nobody around, so the nova would feel like he could get away with dumping another body. And if he’d done any research about the LA Old World, he might know my van.
We were settled into our stakeout by six thirty. I was sitting in the passenger seat with the promised ice packs above and below my bad knee. They were wrapped in place with an old flannel scarf I’d brought from my van. Jesse had stopped for snacks at a 7-Eleven on his way over, and he was subjecting me to a lesson in the art of the stakeout food.