Hunter's Trail

The next thing I knew, someone was gently but insistently squeezing my hand, over and over again. “Scarlett,” Jesse said quietly, “Wake up. We need to go.”

“Time’s it?” I muttered, but Jesse understood.

“It’s five o’clock. I just got a call back from the woman who’s in charge of Humans for the Protection of Animals, Cassey Maximus.”

I yawned, squinting at him. “Sounds like a fake name to me.”

“Scarlett,” he said patiently, “three members of her group went missing last night. Three women.”

Chapter 31

Jesse used his phone to read up on the HPA while he waited for the e-mail that Cassey Maximus had promised to send. Humans for the Protection of Animals was the third-largest animal rights organization in the country, with chapters in most major cities. They weren’t quite as militant as PETA, or as do-goody as the Humane Society, but what they lacked in positive media coverage, they made up for with political influence. HPA focused their time and funding on lobbying politicians directly, one animal-related cause at a time.

The leader of the LA branch, Cassey Maximus, was a former socialite who now spent her time designing purses and running her part of the HPA. To his surprise, though, Jesse had liked her when they spoke on the phone. She had seemed genuine, and also genuinely worried, promising to send him the roster of all the LA HPA members, as well as photos of the missing women.

The e-mail arrived while Scarlett was freshening up, so Jesse borrowed her computer to read it on a bigger screen. Cassey had created a simple Word document and pasted in information on each of the three missing women: Ruanna Martinez, Samantha Wheaton, and Lizzy Thompkins. She’d even included a separate photo of each one, likely cropped from photos taken during some sort of group event since none of the women were looking at the camera. Beneath each photo, Cassey had added each woman’s contact information and a little description of the woman depicted. Rue has three kids and loves horses. Sam has a new baby and can’t stand the sight of blood. The last page in the document was the roster of the LA branch’s members.

In a stroke of luck, the leader of PAW had e-mailed him back as well, and by the time Scarlett returned from the bathroom, he had printed off the rosters for both organizations.

“You wanna go talk to their families now?” Scarlett asked as they headed out of the house. “The missing women’s?”

He considered it for a moment, then shook his head. “Not yet. If the nova wolf took those three women early last night, he may have already tried to change them. Which means he may be dumping bodies tonight.”

“You wanna go back to Will’s?” Scarlett said dubiously.

Jesse held up the printouts. “I want to kill two birds with one stone. We go back to Will’s and go through the two rosters in the car. If we can find a name that’s on both lists . . .”

“That might be the nova,” she finished for him, newly excited.

An hour later, they were back in their spot across the street from Will’s house, and Jesse’s hopes were quickly deserting him. He squinted down at the list of PAW members. “The next name is Orlando Rajes, age twenty-two.”

Scarlett rustled through the HPA roster, looking at the names in the dim glow from the van’s reading light. She sighed heavily. “Yup, he’s on here too.”

Jesse swore, not for the first time. There were twenty-nine names on the PAW roster, each listed along with their DOB, but so far almost all of them had also been on the HPA roster. He’d been hoping to find just one or two matches, but instead there were almost twenty. There was no way they could chase down twenty names quickly, especially not before the nova attacked the three women he’d taken.

This stakeout was becoming more and more like a vigil.

“Jesse,” Scarlett said patiently. “You with me?”

“What? Oh, yeah.”

“Next?” She was actually trying to stay positive, which was definitely a sign that everything had gone to hell.

“Henry Remus,” Jesse said in a monotone. “Age forty-four.”

“Hang on,” Scarlett said suddenly, staring straight ahead. Jesse peered out the windshield, both hoping and not hoping to see the nova. He wanted to catch the fucker, but he didn’t want to see any more dead bodies. But there was nothing out there.

“What?” he asked Scarlett.

“Henry in his forties . . . Henry in his forties . . . I’ve heard that before,” she said, snapping her fingers idly. “Do you have those notes I took from the interviews?”

Jesse reached into his jacket pocket and dug out the little notebook, passing it over to her. Scarlett flipped to the right page and stabbed it with a forefinger. “Here,” she said. “When I was talking to Amanda Lewis. She said that Leah was dating a guy in his forties named Henry.”

“It could be the same guy,” Jesse said. “Is the guy in HPA too?”

Scarlett lifted the printout again, trying to get the right section of the paper into the light. “He’s here!” she crowed, before looking over at him. “What now?”

“Now we find the guy.”

First things first: Jesse took out his phone and googled Remus. The only things that popped up were a couple of PDFs, and when he downloaded the appropriate files he found Remus’s name mentioned in a couple of newsletters from local public schools. Huh.

At his request, Scarlett called Leah Rhodes’s roommate, Amanda Lewis, and asked for any further details on Leah’s boyfriend. Jesse waited impatiently as Scarlett went “Uh-huh” a few times. Finally she hung up and turned to him. “She doesn’t remember much else,” Scarlett reported. “Except that he drives an old blue pickup truck, pretty small, and she thinks he still lives with his parents, because Leah almost never spent the night at his place.”