Which left Jesse and me. I was ready to start driving around the city with my head out of the window screaming Shadow’s name, but Jesse suggested that we interview a friend of his who worked at the prison, in case the Luparii had left any evidence behind. Short of a hotel room key or a signed confession, I had no idea how that was going to help, but neither of us had any other ideas, and sitting at the cottage worrying about Shadow wasn’t going to get me anywhere.
And so, everyone went about wasting the day.
Jesse and I went down to Corona and met his friend Dan Cohen over early-morning coffee, but he couldn’t help much. He did tell us one thing that was being kept from the press: one of the other guards had walked Petra into the minimum-security part of the prison and basically waved her goodbye, all of which appeared on the surveillance footage. That same guard, Cohen said, now claimed he had no memory of why he’d done it.
I looked at Jesse, who nodded to say he got it too. The guard had probably been pressed by a vampire, which confirmed what Kirsten had heard about the Luparii: they were expanding their ranks.
Jesse asked Cohen if Petra had left anything behind in her cell, and he frowned. “I work in a different area, but I’ve filled in a couple of shifts on that ward,” he said. “That chick was an ice queen. No personal effects, no books, nothing. She was careful . . . and scary. Every other woman in there left her alone, which is saying something.”
“Did she have computer privileges?” Jesse asked. “Visitors?”
Cohen shrugged. “They’re looking into that now, but there certainly wasn’t anything that stood out as unusual. In a way, she was a model prisoner: left everyone alone, didn’t cause trouble. But she creeped everyone out. She didn’t even have a cellmate, because they kept trying to commit suicide.”
Jesse and I exchanged a look. The Luparii magic tended to twist things toward evil. Why not minds?
Cohen misinterpreted our expressions and said emphatically, “Yeah, see what I mean? Creepy.”
So the prison was a dead end. At noon, we checked in with Kirsten and Will, who were both busy dealing with informants and/or panicky werewolves, and didn’t have any new information on Shadow. I was racking my brain for ideas about finding Shadow, but I kept coming up empty. Finally, we went back to the cottage—I kept my radius expanded so I’d have plenty of advance warning if the Luparii decided to try another run at me—and started making calls. Jesse phoned his old contacts at various police stations to ask them to call if there were any sightings of a very unusual dog, or noise complaints about a bark loud enough to shake the ground. I called shelters. It seemed like a very long shot, but Shadow was as smart as some people, with magic-enhanced strength and healing. I had to believe there was a chance she could get away from the Luparii on her own.
At 7:45, shortly after sunset, Jesse and I were sitting in my living room, trying to figure out our next move. I had just gotten off the phone with Dashiell.
“Any new info?” Jesse asked.
I shook my head. “More of a confirmation. The vampires in Europe have noticed that the Luparii are expanding. They’ve kept an eye on it, but the Luparii have made it clear that their continued goal is eradicating werewolves.”
“So the European vampires don’t really care,” Jesse concluded.
“Exactly.”
He opened his mouth, but his cell phone rang before he could say anything. He checked the screen and then paused, frowning like he couldn’t decide whether to answer.
“Who is it?” I asked.
“A former friend,” he said briefly, and answered the phone. “This is Jesse Cruz.”
Then he listened for a long time, interjecting only the occasional “Mmm-hmm,” or “Yeah, probably.” At one point he looked at me and made a little writing motion, and I got him the pen from the coffee table. He scribbled something on the palm of his hand.
Finally, Jesse hung up and turned to me, looking grim. “There was a murder in Long Beach that could be supernatural,” he reported.
I needed a second to take that in. His friend was in the know, and worked with the LAPD. While helping Hayne with his security measures, I knew the (very short) list of humans who were allowed to know about the Old World despite not being attached to it. And one of them was a criminologist in Jesse’s old division. “Is this Gloria Sherman?”
“Yes.” Jesse looked tense. “Years ago, Dashiell told her to call me if she got a case that looked supernatural. But I haven’t actually heard from her since the Luparii murders.”
“Huh.” That didn’t surprise me, given how quiet things had been in LA. Well, maybe not “quiet” so much as “we keep our shit contained.”
Then a terrible, terrible thought struck me. “Is it . . . are there jaws missing?”
Back when the Luparii were hunting wolves for the king of France, they would save the wolves’ jaws as proof of death. On the Luparii’s last visit to LA, they’d killed two of Will’s werewolves and taken their jaws.
Shadow. Shadow had killed them.
Were the Luparii making her kill again?
Before I could follow that thought down the inevitable rabbit hole, Jesse said, “No, no. He definitely wasn’t mauled.”
“Then how did he die?”
He made a face. “By beheading.”
Oh, gross. “Who does that?”
He glanced at me, a little amused. “I was going to ask you the same question,” he said. “Even in a city with as much crime as LA, you don’t get a lot of people who die by beheading. Sometimes a body will be decapitated in a traffic accident, or someone will cut a head off after death, but it’s really hard to kill someone by chopping off their head. Even if you’ve got them unconscious, there are easier ways to do it.”
“What’s the victim’s name?”
Jesse checked his hand, where he’d written the name. “Karl Schmidt.”
I turned the name over in my mind for a few minutes, but came up with nothing. “Never heard of him. But I’ll check with the others.”
I texted Dashiell, Kirsten, and Will. Neither Kirsten nor Will had heard of Karl Schmidt. Dashiell called me back about ten minutes later. I put him on speakerphone at his request.
“I don’t know this Karl Schmidt,” he said crisply. “But I have arranged for the two of you to go look at his residence.”
I was surprised that he was taking the whole beheading thing so seriously. “Do you mean you want us to go see the body?” I asked. “My understanding is that it’s at the coroner’s building now.”
“I spoke to the coroner,” he said curtly. “The body has gone through a preliminary examination, but they are unable to do the autopsy until the morning. There is nothing to see except a naked body and a detached head.”
“What about defensive wounds?” Jesse asked.
“There were none.”
Jesse’s eyes widened. “That’s . . . unusual.”
“Which is one of the reasons why I’m sending you two down there.” Dashiell was starting to sound impatient with us. “The house is your best source of information. I have arranged for one of the forensics people to meet you there and walk you through the scene. I will also send a vampire so you can erase his memory, and the memory of anyone else you need to speak to.”
Ugh. This was annoying, though not really unexpected. Most of the time, my job didn’t involve human witnesses—or rather, they’d already been pressed and sent home by the time I was called in. But from time to time I dealt with a situation that was still ongoing, and required the aid of vampires. “Can it just be Molly?” I tried not to sound whiny, considering the thinness of the ice I was standing on. “I hate working with people I don’t know.”
There was a long pause. “No,” Dashiell said finally. “I think you and Molly have had enough adventures for one weekend, don’t you?” His voice hardened with every word.
I winced. He didn’t want Molly and me colluding, or conspiring, or whatever c-word meant we weren’t team players. I was irritated by the lack of trust . . . but I also kind of deserved it. Either way, I wasn’t stupid enough to answer him. Go me.