Trail of Dead

by Olson, Melissa F.

  “You okay, Scarlett?”

  My attention had wandered. I worked to focus back on Sadie. “I think so.” I groped for something to say. “I’m…glad she found someone to be with, at the end.”

  “So am I, sugar.” She patted my hand one more time and stood up. “Just remember, Miss Scarlett, your momma loved you. She was just devoted to you. I’m sure wherever she is now, she’s at peace.”

  Not fucking likely.

  Chapter 18

  When Scarlett hung up, Jesse had looked at the phone in confusion for a moment, until Kirsten said, “Well, that was abrupt.”

  They had hit a patch of traffic on the way back to LA, and he didn’t feel comfortable using the siren this time, since they were sort of at a loss for their next step. “Yes. I hope she’s not in trouble.”

  “Hayne will look after her,” Kirsten said, with perfect confidence. Jesse decided not to mention that Scarlett had escaped from Dashiell’s mansion. “Do you think Scarlett was right,” Kirsten asked, “about Olivia trying to distract us from something?”

  “Probably,” Jesse said grimly. He was lost in thought, half hypnotized by the brake-gas-brake-gas repetition of the traffic. “I do think we’re missing something big. We’ve been running around trying so hard to catch up to Olivia, we haven’t stopped to think. Scarlett suggested as much last night, but I thought she was just being paranoid.”

  “Well, let’s go over it all again,” Kirsten suggested.

  They started with Denise’s death, what little they knew about it. “I read the police file,” Jesse said. “Witnesses saw her packing up her things on the Promenade just before one in the morning. We—the police, that is—didn’t find any of it on the Promenade or the pier, so she must have loaded it in her car.”

  From the corner of his eye, he saw Kirsten nodding. “She had a special permit to park at the mall off the Promenade, I think.”

  “Right. Olivia—I’m assuming it was Olivia, because she would’ve had the strength—must have taken her at the car.”

  “Wait,” Kirsten objected. “That doesn’t make sense. Olivia is a vampire; she wouldn’t have wasted good blood, not when she could make it look accidental.”

  “Maybe she needed it to look like a suicide. She didn’t want to attract any attention yet.”

  Kirsten was shaking her head emphatically. “No, there’s a method for that, which vampires just love. They put the victim in their bathtub, drink most of the blood, and let a little bit run into the water to turn it red. Hardly anyone who commits suicide that way is actually a suicide.”

  Jesse was temporarily distracted. He glanced over at Kirsten. “Really? Wouldn’t the medical examiner realize a lot of blood was missing?”

  She shrugged. “I’ve never heard of anyone catching it. They do this fairly often.” She wrinkled her nose. “Think about it. If you were going to commit suicide, wouldn’t you rather just shoot yourself, or take pills?

  Jesse started to answer that, but remembered the actual point of the discussion. “Anyway,” he said, gesturing for them to get back on track.

  “Right. You read the police report. Did Denise have any major cuts? Specifically at the arteries?”

  Jesse thought back. Denise’s body had been nearly pristine, he remembered, except for some minor bites from fish. No major arteries. “No.”

  “Then maybe it wasn’t Olivia,” Kirsten said. “Maybe it was the witch.”

  “Denise weighed a hundred and fifty pounds,” Jesse said skeptically. He didn’t mention that that was her weight after the fish had nibbled on her—Kirsten didn’t need to know about that. “And she would have been fighting like crazy, and maybe screaming for help, and terrified of the pier. If we’re talking about one witch, a woman…I just can’t see her being able to get Denise that far. Could someone have…hypnotized her?”

  “A reasonably powerful witch could,” she said thoughtfully. “But although we can technically perform spells on each other, we’re naturally a bit resistant to other witches’ magic. And Denise’s mind would have dug in its heels, metaphorically speaking, about going out over the water. Hypnosis is like that; it’s hard to make the subject do something that goes against her deepest feelings.”

  “Are there any other spells, though? For, I don’t know, mind control?”

  She shook her head. “Neuromancy, witchcraft that deals with the mind, is an extremely specialized and difficult area to work in. I know a few witches who could put her in a trance, or maybe take a few seconds of memory, but to get her to the pier and then over the side…” She shook her head. “It doesn’t really work like that.”

  They were both quiet for a long moment, thinking that over. Jesse could understand why the Santa Monica PD had ruled Denise’s death a suicide. It was just too neatly done. “Okay, let’s put a pin in that for the moment,” he said at last. The car had finally made it to the source of the traffic—a multicar fender bender that had forced the police to close off two lanes of the freeway. Jesse nodded to the highway patrolman directing traffic around the cones, and was momentarily grateful that he’d never signed on for highway patrol. “What happened next?”

  “I knew about Denise’s death, and I was suspicious right away,” Kirsten said. “But there wasn’t anything I could do, really. I just thought…I don’t know what I thought.” She slumped back in her seat, biting on a cuticle. It was obvious that Kirsten was blaming herself for not acting after Denise’s death, but Jesse didn’t bother pointing out that it wasn’t her fault. She knew that; she just didn’t feel it, and Jesse understood. He’d felt the same when Jared Hess had taken Scarlett.

  “Then Erin died,” he prompted gently. “What do you know about that?”

  Kirsten told him about being unable to reach Erin, about using a locator spell and sending the substitute cleaner to her apartment. Jesse was still itching to know who had helped Scarlett get rid of the body, but Kirsten didn’t use the cleaner’s name, and by her sidelong glance Jesse could tell she knew not to tell him. Dammit, Scarlett, he thought. She must have warned Kirsten.

  Jesse was still a little pissed about the cleaner taking Erin’s body, but he did realize that Kirsten wasn’t the person to take it out on, so he pushed ahead. “Was there anything else that the cleaner mentioned?” he asked. “Anything else he noticed while he was there?”

  Kirsten held up a hand. “Let me think.” She sat silently for a few minutes, and Jesse figured she was trying to figure out what he should and shouldn’t know. That pissed him off again, and he was about to say so, when Kirsten said, “Two things. First, he said it looked like the body had been crushed, evenly. Not like it had been beaten and bones were crushed, but the whole thing at once.”

  That matched what the crime scene techs had said about the bloodstain. “And the second thing?”

  She shrugged. “It’s probably nothing, but he said there was a bit of an earthly smell. Like dirt, but sort of…processed.”

  That rang an alarm bell in Jesse’s brain. He had forgotten about the dirt being at both Erin’s apartment and the Reeds’ crime scene. “Wait. I gotta stop for a minute,” Jesse said. He took the next exit off the freeway and pulled into the parking lot of an In-N-Out Burger. Kirsten began to ask him a question, but he shook his head. “Hang on a second,” he told Kirsten, and pulled out his cell phone. He turned off the Bluetooth and dialed Glory at the lab.

  The phone was answered by one of her underlings, a bright Asian twentysomething with a Mohawk whom Jesse had met a few times. He informed Jesse that Glory was working nights this week, and Jesse immediately felt stupid. Of course she was; that was why she’d been at the Jeep crime scene to begin with. He hung up and dialed Glory’s cell, glancing over at Kirsten. The witch was calmly playing Angry Birds on her own phone.

  “Jesse?” Glory’s voice was sleepy and irritated. “This better be really good. The kids are in school and I was finally sleeping.”

  “Listen,” Jesse began, “did you test that weird dirt you found
in the Reed Jeep?”

  Glory sighed into the phone. “Of course I did.” Jesse grinned to himself. “It was something called…wait, let me remember this right…industrial plasticine. It’s mostly used to make full-size models of cars before they go into production, to see how they’ll look when completed. I just figured maybe Mr. Reed did something like that for work.” She yawned into the phone. “I was gonna call you about it when I woke up.”

  “What’s it made of?”

  “Basically? It’s man-made clay.”

  “Thanks, Glory,” he said. “That was a big help. Go back to sleep.”

  He hung up the phone and relayed the information to Kirsten. “I don’t know if that helps us any, but it’s something,” he finished, but Kirsten had frozen in her seat, eyes big and round. Her phone slipped from her hand onto the car floor. “What? What is it?”

  “It can’t be,” she whispered. She was shaking her head. “Jewish magics…Jewish artifacts…God, I’m such an idiot.”

  “Kirsten,” Jesse said impatiently, and the witch’s gaze snapped over to him.

  “It was the witch, the one who’s working with Olivia,” Kirsten said. “She’s made a golem.”

  Jesse was a child of the movies before anything else. “Like…in Lord of the Rings?”

  “No, no. A golem is a creature, made from clay and shaped like a man. The witch uses magic to animate the clay, sort of like Dr. Frankenstein’s monster.” She rubbed her face with her hands like she was scrubbing something away. “I don’t know why I didn’t think of it sooner.”

  “Is it…alive?”

  “I’ve never seen one—as far as I know, no witch has created a golem since the sixteenth century. But think of it more like a windup toy. The witch builds a humanoid statue out of clay and funnels magic into it. That’s the windup. She then gives it a task, usually something simple, like ‘take this heavy box and carry it until I tell you to put it down.’”

  “Just to play devil’s advocate here, how do you know that’s what this is? Aside from the bits of clay we found at the scenes?”

  She shrugged. “It just fits. Clay is very heavy, and I understand the weight of the spell makes a golem heavier yet. It could easily have crushed Erin to death.” She straightened up in the seat, as if she’d just thought of something. “And in dim lighting, with a long coat and hat, it could pass for human for a few minutes. If the witch and the golem surprised Denise at her car, the golem could easily have carried her to the end of the pier and thrown her over. They’re incredibly strong.”

  Jesse tried to picture it. A shadowy figure in a long coat and fedora, marching straight down the pier with a struggling woman…it didn’t fit. “The Santa Monica Pier is crawling with homeless people,” he objected. “Wouldn’t someone have noticed?”

  “I told you, there are spells for taking away a few seconds of memory. Or for creating a small distraction, or helping people to sleep…”

  Jesse held up a hand, a little frustrated. “Okay, okay, I believe you.” He was beginning to understand why witches made Scarlett a little uneasy. At least with the other Old World creatures, you knew what they wanted and what they could do. He wished Kirsten could just hand over trading cards with all the witches’ stats. “We operate under the conclusion that it’s a golem. But what exactly could you do if you had a golem, the Book of Mirrors, and Lilith’s amulet, all at once?”

  “Oh, God.” Kirsten said. “I hadn’t even gotten that far. I have no idea; there are too many variables, and it depends a lot on what kind of witch you are…death magics,” she said suddenly, paling in the midday sun.

  “What?”

  “A golem to be your henchman, and possibly take the lightning strike if something goes wrong. The Transruah, which collects the energy of life.” Jesse got the feeling Kirsten wasn’t entirely aware of his presence anymore, and fought the urge to hurry her along. “With the right magics, the right specialty, you could live forever, like I said before…kill someone remotely…even bring someone back from the dead…”

  “Slow down,” Jesse said, before she could speculate any further. “This is getting too big, and there’s too much we still don’t know about what Olivia and this witch are planning, or when. What do we focus on first?”

  “The golem,” Kirsten said immediately. “That’s their muscle. If we could dismantle the golem right away, it would cripple them and make the witch much more hesitant to begin the Transruah spell.”

  “Okay, how do we kill the golem?” Jesse asked, feeling like an idiot as the words left his mouth.

  He looked across at Kirsten, who was frowning. “I’m not sure…I need to consult some texts. A golem is one of those creatures that has many different legends and stories. Most of it is folklore, some of it is truth.”

  Jesse couldn’t resist. “You mean like witches?”

  She smiled. “Touché.” The smile faded from her face as quickly as it came, and she gasped with a sudden realization.

  “Kirsten?”

  “It’s tonight,” she said solemnly, turning in her seat to face him. “Whatever Olivia and her witch are doing, it’s going to happen tonight.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it’s the winter solstice,” she said, as if that explained everything.

  “The longest night of the year, right? What does that have to do with anything?”

  Kirsten gave him an incredulous look. “You don’t…the solstice is a holy night for many religions and pagan rituals. I usually have a big party for all the witches, sort of like a multi-holiday party. I canceled this year because of Denise and Erin.”

  What did a canceled party have to do with the bad guys’ plan? “Does that really matter for Olivia and her partner?”

  “It could,” Kirsten said, excitement in her voice. “The solstice has particular relevance for Lilith, and for the connection between life and death, though I don’t know all of the specifics. Jewish magic has never been a specialty of mine. But if I were summoning power for a big spell, using Lilith’s amulet, involving the dead, and I didn’t have a coven to back me up…yes, this is the night I’d do it.”

  Jesse tried to follow this line of thought. “You’re saying it’ll make the witch even more powerful?”

  “Yes,” she said simply.

  “Can you narrow down the time frame any, based on those rituals?”

  Kirsten chewed on her lower lip as she considered his question. “If she were worried about us finding her, she’d go a little early, like ten o’clock, to throw us off. But I’m guessing this witch wants every bit of power she can grab. She’ll cast at midnight.”

  Jesse checked the dashboard clock. It was barely noon. “So we’ve got twelve hours.” He restarted the car and turned it back toward the freeway. “Does knowing it’s a golem help us find the witch who made it?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” she said distractedly. “Animation magic is a very unique specialty, and animating and controlling a golem would require an enormous amount of power. I’m not even certain that I could do it. I certainly don’t see any of my witches having that kind of…muscle.”

  She sounded so trusting when she talked about her witches, and Jesse raised his eyebrows. “Would you necessarily know?”

  Kirsten snapped to attention, looking across the seat at him. “A very good question. A few weeks ago I would have said yes, of course, I know all my witches. But now…” She turned up her palms in a helpless gesture. “I don’t know. If one of them really wished to, I suppose she could be hiding her level of power from me.”

  They drove in silence for a few minutes. Jesse was trying to process the new information. This golem thing sounded like a cop’s worst nightmare. Even assuming Kirsten could figure out how to kill it, they had to find it first. And if they couldn’t find Olivia, and they had no way of figuring out which of Kirsten’s witches was secretly helping her…“Scarlett,” Jesse said aloud.

  “What?”

  “Scarlett can gauge power.” He to
ok his eyes off the traffic long enough to meet Kirsten’s. “She told me once she gets a sense of how powerful the vampires and werewolves are, when they come into her…aura, or whatever. I asked her about you guys”—Kirsten gave a short nod, understanding that he meant the witches—“and she said…how did she put it? That you all have a low-level buzz when you’re not trying to use magic, and when you do use it the buzz flares up. She said your buzz is stronger because you’re more powerful than the other witches she’s met.”

  “But how does that help us?” Kirsten asked sensibly.

  “If we could get the witches together in one place, and if we put Scarlett among them, she’d be able to tell who was hiding power,” he said excitedly. “And she’d be able to neutralize the witch at the same time, and we could use her to find Olivia.”

  “That…could work,” she said slowly, her face creased in concentration. “It’s a bit of a long shot.”

  “I know,” Jesse admitted, “but the only other things I can think of would be to dig through Olivia’s background to see if we can find a witch connection, or run background checks on all your witches. And we’d need more time for either of those options.”

  Kirsten’s mouth turned down at the words background checks. “Let’s do it.”

  “Do you have any way of getting the witches together?” Jesse asked. “Do you guys have meetings or something?”

  “Not until the first weekend of next month. I could call an emergency meeting, but then whoever it is might just not show up.”

  “If she thought the meeting was about something else?” Jesse asked. “Like, you say there’s news about the killer, or something?”

  He glanced at the witch and saw that Kirsten’s face had brightened. “I have an even better idea,” she said, with sudden cheerfulness. “I’ll just uncancel the party.”

  Chapter 19

  I let Sadie hug me again before I left the hospital. As soon as I got out of the building, my cell phone began to ring, the regular old ring-ring sound that meant it wasn’t one of my bosses. I didn’t recognize the number.