Hunter's Trail (A Scarlett Bernard Novel)

by Melissa F. Olson

  I studied her. I don’t know how I knew, but somehow I did. “You tried to end your life,” I whispered.

  Lydia cringed, a werewolf gesture, and I knew I was right. We sat there for a few minutes without speaking. I didn’t want to push her to talk about it—and every minute we were away from Molly’s house gave Eli more time to get away too.

  Finally she cleared her throat and met my eyes again. “I don’t have any illusions about Ana. I know she can be too intense. And, you know”—she gave me a tiny smile—“dogged.”

  “I think she’s mostly just been trying to help you,” I said carefully. Here I was again, in a conversation where I couldn’t use the past tense for a dead person. Only this one was one that I’d killed personally.

  Lydia flinched. “She’s been so worried. She’s been doing things . . .” She shook her head. “Things I never would have thought she’d do.”

  “Like changing in between moons?” I said gently, on a hunch.

  Before Lydia could respond, the waitress came back with a pot of coffee and filled our mugs.

  Lydia took a long sip of hers before meeting my eyes defiantly. “I figured you knew about that. She thought it would help me if we went up to Kings Canyon, away from the pack.” She shook her head and continued, voice quiet, “Something changed, though, and she’s been scheming with Terry ever since, giving me these looks like I might suddenly sprout fur at any moment . . . But that’s not the point. Last night, she said she was going to follow you. Get you to give her the cure.”

  She paused, as if waiting for my reaction, but I stayed silent. My dad used to say that it was a lot harder to get in trouble if you kept quiet. “Ana and I have been together seven years, did you know that?” Lydia added abruptly, her expression shifting around again. I shook my head. “The whole time, I had no idea what she was. Seven fucking years.” She set her coffee cup down hard and leaned forward. “But now I know. And I know what you do for them now, your job. And my thinking is that Ana came after you last night and you killed her.”

  “I . . .” I swallowed, at a complete loss for words.

  Lydia watched me steadily for a moment, and then leaned back with disappointed satisfaction on her face. “That’s what I thought,” she said, in the same quiet, eerily calm voice. “I’m not going to ask you where she is, or whether or not she’s coming home. But there’s something I do want to ask you.”

  I nodded, trying to keep myself together. I kept seeing Anastasia’s blood pouring down, the way it had felt splashing hot on my stomach.

  “Where is Eli?” Lydia asked me.

  That wasn’t what I’d been expecting. I didn’t answer. Couldn’t. Instead, I took a long sip of my coffee, which is the lamest way to stall, but I had no idea what to say. A big part of me wanted to just come clean, consequences be damned. This woman deserved to know what had happened to her girlfriend. She deserved the truth. But if I gave it to her, would I be making things better, or worse? I had thought changing Eli would make things better, and I’d been so wrong . . .

  Sensing I wasn’t going to respond, Lydia added, “Because here’s the thing. If Eli wasn’t cured, if Ana really was just losing her mind this whole time, then that’s really sad, but I kind of get it. A crazy werewolf, running around stirring up trouble . . . I hate it, and I miss her, but I understand too. Now more than ever.”

  She leaned forward, eyes piercing me. “But if Anastasia was right, and you-all killed her just to keep things convenient for some goddamned asset, then may God have mercy on your souls.”

  I blinked, and a chill went through me as I realized that I was the asset. I sat frozen in my seat, Lydia staring at me, as waitresses and busboys and customers bustled around us, laughing and yelling and complaining to each other. The sun had drifted out from behind the clouds at some point, and a beam of sunshine had traveled through the blinds on the big picture window next to us, striping the skin on my wrist. I suppressed a weird urge to recoil from it.

  Finally I said the only honest thing I could think of. “I don’t know where Eli is.”

  Lydia nodded again, the same weird twitchy expressions moving across her face. She dug in her pocket for a moment, and by the time it occurred to me to be afraid of a weapon she had produced a $5 bill. “Then I’ll make it really easy for you. The pack is gathering tomorrow night for the full moon. If Eli’s there before the moon sets, we’ll make plans for a memorial for Anastasia.” She stood up, keeping her voice low. “But if he’s not there, or not one of us, then I’ll get whoever will join me and I will bring fucking war down on all of you.” Her eyes closed and she swayed as if in pain. “And we’ll lose,” she whispered. “But I’ll take you with me.”

  Lydia opened her eyes and tossed the bill on the table, while I sat there with my mouth open. “Coffee’s on me,” she added, and walked out the door.

  Chapter 35

  When I got back to Molly’s, I checked out the front window to make sure Lydia had really driven away. Then I took a few steps toward the stairs and yelled, “Eli? Are you here?” Listened. Nothing. I hadn’t seen his truck out front, but he could have parked on a side street, or in the garage where I kept my van. I sighed. I was going to have to stump all the way up the stairs to make sure, wasn’t I? Great.

  Then there was a sudden knock on the door right behind me, and I jumped, heart suddenly ping-ponging around my rib cage. I hobbled back to the window and peeked through the curtain before opening the front door.

  “Hey,” Jesse said. His face was expressionless. “We need to go talk to Henry Remus’s parents.”

  I blinked at him. A lot had happened in the few hours since we’d spoken, but not enough for me to forget how hard he’d come down on me. “That’s it?” I said, my voice hard. “No ‘I’m sorry, Scarlett?’ ‘I shouldn’t have yelled at you, Scarlett?’ ‘My sincerest apologies for being a dickweed, Scarlett?’”

  Jesse shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “Last night wasn’t your fault,” he began. “I was angry about the nova getting away, and it was wrong to take it out on you.”

  There was a telltale little catch in his voice. “But?”

  “But . . .” He paused, choosing his words. “I’m not sorry that I got upset. That seeing those women affected me. I’m not sorry that it bothers me when it doesn’t bother you.”

  Images bombarded my thoughts: Leah. Kate. Ruanna and Sam.

  Anastasia.

  I sagged against the door. Sometimes I think pushing those thoughts away is my one real superpower. “You really think that seeing those dead women didn’t affect me?” I whispered.

  Jesse stared at me, unrelenting. “Did it?”

  I gritted my teeth. What did he want me to do, put on a play for him? I was too tired and too strung out to continue this fight. I glanced down at my sweats. “If we’re gonna interview the parents, I should change,” I said tightly. “You can wait out here.”

  I swung the door closed.

  It was a very tense ride to the Remuses’ apartment. I had decided to take the “if you can’t say anything nice” approach, and Jesse probably had too, because neither of us spoke the whole way there. The only non traffic sound was the voice in Jesse’s phone’s GPS, telling him when to change directions. I sat and played with the dark green scarf that I was wearing to hide the bruises on my neck.

  The Remuses lived in Temple City, one of a small cluster of towns just outside the border of the city of Los Angeles. I forget sometimes how big Los Angeles County really is. I had lived there for more than five years, and it seemed like I was always running into huge swaths of the area that I’d never seen before. Temple City was fairly nondescript in a Southern California kind of way: palm trees, decent houses on tiny lots, signs everywhere in a multitude of languages. I saw a lot of Asian women chattering in clusters outside store windows, often with a small child tugging at one of their hands.

  The Remuses lived right on the border of the North San Gabriel area, in a big stucco hive of a building
with cactuses (cacti?) instead of flowers planted along the walkways. We went into the lobby only to discover that the Remus apartment was garden-level, so Jesse decided we should find the exterior door rather than warn them that we were coming. I may have done some grumbling as I hobbled after him around the side of the building, but then I’d never promised anyone I would be gracious about it.

  After a couple of false starts, and one of us threatening to smack the other with her cane if there was any more walking, Jesse and I found the right door. He held up his fist to knock, and I reached out without thinking and grabbed his wrist. He gave me a questioning look.

  “Let me feel first,” I whispered, and closed my eyes. When a null spends as much time as I do around the Old World, the supernatural can start to feel like background noise in the way regular Los Angeles residents can stop noticing traffic, or creepy people on the public transportation. I would feel really stupid if I got distracted and didn’t notice that we were walking right into the nova. But I didn’t feel anything. I focused on the edges of my radius and pushed them outward again, but still didn’t pick up anything nonhuman. I opened my eyes and nodded at Jesse, who drummed his knuckles on the door. Nothing happened for a moment, but we could hear the sound of the television blaring through the door, so Jesse knocked again, harder.

  The door was jerked open by an annoyed-looking man in his sixties. He was very tall, with deep vertical creases in each cheek that gave the impression of gauntness, although he had a pretty average build. “Ezekiel Remus?” Jesse asked, authority hardening his voice. He held up his badge. “I’m Detective Jesse Cruz. This is a civilian consultant, Scarlett Bernard.” Now that Jesse was investigating for the department semi-officially, I could no longer pretend to be Laverne Halliday. Which was fine with me. “May we have a few minutes of your time? It’s about your son,” Jesse continued.

  The tinny cheers of a football game jumped in to fill the silence Jesse’s words left behind. Ezekiel Remus’s face didn’t change as he absorbed who we were, but his rigid shoulders slumped a little bit. For a second, I thought he was going to slam the door in our faces, but instead he abruptly swung it open. “Well, come in, then,” he muttered, like a pouting kid. “I guess I’ll turn that down.”

  The door opened straight into a small living room decorated in Martha Stewart for Kmart. There was an afghan-covered yellow couch along one wall and a blue velvet easy chair sitting adjacent to it, both facing a modest flat-screen television mounted on the wall. The chair was still rocking a little from when Ezekiel Remus had stood up to answer the door. There were three beer bottles on an IKEA-style side table between the couch and chair, one still mostly full.

  “Sharon!” he yelled. He picked up a black remote from the arm of his chair and switched the TV off, cutting off the announcer’s voice. “You call me Zeke or Mr. Remus.” he said gruffly. He pointed toward the couch. “Sit.”

  I glanced at Jesse, who stayed on his feet. I was beginning to pick up on the psychology of Jesse’s interviews, and I was guessing that he didn’t want Remus to feel like he was in charge. I played along, although I really wanted to sit down. I tried not to look longingly at the couch.

  A woman who was also in her sixties came through the open doorway. Sharon Remus, presumably, was a thickset, unadorned woman with sensible short hair the color of cement blocks. She wore plain, unflattering jeans and an equally plain and unflattering blue button-down that did nothing for her sallow complexion. Her eyes, unlike the rest of her, were stunning: big and Elizabeth Taylor-violet, with a thick fringe of black eyelashes that couldn’t have been anything but natural. On a pretty or even pleasant face, the eyes would have made Sharon Remus a knockout. Instead, they seemed jarringly out of place.

  She blinked those big eyes at us in combined terror and relief, like she’d been expecting the police to knock on her door for a long time now. “This is my wife, Sharon,” Zeke said, nodding at her. “I already forgot your names.”

  “Detective Jesse Cruz,” Jesse said again, reaching out to shake hands with both of them. “And this is Scarlett Bernard; she’s a civilian consultant.” I shook their hands too. Sharon’s was plump and a little damp, like she’d just dried her hands on a towel that wasn’t dry to begin with. Zeke Remus’s hand was big and rough, and he squeezed just a little too hard. He eyed my leg and cane as though he was dying to ask me what had happened, but had thought better of it.

  “Please, sit down,” Sharon said nervously, and this time Jesse moved toward the couch. I followed gratefully. “Let me just grab a chair from the kitchen. Do you all want coffee or some lemonade . . .” she trailed off, unsure of the social protocol of a police visit.

  “They’re fine, Sharon,” Zeke said dismissively. He reminded me of an old-fashioned country preacher, although I had no idea if the family had any connection to religion. There was just something about the commanding, self-possessed way he stood, and the way Sharon Remus kept glancing at him with nervous deference. She scurried toward the kitchen, coming back with a plain straight-backed wooden chair.

  “What do you consult on?” Sharon asked me as she took her seat.

  I opened my mouth, though I’m not sure what I would have said, but Jesse jumped in and saved me. “Missing persons cases,” he said immediately. “Ms. Bernard is a coordinator with that department.”

  Sharon nodded, looking confused. Zeke grunted. “Let’s get this over with,” he said stiffly. He looked at me, then at Jesse. “I have three sons. But I’m guessing you’re here about Hank.”

  “Henry,” Sharon added, in case we were confused.

  “Yes, sir,” I answered Zeke. Unlike Jesse, I’m allowed to call members of the public anything I want—but he was just the kind of guy you called “sir.”

  “He’s not missing,” Sharon said hurriedly. “He lives here with us . . . but he camps a lot.”

  “That’s not why we want to speak with him,” Jesse said to her. “We think he may know something about some other disappearances.”

  “Who disappeared?” Zeke broke in.

  “Five women in LA have gone missing in the last two weeks,” Jesse said evenly. “They were all involved in environmental causes, just like Henry.”

  He didn’t come out and say that he suspected Henry of murdering them, but the implication lay thick and obvious on the table between us. I expected Zeke, at least, to raise his voice and demand that Jesse apologize. He looked like the kind of guy who demanded a lot of apologies. But instead, Zeke and Sharon Remus exchanged a complicated look.

  “Hank—Henry, I mean, he prefers Henry—wouldn’t hurt a fly,” she said slowly, as if she really wanted it to be true.

  “I understand, but it’s important that we ask him some questions,” Jesse responded. “When was the last time he was here?”

  Zeke looked pointedly at his wife, and she scanned the ceiling, considering the question. “Maybe three weeks ago? He was going up to the Sequoias,” she added. “He has a little pickup truck that he took up there.”

  The Sequoias. Why was that chiming in my brain?

  “Raided the fridge first,” Zeke grumbled. He’d picked up the black remote control and was fidgeting with it.

  “Have you heard from him since then?” Jesse asked.

  Sharon Remus nodded eagerly. “Oh, sure. We have a system, you know. Henry calls or texts every Sunday to let me know he’s okay, when he’s traveling. He texted me this past Sunday, said everything was fine.” Understanding dawned on her face, and she said to Jesse, “Hey! You were the one who called me last night!”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Jesse said. Unapologetic.

  Sharon looked disappointed. “I thought—I thought some parent really did like his show. He goes around to schools in the area, you know, and gives little presentations to the kids about preserving their world and all that.” Without looking down she began worrying at a cuticle. “He does it on a volunteer basis.”

  Zeke snorted. “They would never pay him for it, is what she means.
The schools tolerate the boy because he’s free and he brings his own photos.” Jesse and I exchanged a quick look. “The boy” was forty-four. “The other two’re straightened out,” Zeke continued, “but there’s something off about Hank. Always was.” Sharon shot him a despairing look. To his wife, Zeke added irritably, “You know I’m right, Sharon.”

  “We tried everything,” Sharon said to us, desperation in her voice. “Private school, tutors. I even took him to a therapist in Van Nuys. He means well, and he’d never hurt anyone, honest. He just . . . prefers the company of wildlife to the company of people.” One of her cuticles ripped a small line of blood, and she frowned and stuck it in her mouth.

  Jesse glanced at me. “Mrs. Remus,” I said gently. “Do you have a family photo?”

  Her face lit up. “Oh, yes.” She jumped up and grabbed a framed photograph off an end table. It was the only picture in the room. “These are my boys,” she said proudly.

  The photo was a few years old, judging by the depth of the wrinkles on Zeke Remus’s cheeks. Zeke and Sharon were posed in the center, sitting on wooden stools, while three younger men stood in a line behind them. “That’s Phillip, he’s the oldest,” Sharon said, pointing at the one on the far right, a weary-looking man with graying temples. “He’s an accountant in Bakersfield now. And that’s Mikey, he’s my baby,” she added, touching the man on the left, who looked about thirty in the photo. “He just got married last winter to the nicest girl, from San Luis Obispo. I’m hoping they give me some grandbabies soon.” She smiled fondly at the photo.

  “And that must be Henry in the middle,” I finished for her. All three “boys” had similar features: their father’s long face, dull sandy hair that had probably come from Sharon before hers grayed. Phillip and Mike both had empty, obligation-filled smiles, the kind that said “look how nice I’m being, to do this for my mother.” But Henry’s grin was different: a little too wide, a hair too crazy. Maybe I was just seeing what I expected to see, but he seemed . . . well, off. Neither of us had gotten a great look at the guy the night before, but this certainly could be him.