“What did she look like?” I said eagerly.
“Short, brunette, pretty in a bland soccer mom kind of way. Maybe thirty, but not, like, a well-maintained thirty. I only remember because she looked really edgy, like she was strapped to a bomb or something.”
That was kind of a general description, but it did match Esmé Welch, one of the werewolves on the PAW roster. I thanked Heaven and hung up.
Most of the calls were like that one. Everyone who had attended that meeting remembered Henry getting thrown out and Leah following him, but no one besides Heaven remembered the brunette woman who’d left at the same time. I made a note of it and kept going.
I was done with my list—minus the people who hadn’t answered—by four, so after checking to make sure Jesse was still talking in the living room, I tried calling Eli again. I’d checked upstairs when changing clothes that morning, but there had been no further note or message. It wasn’t like him to just disappear. Had I done something wrong?
You mean besides slaughtering one of his fellow pack members? I thought sourly.
The phone rang five times, and then his voicemail picked up. “Eli, where are you?” I said quietly. I struggled for a way to tell him that I was worried, that it scared me that he hadn’t called. Instead what came out was, “And where the hell’s my breakfast?”
As I hung up, Jesse came yawning into the kitchen. “Need a coffee break,” he mumbled. “You find anything?”
I told him about the October PAW meeting, and the two werewolves I had skipped. “I’ll give them a call,” he said, nodding. “Are you thinking that they told Remus about being werewolves?”
I paused. “You know, that hadn’t even occurred to me. I’m so used to the Old World being so insular . . .” I considered it for a second, then shook my head. “I just can’t see it. But they might have insight into Henry, like anyone else. How did you do?”
Jesse went past me to circle the counter, heading for the coffeemaker. “Well, first I called the two Remus brothers. Supposedly neither of them knows a thing about Henry’s activities. They only see him at holidays.”
I leaned back in my chair, flexing my knee just a little, half expecting a creaking sound. The swelling had gone down some, but the pain was still there. Shouldn’t have sat so long without moving or elevating it. “That’s not very helpful,” I said absently.
His face darkened. “Yeah. I’m not finding out much from the HPA, either. I can’t ask about all the girls without giving them the chance to connect the dots, and we don’t want that. When the LAPD figures out the five missing women are connected, it won’t take them long to find Henry Remus’s name. Then again . . . maybe we want them to.” He shrugged. “Maybe we want to set up Henry as the fall guy now. And by ‘fall guy,’ I mean ‘guy who actually did it.’” He pulled a bag of coffee grounds out of the fridge and held them up. “You mind if I make some coffee?”
“No, go ahead,” I said cautiously. Things had been tense between the two of us all day. And now I had to make it worse. “Look, Jesse, we can’t tell anyone about Henry Remus until after we’ve . . . found him.” If the cops arrested Henry the night before the full moon, Dashiell would have to get involved. I didn’t know much about how he pulled strings in the police department or the city government, but I was betting it wasn’t easy to have someone killed or released from prison on twelve hours’ notice. “Which brings me to the subject of what we’re going to do when we catch up with the guy.”
“Go stop him,” Jesse said promptly. He switched the pot and turned the coffee machine on, then turned around to lean onto the counter island so he was bent at a near-ninety-degree angle. “But that wasn’t what you meant, was it?”
“No.” I watched him carefully for signs of tension. We’d been down this road before, when we were going after Olivia. Jesse believed in the justice system; it was as much a part of his identity as his face or family. He’d wanted to arrest Olivia, despite orders from Dashiell that she was to be killed. We had managed to avoid the problem when I shot Olivia so Jesse wouldn’t have to be responsible for her death. But now we were up against a similar situation, and while I didn’t have a problem with killing an insane werewolf who’d murdered four women, there was no guarantee that I would be the one to confront him.
“I know I can’t keep riding the fine lines on this,” Jesse said quietly, echoing my thoughts. “But if we do what I think you’re suggesting, if we just put him down like a rabid dog . . .” His voice trailed off.
“You’re scared you can’t be a cop anymore,” I finished for him. Looking a little surprised, he nodded. “Even though you more or less agree that the Old World has to stay hidden.” Another nod.
The coffee was done, so Jesse straightened up and started looking for cups. Maybe there was an alternative, I thought. The Luparii wanted the nova too, and they certainly had no qualms about killing. What if we just let them kill Henry? I turned that idea over for a moment while Jesse rummaged for milk and sugar. I doubted Will or Dashiell would go for it. Aside from their personal hatreds, they wouldn’t want the Luparii to gain any footing in America. Besides, Jesse probably wouldn’t feel like handing Henry Remus over to be killed did much to solve the problem of him not wanting to kill anyone.